Sauna session: The importance of organizational stretching with Irina Nordström and Arto Kiiskinen

Marc (00:00):

Hello, and welcome to DevOps Sauna. My name is Marc Dillon. I'll be your host today on a podcast called organizational stretching. I have here two amazing people from Eficode. First I have Irina.

Irina (00:23):

Hello. My name is Irina Nordström and I am the head of people operations in Eficode. In addition, I'm also a group exercise instructor inside Elixia, which has more than 250 gyms in Scandinavia.

Marc (00:41):

Thank you, Irina. I also have Arto.

Arto (00:45):

Hey everyone. My name is Arto Kiiskinen and I'm a, let's say a trial coach trainer but my focus or my passion is product ownership. So I teach and train a lot of product owners and also in that sense organizations and I'm constantly always thinking of, let's say different viewpoints, different ways of thinking of how organizations can improve and become in more sense, more agile or better. That's my passion.

Marc (01:25):

Great. So Arto brought this topic to us recently and was thinking about stretching and stretching in terms of physical stretching and stretching in terms of organizational stretching and is there a connection here? Irina, why do we need to stretch?

Irina (01:46):

I think we all know that stretching keeps muscles flexible, strong, and overall stretching increases the overall health and wellbeing. So in that sense, stretching has a lot of positive effects.

Arto (02:05):

I just want to continue maybe on Irina's, that why do we need to stretch is also the need for stretching. It becomes a bit more evident the older you get. Maybe in your 20s, you were like, okay, whatever is this thing, we don't need it but then as you become more mature, let's say mature, nice word not older, but then you start a little bit more aches and tightness and you're not so flexible anymore. And then you start to understand, okay, actually this is needed.

Irina (02:46):

Every year we are actually less flexible if we don't stretch.

Arto (02:53):

Yes. I wonder if there is also a same kind of thing with organizations, right? So let's say you have a young company, few people, things are very fluid and flexible by nature then you grow. You are not anymore five people. You are 10 people, you are 50 people. You are 100 people. You are 1,000 people. Now, are you as flexible as you were? Probably not. I mean, that's kind of an aspect of stretching as a physical activity, keeping you flexible. And then as companies grow and become more older by nature they just become more, I don't want to say inflexible, but it's easy to become static.

Irina (03:47):

Yeah, I can maybe tell one example from my own work history. I worked in my history in a very big corporation and as part of my onboarding process, I interviewed quite many of my new colleagues there in the HR department. And actually one colleague said to me quite directly that, "By the way, it's not worth of trying to renew anything here, the ideas won't be flying." And I was a little bit in shock that, is this really the truth?

Irina (04:31):

And of course I actually, during my first months there, I was a little bit worried to success anything new because of that one comment from that one person. But luckily in the end I noticed that actually this is not the whole truth and then I tried and actually I managed to get my ideas flying, but maybe the person had a little bit truth in that comment. But maybe they needed this fresh energy to question these things.

Marc (05:11):

Yeah, often change is the only thing we can really count on. So it's funny to kind of stack the things against the new person that you can't really change here, you can't stretch. One of the things that I've noticed is that over the years stretching itself has changed both in a physical aspect and in an organizational aspect. In the physical aspect, some of those of you who've been around for a while probably remember these kind of stretches where you bend over and you hold it and you push yourself down and doing these kinds of stretches.

Marc (05:49):

But what has emerged in the last many years has been dynamic stretching where instead of pushing and holding in a stretch position, we move back and forth in order to stretch and open up the joints and open up the muscles on both sides. I've seen a lot of this in terms of how organizations are also dynamically starting to stretch. So what do you guys see in terms of dynamic organizational stretching? What could that even mean?

Irina (06:22):

At least first thing that comes to my mind is that something that you need to do not only once or once in a week or something like that but it should be more the way of working, the way of living. So of course, these dynamic stretches that are currently maybe the most used and powerful methods in stretching, you should do those for example, before the workout and also those are beneficial after the workout. So a little bit similar for the organization.

Marc (07:00):

And I've seen on the physical side of things, it's also kind of during the workout, you do one muscle group and then you do an opposite muscle group a lot, don't you now?

Irina (07:09):

Yep, definitely.

