Inside LEGO's Agile Coaches Community with Preben Arentoft, Michael Bang and Ben Dunn

[Music] In this episode, I had the pleasure of speaking with Pravan, Ben and Michael about what it really looked like to build a community of agile coaches inside LEGO Group. I asked about how the community first came together, what helped it grow, and also what made people want to keep showing up. They also shared why they chose to keep people at the beginning, instead of over structuring the community and how that helped it stay relevant as you grew across different teams and locations. To keep it real, they also shared what worked, what didn't, and what they learned along the way about helping people connect, learn from each other, and improve how they work. I hope you love it as much as I did. Enjoy! [Music] Hello everyone, it's An Maria here, and we are racing for a special episode. I think the only ever first episode we recorded, we had three guests back then. We never had three guests sharing, and I am excited to see how ideas are going to flow from one person to the other. Ben, Pravan and Michael, welcome to Mapping Ties. I'm excited to have you here, and to kick us off. I just pass the talking stick to each and one of you. Please briefly introduce yourselves and your roles at LEGO. What do you do? I can go first, and my name is Michael. I'm an agile coach in the LEGO Group. I've been there for almost three years now, and I am located in our Copenhagen office, and I'm working within the Gatill technology, which is our IT area in the LEGO Group. Thanks Michael, I'll go next. Hi, I'm Ben. I'm also an agile coach at the LEGO Group. I'm based in London. I also sit in digital technology. Hi, I am Pravan. I'm happy to see you again, An Maria. It's good, good to be here. I'm also an agile coach in the LEGO Group, and I also work in digital technology in an area called consumer marketing technology. I'm based in Copenhagen. Fantastic. It's great to meet the tree of you. Well, I knew Pravan. We've been sharing and learning from one another for a while now. What community are we unpacking today? Give us a bit of the background. Where does it sit? How big? What should we imagine then? Then we unpack it and go into the details. Okay, yeah, I'll start then. The community we're going to talk about today is a community we started up two years ago, I think. It's for all the agile coaches within the LEGO Group, as a start. We can come back to that later. The focus in that community is all about team effectiveness, or you could say how to do continuous improvement out there with the product teams that we work with daily, and also all their leadership teams in digital technology. When did it start? Like how all this is, and also how many members are there at the moment? I think we started up two years ago. Maybe you can help me here. But I think it was around two years ago. I think we started up with all the agile coaches, and I think we are around 50 agile coaches across the different areas in the LEGO Group, and we are also now starting to see that other roles are coming into the community, software engineers, competencies leads, and so on. So it's growing, but yeah. So around, I don't know how many we are today, 60, 70, that number. Sounds about right. That's a great size. Did anything change in these two years? So it started specifically with the focus on agile coaches and team effectiveness. Now it's been two years, and you said different colleagues are starting to join. Is the practice changing, or the focus of the community changing, as a result of people coming together? Have you noticed any other, that can evolution there? Or is the original purpose and scope still the same? I think we actually, in the beginning, struggling very much about what is the purpose of this community. I think today we are starting to be more confident about what it is we want with the community. So that is something that it's of course helped us a lot, because now we can be very much more focused about the things we are doing in the community that we are focusing on. But the first year, year and a half, I was very much, let's just see, start this, and see where it goes. There was some pros and cons with that approach, and now we are transforming more or more into a more, you could say, structured, focused in the community. So I think definitely that is one of the main changes we have seen so far. I think, I mean, we started the community based on an initiative we as coaches were kind of involved in. So it has transformed from that narrow focus into something more broad, which we call team effectiveness, which is for us also something about continuous improvement, looking into data, and being informed about choices, what is working well, where do we need to maybe direct our attention to some stuff that is not working as well, where we can get better in product teams and how we collaborate and create digital products. And I think, I mean, there's change going on all the time. So I think also we as agile coaches in gathering together, might have not been, I would say we were probably more siloed two years ago than we are now. I see that transformation is happening. We are getting stronger as a group of specific competence, right? I think we can observe that. I just us who works to try and gather people together. Love. So can we go back to the beginning two years ago? How did you start? And what were the first steps you were doing? And maybe even before that, why have you felt the need to bring your colleagues together around this topics of team effectiveness and continuous improvement and data informed decisions? And Ben, I wonder if you would like to take this. There's a really good choice, because actually one of the things that we should share is I've only actually been part of the community for the last year or so. So I was kind of on the other side. I was a part of the community but not involved in sort of leading it with pre-bred and Michael. So I've only stepped into that role in the last year or so. So I've actually got both perspectives. I think Michael pre-bred and correct me from wrong. It was quite an organic thing to start with. So it was really just a coming together of maybe there's a need here, right? We've got lots of people who are doing similar work across 40, 50 people in different locations. But we're all doing the same thing