Mar 03 2024 43 mins
Bio
Victor is a Lean/AGILE Strategy and Transformation Consultant, helping organisations in emergent environments navigate the path to a successful future via "Agile Ways Of Working". This usually involves developing and implementing Lean/Agile Strategies for these organisations, coaching & mentoring Senior Leaders, Managers and Teams in attaining the Agile Mindset that allows them to achieve high performance. Experiencing this evolutionary journey with clients from traditional ways of working to successfully achieving full Agility is his career passion. With a career path spanning over 30 years, starting as an accountant and Business Analyst, Scrum Master to being an Agile Coach today. His best skill amongst many is as a motivator and his work ethic is all around making work fun. Other passion outside work include helping Africa as a whole achieve Agility – Victor is the creator of the A.P.I.A.M-R.A.T.S Agile Culture Model and also an amateur chef, gastronome and suffering Chelsea FC fan. Victor lives in England with his family, 3 dogs and 12 fish.
Interview Highlights
01:40 & 08:00 Childhood bereavement
04:00 The importance of adapting
09:45 A.P.I.A.M-R.A.T.S model
14:50 Using local language
20:00 WakandAGILITY
22:25 Sustainable transformation
29:00 Transformation buzzword
32:15 The importance of timing
Social Media
· LinkedIn: Victor NWADU | LinkedIn
· Email: [email protected]
· Medium: Victor Nwadu – Medium
· Twitter: @wakandagility
Books & Resources
· The Goal by Eliyahu M. Goldratt: The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement: Goldratt, Eliyahu M
· Turn the Ship Around! by L. David Marquet: Turn the Ship Around!: A True Story of Turning Followers into Leaders L. David Marquet
· The Wisdom of the Crowds by James Surowiecki: The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies and Nations: James Surowiecki, Erik Singer
· WakandAGILITY.com: Enabling Agility for Africa: Agile Training, Support and Networking | Wakandagility
· The A.P.I.A.M. – R.A.T.S. MODEL | LinkedIn
Episode Transcript
Intro: Hello and welcome to the Agile Innovation Leaders podcast. I’m Ula Ojiaku. On this podcast I speak with world-class leaders and doers about themselves and a variety of topics spanning Agile, Lean Innovation, Business, Leadership and much more – with actionable takeaways for you the listener.
Ula Ojiaku
So I have with me here Victor Nwadu, who is an agility strategist, Agile coach, everything-in-between, maestro. Victor, it's an honour to have you on the Agile Innovation Leaders Podcast. Thank you so much.
Victor Nwadu
Thank you, Ula, thank you for having me. Thank you.
Ula Ojiaku
So let, just tell us, Victor, about your background. What are the things that you've experienced, that have shaped you into who you are today and how you've ended up to where you are professionally?
Victor Nwadu
I mean, just cutting to the flow, I'm from Nigeria. I'm also, like all Nigerians, educated in Nigeria and then for some, you know, reason found myself here in the UK. If I wanted to pick on anything that has, you know, brought me to where I am and what has driven me to who I am today, I think it's just, it’s my childhood, right. I was born to working class parents that, you know, Catholic people that worked hard for everything they've got. And as a Nigerian, you are told, it's instilled in you from a very young age, what the benefit of hard work is. Unfortunately, I was traumatised at the age of 13 by the death of my mum. So, and yeah, left with five siblings and my dad was broken by the course of events, but, you know, at that young age getting to where I am, having to, you know, do what I had to do to get to school and all that and still have these five siblings with me as well.
Ula Ojiaku
Because you're the first.
Victor Nwadu
Yes, I'm the first. You know how it is, especially when you're Igbo, right, you're expected to be strong and do it.