Arto (07:11):

When you are talking about workouts, then this could mean they could be projects, they could be even sprints, they could be even building a feature or making a release. There's various different things that could be. And when you're talking about a pre-workout stretch, post-workout stretch, then these could be also something. When we talk about stretching within organizations, what I'm thinking is, what does it actually mean? Are we talking about putting... Because we are basically with stretching, we are bending the body into a position that it's not normally in, so that we get the benefit of tendons and muscles stretching. So what does it mean for teams organizations?

Arto (08:07):

So maybe it means that we are putting people visiting a different role or doing somebody else's job for a while to maybe get an understanding of what's the world from that point of view. And I'm also thinking that organizations and stretching, it could also mean just within a team. Because what I see constantly within teams is that people are very comfortable within some area of the work within the team and they are not touching anybody else's area. People maybe become like small castles.

Arto (08:52):

So then why not occasionally just with permission of everybody, I'm going to now try to do that one that you are normally doing. So that's kind of like stretching. What I think, it's sort of then breaking the mold of always thinking the same way. Irina like you said, preworkout, postworkout. Maybe that breaking the mold is important. And now when I'm talking about it, even the preworkout makes more sense in that sense. What do you guys think?

Marc (09:31):

There's something really interesting, which is that Irina was about continuous improvement. I think if we think of that in organizational terms where you stretch before the workout, you stretch after the workout, sometimes even within the workout, you're doing different kinds of things. What we're not talking about is something I really wanted to highlight, which is we're not talking about pushing and pushing kind of stretching. Stretching the organization to achieve more without changing other things.

Arto (10:04):

Very true.

Marc (10:06):

I think that's really important and what we've done in Agile, not we specifically, but what the industry has unfortunately done in a lot of places is to turn sprints into marathons. So if you sprint and you stretch beforehand and you do a sprint and then you stretch after, you give a chance to breathe and recover. And we're not talking about just stretching an organization by pushing people harder and harder.

Arto (10:36):

I agree totally, the sustainable pace from the Agile values is almost everywhere you look and you talk to people and you talk to the teams and everybody's stressed. This is just so depressing because it should not be that way. When you learn to do Agile well, you can avoid that stressed feeling. I totally understand Marc what you are saying. So yeah, what we are talking about stretching is not pushing for harder results. Definitely not. I think it's more, like I said before, is maybe looking for different points of view, breaking the mold of thinking because different viewpoints, even sometimes a disagreement or conflicts or not having a consensus, it's good because you are exposing the potential points that are going to hit you later.

Arto (11:58):

In that sense also, when we talk about organizational stretching then I think it's also the stretching of let's think about this from a different point of view. Let's now consciously think about this from maybe a counter argument type of thinking. Do you get my point?

Irina (12:21):

Yep, definitely. And actually the opposite for pushing stretching, I would say is passive stretching or maybe even go into the massage because that's not the point here. So if you are doing stretching, you still need to be active participant there. You need to move your muscles or you need to do some steps in the organization. So it's not just laying on a massage table and waiting that somebody else will do the job. So I think now when we are talking about stretching, it's somewhere there in the middle. Not pushing, not passive, but somewhere in the middle. Do you agree?

Arto (13:14):

I totally agree and when you're talking about massage I'm thinking, okay, now if you're having tightness and pain in your body, you can go to a... And sometimes maybe you need to go if it's too bad. You need to go to somebody for help, which in organizations' sense would be, okay, let's get some external help coaches like us come and help you, but that's not permanent. That can't be the long term solution. So you have to learn to do this body maintenance and the organization maintenance within yourself, your skills. That's how you avoid becoming tight and having the pain in your body and in your organization.

Marc (14:07):

I have a customer that I've been working with lately and when I look at the development team, they're strong, dedicated, experienced people and they are delivering and delivering and delivering but the difficult part is there's no extra space. They don't have a space to stretch into that would allow them to try something different or to work on technical debt or improving how they do things. So one part of stretching is having the space to be able to stretch into.

Marc (14:49):

In the physical world, I think this is really neat because when I started doing yoga, which is you don't have to be flexible to start doing yoga. What it does is it provides you the stretching and the platform for that. But what is the yoga mat for? The yoga mat is not just to cushion the ground between your body and the ground. It's also, it gives you a space that's your own within the yoga class, or even within your living room or wherever you're working, to be able to stretch into. Most of the exercises fit there nicely.

Marc (15:23):

So within organizational stretching, the thing that kind of fascinates me is, if we allow the teams a bit more space and we trust that they're going to do something good with that, then it allows them to stretch into things that maybe we didn't even plan for that can be positive, like innovation for example.

