Month: December 2024

How do you influence a team that seems stuck, unmotivated, and divided? Sometimes, the most powerful tools aren’t metrics or strategies—they’re dreams.
Let me share a story of how guided imagination turned a fractured team into a unified force of success.

The Story: Last month, I faced a challenge while mentoring a development group in a security company. This team, composed of excellent professionals, was struggling with motivation and team spirit. To complicate matters, they were divided across two locations due to varying security clearance levels. The lower-clearance team members were barred from entering high-security facilities, and those with high-clearance resisted working in the less secure office. The physical separation mirrored their emotional disconnection.

From the start, I believed that bringing them physically together would dramatically improve their dynamics. But the resistance to this idea was strong. Some team members outright rejected the notion, and tensions were high. I knew a conventional approach wouldn’t work.

During one retrospective, I decided to take a different route. I led them through a guided imagination session.

I began by asking everyone to close their eyes, take a deep breath, and imagine their ideal team. I guided them step by step, turning this into an introspective journey. They visualized what it would feel like to work in harmony, to support each other, and to achieve their goals as a united team. I anchored this vision deeply, asking them to internalize the experience.

When they opened their eyes, I asked them to describe what they saw and felt. To my surprise, these usually reserved individuals became remarkably expressive. They eagerly shared their visions and even drew representations of their imagined ideal team. The “working together” motif emerged as a dominant theme in every description.

The Turning Point: Fast forward one sprint. The team was preparing for a critical stabilization sprint ahead of a major product release. They faced daunting challenges, including complex and critical bugs. Before they began, I reminded them of their own ideal team representation. I tapped into the anchors we had set during the guided session, emphasizing the “working together” theme they had envisioned.

Then came the breakthrough: they proposed sitting together in a low-security-level open space, just for the duration of this sprint. What started as an unlikely idea became a two-week bug-hackathon. The result? Nothing short of remarkable.

The Outcome: At the retrospective following the sprint, the results were clear. The team had resolved complex bugs, delivered a successful release, and, most importantly, rediscovered the joy of working together. They broke through their own resistance and expressed a newfound willingness to continue collaborating closely.

The Lesson: This experience reinforced for me the transformative power of imagination. A single guided visualization shifted mindsets and redefined a team’s dynamics. It proved that when you anchor a dream in people’s minds, they can achieve incredible things.

Love your team, and remember: leave room for the Dream Fairy—perhaps with some Hanukkah donuts.

 

Have you ever faced a moment where you had to decide—act decisively or hold back? That split-second choice can define outcomes and create lasting change.

Let me share the mindset that enables me to bring about instant shifts during retrospectives, turning delicate moments into transformative breakthroughs.

It was (as my wife likes to remind me) 40 kilos ago. I was a teenager in Paris, a city under the shadow of neo-Nazis and violent anti-Semitism. Synagogues were bombed, lives were shattered, and fear permeated the air. But fear didn’t define us.

A group of us decided we would not cower. Proudly wearing our kippahs, we walked the streets with courage, but we were not unprepared.

We trained relentlessly—12 hours a week under the guidance of Paris’s best martial arts senseis. Our training wasn’t just theoretical; it was practical.

It played out in the streets, defending Jewish kids from bullies, confronting those who attacked the elderly, and standing up against hatred scrawled on walls.
A street fight isn’t a Hong Kong movie.
It’s not Bruce Lee.
You have about 20 seconds to break your opponent’s will to ensure they don’t come back to harm you—or anyone else.

One lesson I learned, which has stayed with me throughout my life, is this: you never have to fight.
But if you decide to fight, make sure you won’t have to do it again.
Leave no doubt, no room for a second round.
This principle has transcended the streets and found its place in my professional life, particularly during retrospectives.

Retrospectives are like choosing whether to fight.
You don’t always have to address every delicate or complex situation.
Sometimes, it’s better to hold back, not raise the issue in front of the group, and instead handle it one-on-one.
That’s legitimate and often wise.
But other times, there’s an opportunity to fix a systemic issue once and for all. After all, retrospectives exist to improve the ecosystem, refine processes, and empower teams and their members.

When you choose to address a sensitive issue in a retrospective, it can be like cleaning a wound—it’s painful, but it’s necessary for healing.
These moments can become powerful, emotional sessions that leave a lasting impact and can easily spiral out of control if you’re not properly prepared.
In fact, I often advise participants of such sessions to wait an hour before driving home because of the emotional intensity.

