April 9, 2025 • 39 mins
What separates a mediocre Agile coach from a truly exceptional one? The answer might surprise you. When Kamal Kalra posed the question "Can anyone be an Agile coach?" at an Agile open space, he challenged the conventional wisdom that knowledge alone qualifies someone for the role.
Kamal brings a refreshingly human-centered approach to Agile coaching. His journey began when a mentor recognized his natural tendency to prioritize understanding people over processes. Rather than immediately focusing on performance issues, Kamal's instinct was always to connect with the human first—a philosophy that would become the cornerstone of his coaching style.
The conversation takes a fascinating turn when Kamal shares his "apple-orange" analogy, illuminating how organizations often fundamentally misunderstand Agile from the beginning. When companies have been handed "apples" but told they're "oranges," they develop an entirely distorted understanding of what Agile truly means. This misalignment explains why so many organizations struggle to implement Agile effectively despite their best intentions.
Perhaps the most valuable takeaway is Kamal's personal "80-20 rule"—dedicating 80% of energy to addressing immediate problems while reserving 20% for examining and improving the underlying systems. This approach reflects the racing principle that "slow is accurate and accurate becomes fast," a counter-intuitive but powerful strategy for sustainable improvement.
What truly elevates this discussion is Kamal's assertion that Agile isn't just a methodology or even a professional skill—it's a way of life that extends into personal relationships, home environments, and every aspect of existence.
Connect with Kamal on LinkedIn:
linkedin.com/in/kamalkalra-agilist
Follow us on LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-agile-within
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:06):
Welcome to the Agile Within.
I am your host, mark Metz.
My mission for this podcast isto provide Agile insights into
human values and behaviorsthrough genuine connections.
My guests and I will sharereal-life stories from our Agile
journeys, triumphs, blundersand everything in between, as
(00:29):
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So get pumped, get rocking.
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And now on to the show.
Well, welcome back everybody.
(01:33):
This is your host, mark Metz.
This is the Agile Within.
My guest today for this episodeis Kamal Kalra from Lake Forest
, california.
Kamal, welcome to the show,buddy.
Speaker 2 (01:46):
Hey, mark, thank you so much, happy to be here.
Speaker 1 (01:49):
Great to have you.
You and I have had a coupleconversations, and I just want
to get into our icebreakerquestion before we start this
episode off.
So you're from Lake Forest,California.
This is in Southern California,the LA area.
If I were coming to Lake Forestfor a day and I'd never been
there before, Kamal, what wouldyou say is one thing that I
couldn't miss doing.
Speaker 2 (02:11):
Well, that's interesting.
Lake Forest as a town, as acity, isn't really, you know, a
touristy place.
It's your quintessentialsuburban neighborhood.
So I would say so, I would saypersonally, one of my favorite
things that I love about thistown is, you know, I'm a big
(02:32):
nature buff and we have thetopography here is very unique.
It's we're situated below thefoothills and a lot of our
neighborhoods here are situatedon those hills.
So like, for example, ourimmediate neighborhood is
beautifully situated amongstthese rolling hills and, being a
(02:53):
big nature buff, I love thetopography, so I love going on
beautiful walks through thesehills that we live in.
So you know, to answer yourquestion, if you're at all a fan
of nature, it's a beautifultown to walk through because it
has a really beautifultopography and natural terrain.
(03:14):
So that's how I would answerthat.
Speaker 1 (03:18):
I would imagine the weather is pretty nice year
round too, being in SouthernCalifornia, yes, indeed the
weather is very temperate.
Speaker 2 (03:26):
Uh, summers are are.
They can get hot, relativelyspeaking, in the winters, you
know, can winter nights can geta little bit cool, uh,
relatively speaking, but overallit's pretty temperate yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:39):
Sounds wonderful.
Well, Kamal, you and I have hada discussion, have talked, and
I thought it might be nice forto let you introduce yourself to
the listeners out there.
So why don't you tell us alittle bit about yourself?
Speaker 2 (04:01):
So most of my career I've worked with marks like Audi
, bmw, porsche and Mercedes.
I consider myself a highlytechnical person with very high
technical aptitude, and I sortof organically, have always
loved agile ways of thinkingslash working in that order.
For most, my career and mynatural passion has always been
(04:28):
helping systems become better byfocusing on the actual humans
doing the work, and I've alwaysbelieved in creating long-term
sustainable success by doing thehard work, or what I like to
call the shadow work, in termsof helping to build better
(04:49):
environments that extend beyondjust your classic nine to also
so my daughter when it was timeto buy her first car.
Speaker 1 (05:08):
she absolutely fell in love with this Mercedes Benz
that I happened to see on Ithink it was on Craigslist and I
actually fell in love with ittoo.
And and you know, that's not agood recipe, sometimes when you
look at a car and you fall inlove, right, that never ends in
a happy story.
But there was an 87 560 slconvertible oh my gosh car.
(05:33):
And it was well taken care ofand, because of its age, it had
the price range that we werelooking for, because we had a,
you know, a very limited pricerange and me, you know being
very emotional about it, and mydaughter is my little girl,
right, right, every, every dadwants to take care of their
(05:53):
daughter and saw how much sheloved this car, so we bought it,
not knowing that the car wasabsolutely exquisite.
But yeah, the other side, whatthey don't tell you is, if
you're not a mechanic, you'regoing to be shelling out a lot
of money for an old Mercedes tokeep it running.
Speaker 2 (06:09):
That is true.