Irina (15:45):

Yeah, that's a good point, Marc. Usually people know that they should stretch, but still many people don't do that. Why? Because we are quite lazy, we human beings. We are quite lazy as a nature. So sometimes we really need that space and a little push for that, an opportunity.

Arto (16:14):

I totally agree Irina about the laziness and that is that many, if we are talking about engineers for example, a lot of our customers are software engineers. They like to create, they like to work and they actually, I think we get dopamine or we get some physical, good sensation from completing things. That's addictive and that is the least resistance choice always. We get satisfaction from that work and we tend to forget that we need that space Marc, that you were talking about.

Arto (17:03):

Everything within product development organizations has been, the process of creation is always about managing the flow of work. Let's work on these tickets, let's work on these user stories. And the space, it has to be in the same way as stretching has to be something that we know that we have to do. We have to have that discipline to take that time.

Arto (17:30):

So in that sense, what I would like to see is that, for example, if you go to the gym quite many times, the gym layout is organized so that when you finished with your workout, you have to actually walk through the area where people are stretching to get to the dressing rooms, to remind you that, actually I need to do this as well because these other guys are doing it.

Arto (17:59):

In that sense, we should also figure out in our teams and how can we in the same way, remind ourselves that we have to take that space. Taking the space could be, let's not overload every sprint to the maximum velocity or let's take like Scaled Agile is talking about, this extra innovation sprint. So there are many different ways how we could take that space but it has to be something that the team understands we should be taking and also management supports taking it.

Irina (18:43):

Yeah, so it should be like a routine.

Arto (18:48):

Yes. It should become a habit and not something extraordinary that we do once a year.

Irina (18:57):

Exactly. How do you Arto actually, how often do you stretch?

Arto (19:03):

Are you talking about physical stretching or organization stretching?

Irina (19:06):

You decide.

Arto (19:11):

Yeah... My signal is that if I get tightness, I stretch. It's a few times a week for my physical side. Interesting question about the organizational side. Actually, I have to think about that. I haven't been thinking.

Irina (19:34):

Maybe that's already routine for you, so you don't recognize that.

Arto (19:42):

It can be.

Marc (19:44):

So I have an example. So like Arto mentioned, there's the sixth sprint in SAFe kind of thing and we talk about these 20% allocation for experimentation. We talk about this a lot in DevOps and Agile, which basically means that you may take every Friday and say that the team works on technical debt or every Friday and say that the team does a code camp on an interesting feature. Or one of my favorites is, I absolutely insist whenever I work with a scrum team, that there is a moment of their lives where they are not responsible for working on tickets.

Marc (20:24):

So it could be an hour, that's usually a pretty reasonable minimum, but at the end of the sprint when the retrospective is done and all of the work is done, there is a time for people to exist without being on the hook for specific work. And that then becomes a habit. And when people start to understand, okay, so now we're doing that every sprint or every Friday. I think I heard Arto say once, habit stacking. So it's like once you start understanding that you have a pulse and the pulse has a breathing moment in it where we can stop after the retrospective, after all the tickets are done and stretch. I think that's a really interesting way.

Arto (21:11):

Yes. It's quite personal, and when I say personal, I mean one team finds a way to do it but that way maybe doesn't suit the other team. So, we just need to find our way of doing this. I have another example. I was working with a customer that has routine of "cheese days"or "juustopäivät" in Finnish, so every couple of months, they booked two days typically for work where they would do anything. It could be fixing minor bugs, or it could be investigating something, new technology or just creating something fun, whatever.

Arto (22:12):

They had habits stuck that to the point that if they hadn't done cheese day for a while, then the team was asking product owner, "Hey, we haven't done a cheese day for a while. Let's do now again." I totally loved their approach because that was now like a press event for the team, and also allowing them to catch up on minor bug count or other stuff like that. So you can have many different ways of doing it. It's just understanding the need to do it.

Irina (22:50):

I love that new term for me, "cheese days". And yes, as you Arto said, I think all organizations should find the best methods for them to do this organizational stretching. The same is of course also with physical stretching, some people prefer to do it in a group or going to the class to do that, but maybe some people want to do it alone at their home or using different methods for doing the stretching. There is no right or wrong way to do it.

