Next steps on the journey...

If y'all have been paying attention, I often refer to our transformations, or any change really, as a journey. I like that word because it involves the idea of something that takes time and is full of possibilities. Something that could be exciting and full of adventure. It's a little bit mysterious because of the distance and time involved. Anyone who has traveled much at all knows that, even with the most perfectly charted course, the unexpected can, and often does, happen. You can let it derail you, or you can embrace the challenge and take what you can
from the experience. The word "journey" to me says there are things to learn and see and experience along the way, and those things along the way can be just as exciting and valuable as reaching the destination!

On any journey, there will be forks in the road, and we have to decide which direction we're going to go. Today, I'm sharing with you all that I've decided on a path that takes me away from Wells Fargo.

I'm so proud...

In the five years I've been working here, I've had the opportunity to meet and work with, literally, some of the best people I've ever met in a long and interesting career.  There is so much knowledge, experience, energy and passion here, and I can honestly say - I've learned a lot in the time I've shared with you all.  I've been able to work with many different people and teams, across multiple lines of business, and at all spans of leadership.  I've been able to help teams get better at what they do so they can make an even bigger difference in the lives of our customers.  I've gotten to interact with, talk to, and learn from people all around the world, and you know what?  I'm a better coach, mentor, partner, facilitator, contributor and person than when I started here, because of the time spent with each of you. 

 I'm proud of the teams who have leaned into the idea that together, they can achieve more than they ever could by tossing work over the walls at each other.  You have taken the shared values and principles to heart, and worked hard to live them every day as they serve our customers.  You've discovered that "Scrum" and "Kanban" and "SAFe" and "LeSS" aren't the reason for changing.  You've proven the benefit of becoming an empowered, self-organizing, continuously improving team - pulling everyone together to achieve shared objectives and frequently releasing work that makes things better for your customers.  You have been relentless about removing silos and handoffs by learning new skills and adding the right talent and experience to your team.  You've been building psychological safety among each other, realizing that some really incredible things can come from the most unexpected of places.  You've proven to me, over and over, that being agile and customer focused matters far more than following any process or framework!

I'm proud of the leaders who have embraced the concept of servant leadership.  You've understood that you create the most value for customers and our business when you grow your people to be just as good at what you do as you are (and maybe even better!)  You've cut back on giving "approval" and instead empowered your team members to make those decisions... helping them to pressure test those decisions along the way.  You've taught them how to remove their own impediments and solve their own problems, so they aren't reliant on you.  You build confidence in them.  You trust in them.  You help them to feel safe enough to experiment, fail and learn.  You've helped them unlock the full potential within themselves, and helped them embrace their cross functional team.  You've helped them to be agile minded and customer focused while they work with their cross-functional teams.

I'm proud to know, and learn from, this great group of coaches and scrum masters and partners.  You've supported me, challenged me, encouraged me (and sometimes even argued with me!)  You've helped me learn, not only from my teams and experiments, but by sharing experiences from yours as well.  You've taught me new tools to add to my toolkit, and you've absolutely brought out the best in me by raising the bar every single day.  I couldn't have asked for a better, more wonderful community to work and share and learn with.  Thank you.

I'm signing off, the blog lives on!

For those of you who have been along on the ride for a while, thank you for following along.  I hope it's been (mostly) helpful and (sometimes) entertaining.  I will be handing the keys to the internal Wells Fargo blog over to my friend and brother coach - Coach Sri Singareddy.  I know that he will keep the spirit of this blog alive, and make it even more helpful and entertaining!  If you have topics you'd like to see explored, or if you'd like to volunteer to be a guest author, drop Sri a line and let him know!

If you'd like to follow me specifically, I will continue to post my lessons and observations as I continue my journey here at coachdanblog.com.   You are all welcome to join me here!

Since I won't be around to crash your meetings, or to do quick check-ins any more, I thought I'd leave you with a few "Coach Dan questions and sayings" you can refer to if you ever get stuck...

• What's stopping you?
• It depends.
  
  
  
• What does your customer want?
• What did you do differently after your last retrospective?
• Is this helping us get to our shared objective, or is it a distraction?
• Help me understand how this fits into our shared values and principles?
• How will this help us open more checking accounts (or insert your own shared objective here)?
• Jira (or any other tool) is here to help us collaborate so we can be more effective, efficient and engaged, not to make reports easier to compile.
• Do we need to answer this question right now, or can we keep taking steps forward and figure it out later?
• Share with me a "moment of awesomeness" from this week!
• What did we learn from this?
• Process and tools don't solve problems, people do.
• Sometimes the quietest people have a perspective that can blow our minds!
• You can be agile without doing Agile.
• Is it the team, or what's going on around the team that's causing the behaviors?
• We all win together.

Well, that about covers it.  I truly wish you all the best as you continue your journey to become more effective, efficient and engaged while you deliver value to your customer. I'm really excited to hear about your next steps forward.

We all win together.