Yeah, those can be wonderfulcars to own long term, but
you're absolutely right, theycan get extremely expensive to
upkeep over time.
Speaker 1 (06:24):
Well, maybe in another time we'll uh, I'll
share some pictures with you andlet you see.
But yeah, so the the sad endingto that story was I had to end
up selling the car because wejust were spending so much on
maintenance on.
It Absolutely broke mydaughter's heart and she's 27
years old now and she stillnever lets me forget that I sold
that car.
I love that All right.
(06:48):
Well, back to the episode,today's episode.
The title is Can Anyone Be anAgile Coach?
And before we answer thatquestion and dive in and talk
about that, kamal, why don't youtell us a little bit about your
journey on becoming an coach?
Speaker 2 (07:07):
Sure Mark.
So it was right around 2015that I was pretty fed up with my
previous career that I had beendoing for almost 25 years and
was really looking.
I was at a place in my lifewhere I was looking for
something more soulful to do andsomething more passionate, to
(07:27):
really be able to do everysingle day and be excited about
waking up every single morning,and I started working with at
that time.
I started working with a coupleof mentors, one of which asked
me a very interesting question,and this question and my answer
to it was sort of the catalystthat got me to where I am today,
(07:49):
and what she had said to me wasshe said Kamal, if I were to
ask you the following question,how would you answer this?
Suppose you have a team of youknow four or five, six
individuals that you're workingwith and you happen to notice
one particular individual inthat team that's really
struggling to accomplish theirgiven you know sets of goals,
(08:11):
how would you go about handlingthat personally, just real quick
, at the off the top of yourhead?
And you know, I've I'vecertainly encountered that in
the past, and so I knew exactlyhow to answer that and from my
core, I instinctively just saidoh, I would, you know, get in
touch with this individual and Iwould ask to meet with them
(08:31):
privately, one on one, and setsome time aside.
And I would spend a lot of time, I would do a deep dive into
this actual person, not at allfocusing on their challenges
with their tasks, but getting toknow them first and getting to
understand the person behindwhat's happening here.
(08:53):
And so my mentor kind of smiledand said to me that's very
interesting that you answer thatin that way and with the energy
.
And she said there's such asense of positivity and
exuberance to your tone when youanswer that like you're really
passionate about doing it thatparticular way.
(09:15):
And so she said to me, she saidso, let me get this straight.
You wouldn't just go up to thisperson and say, hey, I noticed
you're not doing this well,here's how you could be doing it
better.
And I said I said no, thatreally irks me.
That's not the approach that Iwould use personally, you know.
And so she smiled and westarted talking a lot more.
(09:35):
And that started me on myofficializing of my love for
agility.
And along the journey, you know, a couple of my mentors said to
me.
Well, you know you've beendoing a lot of these ceremonies
unknowingly and they come sonaturally to you.
It's about time you startofficializing your understanding
(09:59):
of this by getting you know theright certifications behind you
, so that the world canunderstand that you really are
passionate about this, andthat's what eventually led me to
where I am today.
Speaker 1 (10:15):
Kamal, you and I, we have a lot in common.
I think our outlooks are verysimilar.
Conversations we've had beforerecording this podcast, and so I
can identify strongly with that, and I don't know just my
mindset.
People just need to know.
Maybe this isn't everybody, thisisn't what everybody needs to
(10:41):
know, maybe this isn't everybody, this isn't what everybody
needs, but what I found is thatwhen a person is struggling,
they just need to knowsomebody's on their side,
Somebody's got their back,Somebody is coming along beside
them and they're not feeling allthe pressure and the weight of
themselves.
So that's my natural inclinationtoo is not to just go in and
give constructive criticismright but to actually understand
(11:06):
that person, because there maybe some underlying things that
have made that person who theyare, that contribute to some of
the struggles, and you can't getto the bottom of that unless
you really know the reason whythey're going through some of
those things.
So we can unpack that a littlebit in this episode a little bit
later.
But one of the things I wantedto get back to is our question
(11:29):
and our title of can anyone bean agile coach?
And you told me a story of anevent or a group that you went
to and that question came up andI thought it would be useful to
for the rest of our listenersout there to hear how that story
went.
Speaker 2 (11:45):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely yeah.
I was, uh, part of a group oncein an agile open space and, um,
the.
The actual topic at that momentwas something very relevant in
the agile world nowadays, whichis the topic was is agile dead?
And this was not very long agoit was about a year ago or so
(12:06):
and there were some really,really well decorated agile
coaches in this group peoplethat have far more experience
than myself as being an agilecoach in their title for many,
many years and we were talkingabout we were really unpacking
this concept of why people thinkagile is dead and what's dead
(12:27):
about agile.
And the one of the questionsthat I asked in this group.
As I was observing quietly, Iasked the group can anyone be an
Agile coach?
And there was a sense ofdiscomfort in the air and there
(12:49):
was.
There were some eyebrows raisedaround the room and most of
most of the attendees of thisgroup actually agreed that well,
yes, anyone can be an Agilecoach, you know.
And then they all sort ofreverted that question back at
(13:09):
me as the person who asked itand said well, why did you ask
that, kamal?
And I said well, I humblydisagree.
I don't think just anyone canbe an agile coach, and what we
sort of came to the conclusionof was you know the devil's in
the detail.
(13:29):
Words matter, right.
So we concluded thattechnically, it's like saying
can anyone play basketball?
