Unique event for Agile managers, directors, project and program managers,
team leads and ScrumMasters:

The Influential Agile Leader:
Make the Agile Promise Happen

Grow your influence and coaching skills, inspire and lead practical change, and respond more effectively to challenging situations.

From: Gil Broza and Johanna Rothman
Toronto and Boston

Dear committed Agile leader,

Does the following describe your situation?

• You consider yourself sensible and pragmatic, but you're oh-so frustrated.
• People go through the Agile motions. And, it doesn't seem like agile to you. It sure looks like business as usual.
• Your team or bosses aren't receptive to your feedback, coaching, or suggestions for improvements.

We can help you. On April 8-9, a small group (no more than 35) committed leaders will join our intensive, two-day event in Boston. These folks will develop two critical skills: influence and coaching. They will immerse themselves in the necessary attitudes of Agile leaders. And they will lay the foundation for sustainable Agility in their organizations.

Deeper and more personal than a workshop, smaller than a conference, and tailored to the participants, this will be a unique, transformative event.

You'll spend two packed, focused days with us and with your peers — all of whom are in similar situations. You'll grow personally and professionally as you:

• Understand how and when to influence others
• Explore how and when to coach both up and down
• Boost your confidence to respond effectively to challenges with your organization
• Learn to manage the frustration of the change agent
• Stay congruent, present, and centered as a leader in a confusing, demanding, and changing environment
• Gain strategies, tools, and insights relevant to the challenges and needs of an Agile leader when not everybody is moving in the same direction
• Stop being alone, and connect with others who are rowing upstream in a similar boat.

We'll work experientially, so you learn and practice. No slides or thick shelfware. You'll practice soft skills in a safe environment, with us. You'll practice with your peers, and learn how to apply what we we teach, so you can use it when you return to your organization.

The event is set up so you can network with peers in similar situations: learn from them, bounce ideas around, collaborate with them, stay in touch with them for extra support. (We don't just get anyone to attend, we attract attendees who fit a certain profile!)

Want to hear us previewing this event, having designed it with input from our “tribe”? Download this 20-min clip.

“Johanna took our team from a really good team that got things done, to a highly motivated and jelled team that shares a common vision and will challenge each other over things that matter. People come to work so excited about what we are doing they literally are bouncing up and down as they talk about our projects and people. This is the thing you read about in management books!” Bill Donaldson Department Head, The MITRE Corporation, Burlington, MA

“I engaged Gil to assess and coach three of my Agile development teams, ranging from novice to experienced. Gil's rational approach and wealth of experience made him effective when dealing with Agile sceptics and enthusiasts alike. His recommendations were pragmatic yet fresh, and resulted in meaningful team performance improvements in each case. In particular, the teams have all observed a noticeable up-tick in collaboration.” Darryl Minard Senior Manager, Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, Toronto

This will directly improve value delivery and productivity.

Think about it. What greater value will your team deliver, and how much more productive will they be, if you make just one of the following a reality:

• Turning one reluctant or unhelpful stakeholder into an ally
• Getting the team's resident cowboy to share responsibility with the rest of the team
• Dedicating time for important-but-not-urgent undertakings such as refactoring and learning
• Taking on one less project of questionable value
• Increasing solution quality and simplicity through greater team member collaboration
• Keeping one smart team member from jumping ship
• Having the project sponsor engaged throughout the kick-off and/or retrospective (impossible, you say? We beg to differ.)

These improvements are hard to quantify, but you'll know them when you see them. If you want to use hard numbers, consider this. If you can improve communication, collaboration, and alignment across the team such that they can abolish one 30-minute meeting per week, you'll save at least $5,000 per year in labor cost alone.

We'll cover the most important needs of an Agile leader in an organization where not everyone is moving in the same direction.

Influence

Coaching

Get your good team unstuck on the way to greatness

Problem-solving clinic

Some of the following will be conducted in parallel 60-minute sessions: you select, as a group, the most important things that you want to do. Taking one end of the room, Johanna will work with one group on a topic, while Gil will work with another group on another topic in the other end of the room. You'll choose your group, and if you prefer, you can move to the other one mid-session. Someplace else in the room, folks who prefer to connect and pick each others' brains on other matters will do so. You may well choose to design your own session and invite one of us to facilitate it or weigh in.

Agile like you mean it

Team-level alignment and collaboration

Program and project portfolio management

Geographically distributed Agile

Partnering across the organization

Managing the frustration of the change agent

Reinventing Yourself

At all times, we will remain focused on your business, so you will gain the most business value from these two days. We're quite approachable :-)

Again, you can hear us provide the details in this 20-min clip.

