The Team Coaching Zone Podcast: Coaching | Teams | Leadership - 086: Gabe Abella: Achieving Organizational and Team Agility with Kanban and the Fit For Purpose Framework

086: Gabe Abella: Achieving Organizational and Team Agility with Kanban and the Fit For Purpose Framework

09/28/17 • 69 min

The Team Coaching Zone Podcast: Coaching | Teams | Leadership

How is work changing and how do we design organizations to be fit for purpose in the knowledge and collaboration economy? How do we form and equip teams to balance capability with infinite demand? How do we coach teams for emergence?

Tune in this week’s episode of The Team Coaching Zone podcast where host Dr. Krister Lowe explores these and other compelling questions with featured guest Gabe Abella--an Organizational Coach and Vice President in Global Technology at JP Morgan Chase and an accredited Kanban trainer.

Themes covered in the podcast include:

• Gabe’s journey from project and program manager to organizational coach

• Fundamental shifts occurring in how we approach and organize work in the knowledge and collaboration economy

• Understanding 3 Natures: 1) the nature of the work the team is doing, 2) the nature of the organization, 3) the nature of the environment/market

• The infinite backlog and the finite team: balancing capability with demand

• Kanban – Lean; visual management system; seeing the flow of work; “look at the board” or signal card; an improvement method

• Problem-solving as a biological process: iterative cycles and learning

• The invisibility of knowledge work

• Collocated vs. distributed teams

• Team formation for organizational realignments

• Skills vs. roles and motivation in team formation

• Being invisible as a team coach

• Use of simulation prior to engaging in real work in order to reduce learning anxiety

• Fitness for Purpose Framework

• Diffusion of Innovation

• Flow Lab – experiential simulation to overcome efficiency mindset and more

• Reflections on the ongoing coaching of teams and scaling agile

• Implications of agile coaching for non-software teams

• Coaching for emergence

• Tons of great resources for team coaches and more!

The Agile movement is disrupting organizations and our approaches to working, learning and teaming. All team coaches need to increase their own agility and to be fit for purpose themselves in order to compete in the knowledge and collaboration economy. Tune in to this episode and let Gabe Abella help you elevate your team coaching game today!

Themes covered in the podcast include:

• Gabe’s journey from project and program manager to organizational coach

• Fundamental shifts occurring in how we approach and organize work in the knowledge and collaboration economy

• Understanding 3 Natures: 1) the nature of the work the team is doing, 2) the nature of the organization, 3) the nature of the environment/market

• The infinite backlog and the finite team: balancing capability with demand

• Kanban – Lean; visual management system; seeing the flow of work; “look at the board” or signal card; an improvement method

• Problem-solving as a biological process: iterative cycles and learning

• The invisibility of knowledge work

• Collocated vs. distributed teams

• Team formation for organizational realignments

• Skills vs. roles and motivation in team formation

• Being invisible as a team coach

• Use of simulation prior to engaging in real work in order to reduce learning anxiety

• Fitness for Purpose Framework

• Diffusion of Innovation

• Flow Lab – experiential simulation to overcome efficiency mindset and more

• Reflections on the ongoing coaching of teams and scaling agile

• Implications of agile coaching for non-software teams

• Coaching for emergence

• Tons of great resources for team coaches and more!

Previous Episode

085: Harvey Seifter: The Art of Science Learning: Fostering Breakthroughs in Team Creativity, Collaboration and Innovation at Scale

How does arts-based learning rapidly transform culture and performance in teams and organizations? What is the relationship between creative thinking, collaboration and innovation? What research evidence exists to support incorporating arts-based learning in teams? How can these processes be scaled up in organizations?

Tune in to this week’s episode of The Team Coaching Zone podcast where host Dr. Krister Lowe interviews special guest Harvey Seifter to explore these and other compelling topics. Harvey Seifter is Founder and Director of Art of Science Learning (www.artofsciencelearning.org) and Principal Investigator of its two National Science Foundation grants and is one of the world’s leading authorities on organizational creativity and arts‐based learning.

Themes explored in the podcast include:

Harvey’s journey from classically trained musician to author to Founder of the Art of Science Learning
Harvey’s experience at the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra and his 2001 book Leadership Ensemble: Lessons in Collaborative Management from the World’s Only Conductorless Orchestra
Convening the field of arts-based learning in business
Metaforming (symbolic modelling)
2012 $2.8 million grant from National Science Foundation exploring arts-based learning, innovation and business
-The development of an arts-based innovation process and curriculum
The creation of 3 innovation incubators: San Diego, Chicago, Worcester
Teaching innovation through doing it: research on 29 cross-disciplinary teams; 22 teams after 1 year went to market (products, processes, services)
The core skills of innovation as well as phases
Approaches to infusing arts-based approaches: music, improv, movement, conducting, drawing, sketching
Wicked problems as failures of imagination
Experimental research: randomized and controlled study of arts-based learning and innovation in teams:
2 phases of innovation: 1) what is the problem and 2) how do we solve it: each with a converge and diverge component
The linkage between divergent thinking, convergent thinking, business results and culture change
Using research and data to bring arts from the fringes into the center of business processes
A story of applying arts-based learning to foster creativity with 22 startups within a Fortune 500 organization
The future of innovation, arts-based learning and wicked problems

This is an episode that truly all teams, team leaders, and team coaches cannot afford to miss! For show notes and more great information and resources on team coaching go to: http://www.teamcoachingzone.com/

Next Episode

087: Phillip Cave: Coaching Organizational Systems for Agility and Humanness

How do we coach across individuals, teams and systems to drive organizational change? Is it possible to be both an internal leader and an organizational coach at the same time? Do team coaches need to be subject matter experts in the content of what the teams are working on?

Join show host Dr. Krister Lowe and today’s featured guest Phillip Cave to explore these and other compelling topics on this week’s episode of the Team Coaching Zone Podcast. Phillip Cave is a Life and Organizational Fulfillment Coach and a Senior Manager at Accenture. He is a people and organizational transformation leader with more than 27 years of experience creating himself, technology startups and coaching organizations. His experience in software engineering, leadership and product management shifted to professional life coaching which results in cultural shifts in Fortune 50 companies.

Some themes explored in this episode include:

Phillip’s journey from photographer to software developer, to becoming a leader and manager of teams and people, to becoming an organizational coach.
Metaphor of a chiropractor: creating alignment across teams, leaders and organizations
Forces driving the shift to new forms of organizational design and effectiveness: 1) agile movement and 2) humanness
Coaching as a vehicle to help individuals and systems emerge
Engaging leaders around their willingness to lead transformation: both the “being” as well as the “doing” aspects
Coaching leaders to see themselves as part of the system and not apart from it
The Lean Change Canvas
Role of the coach to act as a mirror to help the organization “see itself”
Case example: building a new commerce platform over the course of 1 year with a team of 70 at Starbucks
Coaching the “team’s voice”
Being part of the leadership team as an internal director and organizational coach at the same time
Challenging teams to embody roles like “scrum master” as a function distributed across the team rather than as a job owned by one person
Team Performance Model: resource form coaching teams across the lifecycle
The emergence of the “Management Coach” job in companies
Learning how to be a catalyst of people
The merging of worlds: technology + learning and development
Coaching organizational design and effectiveness
Reflections on the future of organizational coaching and more

This is a great episode for coaches interested in understanding how organizational coaching is adapting in order to stay relevant in an era of disruptive organizational change. This is an episode you will surely not want to miss!