in our local areas. So it felt like there was a need for us to sort of come together and think about actually, how do we make sure that we're sharing and learning? But it was quite an organic start to begin with, right? Preb and Michael, I guess what interested to know, what instigated it? Yeah. I remember that we started with boot camps, but that this was way before we started about talking about community, right? A certain amount or group of coaches came together, I think in Belund, where the Lego campers is to learn about what is this initiative, what is about how can we work with it? And then from there, it became a thing where Michael and I talked about how can we make this a regular thing about getting people to meet and talk about this stuff and she have their learnings. That's how I remember it. At least. Yeah, I think you and I had some discussions and then my manager, because Tina Moab was also involved because there was this new initiative driving. We were tabbing into that could drive this team of effectiveness and we really talked about that this new initiative was one of the things that's also important that we was starting to have a shared language across the actual coaches about this. So how do we do that? How do we start this initiatives about bringing us closer and then also having this and how do we then have a shared language around this because when we are approaching the teams and the leaders, it could be really awesome that we, you know, more or less had were approaching them with the same voice you could say. So that was I think that was one of the things that we were tabbing into. Let's try this community. I think it's also very important to maybe say maybe it also comes a little bit naturally to say community in the legal group because there is a culture around a lot of communities. We have communities for so many things. So it's yeah, so it's also just yeah, you can see that a lot of other people are doing it. So let's try it out. Yeah, when you have those examples around you, it's easy to everyone knows what community is so that you don't have to sell the concept of a community since it's already ingrained. Yeah, exactly, but at the same time also we also I think also experience that we also could say in a competition with a lot of other communities because people are members of a lot of different communities. So there's also some interesting perspective in that, you know, there's a little bit of a competition, you know, how can we make sure that ours is vibrant and is that people are still curious about our community and coming back to our community because they're also spending time in other communities. Yeah, that's also an interesting learning. I think there was also a fact that we were learning at different velocities, meaning that there was some group of cultures who started this initiative before other state, right? So there was a you could call maybe an unbalanced in the amount of knowledge and experiences that was being built. So that was one of the things. How can we make that more, spread that knowledge easier there, right? Because we were working as separate groups. So how can we get that connected across the groups? That was on our minds back then. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe that was driving the need a little bit, right? Yeah. I guess for everyone's context as well, like myself, Preb and Michael, we're all sitting different parts of the digital organization. So it's a big organization, maybe nearly 2,000 people, I think. So that's actually one of the challenges. Like we're all kind of doing the same thing, not always, and not always in the same way, but with this joint initiative of using data to lead continuous improvement, it was, we could just feel the need that it's like, hang on, let's make sure that we're not reinventing the wheel that we've got opportunities to share the knowledge and come together and work together on something. And this initiative that you keep referencing was this like a business, a strategic business decision to change something in the ways of working. Or is this, is this the community in itself? I think I'm trying to understand if where there's several paths that came together, like, okay, we're doing some bootcams. Let's meet afterwards. But also strategically, the business is trying to get us to have this shared language and similar ways of working, et cetera. And so we can also plug our community there. We also want to break down some silos. We also have different people adopting this new initiative or ways of working at different velocity. So us coming together regularly as the community will support that transition or that the change, which is, I understand, this data informed continuous improvement in our work. Is that correct? Correct, understanding of the context? Yeah, I would say so. I mean, it was an initiative that went about we need to have some data to be able to, as I told coaches, help the teams better, but also ensure that the teams have a data foundation to be able to have the right conversations to get awareness of how are things working for them and their team? How can they get better? I think Michael, you're probably closer to that decision back then, right? Because you're in the area where that decision was first being made. Yeah, yeah. I think the initiatives was definitely driven by my manager, Kostinemok, that saw this opportunity of outlets. How can we get this data driven insights in so we can get some more focused conversations with our teams, with our leadership teams about this continuous improvement. So it actually began with her seeing this, you could say, opportunity and started this whole thing. So she was the one introducing it and reached out to me. And of course, the agile coaches that I'm in a team with in infrastructure and so we started it and then you could say you wanted to spread it because of course, so that this is something that hopefully everybody can benefit from. So yeah, that's how we started. Love, I love that. I love when different threads are coming together in the same things. And so now the community idea bringing together your colleagues around these topics, team effectiveness, continuous improvement, data and form decisions, et cetera. How that makes sense. And it supported both by that, but that leader, we often struggle a lot when we build internal