Ula Ojiaku
Di-Okpara (First Born)
Victor Nwadu
Di-Okpara, you say, that kind of thing, you know, so, yeah. But thank God for today and I find myself here today talking to powerful people like yourself. And I mean, I think that that has made me stronger, and I miss my mum terribly, but if I look back, to be honest with you, the course of events in one's life really defines, helps one define one's destiny. And that's how, you know, so I believe that what I went through in life has made me stronger, you know? So, yeah. I came to the UK, became an accountant, funnily enough, I did what we need to do. Then I find myself being a BA then a, after systems accounting, because I loved computers and all that, you know, then find myself doing, I don't know if you know what SAP is, so I did that for a while. Met a chap, a BA guy that I was doing his invoice, I saw how much was earning and I said, what, Jesus, I mean, tell me what to do, man. I then became a BA from that, then became, at that time, luckily, Scrum was just coming into the industry and, you know, we, I found myself doing something called an Agile BA, that's how I got into Agile. Then became a Scrum Master, became an Agile coach, and the rest is history. So that’s basically it in a nutshell.
Ula Ojiaku
That's interesting, that you started off as an accountant and now you're an agile coach. I mean, I'm not throwing stones. I started off as an Electronic Engineer and I'm an agile coach, but yeah, it's all about, what I'm trying to also tell young people, including my children, that what you start off with doesn't necessarily mean that that's the career you're going to have for your whole life, you know, there is a whole lot of options, but it's just about starting somewhere.
Victor Nwadu
Especially now, I say the same thing to my kids, especially my son. You need to be in a state of mind where you need to adapt. A lot of paradigm shifts are happening underneath us and, you know, you need to be ready, and you need to be ready to go and adapt to the present circumstances. Otherwise, you know, and this is why we do what we do.
Ula Ojiaku
Yeah, and I think it starts with a mindset as well, you know, just having that Agile mindset, not to flog it, but agility starts first with the mind. What’s your take on it? Because things are changing to be able to adapt and thrive in a rapidly changing world.
Victor Nwadu
Exactly. I mean, so we are living in exciting times, like you know already, agility was born out of the times that we're living in. It all started with the internet and outsourcing and all that, the world becoming a small village and all that. Then, we then have this digital thing going on and the information age and that brought yourselves all sorts of fantastic things. Things are, because we are utilising and leveraging the power of technology, we find out that we don't need to do certain things. Unfortunately, some jobs have to go, but then new ones are coming in. So all these things started happening, and again, it's affecting generations right now. If you were Generation X like me, you would've seen at least three more generations in your time when these changes are happening. It's crazy. So we now have, how do we survive? You know, you survive by adapting. If you don't adapt, you become obsolete, extinct, and that has tailored it to the industry, and the way we work. And even now talking to you, I'm working from home, I have a home office, you know, and that makes it even more fantastic because I can work anywhere in the world. Right. So what it does now is that it creates a bigger competition, right, where anybody can apply for any job anywhere in the world. It also helps the earth, and I don't want to go into that working from home debate, but that's all these things that are happening are as the consequences of the various paradigm shifts that are happening. So we need to adapt, like you said, in the mind, our mind needs to be open to change. And we need to put ourself in a place where we leverage all the advantages of those changes for our own benefits and so yeah.
Ula Ojiaku
Well said Victor. I mean, I completely associate with what you've said so far and the changes that are happening, especially with technology. For example, the recent one that's making waves is like AI, you know, so we're now in, someone said we’re in the knowledge, information age, but now it's something like augmented age. So it's not just about the information, but it's also about being able to leverage, you know, technology like AI to still do productive work. But it still ties back with being adaptable, being able to learn and unlearn, to remain creative because machines are not taking over anytime soon.
Victor Nwadu
They can't take over the creative aspect and we need to automate and become, the competitive edge now is about who does things quicker, who gets to the market quicker and who get to the customer quicker? Who satisfies the customer in terms of the value threshold. So yeah, that's what we are, you know, we’re creative, but we'll still be the same, but if you don't have creative guys in your design and engineering design, or software design, you're still going to fall back into that obsolete group of people that don't change or are not changing as quickly as it should. So yeah, I agree totally with that. Yeah.
