Unwrapping the Agile Framework for Personal and Professional Growth with Felipe Engineer

Ever felt like you're running on a hamster wheel, fast-tracked to burnout? Felipe Engineer, a celebrated author and speaker, joins me, John Gallagher, on a remarkable exploration of transforming from an overworked engineer to a balanced leader. Our dialogue on the Uncommon Leader Podcast promises to arm you with Felipe's practical tools and wisdom that can pivot your life towards a more agile and fulfilling direction. We'll unravel the layers of self-worth and self-actualization, proving that you're more than your job title or family role. Listen in for an inspirational journey that might just redefine what leadership means to you.

Transitioning to the realm of Agile and Scrum isn't just a leap of faith; it's a leap towards efficiency and satisfaction. The conversation takes us back to the historic Snowbird meeting, where the Agile manifesto was born, and demonstrates how its principles have since flowed into various industries, including my own world of construction management. Discover how the Scrum framework, with its visual aids and iterative cycles, is not simply a project management tool, but a powerful conduit for teamwork and productivity. These insights are served with personal stories and professional triumphs, emphasizing the transformative potential of Scrum across the board.

Lastly, we confront the hesitance that often shadows the start of any significant change. Felipe and I will discuss the cascading impact of taking the leap with Scrum, and how the smallest of steps can set off a wave of positive transformation. You'll hear an invigorating tale of a Hungarian construction company crossing oceans to grasp the nuances of Lean Construction, showcasing the limitless pursuit of innovation in project management. So tune in, absorb, and perhaps find the spark to ignite your own journey of change with the principles of Agile and Scrum.

Connect with Felipe and get a FREE chapter from his book, Construction Scrum at his website

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

All change, from what I can see, starts with the gray matter between your ears first. You change your mindset. You change your thinking about something. Everything else unlocks, changes or shuts down. I mean, because you have. The opposite is exactly true. So a changemaker is somebody that changes themselves, takes a hero's journey and starts to create positive changes. Visible, measurable changes in their sphere of influence. Visible, measurable changes in their sphere of influence.

Speaker 2: 0:29

Hey, uncommon Leaders, welcome back. This is the Uncommon Leader Podcast and I'm your host, john Gallagher. In today's episode, I've got the pleasure of chatting with the bestselling author and keynote speaker, felipe Engineer. Our conversation takes us into the dynamic realms of Agile and Scrum and their profound implications for leadership and productivity. Felipe gives us a personal look at his evolution from being an overworked engineer to a balanced and forward-thinking leader, and we emphasize the significance of recognizing our worth beyond professional and family labels and embarking on the path to self-actualization. Felipe doesn't just share his wisdom. He also opens up about practical tools and resources that can kickstart your journey in Agile and Scrum. Prepare for a dose of inspiration, as Felipe nudges you toward becoming a change maker, starting with the person in the mirror. Let's get started. Felipe Engineer, welcome to the Uncommon Leader podcast. It's great to have you on the show. How are you today, my friend?

Speaker 1: 1:27

John, I'm doing really well. Thank you for having me on the show. It is a pleasure to be here with you.

Speaker 2: 1:32

I can't wait. I I'm so happy that I had a chance to chat with you on your podcast and I know that, uh, by returning this favor here, the listeners of the uncommon leader podcast can have good time. I'm so glad that Doug had connected us and that we've had a chance to chat a little bit more. So let's jump right into this. The way I always get first-time guests started, and that's to tell me a story from your childhood that still impacts who you are today as a person or as a leader.

Speaker 1: 1:58

Yeah, and this story goes back top of mind right away. It's got to be a story about my dad. My dad was incredible human being, an amazing leader. By all accounts. He's a hall of fame, illinois state soccer association hall of famer as well, not for playing, but for being president of a non-profit soccer league that grew from a couple hundred people to tens of thousands of people under his leadership, and that was uh, he served as president for over 13 years and it easily could have been longer.

Speaker 1: 2:29

But as a kid I remember my dad dragging me to all these meetings I mean literally against my will, against my will, like a child. A child wants nothing to do with a meeting, right, it wants nothing and a decent kid and we were I mean, we were like every other kid. We want to play and have fun and be outside. But every now and then he'd bring me to these meetings and I'd get to see my dad's leadership style and I got to see my dad in like really calm situations, really intense situations. And I remember one time I was probably 13 or 14 at the time and we were at a soccer tournament and people apparently John get very into sports and sometimes will even do betting on sports. I mean, are you aware?

Speaker 2: 3:14

I'm a little bit aware of that, absolutely.