communities with this idea of sponsorship. Usually when they're grassroots, you have two, three people, they're all excited. They want to start something and eventually you need someone further up in the hierarchy to look at that body of work and say, oh my god, yes, this adds to our strategy. This supports the organization. This is bringing us forward. So you need a bit that stamp of approval, seal of approval. Like, yeah, keep going, keep learning, keep coming together. It can be very hard to sustain it over time if we don't have that. So it's very interesting to hear Michael how your manager, your team lead kind of found not necessarily well found some opportunity to improve the ways of working and the community fell into the bucket of solutions so naturally. It's like, okay, we can also come together in a community of practice to talk about that. So if everything goes well, sometimes I like to think of communities, well, you said it yourself and you're going to go back to the challenges. Oh, it's, you know, the road is treacherous. It's not easy. It's hard to build. Then there's a lot of people and that's okay because we're a gel coach. So if you know anything, that's pivot and changing and improving. So that's great. I think we, whenever we start this initiative, we always have like a bit of a, I want to say like a North Star or a hope attached to that. So I'm curious, if you were to paint a picture of a successful community, a successful initiative, what should this community or your colleagues, you guys coming together, what should that enable? What should it bring? What the success look like in an ideal world that does not exist. But hey, that's what we're striving to go. What would you say? Yeah. First of all, I think all, I will say that we have already gained some huge success because we have all, maybe it's not into the data driven part, but again, it is having into two years ago, as we have mentioned a couple of times, we were in our different domains. And I mean, two years ago, I didn't even know that Ben existed because Ben was located in London. So, so, you know, I didn't know the coaches in London. So, so now I'm sitting here two years later with Ben in this podcast. And this is awesome because this is actually brought us closer together. And I mean, not Ben and I only, but you know, the whole community of actual coaches. So, so I think that's, that's from yet truly success story. But but tapping into the dreams and area going forward, that is of course that we can together with the different teams use this data to have some, you could say, awesome decisions, helping them both within the team, but maybe hopefully also across teams too, because they have so much on their tables right there really have to focusing on a lot of stuff. And can we help them go to a better place you could say, but there's continuous improvement based on these focus conversations as we have seen it. We just want to grow it even more across more teams across domains. I think that that's something we really strive for. Yeah. I'm afraid to start talking because that's so much to say about this topic, right? I mean, go for it. I mean, there's such a big potential, right? I mean, I think now listening to your question and I'm already telling Michael, I'm thinking about, well, we have achieved a lot, not the original purpose about teams having more data to get more awareness and insight into how they are working so they can get better, right? But specifically the a byproduct of this has been that the coaches from the various areas of digital technology are a lot closer now than they've been before. That's work going on outside of this community that also strengthen this, but I think this has been the thing that has brought people together. And I think for me, successful community practice, that is where people connect and gather and share and have trust and can ask the questions they need to ask to get that level of information and share knowledge flowing right because that doesn't happen naturally in an organizational setups. So that needs to be something that connects people. And I think we have the opportunity and the potential to do that. And we're on our way to do that, I think. And I'll stop now because I if I don't stop myself, we'll be continuing. Yeah. Ben, what do you think? One of the other things we often talk about is diversity, right? So actually, what we really hope to see is that this community starts to become much more inclusive with other types of roles, other types of people doing their work in the leg group. So, you know, the initiative itself, yes, is being sort of spearheaded by us as our coaches, but what we really hope is that it becomes something that the team start to own themselves. Maybe they need us a little bit less. And actually, that's we want to scoop those people into this community and make sure that they are also getting the support and the help that they need because the work itself is not easy as well. I think that's also worth saying is like there's an element of support in each other here, which I think is really important to it's not easy to go about this sort of its behavior change at the heart of it, which is continuous improvement, right? And the difference here is that we're just trying to be informed by data. So helping data to make us help us make decisions. So yeah, we want to make sure that people, if they're embarking on this journey, particularly for the first time, that they know that there's people around them that they can speak to that they can get support from. Yeah. Anything that they might need. So yeah, I think diversity, starting to see the community grow beyond our role would be a really great success for us. And also just engagement, right? We want people to be coming, engaging, staying, talking with us, talking to each other, coming to the events that we set up, all of those types of things. I want to do a bit of a reflection here because I think it's interesting how Pruban said, well, we haven't yet reached the goal of having all of the teams working super data informed and being Uber mindful about, yeah, taking those in from the decision in their daily work to continuously improve one, but a product byproduct of that was that we connected. And it was interesting. How my brain immediate you went and said, well, is that connection a byproduct? Is that the first