Well, I mean, let's firstdefine basketball right, because
if, if, if, just by taking theball and, and you know, shooting
it at the hoop and getting itinto the hoop, if that means
(13:50):
that I, that I know how to playbasketball, then I'm a
basketball player.
But if the definition is moreyou know, is more elaborate and
there's great accuracies to youknow who actually is a
basketball player and who isn't,then the conversation becomes a
little bit more fruity, as, Ilike to say, concluded was well,
(14:21):
when you say can anyone be anAgile coach?
Well, sure, I suppose, dependingon one's understanding of what
an Agile coach is and thereinlies the sort of analog
description and my personaldescription of what I think a
great Agile coach or the rightAgile coach, right agile coach
should be is far more thananything anyone can teach anyone
(14:41):
else, because, in my opinion,there needs to be certain soft
skills and there needs to be acertain kind of human that we're
dealing with in terms ofwhether you can really be a
great Agile coach or not, and,as we all know, agile coaches
(15:02):
much like ice creams come inmany different flavors.
You've got certain flavors thattaste better than others, and
certainly that's true within ourcommunity as well.
We have certain Agile coachesthat are really, really great at
what they do, and then we haveother Agile coaches that are
more sort of binary and they'remore academic in what they do.
And then we have other Agilecoaches that are more sort of
binary and they're more academicin what they offer, and I
(15:24):
happen to be the type of Agilecoach that falls in the realm of
being far more analog and humanversus purely academic.
One of the things anotherexample that I can share with
you is I was in a anothermeeting with a couple of leaders
from a very well-knownorganization here in Southern
(15:47):
California, two of their topleaders, and one of the
questions I asked them abouttheir organization and their
environment is, I said,gentlemen, I have a very basic
question that I'm curious about,and my question is when I say
individuals and interactions,what does that mean to you guys,
(16:08):
for your organization?
And I swear, mark, there wasthe longest, most uncomfortable
silence that you could everthink about, and after a very
uncomfortable almost two and ahalf minutes of silence, they
said to me uh well, not reallysure what you mean by that.
(16:30):
Oh okay, well, that'sinteresting.
That tells me a lot.
Apparently, this is a companythat already has that considers
themselves an shop, and they'vebeen doing agile for a few years
.
And when I said what doesindividuals and interactions
mean to you, they had no ideawhat I was even talking about.
Speaker 1 (16:53):
So you were interacting with individuals by
asking them what doesindividuals and orgs get?
Speaker 2 (17:24):
caught up in the academic binary aspect of trying
to blanket agility over theirsystem without ever spending the
time to actually know whatthey're even attempting to do
ever spending the time toactually know what they're even
attempting to do.
Speaker 1 (17:45):
You know, it kind of reminds me it's one of those
things that's so familiar to youthat it's too familiar, it's
too close to you so you reallydon't explore it.
It's kind of like when you livein a city and you live there so
long, there are certain thingsto do in that city that, because
you've lived there so long, youjust take them for granted and
you never visit them yourselves.
Yeah, do you agree?
Oh?
Speaker 2 (18:04):
absolutely 100% yeah.
Speaker 1 (18:09):
Can anyone become an agile coach?
So I think we're of the samemindset.
Probably is what we're sayingCan anyone?
Now, there are different levelsof it.
There are good agile coaches,there are adequate agile coaches
, there are marginal agilecoaches and there are bad agile
coaches.
So to say that you're an anyonecan be an agile coach If it
(18:32):
falls anywhere in that spectrum,yes, you could land in there.
So, yes, you could be an agilecoach.
You just might be a bad one.
But to become a good agilecoach, what are some of the
qualities that you have seen andthat are near and dear to your
heart, kamal, that you look forfor a good agile coach?
Speaker 2 (19:01):
Well, mark, according to me, I mean, I think there's
a big human aspect thatdefinitely has to be there.
I think a great agile coachneeds to be a great human being
and needs to have a focus onmaking their fellow human beings
great as well.
Along that journey,transparency and accountability
are a couple of other words thatreally, really come to mind.
There's a couple of really funexamples that I can share with
(19:22):
you here.
I remember you know, I know I'mgoing to get a lot of pushback
on this, because you know peopleare going to tend to think like
oh, you know, this sounds quitejudgmental and there's a
certain sense of realism in forme personally, anyway when I
shared a couple of theseexamples right?
So one of them, I shared thiswith a group, with a team that I
(19:45):
was working with who was new toAgile, and I said to them
pretend that I gave you an appleand I told you that this was an
orange.
And for years and years andyears, I kept giving you an
apple and telling you here'sanother orange, how do you like
that orange?
And for years and years, yougot to know the fact that an
(20:08):
actual apple is called an orange.
And then, one day somebody saidto you hey, would you like an
orange like a real orange, anactual orange?
And you said to them that's notan orange.
I don't know what that is, butthis is what an orange is.
And you show them an apple andthe person laughs and says what
are you talking about?
That's an apple, that's not anorange.
And the person said, no, no, no, you got it all wrong.
(20:30):
This is an orange, because I'vebeen told this is an orange
like for years now.
And the fun thing that I likeabout that example is, you know,
if somebody explains the wrongthing to you and that becomes
your norm, then that sets thestage for the right type of
understanding for you, for thatthing, for the rest of your
(20:53):
useful time, that you're usingthat thing Right, and so that's.
This is kind of what's happenedwith agility right, with
individuals and teams and orgs.
There's been a misunderstandingof what agility is from the
get-go and that misunderstandinghas just continued down the
path and long into the journeyindividuals and teams and orgs
(21:18):
have got to thinking that thisactual apple is an orange and
they've got it all wrong fromthe get go.