Speaker 1: 3:16

Yeah, and so some people had some money on a game and it wasn't going the way they liked and they were mad and they wanted to take it out on somebody because they were going to lose a sizable sum of money. And so they wanted to take it out on my dad, and my dad I remember him being just so calm and I think we had beer thrown on us and my dad did not get into a fight and he just he had so much grace, the way that he spoke with the person completely disarmed them immediately and in that moment I thought, man, there's a lot of stuff about my dad, I don't know Like. I realized like, and we had a really good talk on the way home after the day was over, we didn't leave. I mean, we my dad's like, mission first, you know, got to make sure everything runs well. There's, you know, probably in that game, easily 3,000 people on this. It was a series of tournaments that day, so there was a ton of people in and out.

Speaker 1: 4:13

And our ride home, john, my dad unpacked all those things about what led up to that event how to put yourself in someone else's perspective, be empathetic in the moment, to put yourself in someone else's perspective, be empathetic in the moment and then he also shared like some tips of like how to be this way, at the snap of a finger, like you could just turn it on and turn it off, and, and I thought we need I said, dad, we need to talk more often. How come we've never talked like this before? He's like we never had beer thrown on us before. That's true.

Speaker 1: 4:43

That trigger of, you know, almost being in a fight, like it was close, like we could have definitely gotten into a fight, and my instinct at 14 was like protect my dad. Sure, that instinct and my dad like held me back and he's like there's gonna be no fight. I mean, he was just so confident and I think what it really taught me was leader's mindset, like the mindset you bring into the situations If you set a couple of rules. And this is what my dad really taught me. He's like set a couple of rules for yourself and get really like intimate with those rules so that when situations arise, you just let those rules play and then you'll show up the way you want to show up, the leader that you want to be the example you want to be, felipe.

Speaker 2: 5:29

I love that too. And again, certainly I love the stories when our family members have been influences on our life and what that means, and when I really listen in to what you're saying and some stories come back to my childhood as well with regards to my dad, and he was an excitable person. He was leading in volunteer groups and things like that as well, and you and I could chat about that for a long time and turn it out like this. But in listening to what your dad said, first of all, from a leadership standpoint especially, it's making that decision before you get into that situation that you're not going to learn as you go into making that decision beforehand. And then the second thing I heard and it's actually a book I read, I think, two years ago, the Power of One More was the word equanimity, which I never thought was a real word until I read that book and had to look it up in the dictionary. But having calm in the midst of chaos is such a critical attribute for a leader that can be successful, and that calmness is not necessarily a lack of passion for what's going on, but it's in the ability to be able to handle a stressful situation and get others through that situation as well and, to your point, diffuse or take off the excitement of the other party inside of that conversation Really cool. No, I appreciate you sharing that and I know I guarantee, in your role today, that becomes very important.

Speaker 2: 6:47

So, felipe, you're an author, you are a podcast host and you are a lot of other things. The topic we're here to talk about today is something that is near and dear to your heart, that you're passionate about it, that you have a strength in it and they've delivered for a while, and that's the problem solving methodology of Agile or Scrum. And so, in fact, as I listened to your story, I thought about some of the things your dad probably had to do, almost like Agile and Scrum, to be organized for an event like that, to have thousands of people and to work his way through that. But tell me, how did you get into Agile and Scrum methodology? How did you become passionate about and scrum methodology? What? How did you? How'd you become passionate about that? What was it?

Speaker 1: 7:27

Yeah, it was a complete, you know, workaholic type of existence is what I had. I was. I was one of those seven day a week working type of folks and it wasn't for ambition of trying to, like you know, get promoted. It was actually never for that it was. I'd looking back on it I was like, wow, I probably, I probably could have gotten promoted several times if I would have put some energy that way. You know just now, as it's striking me, that that was a mistake, but it was really just to keep my head above water. I wasn't thriving.

Speaker 1: 8:00

I was working as a in construction project management side, right out of school, trained as an electrical engineer, and I felt like a fish out of water in the beginning. And the people I was working with had some really good mentors in the early days and they were of the mantra you know, just work harder, just work harder and everything will be fine, and that was the pervading mindset. So I took that work harder to an extreme and, as a young person, first project you get the short straw and you automatically are working every Saturday. So that was already happening. And then by the time I was done with the internship and then working full time I had gotten to the point where, well, if I work Saturday, what if I work a little bit on Sunday? Maybe I could catch up. But you get into this wave of never catching up.