step that you need in order to get to that? Because we need to connect first before we can share and learn from each other. And then we go into that behavior change that then was mentioning. So I love, I love how communities usually you start with the very clear purpose. We want to get better ethics and we think that connections are kind of like the byproduct, other connections are the drive. or the kind of the fuel that pushes there. So it was interesting where my brain went when Preva was talking about that. It's like, actually, I don't think you can otherwise. I don't think there's any other way to go there without this breaking down silos and connection. And also, before we go into the, I love that you kind of bring in this vibrancy and how you would like members to behave and so on, we're gonna go there in a second. But you've brought this piece of diversity, Ben and Michael already mentioned as well at the beginning. We're starting now to get colleagues from different departments coming in, et cetera. I wanna see this for a second. And I think it's beautiful when the community is growing. Is there, do you foresee, or are you aware or thinking about a potential risk of diluting the purpose when different people are coming in that might potentially maybe not have on their day-to-day task this continuous improvement like the Ejacochus have. So by expanding this membership, are you contemplating a risk of sabotaging maybe the purpose of the community or like, what are the benefits you foresee and what are the risks that you are thinking about? And I'm asking this because every time I talk to community builders, to community leaders, they all say, we wanna be inclusive, we wanna cause everyone diversity, everyone in. And the bigger it is, the less people have in common, the harder it is then to have that vibrancy. So I'm curious how you think about that. That's a good question. Yeah. Personally, I've been so focused about this is about getting people to talk together. That has been our main drive, I think. And then we could tell a story about, we talk together because we have a shared interest in learning about how can we help people think and behave in terms of what continuous improvement is. Right? That has been the frame I still think it is. I also think it will be that in the near future. My experience is, it goes slow where many people there's a lot to do. So I haven't seen the risks becoming so clear. And I've probably, why I haven't thought about it. But yeah, I'm curious to hear what you are. What do you think? What do you observe? Yeah, I also think it's a good question. And I think that's really something that we should now be more aware of. But I also see that we have been so much focused circling around the agile coaches. We are just happy to see that. That we start to see other roles also being curious about this. So that it's definitely something we should be aware of. And what we also experience right now in the level group is that we very soon will have a new data set coming in also that we can start using. And that's a lot of curiosity around that data. As well from other roles. So we're talking about the leading engineers out there in the teams. We're talking about the competencies lead the team leaders in the team. So there is a risk. But I think also that we see there's a challenge opportunity because all this new data and we could say the data we already have. You can, I think there's a task for us agile coaches to help us all to, you know, how to use this data correctly because there is a risk that people look at data and use it in a wrong way. You could say that sometimes you look at data because you find what you're looking for instead of really be open and curious. And I think there's something there for us to broaden that perspective to other roles as well. But I think we should keep your input in mind because I hope and for see that very soon we will see more roles coming into this community because more and more data will also come. And so we will also be a little more complex going forward. That they're the same button. It's an interesting perspective. Yeah, it's a good thing because I hadn't actually considered that. But it's a good thing for us to consider. For me, it would sort of reinforce going back to the purpose. If we can get really, really clear that this is just about team effectiveness using data. And as Michael says, the scope of actually what we use to do that might change. The people who are doing it might also change. We hope it will grow. But I think if we can just go back to that core message and get that really, really strong. I think it will help. Yes. Make me think of I'm contemplating now. Community practice around, for example, skills like facilitation. It's very natural that they're coming in internally in the learning department or HR department since we're usually the ones that use facilitation skills most. So we might you might start a community and say this is for this is a community of facilitation to improve our facilitation skills for learning designers. But as the community evolves, you might have team leads that are probably not doing learning, but they are facilitating. They want to get better at that scaling day to day meetings. And you might actually have anyone in the organization wanting to improve that skill. And so suddenly the as the community progresses, it transitions from being a community for learning professionals, learning about facilitation into a community for anyone at X company who wants to get better at facilitation. So I think that as long as there's that anchor that Ben was mentioning, this is about data driven continuous improvement. Does this apply to your job as I work in L&D? So I'm not in agile, not in tech, et cetera. So if does data driven continuous improvement apply to my day to day work? Well, yes, it does. I have data and I definitely iterate on my work. So then those principles, maybe of what does that mean and the type of data and how do you do get data can be that skill can be probably transferred across the different domains. So it's beautiful to see how you you know you you have a very small circle at the beginning and you keep on redrawing that circle and expanding it and making it bigger, bigger, bigger, still knowing that at the core of its all, it's the skill, it's the skill of data driven continuous