Ula Ojiaku
Thank you. I know we went off into a rabbit hole, but I did want to just take you a little bit back to what you said earlier when you were talking about the things that happened to you that shaped you into who you are. And you mentioned your mum's death at 13, you know, I'm really sorry about that, and I can't imagine how tough it would be because my son just turned 13 and I can't imagine the difficulty it must be, well, you did say it must have been for you. You said events in one's life defines one's destiny. Can I, so my twist would be, because the same thing could happen to two different people and you have two different outcomes. So could there be something about how they react to it as well?
Victor Nwadu
Yeah, obviously. I mean, the way people react is the key, right. Yeah. So one person could react, have reacted, okay, fine. You hit the ground, I mean, you fall and you cry, and you get traumatised. Then you kind of rebuild yourself and stand up and keep going. And some people, it's just like a tough man's thing, right? It's a storming it and all that. So people stay in that trough, they never, some teams just stay there, they never rise above, you know, so some people, not because it's their fault, maybe their environment, maybe because resources that are not there to guide them, to help them stand up, you know? Yeah. We're not the same. So, yeah, I just happened to be who I'm hopefully strong enough to have been able to lead myself from that trough.
Ula Ojiaku
Well, you inspire me and I know that you are an inspiration to many other people as well, so thank you for sharing your story. So you did put together this model, agile culture model A.P.I.A.M-R.A.T.S. Can you tell us a bit about that?
Victor Nwadu
Actually, I have a little of pause on that. So it's something that, you know, that’s been on my mind, the pet project, purely because, you know, some people are saying, are you trying to create another agile, and no, it's not. It's just like a clarion call to people that are coming to Africa and the Middle East to engage in a transformation process. We're looking at the way Agile is, when the forefathers of agile went to Utah to dream up this fantastic thing. I'm sorry, they were not thinking about Africa, they were thinking from their own Western perspective, right. And then we Africans, Agilists and change leaders from Africa, we know that things we've learned from what the manifesto and the principles have taught us, are not that straightforward in from where we come from. So it manifests itself with many of my colleagues in the West that have gone to Africa and met these challenges and have complained. And I say, yes, it's because we are totally different, mindset is different, the Western mindset is totally different. So I've kind of modelled it more to Africa and the Middle East, and mainly to Nigeria and South Africa because that's where I got most of my data from. And it's A.P.I.A.M-R.A.T.S it's actually Agile Practice in Africa and the Middle East. Okay. And the R.A.T.S, I get lots of stick from my friends, the R.A.T.S is just when I kind of listed out the main things, main factors, some of them not that bad, some of them, the bad ones, it just, the best way I could figure it out to make, to create a soundbite was, it came out as R.A.T.S. So you have your religious intrusion, the R is religious intrusion, the A is an age respect paradox, and the T, obviously time. The other one is secrecy cults, and the fifth one, which I've added on later on was language, the leverage language and that kind of stuff, right? So the religious one is the effect of religion in the way we work. If you go to any African or if you go to Nigeria today now, you will see, say for example, people doing their standup. The standup, daily standup is, that's supposed to take an average of 15 minutes. They will give an average of five minutes for prayers and, you know, the way we pray, evangelistic sometimes things more than that. And imagine a Muslim guy in that scene. You know, imagine a Western guy, a Western agile coach and like woah, really? You know, so you have that aspect of it. You also have the age respect paradox. So it's a paradox because yes, while people in the West understand age and respect, in Africa and in the Middle East we take it up a notch or two. You know, where sometimes actually the negative aspect is that somebody that is older than you now thinks because he's older, you cannot allocate well as part of a member of the team, you feel, oh, it's an insult for you to tell them what to do, which is wrong and very crude, but it happens, it happens. So we have that and we also have the African Time, so it's not fair to call it African because the French do it. It’s not labelled an such connotative when the French do it…
Ula Ojiaku
I've been to different countries. They do it. I'm not going to name it, name them.