And then when somebody givesthem an actual orange.
They're like oh, I don't likethe way this tastes, I don't
like this at all.
The second example of the twothat I mentioned that I can
share with you that comes tomind in terms of genuineness
(21:38):
here is I was working withanother agile coach once and we
were late one day it was likepast 6pm and I was walking him
out to his car in the parkinglot and he was a great agile
coach, as an agile coach goesvery academic and his
disposition not very human, andI got deeper insight as to why
(21:59):
that might have been thatparticular evening when I was
walking him out to his car and Inoticed that, in addition to
the outside of his car beingreally dirty and it looked like
it hadn't been washed in monthsand months, his car was a real
(22:21):
mess.
There was like food wrappersand half eaten food on the floor
and what looked like dirtylaundry and just it was just
really messy inside the car.
And that sort of you know gaveme some insight as to how this
what this person thinks aboutthemselves to begin with, and so
what that means to me, mark, isone of the other things I love
(22:42):
saying is, in order to be areally great agile coach, you
first need to be the right agilecoach to yourself.
You first need to look in themirror and do the hard work of
showing up as the greatestversion of yourself.
And if you have the honestconversation with the person you
(23:03):
see in the mirror and there'ssomething lacking there, then
that's the hard work to do first, before you come out into the
world and attempt to preach andteach agility when you know to
you it might just be nothingmore than a nine to five, a hat
(23:24):
that you put on at 9 am and takeoff at 5 or 6 pm.
And I personally the reason Iuse those words is because
that's not the kind of Agilecoach I am.
It's not a nine to five for me.
It's not a hat that I can takeoff and put back on.
Agility is a way of life for me.
It extends into my personalbeing.
(23:46):
It extends into my home, intomy lifestyle.
It extends into my friendships,everything I do.
It's a living, breathing thingfor me when I go out into the
Agile world.
Of course, the low-hangingfruit for me are all the
measurable metrics that orgslike to look at to make
(24:08):
processes and systems better.
But in addition to that.
I like doing a lot of theshadow work, which I call shadow
work, by working on the actualhumans and trying to make them
actual, better human beings.
And one side effect of that is,I can almost guarantee you, if
(24:29):
we work on Mark Metz, by makingMark Metz the greatest version
of himself, a great side effectof that will be whatever Mark
does will improve whatever Markdoes will improve.
Speaker 1 (24:43):
So, kamal, it's pretty fair to say I mean, I
don't know any successfulhypocrites out there, right?
Nobody really likes to hear themantra do as I say, not as I do
, right, exactly, I never usethat as a parent.
Never, ever, never use thatphrase as a parent.
(25:04):
Absolutely Amen, ever, neveruse that phrase as a parent.
Absolutely Amen to that.
But I love your genuinenessthat you bring.
I love how you care deeply forpeople and how you feel the need
to be open and honest andsharing both the successes as
well as the challenges.
I do want to pivot justslightly for one, because I want
(25:27):
to be sure we get to this, andyou and I talked you've got an
80-20 rule and I want you totell our listeners out there
what is this 80-20 rule thatyou've come up with?
Speaker 2 (25:39):
Sure, yeah, so my 80-20 rule is something that I
came up with personally many,many years ago and it's kind of
like it's a thing that I doevery morning when I wake up.
I wake up an hour before Iactually have to, so I can
consciously plan my day andthink about my day, no matter
how simple or complex it may be.
(26:01):
And the moment I turn theelectronic devices on, the
messages start coming in and thefires start coming in, and it
tends to absolutelyparasitically dominate your day
in terms of how you're going togo about handling that day.
I came up with my 80-20 ruleand what it simply means is I
(26:26):
spend 80% of my time and energyon the fires that need to be put
out, and I always try to spendat least 20% of my time and
energy on the systems that mighthave helped create those fires
to begin with, to help createenvironments where those fires
(26:50):
don't necessarily exist to beginwith.
And those fires can be personal.
They can be personal issues,they can be professional issues,
and that's what my 80, 20 ruleis.
And and there's another smallcaveat to that rule that I can
share so I'm a big uh racing fan, I'm a big motorsport fan, and
(27:12):
one of the things we say inracing is slow is accurate and
accurate becomes fast.
No-transcript.
(27:50):
Actually slow the processesdown and work on accuracy of
information received andaccuracy of the why behind the
desired results.
And what I like to tellleadership is you will
eventually.
You will initially see aslowing of things, and that's by
(28:13):
design by me, so that we canget a handle on the accuracy of
things.
And once the accuracy of thingsstart becoming better, and once
the accuracy of things startbecoming better, a fantastic
organic side effect of that willbe the speeding up of things
and that is that's directlyrelated to my 80-20 rule.
Speaker 1 (28:34):
So that's wonderful.
So I'm thinking about how I canapply that, and what's bitten
me on that, and so I'll justopenly share, is that I've been
looking for a job, I've beenunemployed and I've been looking
for my next role.
Unfortunately, I was in asituation where I was let go
(28:57):
rather unexpectedly not evenrather like extremely
unexpectedly and so my firstreaction was oh my gosh, I just
need to apply to as manypositions as I can, as fast as I
can.
You know, it's kind of like ina baseball game.
The thinking is well, the moretimes that I come to bat, the
greater of a chance I'm going tohave of getting a hit.