The key is preparation.
You can’t improvise.
Just as martial arts require hours of training to perfect a single movement, handling tough discussions requires practice and readiness.
Stand in front of a mirror, rehearse, anticipate every reaction, and ensure you have total control of the situation.
When you’re prepared, you can decide: will you shoot or not?

And if you decide to shoot, don’t hesitate,
When you have to shoot… shoot, don’t talk!

 

Imagine if you could unlock your team’s true potential—not by commanding every move or letting them run wild, but by finding the perfect balance between guidance and independence.
This is the secret to empowering teams to reach new heights. Let’s dive into how you can master this delicate balance and inspire transformative success.

How do you unlock the full potential of a team? Is it through complete freedom or by enforcing strict control?
The answer lies in finding a delicate balance. Let me show you how embracing both autonomy and structure can lead to transformative success.

Or, what a sandwich can teach us about project management.

I have a deep love for coaching, guiding teams, and supporting organizations. There is nothing quite like the satisfaction of seeing individuals and teams make significant, transformative progress. I enjoy the amazing results, but I also love the journey—the process of change itself.

Almost every time I run a training or coach a team, when discussing the importance of empowering self-organizing teams, I face the same passionate objections:

“Since when do we not need a manager?” “Who will make the decisions?” “Development isn’t a democracy!” “We’re not in a kibbutz, and kibbutzim have proven they don’t work!” “You can’t break the rules!”

And so on.

Usually, I sit back and enjoy the emotional outburst. Firstly, because it means I’ve awakened those who were previously disengaged. And secondly, because it shows that people are open to receiving new insights.

This is the moment when I start with a personal story:

“We have five kids within a four-year age range—three births between my beloved wife and me.
Early on, my amazing wife invented her own version of Agile. As always, necessity was the mother of invention.
In our case, it was the need to have breakfast delivered to her in bed—preferably with a croissant.
But how could we achieve that while also getting the kids ready for school: organizing their supplies, clothes, and, of course, their sandwiches?

Thus, the first self-organizing team of the Deutsch Family Inc. was born. From first grade, our children learned that they were responsible for three key ‘features’: preparing their school supplies, choosing their clothes, and making their sandwiches.

It was a huge success. The kids prepared their supplies just as well as I could (I was never good at figuring out which notebook was needed for Hebrew and whether it should be a folder or a book for mathematics—that whole domain is a kind of voodoo for me). When it came to clothing, yes, sometimes they wore T-shirts in winter or sweatshirts in summer, but after a few retrospectives, they dramatically improved their decision-making.

The biggest drama was around the sandwiches. We had to deal with social protests—kids complaining that they had to make their own sandwiches while all their friends’ parents did it for them. We didn’t negotiate and prepared for a prolonged struggle. But a few days later, the kids came home beaming, saying that all their friends were jealous. Their friends’ parents decided what to spread on the bread, while at Deutsch Family Inc., the team was free to choose whatever they wanted.

So what’s better—democracy or autocracy?

Business isn’t a democracy, and we’re not in a kibbutz. On the other hand, autocracy stifles creativity and limits a team’s ability to make breakthroughs.
So what’s the answer?

The truth is, it’s neither pure democracy nor autocracy. Our kids had the freedom—and the responsibility—that came with, choosing what to put on their sandwiches.
However, they could only choose from what was available in the house.
If there was no Nutella or anything else they wanted, but only cottage cheese or hummus, that’s what they used.
They decided between cottage cheese and hummus, but it was us, the parents, who set the framework within which they had that freedom.

Our children are now in their 20s and still haven’t discovered the secret of our ‘Manifluence’ (manipulative influence—a term I invented, which I’ll discuss in a future article).
They were free to put whatever they wanted in their sandwich, but only using what we as parents decided would be available at home.

If you reveal them the secret, I k..l you! See, you’re warned.

And that’s how it works with school sandwiches—and with team management.

We give our teams full autonomy, empowering them, giving them responsibility, and helping them reach their full potential. In doing so, we also free ourselves from the need for micromanagement. But all of this happens within a framework we, as Scrum Masters, Product Owners, or managers, define. We define the features, present the product backlog, set priorities, and outline the overall plan. This is what I want—it’s up to you, the team, to decide how to achieve it. You are free to choose and explore the best path forward. I am here to support, guide, and explain, but ultimately, you are responsible for the ‘how’ within the ‘what’ that I have defined.

And the only real question that remains is… hummus or cottage cheese?

