Lyssa Adkins and Maria Matarelli discuss how Personal Agility is a powerful framework for leaders and organizations.
Listen in to the discussion and see the conversation summary below:

 

Maria Matarelli

What does this mean for leaders? Why would an executive want to use Personal Agility?

Lyssa Adkins  

I think it’s amazing as an opportunity for executives to use Personal Agility because, for example, well, let’s just talk about the benefits they’ll get in their own lives. The same benefits we’ve been talking about, if there are any people in the world that are running around like crazy, its executives; and if there are any people in the world who need to make conscious, clear decisions, it’s executives, right. And so this framework allows for information that supports all of that. But also, many executives are working in organizations where Agile is present, they may have brought Agile in themselves, or it may have just sort of grown up and then all of a sudden, they look around and go, “Well, this thing called Agile is here”. And here’s the thing is that Agile is operating from a completely different values set and belief system than any other way of working that we’ve had before. And in order for that belief set to flourish, in order for the benefit of Agile to really occur in organization, it requires all of us, all of us to move toward living these values and principles in our own lives. Personal Agility is a way that executives can do Agile on themselves, and learn the same lessons teams learn just in their own context.”

 

Maria Matarelli  

How do you think that that translates, because a lot of people will say, “Oh, it’s Personal Agility. This isn’t in the workplace, this isn’t for a leader or it isn’t…”

Lyssa Adkins  

Oh, my gosh, well, I use it to run my business. I mean, I’m a serial entrepreneur, I use it to start businesses, I use it to make all kinds of decisions. And I use it for managing my own energy. And what’s possible, in my, in the whole sphere of my work and life, you know, just like an executive would need to decide like, how much energy am I going to put into x? What am I going to delegate over here to y? What businesses do I need to start up? How will I know when that business needs to be either funded or put off to the side like, all of those things are things that show up in my Priorities Map on a weekly basis?

 

Maria Matarelli  

Could using Personal Agility help someone be a better team member in an Agile environment?

Lyssa Adkins  

I think it could. And I think it will go a long way to work here. And one of the biggest things I see in organizations at the team level, which is that people don’t ask for what they need to do the job they’ve been asked to do. And so once people become conscious choice makers, when people value themselves in their own time more than I think that they will be more willing to, number one, have clarity about what they need. And number two, be willing to ask for it.

 

Maria Matarelli 

At one point you made the statement that you believe that Personal Agility could shake the foundations of the industry at its core in the Agile community. Could you expand a little bit more on that? What did you mean by that?

Lyssa Adkins  

So here’s what I was imagining when I said that, I was imagining a bunch of people at all levels in an organization that have used Personal Agility that they have used it for all the things we’ve talked about to achieve more in their working life, to be conscious choice makers to celebrate what they what they actually accomplish, on and on and on. If they’ve done that, then when Agile comes into the organization, they will have already learned and grokked at a really deep level, the main mindset shifts that agile needs in order to really flourish in an organization. So if Agile comes in the door later, they’re going to be in a much better position to use agile in a way that fulfills Agile’s full promise.

 

Maria Matarelli  

Is there anything else you’d like to share about your thoughts or experience with Personal Agility?

Lyssa Adkins  

Personal Agility is continuing to be a really important force in my life 111 weeks later. And I can tell when things in my work life, in my entrepreneurial life, in my life-life, I can tell when I need to shift because I can no longer operate my Priorities Map as well as I did a month ago. The things I’ve said that matter don’t seem to fit as well anymore. And I have to go to the next fine grain level to find out Hmm, what is the flavor of that now. And so I love how it’s a sub source of information and even wisdom that informs me.

 

 

The Personal Agility System helps people and organizations identify What Really Matters while providing a simple system to aid in achieving these goals. In addition to helping individuals and organizations gain clarity on What Really Matters, we go one step further to help people identify and create alignment. This could be alignment with the people in your life or in a work context, alignment with stakeholders and other teams throughout an organization.

Stakeholder alignment is important for any company using Agile. Having a clear vision for the teams to support clear initiatives that create a positive return on investment (ROI) for the organization.