Arto (23:30):

Yeah, definitely. If we are doing it alone, it could be just, okay, let's investigate something. And then new technology or maybe, I don't know how to refactor part of code or just study something and then we can tell others about it. Just educate the rest of the team or rest of the organization about it. Or just minimal, it could be reading a book and then quickly telling others what the book was about. Stuff like this. I've seen this happen in some of my customers, have a practice of sharing concepts regularly. Every month somebody is talking about something that they've investigated.

Marc (24:22):

The thing that I like about this, juustopäivät, this cheese day is that there's kind of a framework that somebody can push a button and say, "Let's have a cheese day." And then there's a random kind of component, which is that somebody can bring a topic. They can say, "Let's refactor this thing or let's go swimming or but let's have and allow some period of time for people to do something that is not the well-groomed, strictly-estimated, highly-optimized, scrum patterns that we're all working for.

Arto (25:06):

Exactly. It's refreshing.

Marc (25:10):

Refresh. Recover and refresh, I think, yes.

Arto (25:16):

I've been also thinking about team composition because when we talk about organizational stretching then quite many organizations, the organization is very static. Okay, there might be some movement on the management or high-above level but the people in the teams, they tend to be same people, same teams. Many organizations are still working in component organization type of thing and we are responsible for this component, that's what we are building. And then somebody integrates it down the line.

Arto (26:01):

So what would stretching mean in this kind of situation? I think it could mean seeking maybe occasionally virtual teams or feature teams or some sort of task forces that are collecting experts from multiple teams and putting them together to achieve something maybe faster or more efficiently than the rest of the normal let's say, business as usual work is going.

Marc (26:40):

I think there's something really interesting there. You said task force, which if I think of my personal stretching. I do yoga most mornings usually for just a few minutes but it kind of gets everything moving and stretched out a little bit but I see a lot of benefits from seeing an Osteopath that puts their fingers into the joints and into the tendons and kind of loosens things up a little bit.

Marc (27:12):

I can't necessarily always do that with a tennis ball on the wall or a foam roller on the floor or something so I can ask someone to come in and loosen up things that are too tight for me to loosen. So one of the things in software organizations that I've really appreciated over the years is to be able to put a task force together of either internal or external and point them at a problem and say, "Rise this problem to either put out all of the fires or preferably rise this thing to a state of the art kind of level."

Marc (27:49):

Because in software development, we're getting to the point where many organizations are running most of their processes and tools at a state of the art kind of level. So this tiger team kind of thing, it could be deployment automation or test automation or these kinds of things can help the rest of the organization stretch by offloading part of their burden and allowing them to focus on value creation while someone else kind of comes in and brings everything up to a good state or a known state.

Arto (28:23):

In that sense I agree. It can be a good thing and there's also, I have to say also risk there. If there is now a team of Supermen that always jumps in to solve the difficult problems, then that doesn't sound so good. So I think it would be excellent if this is seen as an opportunity also, not always like a Superman to do this task force. It should be also a learning opportunity for people so that you sort of change the composition of this tiger teams or task forces.

Marc (29:11):

There's a continuation exactly there Arto which is that in many organizations we find that the bottleneck is a human. This is the Superman guy who owns that component or who is the gatekeeper for the code review on that software program or something where it kind of prevents the rest of the organization from being able to stretch and grow. So sometimes the most valuable person and relationship in the organization can actually prevent the rest of the organization from being able to stretch.

Arto (29:55):

Again, for those Supermen, maybe for them the stretching would be "Okay, can I now take a step back and become just the sort of architect or supporting person, and then have somebody else solve this." That would be, "I don't solve it. I'll help you solve it." That's hugely beneficial for the organization. Now you have two people that can solve similar problems in the future instead of just the one Superman.

Arto (30:30):

In that sense also now, if we talk about stretching because what I like about... Organizational stretching can also mean that you do like I think I said in the beginning, a visiting role or you go somewhere else and learn how they do it or you participate in something different. For example, sometimes when I was coaching, I just joined my product manager coaches for their course and just for one module, I was a visiting coach for that module, it forced me to familiarize myself with some new material and then actually go in front of people and talk about it. It forced me to learn new things and in that sense I think that most organizations do this not enough. So that we would go and visit and try and look at what others are doing and how they're doing it.

Marc (32:00):

I think there's a really interesting thing here as well Arto which is that, you can sometimes force people to stretch into something that is uncomfortable for them but as knowledge workers, there are many people who do want to specialize. If you have a Kernel guy and you ask him to do some UI development, they might not like that quite a bit. So there's also these kind of limits to stretching I think aren't there, how do we know when to limit and how to limit stretching people in organizations, especially like with these kinds of things about skills and cross-functionality.