Speaker 1: 8:47

And then, many years later I actually had Bell's palsy in my mid-20s. And Bell's palsy is a type of virus that attacks. In my case it attacked the seventh nerve of my face and it paralyzed my face. It it can only really happen when you know whatever virus transmission plus, you have to be under uh, high stress. That stress has to be at a certain level so it can even get you. So for, for all of you listening, you know, just relax, you're going to be fine, just don't be stressed. And you have no chance. And so doctor said it looks, it shows up like a stroke, john, so your face gets paralyzed. My right eye couldn't even blink. I mean, that's how paralyzed my face was. And the doc's like you just take two weeks off from work and you'll fully recover. 98% of all people, their face fully recovers. I talked to my dad and my dad's like yeah, it happened to me twice as a kid and he's like I recovered both times.

Speaker 1: 9:43

He's like yeah, it happened to me twice as a kid and he's like I remember both times. He's like both times it happened to him in his 20s. He's like a lot of people in our family have actually had it and I never knew. They never talked about it Not one time, Because they don't talk about their 20s for some reason. But I went back to work two days later, John. So two days later my phone's blowing up. We're running this job downtown Chicago, high profile job, but right on Michigan Avenue, six North Michigan Avenue, beautiful building, historic restoration of the exterior facade, and I'm running.

Speaker 1: 10:16

I'm very intimate in running a lot of the work that's happening. It was a very small team and so I was like very key player and my boss is like are you going to come back? And I said, well, I've got doctor's note for two weeks off. He's like I know, he's like I know, but if you want to come back, you can come back. So he was very gentle, very gentle pressure and I went back and when I went back I went right back to working 16 hours a day.

Speaker 1: 10:43

So day three, I had to wear an eye because my eye wouldn't close and it's not safe to have your eye open all day and night, and so I'm wearing an eye patch, I look like a pirate. And I look back at that, John, and I'm like, probably on the path to killing myself with so much work, Like a heart attack at work not uncommon. Lots of people on you had had heart attacks at work. Definitely when you're working like that, you're not exercising every day, You're not eating right, and it was getting really bad. So we fast forward from that moment. Because I'm a slow learner, John, I didn't learn my lesson at that time.

Speaker 1: 11:18

I'm at this work conference and I'm drinking by this point in the morning. It's a two-day conference where you have to physically be at this conference. You can't escape there's no escaping unless you're managing some critical work. So we're all at this work conference and the speaker comes up and he used to work in manufacturing and now he's a director of construction and he's presenting on these ideas of lean. You know stuff that you and Doug know and played with.

Speaker 1: 11:44

I'm watching him and I'm drinking my coffee, like my 13th cup of coffee, and I noticed something. I was like this guy is like wide awake, this guy's not tired, he's not stressed. And then he has his team. His team comes up and they're talking about some of the things that they're doing and every single person on that team was strikingly happy. And I thought I looked around the room and I was like I don't even there's no other person in this. You know audience of like 500 people that looks like that. I was like I want that, I want that. So I I bum rushed him after his talk and I said how can I get like this, you know, with my now my 15th cup of coffee in my hand, cause I could barely stay awake. You know, with my now my 15th cup of coffee in my hand cause.

Speaker 1: 12:27

I could barely stay awake, you know, having worked so many hours.

Speaker 1: 12:29

I put in a full day by the time we got to Wednesday full week's work and he said the way to get into this is like we actually have a team and we read. We read a book, we're reading a book. I was like reading a book, john. I hadn't read a book since I graduated from college. It had been like 10 years. So I read a book. It's called lean thinking how to banish waste in your corporation or your organization by womack and jones. And then that leads to me joining the committee and it leads to me reading books regularly amazon right there.

Speaker 1: 12:58

No, you got it right there.

Speaker 1: 12:59

Yeah, yeah and I'm right back to me jeff sutherland's book Scrum the other, doing twice the work and half the time I consume that book. And now this is after two or three years of practicing lean in construction and I read Jeff's book, start reading it on a Wednesday, finish it by Friday because I have a commute to LA and I start using it that weekend. I test it with my son, who at the time was like three or four years old, and it worked. It worked on this kid and I thought, oh, it's working on this belligerent kid. My kid is very independent and I was like if it can work with this kid, it can work with anybody. So I went, still working. On Sunday, john, I went to a home improvement store, got a whiteboard, hung it in my office on Sunday, set my Kanban scrum board up and that's all I did.

Speaker 1: 13:51

And then I went home and I told my wife, I'm going to try this out. And within a month not even a month, less than four weeks I doubled my productivity. And then I thought okay, this is so good. I talked to my team and they wanted nothing to do with it.