We recognized early on how important it is to ensure that we create alignment with the people around us and alignment with the initiatives in an organization and we have created a tool at the Personal Agility Institute to help with just that.

Introducing the Stakeholder Interview Canvas. We have discovered this canvas can be a powerful tool when talking to stakeholders to uncover what is most important to them. The first column has questions related to “Who”, the second column has questions related to “Why”, and the third column has questions related to the “Desired Outcome”.

A powerful question at the core of Personal Agility, is “What Really Matters?” though we don’t immediately jump in to asking that question. We recommend going in the numerical order and jumping around the canvas. This encourages you to flow with the conversation and you can jump in and out of different questions as you go.

Begin with the first column with the questions related to “Who”. This is where we ask questions about the main goals or objectives.

Next, we go to the middle column and ask the questions related to “Why”. Here, we explore the challenges and impediments along with risks, concerns, fears, and frustrations.

As we approach the third column, we want to focus on the desired outcomes. This is where we ask about their definition of awesome and how we can support them in creating that outcome.

Next, we loop back around to summarize what really matters to the other person. You can summarize the top 3 areas of focus that emerged from the conversation or you may want to ask if they can clarify what the top 3 areas of importance are and identify any follow up steps.

Give it a try! Download a free copy of the Personal Agility Stakeholder Interview Canvas under the “Free Tools” section of the website here: https://personalagilityinstitute.org/freetools

We would love to hear how this tool works for you. Please give it a try and reach out to Maria (at) PersonalAgilityInstitute (dot) org to share your experience on how it helped!

 

 

Lyssa Adkins is best known as the author of the foundational book Coaching Agile Teams, which connected the Scrum Master role and Professional Coaching to give definition to the profession Agile Coach.

She co-founded the Agile Coaching Institute (ACI), which specialized in coaching agile coaches through their agile transformation. She led the development of the ACI until it was acquired by Accenture.

Challenge

Selling the company gave her a clean slate. “The key challenge I had around that time was how am I going to reorient myself and my business and even my public persona so that I can attract the business I wanted to attract, and so that I can do it in a way that didn’t sacrifice the sustainable pace I had very willingly and arduously crafted in my life?”

Desired Outcome

“I wanted clarity in how I spend my time, and to have more kindness to myself. I often didn’t count the things that were in the category of joy and play and family and community and alone time and recharging as valid or real. And I needed to.”

Result

“I definitely achieved that goal. One of my main categories under what really matters was called ample time. I wanted to have ample time to do everything I’m doing fully and well. I absolutely achieved that. Meanwhile, while the business piece was coming back up and getting reinvented, I found myself at the cusp of launching into new business ideas and new business ventures.”

“I had to constantly bring my attention to know relaxation is part of the job. Rejuvenation is part of the job; you’re actually doing tasks. You’re doing work by attending to your own foundation and the resilience that you will need in the future. This is what was going on in my head.”

“It took a long time to rewire the addiction to work, the addiction to achieving, and the addiction to saying yes to too many things (which meant I had to get them done). Getting past this addiction was a huge benefit. It took me a while to consistently direct my attention to what was really important.

That created a lot more happiness and joy in my own life, or maybe just helped me notice how much happiness and joy was already in my life.”

Tools

“Of all the tools of the Personal Agility System, what really stands out for me is the brilliant naming of the ‘Celebrate and Choose’ event.”

“I was on an addiction-to-work rollercoaster where I was moving from one thing to the next. And yes, I would have moments of recognizing my accomplishments or celebrating, but it was not a weekly ritual of celebrating what actually did happen.”

“Since I was tracking all this in my Priorities Map, I could clearly see what I accomplished.”

“I was like, ‘Oh my gosh — I can’t believe I got that much done,’ even though I didn’t feel like I had been pushing myself. This new way of being was both more effective and more relaxed at the same time.”

“Personal Agility reminded me strongly that I do not celebrate enough. I wasn’t noticing enough what I accomplished or the gains I had made. I wasn’t giving myself any breaks or even trying to give myself a break. I had to rewire myself around the ritual of celebrating.”

“The ‘Celebrate and Choose’ event helped me recognize what actually did happen. Good, bad, or indifferent, it represents learning and I know I can choose differently next time. That was huge.”