Victor Nwadu
Yeah. So, exactly. So the way it's been made to feel as if some kind of, like we, Nigerians and Africans started it. I don't really like it, but, you know, that has become something that of note and something that has kind of embedded itself in our culture and our behaviours. Yes, the French do it, but is in social circles, however, we've kind of brought it into professional, our professional lives, where we lack that discipline for some reason of keeping exactly to time. And that itself, obviously as you and I know, has an effect on cost of delay and all that kind of stuff.
Ula Ojiaku
And morale as well.
Victor Nwadu
The fourth one is secrecy cult. For some reason, we don't share knowledge. And I'm happy, agile is, has brought the fact that we need, when we bring transformation into an organisation, part of it is making the organisation at the end of the day, a learning organisation, where we collaborate and collaboration means we have to share knowledge, we have to share, you know, for us to win. Okay? So, yes, so for some reason in Africa, that doesn't take place as much as we would love to see that. The last I’ve put there is language, so this one is very important for me because, and Sophie Oluwole that's one of the, she's late now, but she's one of the people that have kind of been evangelising the need for us Africans to get rid of the Western language, like English or French. We should start teaching our kids chemistry, maths and everything, the academic learning journeys should start with our local language. It's easier on the brain, it's less stressful, and they learn. Then we can learn English later on, or however, we shouldn't waste time to learn a foreign language, then start learning the basics of academia, right. So if you look at it, it's timeframe itself is a waste in terms of agile thinking, right? So for me, I brought it into an agile space because you find out that, I have worked across global teams, right? And when, as an agile coach, you give teams freedom to please, create and design within yourself with your local language. Only come to me when you, you know, when you need to, when you need me. And then you'll normally find a language champion that will do the translation or whatever. And so you find out that it's easy, the engagement is easier, and they're loving you for giving them that freedom. So I've been bringing it to Africa to be the way we work in Africa so that we as teams are, we don't become too stressed or thinking of how we sound when we speak English. When we are designing, we are talking about, and when we are in an agile space, we are talking about and discussing with our local language, we are free, and you find out the mind is less stressed. So these ideas just keep flowing, the brainstorming session is fantastic, lively, because you don't have to, oh, let me think of how I'm going to put, structure this, my idea in English before I have to speak, it just comes out, like it's easier. So I think we have more benefits if we trace ourselves back into our local language, especially if the team is regional and everybody there is speaking the same language.
Ula Ojiaku
I was going to get there, so it seemed like you read my mind. I was going to say, but what if the team, because in Nigeria there are over 200 languages or 200 ethnic groups, since we've started off with Nigeria, you know, what happens? Because you might still have to go to a shared common language.
Victor Nwadu
That's a very good question. So, but the thing is, like most African, especially in India, places like India and even in the Middle East, we have a kind of broken English, we have a local slang anyway, that's a kind of, it's mixed with English, like in Africa, Pidgin, we call it Pidgin, it's a mixture of Creole and Hausa, Wazobia, that kind of thing going on there with English, everybody already speaks that language. Why don't we use that? So that's a tie breaker anyway, that, why don't we use that, you know? So yeah. So, but basically, when you go to places like Enugu or Kaduna, you tend to be of that particular region. But if we have a thought person there that’s from other place, let's use our local vernacular to break that ice in terms of the way we speak and communicate. So that's my answer to that.
Ula Ojiaku
Okay. And where you have someone, if there's only maybe one person who's not of the culture, not from that country, doesn't know it, where does inclusion come in here?
Victor Nwadu
It's highly unlikely, but however if it happens, because in the small village that we have now, the global village that we have, I normally would have a language champion, somebody that's, you know, you should be able to find some kind of, somebody within the, just like your Agile champion, the team. You find somebody that can translate, right? Otherwise, I've developed all sorts of apps right now, where you can use something as Google translates. So when you, when you want to give important meetings and you want to write, you just do the one in English, then translate it to their local language and just send it out. Everybody will understand and they'll come back to you. So, yeah. But it's very rare, very, very rare, to find a place where the English language and French has not touched on this planet, or Spanish. So when that happens, you just, we just use tools that, simple tools are available to us, Google translate, use an Agile champion to kind of leverage and that, kind of make that disability or handicap a non-existence or minimise the impact of it in the way we communicate.
