#115: Aligning Leadership for Success with Dr. Tess Thompson

Join Brian and Dr. Tess Thompson as they delve into the complexities of scaling Agile, highlighting the challenges of aligning leadership priorities, fostering transparency, and applying system-level thinking for successful organizational transformations. Overview In this insightful episode, Dr. Tess Thompson tackles the pressing challenges organizations face when scaling Agile, with a focus on the critical role of leadership alignment. Drawing from her extensive experience, she explains how misaligned priorities at the leadership level can stall progress and waste resources. Dr. Thompson emphasizes the importance of system-level thinking, transparency, and communication between teams and leaders to resolve misalignments and ensure success. She also shares her holistic approach, blending practices from various Agile frameworks to meet the specific needs of different organizations. References and resources mentioned in the show: Dr. Tess Thompson Scrum Inc. Scrum.org #68: The Pros and Cons and Real World Applications of SAFe with Mike Hall #94: Connecting Teams and Leadership with Anthony Coppedge Three Questions to Determine If an Organization Is Agile by Mike Cohn Certified Scrum Product Owner® Training Join the Agile Mentors Community Subscribe to the Agile Mentors Podcast Want to get involved? This show is designed for you, and we’d love your input. Enjoyed what you heard today? Please leave a rating and a review. It really helps, and we read every single one. Got an Agile subject you’d like us to discuss or a question that needs an answer? Share your thoughts with us at podcast@mountaingoatsoftware.com This episode’s presenters are: Brian Milner is SVP of coaching and training at Mountain Goat Software. He's passionate about making a difference in people's day-to-day work, influenced by his own experience of transitioning to Scrum and seeing improvements in work/life balance, honesty, respect, and the quality of work. Dr. Tess Thompson is a visionary leader in Agile transformations, with over three decades of experience reshaping industries from energy to biotech across the globe. As a professor at St. Mary's University, her dedication to fostering Agile leaders has empowered countless individuals to embrace adaptability and forge their own path to success. Auto-generated Transcript: Brian (00:00) Welcome in Agile Mentors. We're back for another episode of the Agile Mentors Podcast. I'm with you as always, Brian Milner. And today I have a very special guest with me. I have Dr. Tess Thompson with me. Welcome in Dr. Thompson. Tess Thompson (00:13) Hi, I'm glad to be here. Brian (00:16) I'm so happy to have Dr. Thompson with us. And just for people who aren't familiar, let me make sure that I introduce her and give you the background a little bit. First of all, she's been in this business for almost 40 years now. She's been doing stuff in IT since the 80s. She is a principal consultant and RST fellow with Scrum Inc. Scrum .inc, I should say. She is a PST as well with scrum .org. So two different organizations from two different founders of Scrum. She has been a professor at St. Mary's University. So has that kind of educational background as well. And I was asking her beforehand if there's anything else I needed to say. And she said, well, make sure you say I've got nine grandchildren. That's kind of my claim to fame. I love that. So. Nine grandchildren, very happy for that. So that's who we're talking with. And we wanted to have Dr. Thompson because there's a lot of experience here that she brings to the table in the realm of scaling, obviously being connected so closely with those two organizations. So with all that out of the way, let's talk about scaling a little bit. And Dr. Thompson, what I want to start with is just Tess Thompson (01:27) I'm Brian (01:40) When you work with organizations today that have scaling issues, what are organizations really struggling with? What's kind of the m