Path to Success

“I think that the biggest thing about Agility itself is transparency.”

“That’s really it in a nutshell. When I get it all out on the Priorities Map — and I’m working my Priorities Map every single day — I’m seeing what’s going on and I’m seeing what I am not getting done. This allows me to be a more conscious choice maker. When I say I want something, and then notice that I’m making different choices, it’s easier to correct my choices toward what I want.”

“I am so aware that Personal Agility will continue to benefit me because it helps me ensure I have the right things on the calendar. My Priorities Map helps me do things completely and not overbook myself or go crazy with too much work in progress.”

Tips for your Journey

“I love the stories that we have heard from people pulling themselves out of desperate financial situations, to people getting in and out of business partnerships, and just making a lot of very declarative and meaningful changes in their lives.”

“Working with the Personal Agility Institute, I have really loved being involved with the groups that Maria Matarelli and I have led through the process. What I’ve learned is that everyone does it a little bit differently. And I love that. So I think to replicate my success, you just use the tools and follow along the process, and you’re going to do it your own way.”

“You will have different things that matter to you, you will have a different way that you’re charting your course across the ocean of your life, you will have different things that get in your way. My particular ways of getting in my own way will not be your particular ways. But all of this can be revealed and worked with in a really kind way.”

2020 Is the year The Personal Agility System (PAS) really got off the ground. In January, Maria Matarelli introduced Peter Stevens to “The Culinary Queen” Sharon Guerin. She wanted to say thank you to Peter for Personal Agility, because thanks to Personal Agility — and the right help from Maria — Sharon changed her life! So she invited us all to dinner – which was amazing, and she shared her story, which is also amazing!

Sharon inspired in two ways. First her story gave a hint how universally useful Personal Agility can be: literally millions if not hundreds of millions of people could change their lives or work for the better. So Maria and Peter decided to document case studies for our book.

When the COVID crisis came around, we was looking for purpose and inspiration. What if we could reach even 1% of the people like Sharon who Personal Agility could help? That’s still millions of people! If every one of them invited us for dinner, that would be 3’000 years of thank you’s! So we decided to focus on Personal Agility like never before. In particular, to get the Ambassador program going, so we can start to reach those millions of people and generate those thank you’s.

Personal Agility Recognized Ambassadors and Trainers

Personal Agility Recognized Ambassadors and Trainers, November 2020

Today a group of 10 “PARAs” and “PARTs” – Personal Agility Recognized Ambassadors and Trainers are spreading the word around the world. Together we have trained 90 people in Personal Agility this year – three time our cumulative total from last year! Which brings me to the topic of this blog post.

What are they saying about Personal Agility? With this post, I am going to collect the articles articles and resources written by people on their Personal Agility voyage. Some are just getting started, others have been applying PAS for years.

Should your article or video be added to this list? Share it on LinkedIn and tag me and the Personal Agility Institute, or contact me directly

Initial Experience Reports

Long-Term Experience Reports

Personal Agility in Leadership

Personal Agility System Tools and Concepts

Personal Agility in the Press

Presentations

Reference Materials

Personal Agility Insitute

Janani Liyanage is an enterprise agile coach who is passionate about helping people embrace the agile mindset. “I want to support people on the road to their success.” Janani is married with an 8-year-old son and lives in Colombo, Sri Lanka. When she started with the Personal Agility System, she was working toward her certifications as a Scrum Trainer and Enterprise Coach. She wanted to connect her passion more with her profession. How could she feel that she is living her purpose every day?

Challenge

“As a person, I wanted to lead the life of a coach, not just do coaching. I wanted to know which opportunities would help me realize my purpose. I was doing too many things. It looked like many things were helping me achieve my purpose, but I wasn’t actually making any progress. I needed to do some filtering to focus on what really mattered.”

Desired Outcome

“I wanted to be my profession. To me, living the life of a coach means I want to lead an agile life. I want to share my inspiration with more and more people. An agile life for me means I want to do things that are meaningful and not always have to say, ‘I am too busy’. We are living in uncertain and chaotic times. I want to be able to stay calm and evaluate what really matters so I can do the right thing. I want to be open to new ideas and new opportunities. I want to get away from being perpetually busy.”