Speaker 1: 14:09

They wanted nothing to do with it and I said I don't care, I doubled my productivity. You don't want to do it? That doesn't matter, I'm going to still do it anyway. So I just kept doing it through the whole project. That job finished a month ahead of schedule. We had zero claims. And finished a month ahead of schedule. We had zero claims. And that was uh, according to the owner's rep, unheard of. They've never. They've never had a project and with no claims ever.

Speaker 1: 14:32

And they had been the, the cm owner's rep on that campus for over 12 years. And this was the first time. And one of the owners asked me he's like. He said we could tell like it felt different on your job as compared to the other ones on the campus, like what was the difference? And I was like I think it probably looks like attitude, but in reality I'm using this framework called scrum and I just kept using it.

Speaker 1: 14:55

I kept trying it in different places and at that time I was a project manager, so I was using it as a project manager. The funny thing, john, is that it got me so effective. I could be in the field half the day. Half the day I could just be on site in the field, and so I was using that time to learn more how things come together, learning from the trades experience. People running work continue to develop my leadership skills, to develop my leadership skills, and then I've been using Scrum everywhere. And then, some years later, I published my own book about Scrum, called Construction Scrum, which is over my right shoulder. There you go, next to Elmo.

Speaker 2: 15:32

Next to Elmo. Next to Elmo Felipe phenomenal way. First you used it to help solve a personal problem okay in terms of understanding. Then you helped your four-year-old utilizing a tool like Agile Scrum You've consumed it. The story about not reading a book I think you and I have a lot in common from that standpoint, in that I got out of college and said I'm never reading a book again. I was a mechanical engineer, not electrical engineer. And then it was about six or seven years later when I had a mentor give me a leadership book for the first time and I was hooked. What book was that? And the concept of Scrum, the concept of your board that you set up there. For those listeners who are in who may not know what Agile or Scrum is, maybe at a very high level. I say this high level, but put it on some simple words for us what is Agile and Scrum and how does it relate to lean and lean manufacturing?

Speaker 1: 16:27

Yeah, let me start with Scrum and Agile together. Scrum is older. It was invented in the mid-90s, and then Agile came later, 2001,. A group of people got together in Snowbird, utah, at a resort, and they were joined together by one common thing are 12. I think it's 12 or 14. I don't have them all memorized yet. I know a couple of them from memory, but it's something that even I study and reread often, john. So Agile comes later, and one of the people at this manifesto that's working on this problem of how software is developed is Jeff Sutherland, who later becomes one of my mentors.

Speaker 1: 17:23

At the time and you can read about Agile more, but for people it's a mindset. So these people came together to solve a problem and ultimately they came up with a series of principles and a series of four values and if you put them into practice and you can put them into practice regardless of contract type, you can even put them into practice in your family to some degree. You just have to substitute the word software for product, and product can be a service or a thing, and you can look at even how we relate to each other and our family is, you know, in service of others. So you definitely, with a little bit of synonyming that's a made up word you can have agile in all that you do. So the mindset is that you can adapt and make changes based on what reality is. I mean, that's in the essence. In the essence, agile with a capital A is just like agile with a small a, which you know you should be thinking. Adaptability, you should be the small a which you know you should be thinking. Adaptability, you should be thinking, experiencing, using all your senses. And then the values, like they have, one, excuse me. One of the values is that we value. Um, I'm going to have to. I'm gonna have to pull up the exact value, cause I don't want to, I don't want to butcher it. For sake of Sure, I'm going to jump it up real quick on the internet here, because I have that capability. So one of the first ones is this first value is super interesting, john. I think it ties in nicely with what we've been talking about. And the first value is that individuals and interactions over processes and tools and the reason if you, if you think, if you studied toyota I know you have and I know probably some of your audience has as well you know, in toyota they have this model called the four p's, and it's philosophy first, then people and if you, if you peel that back, and then there's like some other piece. I'm not going to mention the next two, but the people have the philosophy, the people have the mindset, the belief structure, and in Agile they have that same type of thinking. They brought in in that first value, like everything that people are going to do to get work done, or how they come together, is going to happen through them and how they think and believe. And so the individual people are more important, not to say the processes and tools aren't important, but they certainly are. And the values are very clear that they say you know, the things on the right are important, but the things mentioned first are priority. So people first, people first. So I think that's powerful. And then for Scrum, so that's agile. It's a set of values and principles.