Ula Ojiaku
On a slightly off tangent point in terms of languages, Mandarin is also like going up there, you can't ignore that. So what have you been working on lately as you've talked about the A.P.I.A.M-R.A.T.S model, why you came up with it and how, in a little way, how it could be used, but what else have you been working on lately that you'd like to share with the world?
Victor Nwadu
Apart from work and all that, I give a lot to my people. I have tried to empower a lot of people, so I've created this WakandAGILITY group where we, it's a global support thing where we kind of give masterclasses to people that are coming into the industries from masters and Agile coaches already there, but want to, you know, so I kind of hold these master classes for free actually, because, I am looking at the scope of how we can kind of create, make sure that as Africa develops and becomes more hungry, resource hungry, we have the resources on the ground to accommodate those requests, right?
Ula Ojiaku
So skilled manpower, you mean?
Victor Nwadu
Exactly. We don't have it. So, and now to train up, agile training is expensive. So that's my own way of giving back. But apart from that, I've been working with people, great people, great change analysts, internationally based people like, I don't know if you know her, Mary Laniyan, she's based in the UK and we have a lovely woman that did African something sometime ago that invited me to Lagos Abiodun Osoba. We also, in fact, I think we have somebody, her name is Anu Gopal, she’s even a powerhouse in agile affairs, I think one of those, yeah. I also have Etopa Suley from Canada. You know, all these guys who come together in the last Agile 20 something, we came off with the whole government manifesto for Nigeria. That was our presentation, it's fantastic, right? It is there on the internet right now, so yeah, so it's people like this I'm working with, we came up with the manifesto for good governance for Nigeria and many other projects like that. So yeah, that's what I spend my time doing behind the scenes, apart from work and spending time with my family.
Ula Ojiaku
That's really awesome, and I'm sure some of the listeners would want to know more about it. So we'll make sure the links are in the chat. Do you still do run these sessions?
Victor Nwadu
Yes, I do. It's keeping with the requests. I have a lot of requests, and you know.
Ula Ojiaku
So there is a question I have for you with respect to transformation, because as an Agile coach, I would expect that you've been involved in a number of transformation efforts with organisations in involving leaders and teams. Can there be a sustainable transformation without vision or strategy?
Victor Nwadu
So, it's possible for you to have a transformation, well a transformation, it's possible for that to just happen once, right? So it's like a rider, you know, you are told to ride through one end of the Serengeti to the other with dangerous animals and valleys and all that. With a horse, no compass. And you don't have a compass, you have a map or maybe don't have a map, you just know just face there, you get to the end, right? And you don't have a compass. You don't know the health of the horse and you just got on that horse. And yet, it is probable that you may be able to get to the end. But how sustainable is that? That is why the word sustainable that you use is very important. How sustainable is that for us to now create some kind of tourist pamphlet for other people to come behind us to use? It's exactly the same way. So it's probably, it's very, very probable for you to run this kind of transformation rather than just win with one team or whatever, then where's the playbook for those coming behind you, if you want to kind of multiply that, accelerate it within the organisation. So that's why sustainability is important. You know, how sustainable is that? How can we we create a model, or a playbook for us to use as an organisation for our own peculiar transformation, right? That's why it's important for us to have vision. I mean, you know, we need to have a strategy, you know, so the vision itself, first of all is the what and the why we are doing it, and all that kind of stuff. Then the strategy, the Agile strategy is very important. The Agile strategy itself is the vision plus how we're going to do it. Under it, in a timeframe, and how we’re going to fulfil the objective required to actualise that vision, right? And with regard to the scope, timeline, course and the organisational culture. So that's the strategy. We need to have all that. When you have that and you place it, and you can start to kind of base it under the kind of, your playbook of entry, the change itself and the exit, then you have something to go with, you know? So, yeah, that's basically how it works. You cannot have a sustainable transformation without a clear vision, without a realistic strategy that kind of makes sure that all these aspects of the scope itself, the objective, the goals, and then taking into consideration the culture I dealt with, you know, you cannot have a, what is known as transformation, a sustainable one without having a transformation strategy. So that's it.