Irina (32:48):

Yeah, it's like body builders at the gym who doesn't want to stretch at all.

Arto (32:55):

Yeah. That's a good point and obviously when you are stretching then if you feel pain, you shouldn't be pushing the body at least too far into the pain. I guess Marc, what you are saying, if the Kernel guy would be forced to do the UI then it would be so painful. It doesn't make any sense to go that far, right?

Marc (33:29):

Yeah. I'm just going to remind our listeners that the culture within the company is so important these days because you want to attract and keep the best talent that you can, and word gets out. If you push people and you don't take feedback and things like this into account, you could end up losing people and having difficulty getting that kind of talent again. One of the things about feedback and culture is listening to people and then being able to stretch the organization or the rules or the ways of working in order to meet the most needs of people and I think that's really interesting.

Arto (34:17):

However, if we change the goals for the person. Let's take the Kernel person as an example. If we take the goal, the goal is not to become as good and efficient and fast in the UI development as the guy who normally does it. What if the goal is just to understand how he does it? And then maybe that takes totally different stress level. Now the guy is understanding, "Okay, I don't need to become good. I just want to do it once so that I understand how he's doing it so that maybe we can collaborate better in the future."

Arto (35:03):

Now that might be something that's more interesting to him. So we just need to, like you said, talk to him, understand if that's interesting or not. Then now we have taken the stretch a little bit back from the painful level into maybe some level that benefits the team.

Arto (35:26):

When you talked about how organization is viewed as an employer or...

Irina (35:35):

Attractive.

Arto (35:36):

Attractive, yes. So now what if we have two organizations that a person is interested in joining? One of them is very strict in, everybody's in their specialized power and there's really not so much movement. And the other one has a reputation that, here, it's all right and we occasionally allow people to just try things out, no pressure. You don't need to succeed. It's okay to fail but we allow you to do different things.

Arto (36:17):

Now, I think different people might be attracted to different kind of organizations but it might be sometimes useful to have this kind of reputation that in here it's okay to experiment and we do different things once in a while. And we don't punish if you don't succeed on it. It's more fun. I think that that kind of organization might be more attractive to people.

Irina (36:52):

Definitely Arto. Yes, and also the same from from the gym. When I have these group fitness classes, these flexibility classes, I always say to people that if you have some kind of injury or some other pain during the class in one position, you shouldn't do that, then just figure out something else instead. So it's a little bit similar that you are not forced to do something that feels very bad.

Marc (37:25):

As resistant to change as we humans can be, there's still something that has always fascinated me. Like what Irina was talking about, which is that movement is medicine. Many times, even if we have an injury without pushing too hard, moving that area is better than freezing that area or not moving.

Irina (37:49):

Definitely.

Marc (37:50):

And within organizations I think, there's also this kind of tendency where rather than organizations used to be very fixed hierarchies for a very long time. And then we've gotten to virtual teams, dynamic teams, self-organized teams and a lot of people are a little bit afraid of this, especially if they came from a hierarchy kind of background. I think this is really interesting how the world is starting to understand that if we get good people and we give them the right environment, then they can stretch into things that weren't even thought possible before.

Arto (38:30):

And many knowledge workers are attracted to companies and positions which offer learning. If you would take somebody, you get this much money in that company and this much money in that company, which of the companies is long term going to be better for me professionally for my skill development? I think many, many engineers would choose the one that offers better learning potential over the better money. And then in that sense, if we have two organizations. One of them has a reputation of stretching and the other one has a reputation of we just keep sitting in the same position forever. Definitely, I would think that the first one is the more attractive one for employees.

Irina (39:32):

Yes, definitely. Usually the number one, the most important point for employees to be satisfied with the employer is the meaningful job. I believe that as you Arto said, that if the employer is able to provide these learning opportunities, of course the work feels more meaningful then.

Arto (40:03):

This also comes back to the space that Marc you brought up earlier. Learning opportunities and space and also even showing the value that the organization values that learning and values that let's say skill stretching.

Irina (40:25):

Yeah, and this kind of situation requires right organization culture, a culture that enables freedom that you have that space but also is able to trust you and give you the responsibility. I always think that responsibility and freedom, they go hand in hand.