Speaker 1: 20:04

Scrum is a system of getting things done. It could be a delivery system or a decision-making system, or both, depending on where you're using it. If you're early in design and product development, it's a great decision making system because it brings forward decisions and it's good at prioritizing and breaking work down. And it's also a delivery system because if you're in the mix of now, you're making something like a building. You can take any type of work and most of the work we do in construction, with the exception of people actually putting things together, it's knowledge work, and knowledge work is mostly invisible.

Speaker 1: 20:40

So scrum is a highly visual way to make things visible, put organization, break things down, get really clear on what you're going to deliver and then deliver it. And it has like this. It only has three roles scrum master, product owner and the team, the developers. And so I'm trained as a scrum master and then I also. And construction scrum is written from a scrum master's perspective and it's highly focused on you, you, the collective, you, whoever's listening, you being the scrum master of yourself and helping your team to deliver, very focused on delivering, very focused on delivering. And it's a great container, like. It's got very few rules and we can we can get into those rules if you want to, if it's interesting for the audience, but, like, one of the rules is that you break your work down small enough so that the end of a cycle that you decide how long your cycle is typically a week to four weeks.

Speaker 1: 21:35

You know, you pick one and you stay with it. Like, my podcast podcast runs now on a four-week cycle. In previous years it used to run on a two-week cycle but now I've extended it to run on a one-month cycle, which means shows recorded, edited, worked on, social marketed, published All of that happens in less than a month and then we iterate. So, like, we get feedback from like, we got a show that went live at the beginning of this month. We're recording this now in february just had a show that that john has threatened to ask me questions about. That show was recorded in the summer of last year. But the feedback we close the feedback loop once it gets exposed to the wild, which is where we get audience questions and answers. And then that feedback we take, put it on a board and carry it into future shows, future questions, future marketing, how we talk to guests. Like, there's an evolution of how I interview my guests over time.

Speaker 1: 22:35

John was a podcast guest last year on my show. His show will go live, probably within a week or two of this interview going live. So you're in for a treat audience. You're going to get to hear from him. That's right.

Speaker 2: 22:48

Hey, listeners, I want to take a quick moment to share something special with you. Many of the topics and discussions we have on this podcast are areas where I provide coaching and consulting services for individuals and organizations. If you've been inspired by our conversation and are seeking a catalyst for change in your own life or within your team, I invite you to visit coachjohngallaghercom forward slash free call to sign up for a free coaching call with me. It's an opportunity for us to connect, discuss your unique challenges and explore how coaching or consulting can benefit you and your team. Okay, let's get back to the show.

Speaker 2: 23:27

Felipe, I love the explanation in terms of one. It comes across as very I'll use the term simplistic, not simple, don't mistake simple with easy. As we go forward, you and I have some mutual connections in the electrical construction world and one of the things that we know is that generally, when you go and visit a job site, that's being done and you've seen one job, you've seen one job. There's so much variation in the activity that goes on. And your point about visual is we know that visual is generally not being used enough as well. So the opportunities for this system and this methodology to be used to improve the success rate is just unreal in terms of how big the opportunity is. So what are the barriers that get in people's way of getting started when?

Speaker 1: 24:20

it is that simple.

Speaker 1: 24:21

Yeah, it's incredibly simple. So in Jeff's Red Book, which is a big explanation of why Scrum is and how it came to be, which is called Scrum the Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time by Jeff and JJ Sutherland father and son duo wrote that book. He doesn't even tell you how to do Scrum until you get to the appendix of the book. The whole purpose of that book is because jeff got tired of answering why scrum works so well, which is pretty hilarious. And, like I know a lot, a lot of people john read a book and they might not even go to the appendix. You know they might not turn past that last chapter. Right, there's only by chance I got to that last chapter and it's the framework so simple. Like John is saying, that it can sit on a single 8.5x11. All the rules for Scrum are so few and so simple. It sits on a single page. Now, the book is not 8.5x11 size, it's two pages, this index. So if you're looking through the book and you're like Felipe, it's on two pages. Listen, put an 8.5x 11 sheet of paper on top of those two pages and those two pages fit inside of it. It's that simple. So it's only 11 ish or 12 steps thereabouts, depending on how you implement it and putting it into practice has lots of barriers, like I was mentioning to John, either before we recorded or in the beginning of the show.