Result

“Initially, I was not able to accept that there was a problem. I would make excuses for why I wasn’t changing.”

“The first thing I achieved was awareness and acceptance. I became able to take accountability for my actions. I had to do some tough negotiations with various people in my life, like my family and my employer. It became much easier to have these crucial conversations.”

“Before, I was plagued by self-doubt and “inner chatter” that interfered with what I really wanted to achieve. Now I am able to act. I’m not sure if I can ever say that I have achieved an agile life, but I feel I am well on the path.”

Path to Success

Janani used the Celebrate and Choose Event, the PAS Priorities Map and Breadcrumb Trail, and the PAS Stakeholder Canvas.

“The Personal Agility System helped me build awareness and acceptance of myself. I could stop making excuses, face the challenges, and take action on the things that matter to me. Now it helps me to take the steps continuously. The next step is, I want to feel more accountable. The visualization of the PAS Priorities Map with the color codes helps me. Before, I needed someone else to appreciate my efforts. Now, with the Celebrate and Choose event, I realize it is more important to explain things to myself than to others. I can appreciate myself for the things that I did and have accountability for the things that I didn’t.”

Ben Sever is CEO of eRemede, the rapidly growing Health Tech company in Tampa, Florida. Their focus is enterprise level services that are compliant with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA).

Challenge

The goal was to quickly establish the company as a player in a new line of business, despite the complexity and compliance requirements of health care solution. The whole team had already been through Certified ScrumMaster (CSM) and Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO) training and they were already working more productively thanks to the training.

“My biggest challenge was the inability to let go and delegate large projects and deliverables to others. As a CEO, I was underutilizing my team and taking on too much. I wasn’t effectively delegating to my leadership team which led to me not working at a sustainable pace.”

Desired Outcome

“I hoped that the Personal Agility System would assist our entire company in understanding both ourselves and interactions with each other. I wanted my executive team to thoroughly understand the Agile mindset because they were already receptive to the business application. They knew Scrum, they knew Agile, as a concept, but Personal Agility allowed them to embody, embrace, and live optimally. If achieved, the outcome would be an organic co-creation of self-organizing teams and optimized performance.”

Result

“We reached our desired valuation in half the time.”

— Ben Sever, CEO eRemede

“Our original roadmap was to be worth $35 Million by the end of 3 years. We shortened the timeline to reach our desired valuation in half the time.”

“I gained clarity from stepping back and shifting my focus from doing all the work myself to delegating and shifting to self-organizing teams, so instead of having just a patient engagement platform, we added two other enterprise platforms that allowed us to penetrate any vertical and expand our market reach on a global level.”

Path to Success

Ben took advantage of the full palette of the Personal Agility System, including What Really Matters, the PAS Forces Map, PAS Priorities Map and Breadcrumb Trail, Celebrate and Choose and hearing stories from other Personal Agility Recognized Practitioners.

“The Personal Agility System allowed me to better understand my executive team because we’re empowering each other’s personal lives. It’s helping us all to be able to motivate each other and understand each other.”

“When you actually understand what really matters to each other, by looking at each other’s Priorities Maps you can more effectively hold each other accountable to their goals in their overall life. We had visibility into each other’s Forces Maps where we could see what was important to each other. This process increased the effectiveness of how the leadership team set the tone for the entire organization in getting business results. Celebrating each other’s growth while reflecting on smaller wins allowed for clarity in necessary ongoing steps and actions for continuous improvement.”

“We don’t just use Agile in development and leadership; we truly integrate Agile in a holistic view from business to our personal lives. This accountability helped us achieve our priorities in our personal lives and in business.”

“Overall, the Personal Agility System helped us achieve a culture in which delegation and motivation are appropriately in alignment. At the end of the day, we connected with people’s true motivations which evolved into organic self-organization and increased efficiency. Personal Agility brought transparency to the surface which led to increased trust, which led to more effective delegation. As people felt trusted, they felt empowered and motivated. Personal Agility helped us create trust, empowerment, and alignment, which is the backbone of culture.”