 

Imagine a team so motivated that they take on challenges without being asked—solving complex problems creatively and efficiently.
Imagine leaders who foster this level of autonomy, trusting their teams to take ownership.
This is the true power of self-organizing teams, and it can lead to incredible results.

Let me share with you two real tales that demonstrate how autonomy and trust can achieve the impossible.

One of the cornerstones of biology is the Latin phrase: “Omne vivum ex vivo”—all life comes from life, a rebuttal to the concept of spontaneous generation. Here’s proof that hyper-productivity in development doesn’t strictly adhere to cellular biology, but instead stems from something much more profound—something I have witnessed repeatedly in exceptional Agile teams.

Last week, a Scrum Master I mentor approached me, concerned. He was worried that his team was becoming increasingly autonomous—organizing and operating on its own. He acknowledged that Agile theory supports team autonomy, but then he said, “But Haim, be serious, you and your Agile methods… there’s no way we can manage development like this in the company!”

“Excellent!” I told him, “Agile and I are overjoyed. You are incredibly lucky. You might not realize it, but fostering true team autonomy is one of the hardest things to achieve. It can take months, years, and sometimes… it just never happens at all. So celebrate it—enjoy it!”

Still, I could sense his lingering concern. So I told him these two compelling stories about teams that self-organized for the benefit of the company.

Eric Schmidt, former Chairman and CEO of Google, shares that when they first launched AdWords, Larry Page, co-founder of Google, conducted a search for “Kawasaki H1B.” Unfortunately, the search results returned numerous ads for lawyers offering immigration services to secure the H1-B visa, completely unrelated to the motorcycle Larry was searching for. Larry continued with another search, this time for “cave paintings,” and again received irrelevant results—ads from galleries selling paintings, with no connection to caves.

These results worried Larry. If searches did not return accurate results, AdWords ads would receive fewer clicks.

A traditional manager would have convened an emergency executive meeting, assigned a task force to analyze the problem, and set up a special team to work tirelessly until the issue was resolved.

But what did Larry do?

Larry printed out the search result pages, marked the poor results with arrows, and wrote: “This is a bad result.” He then hung these pages in the office kitchen.

Three days later, Larry received an email from five developers—not even part of the AdWords development team—who saw the pages, understood the problem, and attached their analysis of the bug and suggestions for a solution. Larry decided to implement their suggestion, which continues to influence Google search results to this day.

What happened here? A group of talented people, connected to each other and aligned with the company’s interests, took it upon themselves to solve a problem. No one explicitly asked them, no one demanded it, criticized, or managed them. They saw a need, they saw a challenge, and in a fully autonomous way, they solved the problem as quickly and effectively as possible. Incredible!

Think this can only happen at Google? Well, think again…

The same happened to me at Elbit Systems in the previous century. I was a young and promising team leader. Even then, I resisted any form of authority, so naturally, I led my team in a non-traditional way, instinctively striving to build a responsible, autonomous, self-organizing team.

One day, I received a frantic call from the head manager, informing me that we needed to translate the core code of a classified system from PL/I to C. I knew it was going to be a huge challenge given the time constraints—we would need to plan the project, create the design, validate the new architecture, code, and test the entire system. In essence, it looked like two years’ worth of work. And we had just a few months for the release.

So, what did we do?

During our break (Happy Hour), I simply presented the challenge to my team: “Obviously, we can’t do this in the conventional way, but I know you and your capabilities, and I know that this challenge will push you to find creative solutions.”

I conveyed this message on a Thursday afternoon. After a long weekend, on Monday, two of my team members, Sharon and Oren, came to me. Oren said, “We have good news and bad news. The good news is that over the weekend, we thought of a solution for translating the code from PL/I to C and wrote software to translate the code automatically. The bad news is that it only achieves 80% accuracy, and we’ll need to translate the rest manually!”

“Fantastic!” I told them. “I’d love to see the code you developed!”

I didn’t demand deadlines, I didn’t assign tasks, nor did I dictate how to do it. Just responsible, challenged people who rolled up their sleeves, dedicated their time, and came up with a quick and effective solution. The project was completed successfully, well ahead of schedule.

A year later, I moved to another group where I found out they had faced a similar challenge—translating code from PL/I to C. They outsourced the translation to a company in the United States, which contractually promised to deliver the translated code in six months. Two years later, the code still wouldn’t compile!

So tell me, dear Leader, is having a responsible, self-organizing, autonomous team a good or a bad thing?