Speaker 1: 25:41

When I first started using Scrum, I was on a hard bid project and the team wanted nothing to do with it. The team did this thing and this is where a lot of you are listening to the show. You're going to get yourself in trouble. People will just Google something, they'll search, they'll look at the first couple of results and they'll just read. And then their phone rings or an email pops or somebody walks into their office and then they never look at this ever again. And I don't know what you're going to find when you search this, because how you search matters how you search matters. So I would highly recommend, when you can, always go to first sources, first principles, as often as you can, don't play telephone game. Today there are over a hundred thousand different companies that teach Scrum and there's variation in how they teach it and what the audience is. So I've learned how to adapt it for construction.

Speaker 1: 26:36

So my book, construction Scrum, is focused on people in design and construction. So if you're an IT person, my book is not necessarily for construction. So my book, construction Scrum, is focused on people in design and construction. So if you're an IT person, my book is not necessarily for you. If you're in education, my book is maybe not necessarily for you, but my book is an example of taking some very domain specific solution, translating it into language that people in the construction industry easily understand and then going after it.

Speaker 1: 26:59

And then, john, because I'm so sensitive to bad searches, I made my favorite chapters of the book free. So if you want to just even listen to the Scrum Guide, there's an audio chapter nine on my podcast at the EBFC Show. If you go to the ebfcshowcom and in the search bar just type chapter nine, you will get the free chapter of my Scrum book, which is me reading the scrum guide with construction audio commentary so you can hear the translations from what it originally was for software into the construction industry. That's one of the things that Jeff Sutherland said is like one of my talents, like the ability to translate. So don't just search it, get it. Get understanding of what it is.

Speaker 1: 27:44

The scrum guide is free. Scrum guidesorg is the website to read the scrum guide for free and I've got links for my book website. That's the first link on my book website on the book resources is go read that scrum guide for free. I tell people like I want you to read it for yourself, and it's available in over 30 languages so you can read it in your native language and then try it, actually try it from start to finish. And then I and then john because I got so many I get questions like this all the time john, I created a free 30 minute scrum course on my web.

Speaker 1: 28:17

So if you go to the ebfc ebfc showcom and click on store, you can take my free, no obligation scrum course 30 minutes or less and it'll have you doing scrum by the end of 30 minutes and it's a good primer and a start. It's that simple. You can get started and I've had. I just published a new blog post recently, john, where someone took the free course and then used it and improved their schedule by over 70%.

Speaker 2: 28:43

Wow, fantastic. Love hearing success stories like that too. I'll make sure to put links in the show notes to both of those, both the video and the guide.

Speaker 1: 28:53

A lot of people stay academic on this. John and I had a phone call with a friend from Germany. I got up at 4 am, john, to talk to somebody in Germany last week so I've gotten my sleep since then. I'm fully recharged and they were asking me all these questions. They work for a very large, big name company and they were going to go work in construction and deploy agile. They got hired in Germany to do agile in a construction company there and they're asking me, like, what are the pitfalls going to be? And I said you cannot come at people like with a mind that you're going to teach them something, and I was just talking about teach yourself, like, take this course, and it sounds like teaching right, but it's actually. It's showing you an onboarding. You is more what it is onboarding you Cause I don't know where you're starting right. Everybody starts a different spot. So I'm onboarding you. You're going to bring your skills with you to this practice and it's a practice and you'll do the practice. You'll have your own story of oh, my goodness, you know I doubled my throughput, like what I did as a project manager.

Speaker 1: 29:51

It was, it was exponential. I think. I 5x my capabilities within a month, whereas when I had just learned lean. I definitely doubled my productivity when I learned and applied lean. But I got. I never got more than that right. I had limits and then with scrum, I've broken through those productivity limits over and over and over again because of the. I think it's the rapid cycle of getting feedback and adjusting trajectory but allows you to change much, much, much faster. I mean not to say that you can't follow plan, do study, act and get the same benefit. Scrum is built on top of that concept, of that scientific management methodology of Plan, do, study, act. It's built on top of that. So that's what makes the machine turn inside, in addition to a couple other cool values and rules.

Speaker 2: 30:40

No, I appreciate you. Even the rules, like you said, they are simple as you go forward, and I encourage folks to go out there and take advantage of these free resources that are there, and you touched on some of the things that are important inside of it, and it's people, and that, generally, is how you end up with some of the challenges is because you're dealing with people, so it's not just laying it down and all of a sudden things go miraculous and go forward and really work. So just a couple more questions as I honor your time, felipe, as we go forward. What are some tips then? What are some practical tips for folks to implement Scrum into their project planning methodology?