But if you think about that, ifyou're just literally running
(29:21):
up to the home plate and noteven getting your feet set and
you're just swinging okay,missed that one, now go run up
again and try another howeffective is that approach
really going to be?
And so I had to intentionallyslow myself down and say okay,
I'm going to stop just sendingthese blind applications out,
(29:44):
just hoping that one persondecides to give me a callback,
because it just wasn't working.
The data spoke for itself.
I wasn't getting any returncalls, and so it wasn't until I
was very intentional to buildrelationships and have strong
connections and focus my time onthose, not on let me just put
(30:05):
as many applications as possibleas I can in, but let me focus
on the ones that I feel like arereally worth the time and
investment in.
That's when I started seeingsuccess.
So, applying that 80-20 rulethat you talked about, I'll
second and third that that isabsolutely fantastic advice
because it's easy to get caughtup in the busyness of life, in
(30:29):
the busyness of work, and when amillion different requests are
coming your way.
And in our work, like insoftware, you've got so many
people requesting to have somany things done, how do you,
how do you shut out the noise?
And it's very important for youto not have to say yes to
everything but to say I hear allthese requests but I'm going to
(30:53):
say no to 90% of it.
The top 10%.
That's truly the most important.
That aligns with the companygoals, that's going to give
value to our customers.
We're going to focus on thatand I'm sorry for that 90% that
I'm and it may seem like I'msaying no to everything.
Just understand I am saying noto some things so that we can do
(31:14):
other things really well, andso that's what I get from your
80-20 rule.
And the other visual that I getis you and I talked about this
is you're in a boat and the boatis taking on water and you're
so busy bailing out water out ofthe boat that you're never
making time to try to fix thehole that's in the hull.
(31:38):
I don't have time for that.
I've just got to bail the water.
Yes, you need to spend that 80%bailing the water out, but at
some point you've got to givesome time to fix the root
problem or you're going to bebailing water forever.
Speaker 2 (31:50):
Absolutely, mark.
I love everything you said, andit's the right organizations
that understand this, thatunderstand agility, and the
organizations that didn't, thatgot into agility without
properly understanding it.
They're the ones that are justcontinuously focused on trying
(32:12):
to dump the water out of theboat without actually plugging
up the hole chaos that ensues.
Speaker 1 (32:29):
There are some people that really, I will say, thrive
, but they really welcome thatchaos, so much so that they're
really, you know, it's almostlike an endorphin rush for them,
because they get to swoop inand be the hero and to to save
everything, because they wereable to avert this crisis.
And so have you had situationslike that, where it seemed like
(32:51):
chaos was just a way of lifeuntil the Superman or Superwoman
came in to save the day.
And it's like, wait a minute,we're falling into a pattern
here.
Speaker 2 (32:59):
Yeah, oh my God, that totally hits home.
Yeah, oh my God, that totallyhits home.
Yeah, there's examples that Ican share that I've been in,
where you know there's people,that sort of individuals, that
self-sabotage their environmentsjust so they can create a
reality where they're alwaysseen as the magical firefighter,
(33:22):
where they're always seen asthe magical firefighter.
This is partly what I mean byshadow work when I say there's
something deeper about thosetypes of individuals that
deserves to be extrapolated inan effort to help create better,
long-term environments for them.
(33:44):
Like, why does that kind of aperson feel that way?
Why do they feel like theyalways need to be the magical
firefighter and why are theysabotaging you know,
inadvertently sabotagingenvironments and systems so that
they remain on that list ofmagical firefighters?
So, yeah, I can definitelyrelate to that.
Speaker 1 (34:06):
So definitely not the type person that is going to
make your team, make yourorganization, make your group
better.
You have a sense that it's allabout them, right, right?
Speaker 2 (34:18):
Right, absolutely, yeah, and there's something's
something you know, I I I alsominored in psychology and it's
very fascinating to me when Isubjectively step outside of my
role as as a coach or a scrummaster and I think about
individuals like that at apsychological level and it it
shifts my paradigm in terms ofhow I approach people like that
(34:44):
and that's very meaningful to me.
Also, the psychologicalcomponent of my take on agility
is something very powerful to meas well.
Speaker 1 (34:54):
You know the ugly.
Truth is, though, kamal, thatsometimes those people, they do
rise to the top because they areseen as as being valuable, as
being indispensable, as beingneeded, and so it's hard to it's
hard to deal with that, so howhave you dealt with that in the
(35:16):
past, in a in a positive, ormaybe even in a in a in a
critical manner?
How have you dealt with withthat type of situation in the
past?
Speaker 2 (35:25):
Well, that's interesting.
It reminds me of a question Iwas asked by an individual once
who said to me where does anagile coach in the organization
ascend to?
What's the next position for anagile coach?
And I said well, that's a veryloaded question.
It depends on the organization.
(35:47):
It depends on you know their,their size.
There's many factors there.
And this person said well, Iwould tend to think the next
level would be CEO.
And I got a little bit of achuckle out of that.
And this person said why do youlaugh?
I said well, I think I humblysay I couldn't disagree more,
(36:14):
because a great CEO and a greatagile coach are two very
different individuals.
They've gotten to where theyare really really differently.
If they've done it correctly,and how they see a given
challenge are two very differentways and I don't think, in my
opinion, that they'reinterchangeable.
Now, if you have the wrong CEO,the wrong type of CEO and the
(36:38):
wrong type of Agile coach, sure,those might be able to be
interchangeable, but if you'vegot the right type of CEO and
the right type of Agile coach, Ithink those are two vastly
different positions that arefueled by two vastly different
mindsets.