improvement. Interesting. I always ask these questions because I'm so curious to see how others are thinking about them. I think it allows them so often and I'm like, I wonder how you see this. So I think I'm going to direct this one to Ben because it's interesting when how you started as a member. I know you're part of the cool team and leading that. So if I were to join the community as a new member, what would that experience look like for me? What would I see? What would I do? How often would I meet? Like, what is that community experience? Can you paint a picture further this nurse? Yeah, and I think it's something we reflected on a little bit as well as we want we probably need need to put a bit more structure and a bit more process in place now. It's quite organic. I mean, we have a we have a teams we're using teams at the logo group. So we have a team's community there. We have a big channel and we try to make sure that anyone can come onto that channel and find information and they can obviously reach out and contact. And then we set up a schedule of events. So we always did we've had about three or four knowledge sharing sessions this year with different people from different domains who we've kind of worked with to help present how they're using it within their team. And that's really just so that we can share and we can hear about their challenges. We can hear about their learnings. We can hear about their experiences. And that's an open session. So anyone can come to that. We also run some open office hours. So that's really just a drop in session where anyone can come. If they've got a question, it might be something a challenge that they've just recently experienced or something like that. And we try and make that public so that people know when these are going to coming they can sign up for them. They can see them happening. And if maybe they didn't get get to catch them, they get to they get to see some some output from that session, whether it's a recording or some notes like that. So it's quite organic at the moment. I mean, it's it's you know, we make sure that people we try and make sure that people get onto that channel as a first part of call. And then from now we we really allow them to find what they need and sign up for the things that they need. But yeah, I think it's a good reflection for us to think about actually what does that and boarding experience look like? Are we missing people? Maybe there's there's people that haven't found the community yet that they need to. Well, you say it's pretty organic, but it there is quite quite some structure there. You're hosting events. You're coming together. You're learning. I love that. They have the teams channel. I want to maybe plug in here this idea that Michael brought in. We're competing with so many communities. And it's funny how when you're just starting to build internal communities in an organization, the challenges are very different because you need to almost like educate people and show them what that means to learn in community and to learn socially and with others. And then the magic happens and you suddenly have so many and then you are bumping into other challenges, which is exactly this one. There's so much so many of the spaces available to our colleagues. So how do we make sure that our community is vibrant that our community is interesting that we keep bringing them back. So let's talk a bit about that idea of when we build community as leads co leads. That's the most rewarding piece to see people showing up to see people buzzing to see people sharing to see people recommending it to us. What are some of the conditions that you think are necessary or that you're intentional about to nurture that spark and keep putting logs on the fire or how that's called keep the fire alive. I think actually one of the things that we need if we should continue this ripen thing is actually to bring other roles in because they will share a different perspective because of course that day today work looks different than the other. And you could say us agile coaches. So I think that is something that could be really interesting because we really want to bring us agile coaches closer to for example the competencies around in the product team. So could be bring some of those people into the community and start to have this more across roles instead of it has been very much in the beginning around you could say our own role. So that's one thing that I see could be interesting that we actually start to see this diversity and have these conversations across the world. That's a good point. I'm thinking, I mean, if we can create a space for people to show up, regardless of their competence, right? But a space where they can, they feel that there's trust to ask questions, you might not be able to ask anywhere else, right? Because nobody else knows, or you don't know who'll answer you. But this is where you go, right? Because you'll find people who have exactly the same challenges as you do yourself. And I mean, we are at Lego, play as a big item in our culture, right? And our awareness. And we can draw on that. And I think in general, we have a culture of curiosity. And we can use that to our advantage, I think. If we can get there and get people to share that, so it breaks down the notion of we are different competitors, but we're here together to learn and progress and get better. And we can make that the core thing, maybe not the purpose, but that's what lives in behavior. I think that could be really, really good. And also, I think I would take a lot away from helping that happen. Are you fidgeting with some Lego in your hands now? Sorry. Can you see it? Yeah. It's a duck. The little duck. I love it. Yes. That's one of the things, right? About being this one. I think it's the biggest part. It's the biggest. But as I said to Ben before, we started recording. I have put Lego up in my Lego sets in the windows, but the screen is so narrow, so it can't see my mom. I think we can see it now. Excellent. Peace. Sorry. This is the biggest perk that I imagine by working at Lego Group 2, we are just like, no matter what you can't turn around without having Lego like the bricks at like a length of an arm. It's a big perk. But I think also maybe bring it back to this. I think I'll actually also want to be perks. I haven't experienced this, but this