Speaker 1: 31:19

Yeah, so tip number one you know, when I studied construction teams and I've worked with owners, architects, engineers, designers, trade contractors, specialty contractors, even consultancies, and I've done some full-blown agile transformations with those types of groups and the first barrier that a lot of people have not everybody, but a lot of people think if I don't get the entire project to do this, the entire project is like the 300 people in the building plus the 200, you know support people plus the 100, you know design professionals plus the owner's rep. If I don't get everybody doing this, then I'm not doing scrum, and that's wrong, that's an incorrect belief and that's a that's actually you creating a barrier to start because you're you're putting up this barrier like if I can't get everybody to do it right away on day one, then I'm not doing it, and that's just false. That's not true. It's not how I started. And I went back to Jeff Sutherland, who's still amazing, still answers my questions and makes himself available for me, and Jeff's like you don't need everybody to do it. He's like you only need one person to start, and that's you and that's how I started. And Jeff encourages that to this day. He even has uh, you're going to get kicked out of this John. He even created a, a GPT uh for him so that you can go to the chat GPT store and uh get scrum sage, which is Jeff's trained GPT, to answer his questions.

Speaker 1: 32:47

And I it's so funny I told Jeff like I tried it out when he first published it and I asked it that question, like how do I get started? And it said the same thing Jeff says you need to start. So just just you. So I always tell people like, put your arms out and that's out, and that's your sphere of influence. Right now, it's at least you. You close your arms back in, you're hugging yourself. So at least yourself, do not create additional barriers to start and start.

Speaker 2: 33:20

Love that. Just start, don't overthink it, don't wait, get things going. I wanted to ask you a question because I think that just start is so important as well for us again as leaders, for us as individuals who want to continuously grow and this is a philosophical question as we come toward the end with regards to who we are as individuals to get started, not just Agile, scrum, but overall how we get started, and there's a word that I've heard you use before. It's called a changemaker, and what do you consider a changemaker to be in this space to make that happen?

Speaker 1: 33:56

Yeah, changemakers, any person. So first of all, as I defined it, changemakers it's a noun, it's any person or people that make positive change, and it always starts with themselves. First, you change yourself, and there's been tons of books written on this topic and all change, from what I can see, starts with the gray matter between your ears first.

Speaker 1: 34:18

When you change your mindset, you change your thinking about something. Everything else unlocks, changes or shuts down. I mean, because you have. The opposite is exactly true. So a changemaker, somebody that changes themselves, takes a hero's journey and starts to create positive changes, visible, measurable changes in their sphere of influence that's measurable. And so on LinkedIn, where I'm very active on LinkedIn, if I see somebody who's acting as a changemaker, creating positive change, either individually for them they're sharing or greater in a greater service or a leadership type of role, I'll reply and just put a hashtag change makers on them. And then so every time I see it and it pops and I've watched, there've been people, and the first second is actually the second live stream I ever did on LinkedIn.

Speaker 1: 35:07

It's called the Changemakers live stream and because I brought in, like all these friends of mine that were making positive changes in the construction industry, we just got together for no money, totally for free, and we just talked about how we're applying lean and the type of work we do, and it was very, for me, a very inspirational show about how easy or difficult it is to make change, for for some of the change makers, it's very difficult because, again, the change has to happen in your mind and then for others it's. It can be easier. Some of the change makers are very we're very stubborn. I'll say the we cause I'm. I'm in that stubborn category as well, john, and we will make change, no matter what. We just need to be there and change will be made.

Speaker 2: 35:50

Thanks for sharing that. Felipe. Fun story, fun question. You may or may not know where this question came from, because I don't ever know where to get it, but is it true that a construction company from Hungary came all the way over to the US just to see you? I'm hearing this as a rumor.

Speaker 1: 36:13

This is, uh, I don't, I don't know that the rumor was to see me. I mean, that sounds really good, but they actually were had done studying. So this is true, this is a company from hungary called market, and I think there might be one word after market, but if you, if you just put market and hungry, you'll find it. There's been some posts on linkedin where they they did some appreciation posts and shared some some of the story, and so they had an individual, uh, they had a project and it was with, uh, actually, one of my friends, another change maker, janusz DeLui, at a BMW, so a BMW assembly line project, and Janusz brought through their contract and their process all these things that that this company, market, had never heard of, all these things being under the lean construction umbrella, right, so there's a whole set of principles and values and tools under lean construction and this was just completely foreign to them. They had a company I think they were like 25 years old, so relatively new company. Uh, that's a long time. Successful by all all means. Uh, they said we've got to learn like, what is this? The CEO made a commitment. He's like they're having really good results in that project. It's a very different approach than what they're used to.