Arto (40:53):

And acknowledgement. When somebody is doing it, you Irina when you are maybe having a stretching class and I bet you are saying to the people, "Ah, great job. Yeah!" In that same sense, if somebody's doing an organizational stretch, we should acknowledge and thank or say they're doing a good job. Not only the bosses but the rest of the people.

Irina (41:25):

Yeah, for sure. Having a good atmosphere.

Marc (41:30):

It's one of my favorite things at Eficode is on our Slack channels. We have a #goodvibes channel and we share good vibes about experiences with each other all the time and they can be helping somebody through a technical issue but they're often things about more what some people would call soft skills. Support of, how should I think about a problem? How should I approach a problem as a consultant? How do I feel great about going with a customer when I have some difficult problems to solve? And there's a lot of kind of emotional support that we can give one another through good vibrations as well, which I think is really cool. I'm kind of curious Irina, you've been with Eficode for how long now?

Irina (42:19):

Almost six years.

Marc (42:21):

Almost six years. And you've seen a lot of growth of Eficode.

Irina (42:23):

Yeah.

Marc (42:23):

Would you like to tell us anything about how you've seen Eficode's organization stretch during your tenure here as head of HR?

Irina (42:35):

Well, I have seen that a lot, very, very lot. I would say for example, one is how we have been capable to improve our internal processes. So of course, when the company grows there are usually the need to fine-tune the processes, maybe implement new tools and maybe name some people who are responsible for the processes. And I think we have done a very good job in that area. I think in the latest two years, we have taken huge steps forward.

Marc (43:21):

There's something that I've noticed in my time here that is keeping up with the growth, I think is really important. So we think about continuous improvement as kind of one angle but I think another one is that acknowledging as you are growing that new things may arise, that perhaps weren't as important to have a strict process behind before, or even a documented or a responsible person. But then as we grow, we have to keep up with the growth in order to not allow it to become debt. There's something, we talk about technical debt a lot in the world but there's a term that I've been using for some time called organizational debt.

Marc (44:07):

Organizational debt is where we know that there are things that are disorganized and we allow those to pile up. Have either of you seen organizational debt in your work or does that ring any bells?

Arto (44:21):

I was exactly thinking... We joined Eficode now a few months ago and I think I'm seeing a little bit of organizational debt. It's not big things but it's just small annoying things that I notice that probably the rest of Eficodeans have tolerated and I would not like to tolerate. But I think this is normal as growing. What was working one year ago might not work so well today, right?

Irina (44:58):

Exactly.

Arto (44:58):

The organization of the company changes and so on.

Irina (45:02):

Exactly, and that's the point that actually we are never ready. So for example, in my team in human resources, we are critically reevaluating our processes I would say on an annual basis that we check that, now we have this kind of onboarding process but is there still something that we should maybe modify or make it even better for this situation? Because as you said Marc, when the company grows there are different stages and maybe something that worked with 200 people doesn't work anymore with 500 people.

Marc (45:44):

There's a couple of really interesting points here that you two just brought up. The first one I think is about the diversity. So Arto worked for Contribyte, which is one of the companies that has merged with Eficode recently and had a very different working culture. And what this in my terms is, is it brought a diversity in a different point of view and a different culture that then starts to cook and brew into a new operating culture for all of us. And I think that the diversity angle, different points of view come in and they see things differently and might even see opportunities to improve that we didn't even know before needed to be improved and I think that's really neat.

Arto (46:38):

Again, like a different viewpoint. These things should be like good viruses, right? You are infected by some of the Contribyte ways of working. I'm not saying everything we did was good because definitely I see a lot of good things in Eficode that you guys are doing much better than what we were doing.

Irina (47:03):

Yeah, but we are really eager to hear about those well-working practices and maybe we can have a shared session after this and discuss more about those.

Marc (47:15):

And on the other side, there was something that I think was really important as well, which is when there's a thing called Lean and many companies are working in Lean manner. But one thing that's really important with lean is that everybody agrees to do things one way for long enough to measure it and see if it's working or not before making changes. This is a really neat thing where, okay, we can plan stretching within that structure.

Marc (47:49):

So let's say that we have a really well oiled machine running scrum and it has 20% every Friday people get together and they work on different things. And we run this for six months or a year before making any kinds of changes to understand what happens when it settles and it just starts moving?

Marc (48:09):

So stretching doesn't have to disrupt working processes. It can be something that is allowed to still work in a Lean environment where everybody does things the same way and we can measure that and we can try to improve on it but we still give an opportunity for different types of learning, different types of experimentation and things like this. I think that's really neat.