freedom of just starting this. I mean, we have been, our managers just go out to this experiment and giving us this, you could say freedom of experiment and build and just drive this, as we see it's best, if you could say it like that. I think that's also something that I have been really amazed about that there's this freedom of just go out and do this and spend the time. You could say knead it and stuff like that. I think that's also been true or something. In this, you could say journey of building and creating this community. Yeah. It's certainly quite an empowered culture. I think at the Lego Group, which is again, maybe what, back to Michael's point about why I think we see so many communities coming up. Generally, it's like if you're passionate about something, you go do it, right? No one's going to stop you and it's just welcoming to try that out and see what happens. Yeah. Whenever I talk to people and they're like, we don't have communities, we'd like to start one one of the first reflections that we do together is this, how is your culture? What is the flavor of your culture at the moment? Because it's true that a community creates its own micro culture in a certain way, but you're part of the big bucket, like the big organizational culture. Sometimes, like in the case, like in your case, the company culture is so nurturing and it's boosting, it's supporting these types of initiatives. In other cases, it just rubs against or it imposes some sort of friction that does not make it impossible, but it definitely makes it harder. To be in this environment where creativity and playfulness and go start something and you'll see what happens and like, we don't need to have a big plan. And so what if it fails? That's okay, we learn. I think that's such a beautiful environment to build communities. So I'm not surprised to hear that you have several initiatives going on. I would like to maybe start to go back to some of the challenges. Some people know communities and they would like to start some. There's so much fear and so much unknown. And I love how you guys just started very small and organic and we're like, we're just going to stop with something and then we'll see where the journey takes us. What challenges have you encountered by doing that? What have you seen so far? What was hard? What have you done? How have you tackle them? And how have you now persistently over the two years? You're still here. You keep building here. You're still excited and you still have big plans for it. So let's take, let's do a bit of a trip down memory lane in the pitfalls on the challenges. As I remember our first conversations Michael, I mean, we had an idea. It's about connecting people to begin with that. So, community practice was a natural thing. But what does that look like in real life when you are part of trying to create something that has not been there before? And I think our challenges there was kind of the concept of what would it look like? What would we do? What would be interesting for people to spend time coming to a space? And what would they get? How can we create value for them? I think that was on our minds back then. And that was part of our discussions and then we just tried something right. And clearly we have been learning right since then. And it is expanding all the time. And we still have those conversations. And now Michael mentioned the data set, the new thing. And that's going to give us some new opportunities to frame it in a different way, I think. Yeah. Yeah. I think one thing also that was very difficult in the beginning. And it took me some time to, you know, to come to that conclusion was this whole thing about what is our role as this community crew builders? Are we the one who drives also the outcomes for all the initiatives around this data driven insights? Or are we something else? So this about maybe, you know, how to split this, the how and the watch in all of this. It has taken us some time. And I don't, I still believe that we are discussing it or talking about it or adapting it together with our stakeholders, our sponsors. So I think that that has been that has been a learning. And I'm still learning about this, you know, to differentiate what is our responsibility as a community crew builder group versus what we are trying to support out there. What are some of the insights so far with regards like where, where's your state of mind? Like where, how are you thinking about that now? And I'm asking, I'm doing it on that because that is true. Where you're building the community at work. There are stakeholders, there's managers. In your case, it was also linked to a strategic initiative. So how far have you gotten into that into that thinking? Where do you stand right now? Are you rather like, we're responsible now, responsible, someone in the middle, like, what does that look like now? I think maybe we're coming pretty close to the fact that let's focus on the community. Let's focus on the how if we can focus there and maybe back to your point, Anne Maria, it's actually quite interesting to hear you say that maybe actually if you just focus there, the other thing will also happen. So it's maybe about how you see the link, I think. But I think one of the things you struggled with is who's owning the bigger outcome? Who's owning that bigger piece? And it's sometimes not so easy to see when it's spread across lots and lots of different people. But I think right now, when I joined it was like, what's the goal here? How do we know that we're succeeding in this community? And I think it's helpful for us to know where we can play. That's something we can influence, right? Because I think we need to set ourselves a goal that's within reach and that actually we can contribute to. Yeah. Yeah. And I think also, as mentioned before, in the beginning, it was very much an initiative started by my manager, which is also one of our sponsors of this thing. We have more sponsors today. And this whole, you could say, transformation is also that in the beginning of next year, we will meet with them and align on, you know, what are the goals, the outcomes for these communities? Because there's also this alignment of expectations. And I think that is something that we, in the beginning, it was not that much. And now we are transforming more and more into, you know, what could be really awesome that