“Coaching had a profound impact and was an essential element of our success. I believe It’s imperative for a leadership team to have a coach. It is a great way to strengthen accountability in the team. Thanks to our coach, people spoke up more authentically. Although we had worked together for years and I thought I knew them, I learned things I never knew about my leadership team and we as a team grew together.”

“Having a coach maximizes the output by keeping the conversation on topic and facilitating true collaboration. There is something in the visualization and simplification that makes complex new projects seem simpler and more doable. We could see that exponential improvement didn’t need exponential effort. The essential service of a coach is to ask the right questions. When the coach has experience with leaders in similar situations, their authenticity and relatability help maximize insights. Our coach ensured that our conversations covered what really mattered and created an environment where deep thinking was possible. We were able to generate new insights and genuine answers.”

And

“The Personal Agility System helped my leadership team and I get visibility into each other’s lives and what was important to us, which helped us become even more connected as a team in all facets of our lives. I thought they were already rock stars, but it gave me the confidence as the CEO of a multimillion-dollar company to begin to effectively delegate so that my team could grow as autonomous leaders and the company could scale. By doing this, it freed me up from doing extensive operational execution so that I could be able to focus more on the vision and strategy with my advisory board. In that step alone, we were able to go from one flagship product offering to three which tripled our total addressable market.”

“As a culture-centric transparent CEO, I would recommend making Personal Agility mandatory as a part of the onboarding and business formation process, so that understanding people is the baseline and foundation of your teams.”

“I do believe that if we had learned Personal Agility sooner at the beginning of our Agile journey, this road toward exit would have been smoother. Personal Agility builds trust beyond what’s tangible so when you have to make tough decisions and innovative pivots, the foundation of trust minimizes disruption and enables self-organization around the change in direction. It enables increased accountability and ownership through delegation. When your culture is connected through shared trust, the roadmap to output will be smoother. We have a track record of operational efficiency, but to be able to pivot and shift seamlessly is where Personal Agility becomes essential.”

“I recommend other CEOs do Personal Agility with their executive team and maximize their insights by working with a coach to create cohesive alignment between personal and professional goals. This approach will ensure that leaders will have ongoing actionable realizations the way our team did that leads to true continuous improvement.”

“As our team grew and our clientele became Enterprise, we realized that it was essential to better understand our people. When leaders take the time to reflect on what really matters and take the time to understand the motivation of the people they work with every day, they are able to optimize the individual connections that lead to increased alignment.”

“When we first started, our success was reliant on the value of our product, however as we began to grow, the value of our people became equally as important to our focus on the value of the product.”

“If you’re asking people to execute critical tasks that affect business and culture, but you’ve only shown them the business application of Agile, you haven’t yet fully holistically empowered the person, you only gave them 50% to do the job. You didn’t hire a business to work in your business, you hired a person to work in your business. Therefore, the strategy I chose to empower every person on my team was through the Personal Agility System.”

“When you choose to go beyond developing a person’s performance in business to include the overall quality of their personal life, it becomes true optimization because a person is at work only one third of their day. You’ve got two thirds of other variables impacting their mood and productivity when they come into work. It’s a leader’s responsibility to enlighten people and show them that their personal wellbeing is a direct catalyst to their professional happiness and growth. It’s imperative to empower both if you want an ideal culture.”

Excerpted from Personal Agility, by Peter Stevens and Maria Matarelli.

In April 2019, Tuhan Sapumanage from Colombo, Sri Lanka was a last-year student at Coventry University (UK), working towards his BSc (Hons) Computing. He was also working as Operations Coordinator at TAC (the largest Social Media Marketing Company in Sri Lanka) and was President-Elect of the Colombo Gavel Club.

He had a lot of plates on his table. There was his degree, his job and his duties with Gavel Club, and a few other things. So he had a high workload and a lot of things to keep track of.

Tuhan explained his goals: “I wanted to systematically allocate my time to each of my duties. Not to give too much time to the wrong aspect. “

“Despite my high workload, I wanted to have time for family, friends and recreation.”