“Johanna is extremely knowledgeable in her field, pragmatic with her advice and also an engaging & entertaining speaker. Johanna is real with her advice and can apply her knowledge to real life situations which truly bring value to an organization.” Jenny Saunders Software Development Manager, Livestock Improvement Corp., Hamilton, New Zealand

“Gil, I really liked the fact that you accept challenging questions and you answer with multiple possibilities, leaving your audience to think and choose. You have true qualities of a teacher. And I also appreciated the fact that you can be trusted. You have helped our team as well as me individually grow and become well equipped for any challenge.” Lidia Damian

Location and Dates

The event will take place between 9am and 5pm on Monday and Tuesday, April 8-9, 2013. Our venue is the Burlington Marriott (near Boston, MA).

You are responsible for your own travel and lodging. We will arrange a block of discounted rooms at the event hotel.

If you wish, join us for dinner on Monday night. You might want to stay on Tuesday night for another chance at strengthening the relationship you'll build with other attendees.

We will not take more than 35 participants in order to keep this a deep, transformational experience for you.

As you know, we regularly speak in front of large audiences, live as well as virtual. The effect for each participant, however, is somewhat limited; we can't promise you a deep experience if you're sitting in a large room with 100 people, listening to us and watching slides.

We know first-hand the amazing influence the small-scale, experiential format has on individual transformation. Johanna is well-known, for instance, as one of the hosts of Amplify Your Effectiveness (AYE) and Problem Solving Leadership (PSL). In order to serve you at the highest level, we picked a number that's small enough so you get lots of individual attention, and high enough so you can have a good cohort of colleagues to network with.

“I have worked with Johanna over the past 10 years on a wide array of projects and I have been impressed with each and every project she has worked on for me! Her recommendations are insightful and actionable. She is a very reasonable person and considers constraints when giving business advice.” Bob Herdoiza CEO, Cebos

Like it and want to cut to the chase? Go here to save your spot.

You're protected by our “Happy To Be Here” guarantee

We're confident that when you dig in to the deep learnings in the Influential Agile Leader event, you're going to be thrilled. We also know that if you truly participate and apply yourself, you will have a life-transforming experience.

Just to back that up, if you decide at the end of the first day that it's not for you, tell us. Return all the materials you received, and we'll refund your ticket less a 20% reversal fee. No questions asked.

Price of admission

Seats are still available at the regular rate of only Cdn $1,800 (which is almost exactly US $1,800 these days).

Considering the value you get, we believe it's a bargain. For comparison, if your company hired us for on-site consulting or coaching, $1,800 would get them about 2.5 hours' worth.

You are welcome to buy tickets for one or two colleagues at 20% off.

“Sometimes, reading good advice 147 times on blogs is not as effective as having one person ask you to actually do it. As you know, I paid for that course, not an employer. I consider that fee a sound investment.” (In reference to Gil's experiential course for Agile developers) Duncan McRae Development Team Lead, Toronto

“I had the pleasure of joining Johanna's Peer Project Portfolio Coaching Group. If you're thinking about signing up — stop thinking — and just do it! No matter how much experience you think you have, Johanna either has more experience or a perspective you haven't considered. Whenever I'm puzzled about portfolio issues I hear her warm no-nonsense voice in my head and move along. Highly recommended!” Andrew Annett Senior Quality Management, Lean/Agile Coach at Workplace Safety and Insurance Board (WSIB), Toronto

When the two days end, it's not goodbye!

A few weeks after this event, you'll join us and the other participants for a bonus group coaching call. Did you have trouble putting a certain learning into action? Did you do something unusual, and could use some feedback? Were you going to do something different, but got cold feet? Have new challenges popped up? We'll talk about all this so effective new skills and attitudes can grow roots.

Do you need to know a bit more about us?

First off, we're a pair. We pair-developed and we pair-teach these workshops. It still amazes us how much better the result is than had we developed it individually.

You get depth: We've both been technical contributors as developers and testers. We've both been managers at various levels. We've both introduced and facilitated change from the technical and management perspectives. In addition, we're both students and teachers of human systems and organizational behavior. We've written books about project portfolio management, the human side of Agile, hiring, and much more.

We are pragmatic. We're not focused on just one part of the solution and we certainly don't parrot dogma. Between us we have several decades of agile experience. Johanna chaired the Agile 2009 Conference and Gil produced the Agile Coaching stage in 2009 and 2010. Yet, we still know what it's like to be Waterfall...

“Johanna is a no nonsense, direct and factual based consultant. She can speak on the most technical of levels as well as a business level. She understands all the disciplines within the software development lifecycle and has been a practitioner of most of them. I will tell you what I was told: If you have a project that needs help, at whatever level be it team, corporate, program, call Johanna and then consider it done. I wish I had heard about her when I started doing such things back in the mid 90's! Marjie Carmen Director, Health Dialog

“Gil is a great Agile practitioner and coach. I hired him to help with planning an implementation strategy to adopt Agile into our organization. Gil is an expert on a number of Agile topics and methods. His facilitation, coaching, and presentation skills are excellent. I would highly recommend him to any organization wishing to adopt and further evolve their adoption of Agile.” Mark Veksler Senior Director, Software Development, VFA, Boston

Ready to get started? Or do you still have a few questions?