Arto (48:32):

The whole organization doesn't need to stretch the same way.

Marc (48:36):

Yes.

Arto (48:37):

You could have different experiments going on, what works and what doesn't work and then it's just the importance of communities and sharing the results of these stretching experiments within the community. Then the good practices would become more popular and then what didn't work so well are less popular or then in the fringe teams. I don't want to force everybody to do it the same way. That doesn't sound right.

Marc (49:14):

I think that's a really good point, that this allowance of stretching for everyone to do their own way.

Arto (49:23):

One thing which we haven't talked yet is trust. I see this quite often when you go and visit organizations, you get a little bit of a sense of lack of trust or not that much lack but you get the feeling that there could be more trust. Is that something that you've seen as well?

Marc (49:52):

Yes.

Irina (49:52):

Yep.

Arto (49:56):

I've wondered now, when we are talking about this stretching, the trust is somehow tied into understanding of how others are working and why they are working in that way. Mostly everybody that we see are intelligent people. They try their best. They want the best for the company or the team or the organization or the product and still, we get the sense that there could be more trust. Now, that tells me that there would almost always be room for more understanding of why others are working in that way that they are working.

Marc (50:48):

There's a term that I've used for a while called "asymmetric trust". It actually comes from a cyber security angle of things but I think that trust can be a decision and it's not only something that's earned. I think that you decide to trust someone. And what I see in some organizations is where there is a symmetrical mistrust. So if I'm a leader and I don't believe that my team trusts me and maybe I'm even showing them that I don't trust them, what can I do?

Marc (51:30):

And I think one of the most important things I can do is I can choose to trust my organization and show it and demonstrate it through action and then that will allow the organization to say, "Okay, this person really trusts us. So how are we going to respond to that?" And part of it I think, is to actually try to build the trust that is being demonstrated, that's being given.

Irina (52:01):

I think one of the key points when building the trust is really see the effect on that. So when people see that, okay, when we trust more each other, we can get better results. It's like the same as in every workout whether it be stretching or maybe cardio workout. When you start seeing the results, what that brings to you then of course it motivates you more to continue doing that.

Arto (52:31):

I forget who was that, some big politician said that: the only way to know if you can trust somebody is to trust somebody.

Marc (52:43):

Yes. Oh, I love that.

Irina (52:46):

Yeah.

Arto (52:49):

Increasing the trust is something that would benefit most organizations and then it is the, let's say the organizational stretching or viewpoint switching or role visiting or somehow other ways of understanding others. This is important.

Marc (53:13):

I think this trust is a really great place for us to close this podcast. I'd like to ask Irina and Arto, would you like to share anything further on this great discussion we've had on organizational stretching?

Irina (53:32):

Maybe one thing from my side. Stretching, of course, that boosts the flow of blood and oxygen in the muscles and that of course gives you an energy boost and I hope that this same organizational stretching could give us when doing that, give this kind of energy boost.

Marc (53:57):

Excellent. Arto?

Arto (54:03):

Maybe some just final thoughts on just also the attractiveness and even like a posture or pose or how does the organization look to the outside eyes? Lots of people are looking at your organization, your partners, your customers, your potential people who want to work with you. Lots of people are looking at your company, your organization, and how do you appear to be outside?

Arto (54:43):

Do you appear to be standing straight in a, let's say good and trustworthy posture, it's important. I think that what we were talking about over the past hour is, as in stretching allows you to maintain that good and attractive posture then the organizational stretching also allows you to maintain that same kind of organizational posture or post or maintains your attractiveness. That's my final thought.

Marc (55:22):

Excellent. Thank you both to Arto and Irina. Today, we've talked about how stretching has become more dynamic, both in the physical world and in the organizational world. We've realized that some of the best skill development can come from giving people the space in order to stretch themselves and stretch the way that they work. One size doesn't know necessarily fit all. So it can be different in your organization, but we're all interested in continuous improvement and providing a space to stretch and improve the employees makes you look better from the outside and the inside.

Marc (56:04):

It helps you retain and attract the best talent and helps attract the best kinds of customers. And most importantly, it also boosts energy inside the organization if you allow people the space to stretch. This has been Marc Dillon, Arto Kiiskinen, and Irina Norström. This is the DevOps Sauna podcast and I'd like to thank you all for joining.