— Tuhan Sapumanage

“I was thrilled by the results. I was able to master my time management problem. Late in 2019, I was appointed Secretary of the All Island Gavel Community. I was able to discover a new passion which is to be an event-host compere (MC) as a hobby.

Cultivating my relationships with friends led to my becoming a recurring guest speaker for a national TV program aimed at giving the youth the opportunity to voice their opinions. And I successfully completed the Bachelors with a first class (with honors) and completed CIMA Mgt Level. Personal Agility also helped me to understand the Agile Module during university.”

The Personal Agility tools that Tuhan used included the 6 Questions of PAS, the concept of What Really Matters (WRM), the Celebrate and Choose Event, the PAS Priorities Map and Breadcrumb Trail, and the PAS Stakeholder Canvas.

Tuhan felt the “Celebrate and Choose” event was the single most important element.

“The Personal Agility System helped me to manage time, or better, helped me to manage myself to use the time available. Rather than get stressed out, I could appreciate what I did. I could take a break without feeling guilty about it. PAS helped me to identify the people who could help me achieve my goals. Asking the right people gave me an inside understanding and support for my future job application. This would not have happened if I hadn’t been using the PAS Stakeholder Canvas.

‘What Really Matters’ helped me establish my personal brand. By knowing WRM, this helped me to avoid chasing distractions.”

Sharon Guerin The Culinary Queen

In these case studies on Personal Agility, you will find the true stories, mostly in the people’s own words, of how The Personal Agility System™ helped them change their lives, their companies or both for the better. These stories form the basis of Chapter 2 in Maria Matarelli and Peter Stevens’ book on Personal Agility (download). When Maria and Peter set out to write this chapter, they had an idea what they would find, but even they were surprised by the powerful stories we uncovered.

For Maria and Peter, perhaps the most inspiring case was Sharon’s. She went from struggling to thriving. When she started working with The Personal Agility System (PAS), financing the food for her catering business was a huge challenge. A missed car payment would cause her car to be repossessed. An unexpected bill could have been a disaster. Two years later, she had put that behind her. She could handle life’s bumps like an SUV, both financially and emotionally.

If the Federal Reserve board is correct, at least 40% of Americans are like Sharon. In 2019, 40% of Americans couldn’t cover a $400 emergency expense and two-thirds could not handle an unexpected $1,000 expense. That’s 100 to 200 million people! Imagine if most people had enough control of their lives and that they could handle unexpected events without sweating. We have seen our first cases… Imagine if we could make this a repeatable pattern!

How Sharon went from Struggling to Thriving with The Personal Agility System

Sharon Guerin was an aspiring private chef in St Petersburg, Florida who had dreams of starting a business but didn’t know where to begin. Most of her life was spent as a single mom, and her grown kids still relied heavily on her. While she was working 5 jobs, she struggled to make ends meet and barely got by. She felt stuck and unable to break the cycle that was keeping her down.

“My roadblocks to success were not just related to business. Years of living in survival mode from challenges in my personal life are what kept me from being successful in business, in my career, and in life. Just working on my business would have not been enough. I needed to make changes in my personal life.”

“I was treading water, could barely make ends meet and any unexpected bills were catastrophic. I wanted to have my dream business, however, I didn’t even know where to begin. Being a single mother, I always put my family first at the sacrifice of my own dreams. I did not believe I had the ability really to be successful. I was surrounded by people who were part of my roadblocks and I did not have the faith in myself to be successful. I was so focused on helping my kids and making everyone else happy that I never really thought about what was important to me and where I wanted to see my life go. I had enough of the toxic relationships. I had dreams but I didn’t have a clear path to get there. I was struggling to make any progress towards starting a successful business.”

“I wanted to start my dream business of being a private chef with a successful catering company and I desired to create stability in my life. However, my bank account kept getting hit with fees for insufficient funds. Usually more money went out than came in. I wanted to stop paying so much money to the banks. I just wanted to get ahead in life.”

“I feel more successful than I’ve ever felt before in my life. I feel alive. I feel loved. I feel happy. My family is extremely proud of me and my growth and my kids are more self-sufficient than ever before. The growth of my business has given me a respected place in my community where I’ve catered charity events and cancer benefits for well-known organizations. I had a mindset shift – I started believing I could do it.”