Q: Can't I just soak up the knowledge at a conference?
A: Conferences are great, and we often speak at them. But they are structured for knowledge transfer, and for the most part, you have little in common with other participants. They are not a means for solving your pressing problems. Moreover, conferences tend to be lean on the soft skills side. Our event is not about knowledge transfer or theory; it's intended and structured to catalyze your personal growth as a leader among leaders.

Q: Can't I just buy a book?
A: There are many helpful books (and we've written some of them). But a book won't give you a straight, empathetic answer to a question you have in the moment. And you can't network with a book. And learning about influence and coaching from a book is quite different from practicing them with peers and experts.

Q: You're promising a big leap in self-development. Do people really grow and transform so much in two days?
A: Attendees who are truly present, who keep an open mind and diligently apply themselves, do in fact undergo a deep shift. You won't become a master influencer or coach overnight, but you will experience and practice the skills, and make the mental switch, to put the new abilities into action. You will also probably not reinvent yourself on the spot; but we'll walk you through the necessary steps, get you started, and intrigue you just enough so you can complete the process at your own comfortable pace.

Q: Is the guarantee for real? Nobody ever guarantees a conference or a workshop!
A: The guarantee is most definitely for real. We've guaranteed our work before, and nobody has ever made a claim on it. If the event is right for you, we want you to feel confident about attending, and we want you there, so we're happy to back up our work. Also, this is neither a conference nor a workshop; since it's a high-touch, intensive interaction with us, we know we can be agile enough to deliver the goods.

Q: How does this differ from the Agile training everybody else is offering?
A: All Agile training out there is about skills and mechanics. It's all the stuff you must absolutely know and do to run Agile properly. Most attendees leave these courses energized and full of hope, but their resultant implementation is not so picture-perfect. It's easy to describe Agile. It's a lot harder to implement it safely and effectively and to lead the particular people that you work with. In this event, you will learn how to reconcile the Agile ideas (and ideals) with your context.

Q: When will you offer this again?
A: We're applying Lean Startup principles here, so the honest-to-goodness answer is "We don't know." Nobody in the Agile community has ever used this format. We asked our newsletter subscribers to voice their challenges and wishes, and used that information to design the event. If the demand turns out to be enough, we might run it again next year.

Q: How should I present this to my superiors to get their approval?
A: Your superiors expect certain results from you. They trust you enough to employ you, but they probably don't expect perfection all the time. What's on your personal development plan? Which gaps in your performance do you need to close? Has closing them on your own been challenging? Is closing them worth the two days away from work, plus the admission fee? (Remember, you're covered by our guarantee.) By becoming a better leader, your team will perform better, which directly impacts the bottom line even if it's hard to quantify.

What's standing between you and saying “yes”?

If you're really interested in joining, but you still have some doubts or open questions, feel free to reach out to either of us and ask us anything about the event. Our full contact info is at the bottom of the page.

To your success,

Johanna & Gil

P.S. Remember that our “Happy to be here” guarantee covers you, so we're taking on most of the risk.

One more thing. Although some specialized skill training for senior managers does exist, there is hardly anything specific for the soft skills, and the mind-set, you need in your situation. Where else can you develop your influence and coaching, immerse yourself in Agile leadership attitudes, and receive concentrated help to overcome organizational and team inertia? This one is unique and there's no knowing when we'd offer it again. Use this opportunity to invest in yourself.

“Johanna understands that one needs to understand the system in order to solve a problem, and not just focus on immediate issues. She has an excellent (and unique) ability to be direct while not putting people on the defensive. Johanna helped me to take technical leadership techniques I thought that I knew and learn how to apply them more effectively. Johanna brings a unique set of skills, an effective style, and an excellent base of experience to her writing, her presentations, and her coaching and consulting engagements. Johanna can help teams work better.” Steve Berczuk Agile Software Developer, Humedica

“Gil brought a unique blend of team coaching and technical skills to our organization, and helped our team to understand the interpersonal, process and technical capabilities that are necessary to best leverage Agile methods. Gil is an empathetic individual who is adept at coaching to achieve positive individual behaviors and team dynamics.” Chris Hawman Director, Information Services at Canada Pension Plan Investment Board

Legal Disclaimer: Every effort has been made to accurately represent our course and its potential. The testimonials and examples used are from previous clients relying on our service, not on this particular packaging of it. There is no guarantee that anyone will achieve the same or similar results. Your organization's, team's and individual success depends on your situation, context, motivation, dedication and actual use of the material.

Rothman Consulting, Inc. (Johanna) 38 Bonad Rd. Arlington, MA 02476 USA (781) 641-4046 E-mail: click here

3P Vantage, Inc. (Gil) 572 Bedford Park Ave. Toronto, ON M5M 1K3 Canada (416) 302-8120 E-mail: click here

© 2013 Rothman Consulting, Inc. and 3P Vantage, Inc.