Ula Ojiaku
You may have touched on this, but I'll say, just going back to your Serengeti Crossing analogy. I mean if you are crossing, or the person has been assigned a horse cross, that it's important to say why are we crossing the Serengeti? Because it might be that if you evaluate the why it might be better for you to stay where you are and don't put yourself and other people in danger and waste resources crossing, just for crossing's sake.
Victor Nwadu
Yeah. I mean, all these things will come in when we are laying out the strategy and, you know, we will have the vision, somebody comes, you know. I have to say transformation is sexy nowadays. So the metaphor is dealing with the, the Serengeti itself is the transformation, what we assume to be all the wahala inside the transformation.
Ula Ojiaku
What is wahala? Beause not everyone understands what wahala is?
Victor Nwadu
Wahala means all the troubles in life, all the challenges you meet in everything. So we need to first of all understand that nowadays transformation is sexy. Where many organisations, I heard a rumour that many leaders engaged in these big companies engaged transformation purely for the benefit of their PE ratio in the stock exchange. It's a rumour, I haven't confirmed it, but I don't know how to confirm it, but I do know that it's very sexy to say your organisation is carrying out its transformation. Everybody wants to be a saviour, that's what we're doing. So that is part of the big problem and the challenges that we face as change leaders in the transformation, because the success of the transformation depends on the leaders and the person at the top. How committed they are to it. So the commitment of that leader is tasked from the top. If they don't have the buy in, if they're not convinced about it, they're just doing it for show, when push comes to shove, and it will happen, the challenges will come and hit you. Cultural challenges, personality challenges, the ego of leaders or middle managers, and you'll hit them as you already know. How committed is the leader at the top to come down and say guys, and create that space for us to be able to make this transformation happen? Because as the ultimate impediment remover, that person should be able to have the time, to have the commitment to come down to the team level, to the whatever program level, whatever, and be able to remove that impediment for that to happen. So if this leader or sets of leaders or whoever is given the mandate to commission a transformation doesn't have total commitment or is not bought in, is not doing it for some show or for some reason, it's not going to work.
Ula Ojiaku
Very true. Do you have any anonymised stories of your experience in guiding organisations in enterprise agility or transformation journey. Because one thing you've said, you know, transformation is sexy, it's really a buzzword. And if you ask two people, and they could be in the same leadership team, you know, C-suite team, what is transformation? And they'll give you different answers. It's just a buzzword, which means different things to different people. But do you have any story underpinning, you know, what you have said about leadership being key?
Victor Nwadu
If I give you all the stories, you're not going to leave here, right. However, I want to make a few things very, very clear that just standing in most organisations, that starts their transformation journey with a few teams, as you would expect. When they succeed in that they then call it an enterprise wide transformation. Where you take a few teams to delivering some funky, sexy, innovative products, that is not enterprise wide transformation, that's not business transformation or business agility, right. It is you showing that, and delivering a particular product as quickly to the customer, whatever works using agile ways of working. So there's that misconception there, that's the number one misconception that people think, oh, when we succeed with a few teams, yeah, we have, no, we haven't, because you still need to scale it, you know, to the entire enterprise, to non-IT enterprise to both upstream and downstream and all that. It is when your organisation as a whole, no matter how tall it is, can have a transparent view of where everything is, when an organisation can adapt to news in the market very quickly, when an organisation can innovate, it has the people they have been enabled to, to have a different idea, different mindset towards failure and seeing failure as a learning bridge, all those kind of mindset things, but happening in very large scale so that the organisation becomes a learning organisation, everybody's learning, we have a lot of COPs (Community of Practices), you know, that's when you say a transformation has been successful, that’s when you can actually say the organisation has transisted from a traditional stoic, siloed set up to where we have open collaboration, and the cultures, mindsets and the culture have been changed in that the mindset of people that lead and those that make things happen is one, and they have this adaptive way of behaving. When something happens in the market, nothing shocks them. Even when it does, you have some, I understand some people even have an anti-disruptive, you know, when you come up with an idea in your organisation and you go back and you go out to the market and sell it, you become disruptive, you disrupt the market. However, some