Speaker 1: 37:21

So they, they made a key hire. Um, they hired a person and she started doing research and found my name comes up quite a bit. Apparently, when you search Lean Construction, my name comes up quite a bit. And they also found the Bolt Company, the company that I work at as the project or services director, and so they found a lot of. There's been a lot of white papers published about Lean and experiments that Bolt has done at various different sites across the United States. They've been into lean since the nineties. They were one of the early founding members of the Lean Construction Institute, where I've been serving as a volunteer for almost 10 years now myself. And so they, they connected to bolt through our website and uh, two connections later goes from it to my friend, jenny han, who works in modular group, to then me and my boss, nick, and uh, and everyone's like felipe is probably the best person to answer these questions because they were very beginner questions and they know I'm like a sucker at answering questions. So so we that started a dialogue with this person and then from there they eventually said can we tour? Can we tour and see your projects? I was like I think. So I think bolt's pretty open to that, based on the volume of research that's been done.

Speaker 1: 38:39

And so we organized a trip and we saw projects in wisconsin and we saw projects in california and so in California, and so I was there as the guide, the liaison, to show them through all these different projects and I organized on our side, with a lot of help from a lot of great people inside of Bolt, we made an amazing experience for them. They brought executive leadership from various levels of their company. I might be losing count, john, but it felt like there was 25 people from Hungary. It's probably less than 25, but it just felt like 25. Like there are times, john, where we're on this little bus, this little black limousine bus, and we're like driving around different parts of Wisconsin and then here in San Francisco, and so it was an incredible experience to visit projects and then projects to talk and answer questions that they have.

Speaker 1: 39:33

And the most amazing thing is I've been a volunteer at LCI for over let's just call it 10 years.

Speaker 1: 39:39

For easy rounding, the questions that they had are the exact same questions that new people to lean have, the same exact questions that I had when I was new to lean 15 plus years ago and it's just, it's kind of nice to pay it forward and to help shepherd people onto a sustainable path so fast forward.

Speaker 1: 40:00

They've had, like I know their concrete production executive had probably he grabbed it the hardest and I heard from my contact over there that his group has had a complete transformation and they've like blown all their KPIs out of the water with just a little bit of advice and guidance we gave them, which was also just do it Like start, pick something that you want to work on, pick a good problem and then work on that problem using some of these tools and processes and uh, you'll be amazed at what happens and it's a very, it's a very like human centric, uh style that we have, because in lean we have like two big principles uh, it's on my shirt too respect for people. These are two foundational things and and depending on where you come at this from, you could be heavy on one or the other, rarely equal on both. But you study Toyota and how they deploy this. These are two equal foundational things that hold up the Toyota house or the structure of all the other principles and processes that are contained inside.

Speaker 2: 41:04

Felipe, engineer, you've been a very gracious guest to share as much as you have. I'm going to make sure I put contact information for your podcast and the links that you talked about for your LinkedIn profile, because folks are going to want to follow you and connect with you, and to your book and the show notes. So those will all be there. Bleepy, I'm going to go ahead and finish you up with the last question. I always finish up on my first time guests and then give you a chance for the last word, and that's to say I'm going to give you a billboard. You can put that billboard anywhere you want to. What's the message that you put on that billboard and why do you put that message on there?

Speaker 1: 41:39

Okay. So if I have a billboard, I'm going to put this billboard in a very prominent, probably highway into the city, into major cities, john. So that's the where is I want it to be seen. And my billboard message is going to say human being. Human being is going to be like big, bold letters and below those letters say I am more than the labels I put on myself and the labels people put on me, and that's all I want people to see. And there's going to be like no, no, no advertising, no marketing. I think in today's day and age, john, it is so important for us to self-actualize, and part of that self-actualization is to recognize that we are a human being and it's so much more than the job that we do, than the roles we have in our families, and so I invite, through that billboard, everyone to put themselves on the journey to self-actualization and become a fully functional, complete human.

Speaker 2: 42:49

Amen, brother Felipe, thank you again. I wish you the best. Let's stay in touch. Okay, thank you, john, will do, and that wraps up another episode of the Uncommon Leader Podcast. Thanks for tuning in today. If you found value in this episode, I encourage you to share it with your friends, colleagues or anyone else who could benefit from the insights and inspiration we've shared. Also, if you have a moment, I'd greatly appreciate if you could leave a rating and review on your favorite podcast platform. Your feedback not only helps us to improve, but it also helps others discover the podcast and join our growing community of uncommon leaders. Until next time, go and grow champions.