we focus on and who will then drive other initiatives of focusing on that you could say the bigger outcomes. And I think that's also something that is maturing. And that's also really interesting. And maybe one of the other challenges we've talked about is kind of not sleepwalking into this. Right. So I think we all kind of just thought, maybe this is a good idea, right. We can kind of just put this on top of what we're doing day to day. And it's like actually the amount of work or the amount. It's maybe not so much work, but it's thought and it's, you know, structure and it's coming up a process and engaging and communicating. Like there's a lot of work to do here, I think. So that's the other challenge that I think we reflected on is, yeah, it's, let's not underestimate what's involved in actually supporting and creating a community. Yeah. Sorry, Peb, and I cut you off. No, no, no worries. You're right. I mean, that has always been a challenge, right? About time it takes a lot more. And I think that is a learning curve. Everybody who has not been engaged in what a community of practices they quickly learn, right? I mean, I learned that in in a course, right? I was super surprised. But that being said, I also think we, I mean, coming back to what you said, Michael, there's something think about that we are biased as agile coaches because our concept of our role is something about so many things, right? But I mean, what I've seen in our discussions is that we are also kind of, I wouldn't say stock that's a hard hard word, right? But we are definitely biased by we are agile coaches. And I think building a community is something different. It's not we can use some of the stuff we have from agile coaching, but it we shouldn't. We should we are a group that should connect people so they can have conversations about their learning and what they need to do. And they own that process of being change makers in that context, I think. But yeah, that is still a learning and discussion. How can we see that? When are we agile coaches and when are we community builders? And it's sometimes it fuses and their benefits to that, but also sometimes it's not helping. And we're still learning in that, I think, that is a challenge. And maybe as we see as we are hoping and as we see now and also hope that more and more other roles will join this community, maybe it could also be interesting that experiment to invite some of those roles into this community crew because then we also get their perspectives. So we are hopefully challenging ourselves and our, you could say as you mentioned, biased from because we see the world maybe through one pair of lenses and they will truly see the world differently, right? I think that could be interesting also because yeah, that's an interesting experiment. We could play with next year. Speaking of the community crew, I'm curious how the three of you work together. So you're kind of at the steering wheel. Some people sometimes think that communities can just magically exist and all you have to do is put people in the room and somehow they will do it. You always need some form of leadership. In this case, it's an informal leadership. You're not recognized. There's no role. You're not getting paid to do this, etc. So how do you work together? Like how often do you meet? But I think I'm maybe even more interested in what are the type of conversations you're having? Like what's top of mind? What are some of the decisions that land on your table? And how should we picture those? The meetings just with the community crew. We help me here. I think we have a real concession. We meet. Is it every third week or something like that? I can't remember. But that's biweekly. I think we meet biweekly. We have a backlog of things that we are either working on and talking about this could be really awesome. We see those needs. So there's a backlog we look into. So I think we have this structured way. And then when we have an event coming up, we meet also more frequently to get ready for that event. We also of course meet with those people we have invited in because we want other people to come and share. So biweekly and then also when events more frequently. That's our thing. And of course we always meet online because two of us in Copenhagen and the Benis in London. So that's the hybrid setup in this collaboration. Yeah. I actually think we've managed to work rather well collaboratively online together but also a part. I think that works well. Of course we can get better. But I mean we also have other engagements where Michael and I have started something. So we speak in maybe not the structure manner but we have conversations regularly outside of the community. But then that also impacts what we do together on the crew. And this Ben and I have done something also. So I think I at least think I speak to you maybe up to three times a week, right? And different ways and that has an impact for our collaboration I think because we know what each other are doing all the time in some sense. Yeah. I'm curious to hear what you think then. Yeah. I think it's working well. Right. I think we know each other well. And as as probably mentioned, I think we've all worked with each other in other ways as well. So like having that trusting relationship wasn't something that we had to work too hard at which is always a nice thing. Right. And I think the other thing we tried to do is look for things that we can share. Right. So ideation or like and sometimes that happens asynchronously or we don't always need to meet to do that. But it's like if someone has a question, we try and just sort of reach and find people that can help and you'd tag each other so that you know, I think one of the things that I'm always really conscious is let's try and be as responsive as possible. Right. So it is. But the last thing I wanted someone to ask a question and for it to hang there because no one has got the time. Right. So trying to be as responsive as possible, even if that's just saying, I don't know this, but I think I know someone who can help. I'm going to go and find out for you. Just just trying to be as active as possible on the community. I think is really important. Yeah. And actually interestingly, I was just thinking, Ben, we have worked very closely on this for the last year. And I think I have a feeling I know you pretty