Elevate stands ready
As I write this, it feels like everything has changed in the world around us. Capabilities that we took for granted even just three weeks ago are no longer possible, and we do not know when we will be able to return to what we knew before. It is suddenly irresponsible to get on a plane, convene a room full of people to learn together, or even to show up together as a team in the same space.
And yet, we do want to maintain momentum in improving our business outcomes and our transformation activities. COVID-19 will stress our companies significantly, and coming out of the current crisis will require us to be at our best, ready to adapt to the new world and compensate for the extreme cost and impact that is already emerging because of the healthy decisions we are making right now.
Right now each of our clients is working through the required urgent response to the crisis. We also see that they are already looking forward to settling in to a new way of working afterward, and some are struggling to fully identify what that new working arrangement will look like afterwards. None of them believe agile or devops will be less important, though. In fact, the leaders I’ve spoken to uniformly see agility as being even more important for a workforce that is working increasingly dispersed. Why? Because with agility comes transparency, difficult prioritization discussions, and regular demonstration of completed items–things all leaders need even more acutely when they can’t stop by a desk to ask.
At Elevate, we acted on the early indicators when our first clients suspended travel, and thus we have focused the last weeks on preparing to serve our customers in the most effective way without leaving our homes. A big part of our response is to expand our leadership and corporate steering approaches to an environment that does not allow for travel. Another important focus for us is helping our customers quickly gain the skills required to run remote meetings that don’t suck.
Another, crucial, consideration for our SAFe transformation customers is preparing to deliver the training that begins the journey of change in a fully dispersed manner. We very much appreciate that Scaled Agile, Inc is reacting quickly to support its customers and partners in moving forward by granting permission and providing support for delivering their courseware to dispersed audiences. We are additionally bringing our whole team up to speed on the best techniques to ensure our training remains high-value to leverage the unique capabilities of a distributed environment. We learned these techniques over a decade of working with global and distributed companies.
Among these, there are three key aspects that we hope every company delivering training pays attention to in coming months:
- Recognizing the value of trust-building in the face-to-face experience, and creating space for that to emerge in the dispersed training space
- Applying truly effective remote facilitation techniques, and investing in their trainers’ growth and skills in creating deeply engaging spaces
- Preventing the “one-way” challenges of remote training, and ensuring that the value generated by conversation and collaboration is still received
Engage with us
The Elevate team of SPCTs, SAFe Fellows, and master facilitators stands ready to help your organization move forward:
- We are actively scheduling instructor-led, remote training with our SPCTs.
- We are available to help your internal training teams in rapidly developing the skills needed to carry your transformation forward.
- We can support your team rapidly learning the remote facilitation techniques needed to ensure transparency, collaboration, and quality are still the emphasis.
- We can support your leadership teams in learning the new alignment tools needed to lead a dispersed organization.
Get in touch at results@elevate.to and we can help you keep your transformation momentum in these difficult moments.