Speaker 1 (36:59):
So, kamal, our time is coming rapidly to an end here
.
I want to bring it back to ouroriginal question and our title
for today's episode and ask youso tell us again, maybe give us
a summary.
Can anyone be an Agile coach?
Speaker 2 (37:16):
So, mark, I would say the short answer is yes.
If we say can anyone be anAgile coach?
Yeah sure, anyone can be an anagile coach.
Yeah sure, anyone can be anagile coach.
But, as with many things inlife, the devil's in the details
If you really want to be agreat agile coach and a
legendary agile coach.
I think the conversation is abit deeper than just a yes or a
(37:39):
no, because I feel, in myopinion, a great Agile coach
needs to have many more humanattributes than just an academic
understanding of Agile.
Speaker 1 (37:52):
Kamal, if our listeners out there want to get
in touch with you, what's thebest way for them to do that?
Speaker 2 (37:57):
LinkedIn.
I'm on LinkedIn.
If you just type in my fullname, Kamal Kalra, you can find
me on LinkedIn.
That would be the best place.
Speaker 1 (38:06):
All right, as always, we'll put a link to that in the
show notes to make it easy forour listeners to get in touch
with you, kamal, thank you somuch for coming on the show,
really enjoyed it.
I just feel like there's a lotof commonality between us and
it's just been a pleasure havingyou on the show, buddy.
Speaker 2 (38:27):
The pleasure is all mine, Mark.
It's always wonderful toconnect with you.
Speaker 1 (38:29):
Thank you so much for this time and space, and that
brings it into another episodeof the Agile Within.
We'll see everybody next time.
Thanks for joining us foranother episode of the agile
within.
If you haven't already, pleasejoin our LinkedIn page to stay
in touch.
Just search for the agilewithin and please spread the
(38:53):
word with your friends andcolleagues until next time.
This has been your host, MarkMetz.
Welcome to the Agile Within.
I am your host, mark Metz.
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My guests and I will sharereal-life stories from our Agile
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(00:29):
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And now on to the show.
Well, welcome back everybody.
(01:33):
This is your host, mark Metz.
This is the Agile Within.
My guest today for this episodeis Kamal Kalra from Lake Forest
, california.
Kamal, welcome to the show,buddy.
Speaker 2 (01:46):
Hey, mark, thank you so much, happy to be here.
Speaker 1 (01:49):
Great to have you.
You and I have had a coupleconversations, and I just want
to get into our icebreakerquestion before we start this
episode off.
So you're from Lake Forest,California.
This is in Southern California,the LA area.
If I were coming to Lake Forestfor a day and I'd never been
there before, Kamal, what wouldyou say is one thing that I
couldn't miss doing.
Speaker 2 (02:11):
Well, that's interesting.
Lake Forest as a town, as acity, isn't really, you know, a
touristy place.
It's your quintessentialsuburban neighborhood.
So I would say so, I would saypersonally, one of my favorite
things that I love about thistown is, you know, I'm a big
(02:32):
nature buff and we have thetopography here is very unique.
It's we're situated below thefoothills and a lot of our
neighborhoods here are situatedon those hills.
So like, for example, ourimmediate neighborhood is
beautifully situated amongstthese rolling hills and, being a
(02:53):
big nature buff, I love thetopography, so I love going on
beautiful walks through thesehills that we live in.
So you know, to answer yourquestion, if you're at all a fan
of nature, it's a beautifultown to walk through because it
has a really beautifultopography and natural terrain.
(03:14):
So that's how I would answerthat.
Speaker 1 (03:18):
I would imagine the weather is pretty nice year
round too, being in SouthernCalifornia, yes, indeed the
weather is very temperate.
Speaker 2 (03:26):
Uh, summers are are.
They can get hot, relativelyspeaking, in the winters, you
know, can winter nights can geta little bit cool, uh,
relatively speaking, but overallit's pretty temperate yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:39):
Sounds wonderful.
Well, Kamal, you and I have hada discussion, have talked, and
I thought it might be nice forto let you introduce yourself to
the listeners out there.
So why don't you tell us alittle bit about yourself?
Speaker 2 (04:01):
So most of my career I've worked with marks like Audi
, bmw, porsche and Mercedes.
I consider myself a highlytechnical person with very high
technical aptitude, and I sortof organically, have always
loved agile ways of thinkingslash working in that order.
For most, my career and mynatural passion has always been
(04:28):
helping systems become better byfocusing on the actual humans
doing the work, and I've alwaysbelieved in creating long-term
sustainable success by doing thehard work, or what I like to
call the shadow work, in termsof helping to build better
(04:49):
environments that extend beyondjust your classic nine to also
so my daughter when it was timeto buy her first car.
Speaker 1 (05:08):
she absolutely fell in love with this Mercedes Benz
that I happened to see on Ithink it was on Craigslist and I
actually fell in love with ittoo.
And and you know, that's not agood recipe, sometimes when you
look at a car and you fall inlove, right, that never ends in
a happy story.
But there was an 87 560 slconvertible oh my gosh car.
(05:33):
And it was well taken care ofand, because of its age, it had
the price range that we werelooking for, because we had a,
you know, a very limited pricerange and me, you know being
very emotional about it, and mydaughter is my little girl,
right, right, every, every dadwants to take care of their
(05:53):
daughter and saw how much sheloved this car, so we bought it,
not knowing that the car wasabsolutely exquisite.