“I used to have 5 jobs, now I have my dream business that brings in more than 6 figures, debt free, which is more than twice the annual income I have ever earned. In 2020, despite the global pandemic that led to the canceling of all events, I have been able to guarantee that I will earn at least as much this year.”

“I also have clarity about myself and what has happened in my life. It feels very rewarding that people trust me with their most memorable events. I feel trustworthy, confident, reliable, and proud. I feel very successful.”

“Today, I am realizing I want to help other people do what I did. “

There is nothing you cannot change. You just need the desire. It’s that simple.

Sharon Guerin

“I was open to learning and putting in the work and just needed a little guidance and direction from someone who believed in me. Working with a coach, taking on a business partner, and access to small loans gave me just the support I needed.”

“My coach believed in me and was committed to my success. I didn’t give up because I knew there was someone in my court cheering me on. My coach helped me focus and sometimes even remember what really mattered to me to help me stay on track.”

“The loans enabled me to improve my cash flow, so I didn’t have issues with overdraft fees. They were again proof that somebody believed in me! Before, I was losing half a month’s income to bank fees, so I could never get ahead. This helped me to break the cycle.”

“My business partner was a mentor who shared essential know-how about running the business, from marketing and promotions to operations and invoicing along with many other aspects of running a business. I didn’t want to let her down. I always went the extra mile even when I felt like giving up. If she believed in me, I had to believe in myself and I always kept going even when things were challenging.”

“Being able to visualize is essential. I put the three things that really matter on sticky notes and stuck them on the dashboard of my car. Health, finances, business. See it, say it, write it. It becomes ingrained, you remember it, and it just becomes a habit.”

“What really matters is like the source of the tree of life. Once you know that, everything falls into place. When you have those things clearly visible, then you make your priorities and you can just delve in to do the right things that help you achieve your dreams.”

Excerpted from Personal Agility. Get the PAS book

Many of us have too much to do and not enough time to do it. Why do people stay in that situation. Often because they feel trapped. Like many of the people featured in our case studies, Hugo Lourenco discovered how to say no to things that cost time but did not bring value or happiness.

Hugo is an entrepreneur based in Lisbon, Portugal who owns a consultancy and several other businesses. He wanted to kick off a new generation of products and services for his customers.

Portrait of Hugo Lourenco 300x272
Hugo Lourenco, Entrepreneur, Lisbon, Portugal

“I was working for, or rather involved in, seven organizations. I was working like crazy, but not getting a valuable return on the time that I was investing. I was too busy working to achieve my long-term goals. The problem was that I had to recover from a previous business failure, support my family and reinvent the business. I felt a strong need to accept every paying gig I was offered, regardless of whether it was profitable or serving my long-term interests. I couldn’t bring myself to say no.”

“I wanted to concentrate my efforts on things that matter, have more income and have more focus. Ultimately, I wanted to do things that would put our work and Portugal on the map. I knew I had a lot going on and needed better concentration, and to get more control of my life. I was just working, not enjoying things. I really needed to be able to say no, despite the risks involved, so I could be successful.”

“I started saying no, to myself first, then politely getting myself away from those activities that consumed so much time without bringing any joy. I have more perspective and can make better decisions. I am working smarter, not harder.”

Today, in addition to running his businesses, Hugo is the President of the World Agility Forum and the Experience Agile Conference, two of the most prestigious global conferences in Europe.

“‘What really matters’ helped me find my balance.”

— Hugo Lourenco

“What Really Matters (WRM) played a key role. If I know why I am doing it, I can justify it, even if there are risks involved. Today, I use the PAS Priorities Map every day, as does our staff, so that we all stay focused on What Really Matters.”

“I looked at the organizations I was working with, how much time I spent with them and how much I earned. WRM gave me focus on the 7 organizations I was involved with. Some of them were good for me, others less so. I never prioritized myself, never prioritized quality time. It’s kind of normal for me as an ex-military officer. We live to serve others. But in your own life, that approach can be self-destructive. WRM helped me find my balance.”

The next level – Managing Stakeholders

Seven months after starting with the Personal Agility System, Hugo had shed many non-productive activities, and had taken an engagement as an external Agile Coach and Project Leader for a large consulting company.