organisations as well are having anti-disruption strategies. If somebody else comes, how quickly can we respond? So those are the kind of things that shows that organisation has actually transisted from those traditional ways of working to an agile way of working. However, the other aspect I want to draw to our attention is about timing, when we are thinking of transformation. So for me, my advice is first of all, number one, to get the top person involved in it. Timing is very, very important. You need to have time for this transformation, to start this transformation. The time when you start transformation is very important. You don't want to start it when you have disruption in the market, things will not happen normal way, and it's better for you to do transformation in peace time, what I call peace time, before some major disruption, so that you can leverage what you've learned from that transformation in that, when that disruption happens. Timing is very important when you're carrying out a major transformation in your organisation, okay? You need to have committed leaders, leaders that are really committed to the cause, they're not just doing it for show and leaders should be able to come down and do Gemba walks, and see that what is actually happening in the kitchen is what their executive information system is relayed to them, right? There needs to be complete transparency from the top to bottom. So that we are sure that what the developers and the guys creating all our products are doing is exactly tied to the revision and objective of the executive. So that's part of it. And for me it's common sensical things that we already know. However, when we have transparency, this transparency increases trust. And it needs to start with the leader, he needs to show transparency by example, right? So it increases trust, and trust enables organisation-wide collaboration, right? So when teams start collaborating, teams that were locked in silos start collaborating, we start seeing silo breaking, and when you start breaking the silo, you start seeing aggregates, paradigm shifts happening. And that is when you now then see that almighty cultural change emerge. So it comes from, and transparency, it comes from transparency leading to trust, and trust leading to collaboration that breaks down silos. And when that thing happens, you start having all this shift because we now trust each other. There are no more silos, then the cultural shift that people say is hard to do, it is, however, if you follow this, if you allow this thing to flow the way I just listed, it'll flow in its normal cadence, right, without having to have unnecessary, you know It's not easy to have a cultural, don't get me wrong, when we are as change analysts and change agents, it's not easy for cultural change. No matter where we are in the world, people don't like change as a result. However, it starts with common sensical things like the leader taking the first step, the leader coming into, sometimes when you have a Gemba walk, you come into a meeting and you, like, for example, in some recent, not recent, about two years ago, where the leader came into a meeting or for an impediment that had been there, so kind of a Scrum of Scrum meeting, that had been a feature type impediment, and had been there for quite a while. And he came in and after they've had the conversation, he just raised his hand and everybody was surprised to see him and just said, what is it? And he kind of listed back to him, you know, this impediment that I've been there for roughly about almost a month was dealt with within two days. That is one of the major advantages where you have the leader there, and you need to ask yourself a question, what was causing the impediment delay? The verification of the impediments and the delay of the action of impediments before the leader came in. Middle management, also cultural things, bureaucracy, my space, your space, so the person at the top comes in and slashes through. If you have leaders that are prepared to do that, that have the time to do that, transformation will take its normal course without unfortunate circumstances happening.
Ula Ojiaku
You've said a lot of things in this time and space and they make sense to me, but is it possible, because you said transformation is ideal when done in peace time. How can you, it’s almost like saying you time the markets. Because there are other people, many organisations that have admitted, for example, the Covid, the pandemic accelerated their transformation per se.
Victor Nwadu
Accelerated, but many of them died. You know, yes we have unforeseen circumstances that you cannot help that, right? Aliens landing on the planet and disrupting the world, you cannot help that, right? But I was saying that if you are given a time to select, so it's better for you to do it now before any, covid is part of it, but you also have market disruptions as well, right? So the best time would be when you think just kind of stability, because it starts from a small team, then expand. So you want to make sure that team is not distracted by bigger factors that may be beyond the help, the beyond the reach of the remediating powers of the leaders in the organisations, right. So that's given, if you are given, you know, if you can help it. If you can't help it, start it as quickly as possible, but you know, it's better to have it started in peace time.