But yeah, the other side, whatthey don't tell you is, if
you're not a mechanic, you'regoing to be shelling out a lot
of money for an old Mercedes tokeep it running.
Speaker 2 (06:09):
That is true.
Yeah, those can be wonderfulcars to own long term, but
you're absolutely right, theycan get extremely expensive to
upkeep over time.
Speaker 1 (06:24):
Well, maybe in another time we'll uh, I'll
share some pictures with you andlet you see.
But yeah, so the the sad endingto that story was I had to end
up selling the car because wejust were spending so much on
maintenance on.
It Absolutely broke mydaughter's heart and she's 27
years old now and she stillnever lets me forget that I sold
that car.
I love that All right.
(06:48):
Well, back to the episode,today's episode.
The title is Can Anyone Be anAgile Coach?
And before we answer thatquestion and dive in and talk
about that, kamal, why don't youtell us a little bit about your
journey on becoming an coach?
Speaker 2 (07:07):
Sure Mark.
So it was right around 2015that I was pretty fed up with my
previous career that I had beendoing for almost 25 years and
was really looking.
I was at a place in my lifewhere I was looking for
something more soulful to do andsomething more passionate, to
(07:27):
really be able to do everysingle day and be excited about
waking up every single morning,and I started working with at
that time.
I started working with a coupleof mentors, one of which asked
me a very interesting question,and this question and my answer
to it was sort of the catalystthat got me to where I am today,
(07:49):
and what she had said to me wasshe said Kamal, if I were to
ask you the following question,how would you answer this?
Suppose you have a team of youknow four or five, six
individuals that you're workingwith and you happen to notice
one particular individual inthat team that's really
struggling to accomplish theirgiven you know sets of goals,
(08:11):
how would you go about handlingthat personally, just real quick
, at the off the top of yourhead?
And you know, I've I'vecertainly encountered that in
the past, and so I knew exactlyhow to answer that and from my
core, I instinctively just saidoh, I would, you know, get in
touch with this individual and Iwould ask to meet with them
(08:31):
privately, one on one, and setsome time aside.
And I would spend a lot of time, I would do a deep dive into
this actual person, not at allfocusing on their challenges
with their tasks, but getting toknow them first and getting to
understand the person behindwhat's happening here.
(08:53):
And so my mentor kind of smiledand said to me that's very
interesting that you answer thatin that way and with the energy
.
And she said there's such asense of positivity and
exuberance to your tone when youanswer that like you're really
passionate about doing it thatparticular way.
(09:15):
And so she said to me, she saidso, let me get this straight.
You wouldn't just go up to thisperson and say, hey, I noticed
you're not doing this well,here's how you could be doing it
better.
And I said I said no, thatreally irks me.
That's not the approach that Iwould use personally, you know.
And so she smiled and westarted talking a lot more.
(09:35):
And that started me on myofficializing of my love for
agility.
And along the journey, you know, a couple of my mentors said to
me.
Well, you know you've beendoing a lot of these ceremonies
unknowingly and they come sonaturally to you.
It's about time you startofficializing your understanding
(09:59):
of this by getting you know theright certifications behind you
, so that the world canunderstand that you really are
passionate about this, andthat's what eventually led me to
where I am today.
Speaker 1 (10:15):
Kamal, you and I, we have a lot in common.
I think our outlooks are verysimilar.
Conversations we've had beforerecording this podcast, and so I
can identify strongly with that, and I don't know just my
mindset.
People just need to know.
Maybe this isn't everybody, thisisn't what everybody needs to
(10:41):
know, maybe this isn't everybody, this isn't what everybody
needs, but what I found is thatwhen a person is struggling,
they just need to knowsomebody's on their side,
Somebody's got their back,Somebody is coming along beside
them and they're not feeling allthe pressure and the weight of
themselves.
So that's my natural inclinationtoo is not to just go in and
give constructive criticismright but to actually understand
(11:06):
that person, because there maybe some underlying things that
have made that person who theyare, that contribute to some of
the struggles, and you can't getto the bottom of that unless
you really know the reason whythey're going through some of
those things.
So we can unpack that a littlebit in this episode a little bit
later.
But one of the things I wantedto get back to is our question
(11:29):
and our title of can anyone bean agile coach?
And you told me a story of anevent or a group that you went
to and that question came up andI thought it would be useful to
for the rest of our listenersout there to hear how that story
went.
Speaker 2 (11:45):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely yeah.
I was, uh, part of a group oncein an agile open space and, um,
the.
The actual topic at that momentwas something very relevant in
the agile world nowadays, whichis the topic was is agile dead?
And this was not very long agoit was about a year ago or so
(12:06):
and there were some really,really well decorated agile
coaches in this group peoplethat have far more experience
than myself as being an agilecoach in their title for many,
many years and we were talkingabout we were really unpacking
this concept of why people thinkagile is dead and what's dead
(12:27):
about agile.
And the one of the questionsthat I asked in this group.
As I was observing quietly, Iasked the group can anyone be an
Agile coach?
And there was a sense ofdiscomfort in the air and there
(12:49):
was.
There were some eyebrows raisedaround the room and most of
most of the attendees of thisgroup actually agreed that well,
yes, anyone can be an Agilecoach, you know.
And then they all sort ofreverted that question back at
(13:09):
me as the person who asked itand said well, why did you ask
that, kamal?
And I said well, I humblydisagree.
I don't think just anyone canbe an agile coach, and what we
sort of came to the conclusionof was you know the devil's in
the detail.
(13:29):
Words matter, right.