“I was taking over the leadership of a project that was to deliver a solution to the customers of my client. The situation was challenging, because there was the client, and the client’s clients, each with their own set of stakeholders and potentially conflicting interests. How do you work with stakeholders in such a complex environment?”

“I needed to figure out what the customers were really looking for. I had a client who wanted to use agile practices for a project for their customers, but the situation was very complex. I wanted to build trust and alignment. The idea was to understand the situation, the stakeholders, and the real issues so I could build trust and the stakeholders would understand what we are trying to achieve.”

“I interviewed all my key stakeholders, both at my client and at their customers, using the PAS Stakeholder Canvas to understand the situation.

“During the conversations, the questions of the stakeholder canvas triggered strong feelings of happiness in people. They told me, ‘I have worked on several projects, but no one has ever asked me about success or failure.’ I was alone with the people, I took time with them, which people don’t usually do. People almost had tears in their eyes, because people never seem to care about them or their contribution. No one in the company had done this before.”

“By the content of the answers, I was also able to identify which people belonged in the project, but also who shouldn’t belong in the project. Some people would take an open-ended question and turn it into a closed-ended question. It became clear that some people just didn’t have a clue.”

“I engaged with and energized the people who belong in the project.”

“I was able to build a good relationship with my client. I was also able to identify who would be a good contributor to the project. Most importantly, I could identify the existential risks to the project.”

“I needed to change basic things fast to save the company.”
— Walter Stulzer

Walter Stulzer is the executive director of Futureworks, a creative consultancy in Zurich, Switzerland. In 2017, his company was no longer profitable. “We had liquidity problems, that is we were close to having no money in the bank account. We were about to run into a wall. Without changing things rapidly, bankruptcy was inevitable. I needed to change basic things fast to save the company.”

“The timeframe I gave the team was a year, but we needed to make the turnaround in 6 months. Our Vision was that we are a company focused on bringing value to our customers. People should know why they come to work every morning. Everything they do should produce value for the customer. Obviously, we also wanted to be profitable again, but profitability is a result, an outcome, not the goal of what we do.”

“We did not go bankrupt. People now know why they come to work, we produce value for our customers, and we are profitable. We did have a loss in the first year, but it was a loss that we could afford, and the following year, we were profitable. I considered profitability to be my challenge, not the company’s. I kept the bad news to myself, so people could focus on the right things and not act like ‘a deer in front of the headlights.’

“People know why they come to work every morning. We had lost 41 people in two years and had hired as many. Since then, we have had 2 exits per year, and even these were ‘good’ separations. No one is talking badly about the company.”

In the second year, we were able to fix the problem of delivering value. Previously, we thought we knew what the customer valued, but the customer didn’t always agree. We were able to address this in the second year.

“Without Personal Agility, I wouldn’t have done this.”

— Walter Stulzer

“We had half a year to avoid bankruptcy. The first year was for people to feel secure that they bring value to the customer. The second year was about bringing actual value to the customer, which improved our profitability.”

The Personal Agility tools that Walter used included the 6 Questions of PAS, the concept of What Really Matters (WRM), the PAS Priorities Map and Breadcrumb Trail, and the PAS Stakeholder Canvas. His company also used Scrum to organize and coordinate the work of the leadership team.

The Personal Agility System helps to prioritize and focus. Walter explains, “In a challenging situation, there are so many things you could do. The trick is to do the right thing, but you don’t know in the forefront what the right thing is. So the system helped me make educated guesses about what to do next. Then you do something, you probe and sense to see what happened. The next step is to learn, that is to inspect and adapt. Even if what you did was the wrong thing, you can learn quickly, and the damage from one misstep step is limited. So you have the possibility to reorder, re-prioritize and make a better guess next time.”

For Walter, the most important thing is to “finish every week with satisfaction and to start each week with confidence. This is number one on my What Really Matters column on my Priorities Map.”

Furthermore, Walter’s company uses the Stakeholder Canvas to understand their customers. “We used this as an analysis tool rather than an interview template. This helped me and my team understand what motivates our customers.”

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