well. And then we had an event in our headquarters a month ago. And that was actually the first time we met in person. It was. Yeah. That was actually also pretty funny. But then, yeah, it's quite surreal when you're like, Oh, we've never seen each other. It almost feels not real that you've never met in real life. Right. Yeah. Maybe when, as we're approaching the end of the conversation, I want to just quickly fish and latch on to something that Ben said earlier. And it was about this piece of behavior change, right? So you're, we're trying to support people. We're bringing people together so that they can support each other to learn how to think about data, how to take data and form decisions and bring it into their day to day and their continuous improvement efforts. I wonder why are communities best, well, not best, probably not best position, but why are communities positioned to do that? Like, how is coming together and learning from one another? How is that supporting that behavior change or transformation? And those processes are hard. They need time. They grapple with a lot of friction. So I wonder what is the benefit of learning in community or tackling this challenge collectively compared to attacking it in a different way, like with different strategies, trainings, courses, control boot games that people, whatever. A big big part for that for me is the, the notion of signing up to something, right? So like, we don't push this community. It's there. And if people want to come, then it's there for them. And if they want to come, then they're also motivated to do something, right? I think so that's, that's a big philosophy that I think is why communities work in this space. But yeah, there's, there's probably other reasons too. Prevent Michael, you have thoughts? I don't know if I'm answering your question, but I was just thinking of we had a knowledge sharing session a couple of weeks ago where two agile coaches from Ed Domain was coming in and sharing how they are working with this data driven insights and the, and behind different, you could say, context, because I'm in another context, of course, but they have just, we are working with the same thing. We want to achieve the same things, but their approach was just completely different than you know, how my team have approached it. And it was very much about how to engage with readers around this data. And it was really an inspiring and eye-opening event for me. And also, I know I talked with some of the colleagues in my team about it, because there was a lot of food for thoughts in the way they have done it. I would like, it's not a copy, but it was really like, wow, this is very inspiring to hear that. And I think that was, that's for me, that was truly one of the, this is actually why we are doing this. Because we are bringing people together. We want to do the same, but of course, we are operating differently. We are thinking differently, but just hearing and seeing what they are doing, it changed my way of thinking, oh, maybe they are different way of doing this, actually, oh, okay, if we did this approach or something like that. And for me, that was truly one of the, this is actually why we are doing this, this is actually pretty awesome. Because I went back and had some really awesome discussions with some of, you could say, my team members, based on that knowledge sharing session. So yeah, that was truly inspiring for me about why we have this community. There is something about, I'll call it, to get permission. And what I mean by that is that our company is really large, so many different contexts. But we as humans kind of, you know, we live in a bubble, we live in the context of our rituals and who we surround ourselves with, the challenges we are and the areas we work. And it's difficult to see what goes on outside that bubble. So we become conditioned in a way, right? Not by choice. It's just the way it is. But I think what we are offering is a space where someone else can say, this is my bubble. And I choose to do like this because I've understood and perceived the challenges like this. And I have this freedom and experimentation or creative mindset to do this kind of thing. So somewhere in another bubble, a person says, never thought about it. You said that, right? Michael, but it, I mean, it is about expanding how we can play in, to solve something I think. And it is all about humans and having a playing field to do different things. And I think if we can get to the place where we can, we as a crew can inspire people to talk about what they do and what they don't do and how they fail in that and learn from that. I think that success we cannot measure it, but I hope somewhere else someone from that other bubble will then try something based on what that sort and it sounds like at least you Michael did that right. That's what I hope we can establish and especially if we can get other competencies into this so they can see. We are privileged as other coaches that we see different contexts because we move around. Product managers, they don't get that chance, especially developers don't get that chance right. So if we can use this community for them to see something else that would be fantastic. I love that. I'm left with so many threads. I want to pull. We're at time. I appreciate you so much. Thank you for sharing and for being also so candid and honest and open about your experience. I adore that because it is hard. It's quite hard. But to hear you going through the challenges and also the rewards that you're getting in the interaction with each other with others, the learning. I think that's quite beautiful. Now if there's anyone here that thinks, oh my god, I really want to grab a coffee with these people. I want to ask the more questions. How can they find you? How can they stay in touch with you or learn more about you and your work? I guess they can find us on LinkedIn. I think that's maybe the best place to go find us. So yeah, please be more than welcome to reach out and let's have a coffee online coffee or something like that. Yeah, absolutely. All right. We're going to link your LinkedIn as well in the show. So that people can find you. Yeah, yeah, pretty. And thank you very much. It was an absolute pleasure. Then, Kevin and Michael and we'll see you around. Take care. Thank you for having us. Bye bye. Thank you. Bye. [Music]