Crossing the imaginary chasm: Improvement Dialogues (remote edition)
I am currently responsible for providing coaching sessions to a group of product owners of a Bank. Being a PO demands a lot of market knowledge, agile frameworks, and an entrepreneurial/experiential mindset.
We meet 2–3 times per week to review impediments and explore solutions to common challenges. These are intense sessions of conversation and analysis, for those reasons I prefer to use a Management 3.0 practice called “improvement dialogues”, which contribute to teams in their learning and discovery processes.
When I started the session with the coachees I asked them to select their topic of work and shared a little about the purpose of the process and brought doubts and concerns about product development. I introduced them into improvement dialogues using a simple string of liberating structures: mad tea plus wicked questions.
I divided them into pairs or trios through the zoom breakout room and invited them to answer the sentences that represent the inquisitive statements and complete the sentence in any way he or she wants.
This dynamic facilitates them to have enriching discussions in a safe environment, identifying simple ways to share perspectives and accept what the other has to say. By being a co-created process of accepting and building ideas, they achieve a common understanding of the challenges they have in their company. As a bank, they share technological resources, equipment, and problems. Therefore, being aligned is a vital element for the development of solutions.
Then we debriefed the results and I asked them to prioritize through a vote the inquisitive statement that most caught their attention.
To the selected inquisitive statement I applied the liberating structure of Wicked Questions, Asking them
“What opposing-yet-complementary strategies/features/behaviors do we need to pursue simultaneously in order to be successful according to our impact map?
Each participant generated pairs of opposites or paradoxes at play in his or her work using the Wicked Question, questioning if we understand the different propositions
All statements were shared with the whole group, and they picked out the most powerful ones and brought their thoughts, refining and sharing a common understanding around the PBI’s of the product, continuously thinking aligned to the goal established
The main lessons I have learned from the use of this practice through its implementation have been that inquisitive statements work as a catalyst, provoking a deeper set of insights among a misunderstanding, engaging in the collective imagination, and helping to devise strategies to move forward and evaluate decisions.
As a facilitator or coach I help people to explore the consequences of their choices, and the impact on their circle of influence, what is missing and help to decide what is important to them, and how to achieve what they want. The end result is focusing on solutions with a holistic approach to the challenge instead of focusing on consequences.
Imposing consequences often invites rebellion and defensive thinking instead of explorative thinking. One key task to become an awesome Product Owner is to stop telling the team what to do and start asking curious questions about the purpose. This is why Improvement Dialogues is powerful.
In the future, I’d like to explore how often managers encourage their teams, what causes promote trust, how teams feel about it, what product owners learn from it, and what the team should do about it.
I would like to experiment with this practice with Change management canvas