Ula Ojiaku
Awesome, thanks Victor. I can see that you are quite passionate about what you are saying. So what books have you recommended to people about this topic or anything else and why?
Victor Nwadu
I have many books. The main book, that for me has kind of created powerful insights in the way I do my work, the way I even see life. One of them, the top one is The Goal by Eliyahu M. Goldratt. Then the other one is Turn the…. Turn the Ship Around! by David Marquet. We'll put it in the links. You know, I use that a lot. And it's just leadership should be, you know, it should be about enabling, self-managing, self-organising team. I mean, in the way we work nowadays, you can't know everything. And that was what the point he was trying to say that as a captain, yeah, he's supposed to know how they work, but the details, there are experts that is within his reach, there are the guys that are the experts, so enable them to do the thing and you just deal with it. And the third one will be this one. I just read this book, it's called The Wisdom of the Crowds by James Surowiecki. He was saying that data shows that if you take, if you ask people to solve a problem and a group of people from just non-experts, and you get the experts to predict that same problem, the crowd will be, the answer will be closer to the reality than the experts themselves. Why, I don't know, maybe it aggregates knowledge of the crowd coming together rather than experts, and the other point he was making also, is how the HiPPO opinion (HiPPO: Highest Paid Personality), like when you have a team of engineers and the manager comes in that meeting and you ask a question of how do you think we can do this and he gives his opinion first, his opinion is going to skew the answers of everybody else. So this is why it's important, where you have a meeting and some HiPPOs are there, let them be still, let us hear the opinions of the team, the ordinary members of the team before if they need to give their opinion, right? Otherwise we just have a skewed opinion and that opinion will not be the best for that particular question. So that is another very good book.
Ula Ojiaku
Thank you. So there are three books. The Goal, Turn That Ship Around, The Wisdom of the Crowds. So how can the audience find you or contact you?
Victor Nwadu
You can get me at wakandagility.com, you can get me at [email protected]. You can get me at LinkedIn, Victor Nwadu, you just type it there, you’ll see m there.
Ula Ojiaku
Any ask for the audience, or any final words, Victor?
Victor Nwadu
Final last words, yes, Agile is real. Agile is here. And so be inspired, be prepared, be Agile. First of all, you be inspired to change, to have that mindset to adapt to your present circumstances. You know, be prepared for future disruptions, for anything, and be Agile, right? That's it. Then you will definitely succeed. You will definitely live longer. You will definitely transcend all the challenges, all the Covid 19 time, even aliens coming to this world or whatnot.
Ula Ojiaku
So can we hold you to, to account for it? Can we take it to the bank and say Victor said if we're inspired, prepared, and agile…
Victor Nwadu
It will help. I mean, from my experience in life, it'll help if you're inspired, you have to be inspired. People that are not driven cannot achieve much. You need to be passionate about what you do. And then you need to be prepared. You need to be prepared by having the skillset, challenge yourself to learn, constantly learning. Then be agile, all those things that we do, your mindset, the way you think, you know, having agile ways of doing things, you know, having a different mindset towards failure. When you fail, it doesn't mean you have, you know, you’ve done anything bad or the end of the world, failure is a sign that that option is not going to work and you've learned something new, you pivot and try a new one. So if we have that kind of mindset, we'll be innovating every year, every six months, every three months. If we have a different attitude towards failure, so be inspired, be prepared, be Agile.
Ula Ojiaku
Thank you so much, Victor. It's been a pleasure having this conversation
Victor Nwadu
It's been an absolute pleasure. Thank you so much, Ula.
Ula Ojiaku
The pleasure is mine. That’s all we have for now. Thanks for listening. If you liked this show, do subscribe at www.agileinnovationleaders.com or your favourite podcast provider. Also share with friends and do leave a review on iTunes. This would help others find this show. I’d also love to hear from you, so please drop me an email at [email protected] Take care and God bless!