So we concluded thattechnically, it's like saying
can anyone play basketball?
Well, I mean, let's firstdefine basketball right, because
if, if, if, just by taking theball and, and you know, shooting
it at the hoop and getting itinto the hoop, if that means
(13:50):
that I, that I know how to playbasketball, then I'm a
basketball player.
But if the definition is moreyou know, is more elaborate and
there's great accuracies to youknow who actually is a
basketball player and who isn't,then the conversation becomes a
little bit more fruity, as, Ilike to say, concluded was well,
(14:21):
when you say can anyone be anAgile coach?
Well, sure, I suppose, dependingon one's understanding of what
an Agile coach is and thereinlies the sort of analog
description and my personaldescription of what I think a
great Agile coach or the rightAgile coach, right agile coach
should be is far more thananything anyone can teach anyone
(14:41):
else, because, in my opinion,there needs to be certain soft
skills and there needs to be acertain kind of human that we're
dealing with in terms ofwhether you can really be a
great Agile coach or not, and,as we all know, agile coaches
(15:02):
much like ice creams come inmany different flavors.
You've got certain flavors thattaste better than others, and
certainly that's true within ourcommunity as well.
We have certain Agile coachesthat are really, really great at
what they do, and then we haveother Agile coaches that are
more sort of binary and they'remore academic in what they do.
And then we have other Agilecoaches that are more sort of
binary and they're more academicin what they offer, and I
(15:24):
happen to be the type of Agilecoach that falls in the realm of
being far more analog and humanversus purely academic.
One of the things anotherexample that I can share with
you is I was in a anothermeeting with a couple of leaders
from a very well-knownorganization here in Southern
(15:47):
California, two of their topleaders, and one of the
questions I asked them abouttheir organization and their
environment is, I said,gentlemen, I have a very basic
question that I'm curious about,and my question is when I say
individuals and interactions,what does that mean to you guys,
(16:08):
for your organization?
And I swear, mark, there wasthe longest, most uncomfortable
silence that you could everthink about, and after a very
uncomfortable almost two and ahalf minutes of silence, they
said to me uh well, not reallysure what you mean by that.
(16:30):
Oh okay, well, that'sinteresting.
That tells me a lot.
Apparently, this is a companythat already has that considers
themselves an shop, and they'vebeen doing agile for a few years
.
And when I said what doesindividuals and interactions
mean to you, they had no ideawhat I was even talking about.
Speaker 1 (16:53):
So you were interacting with individuals by
asking them what doesindividuals and orgs get?
Speaker 2 (17:24):
caught up in the academic binary aspect of trying
to blanket agility over theirsystem without ever spending the
time to actually know whatthey're even attempting to do
ever spending the time toactually know what they're even
attempting to do.
Speaker 1 (17:45):
You know, it kind of reminds me it's one of those
things that's so familiar to youthat it's too familiar, it's
too close to you so you reallydon't explore it.
It's kind of like when you livein a city and you live there so
long, there are certain thingsto do in that city that, because
you've lived there so long, youjust take them for granted and
you never visit them yourselves.
Yeah, do you agree?
Oh?
Speaker 2 (18:04):
absolutely 100% yeah.
Speaker 1 (18:09):
Can anyone become an agile coach?
So I think we're of the samemindset.
Probably is what we're sayingCan anyone?
Now, there are different levelsof it.
There are good agile coaches,there are adequate agile coaches
, there are marginal agilecoaches and there are bad agile
coaches.
So to say that you're an anyonecan be an agile coach If it
(18:32):
falls anywhere in that spectrum,yes, you could land in there.
So, yes, you could be an agilecoach.
You just might be a bad one.
But to become a good agilecoach, what are some of the
qualities that you have seen andthat are near and dear to your
heart, kamal, that you look forfor a good agile coach?
Speaker 2 (19:01):
Well, mark, according to me, I mean, I think there's
a big human aspect thatdefinitely has to be there.
I think a great agile coachneeds to be a great human being
and needs to have a focus onmaking their fellow human beings
great as well.
Along that journey,transparency and accountability
are a couple of other words thatreally, really come to mind.
There's a couple of really funexamples that I can share with
(19:22):
you here.
I remember you know, I know I'mgoing to get a lot of pushback
on this, because you know peopleare going to tend to think like
oh, you know, this sounds quitejudgmental and there's a
certain sense of realism in forme personally, anyway when I
shared a couple of theseexamples right?
So one of them, I shared thiswith a group, with a team that I
(19:45):
was working with who was new toAgile, and I said to them
pretend that I gave you an appleand I told you that this was an
orange.
And for years and years andyears, I kept giving you an
apple and telling you here'sanother orange, how do you like
that orange?
And for years and years, yougot to know the fact that an
(20:08):
actual apple is called an orange.
And then, one day somebody saidto you hey, would you like an
orange like a real orange, anactual orange?
And you said to them that's notan orange.
I don't know what that is, butthis is what an orange is.
And you show them an apple andthe person laughs and says what
are you talking about?
That's an apple, that's not anorange.
And the person said, no, no, no, you got it all wrong.
(20:30):
This is an orange, because I'vebeen told this is an orange
like for years now.
And the fun thing that I likeabout that example is, you know,
if somebody explains the wrongthing to you and that becomes
your norm, then that sets thestage for the right type of
understanding for you, for thatthing, for the rest of your
(20:53):
useful time, that you're usingthat thing Right, and so that's.
This is kind of what's happenedwith agility right, with
individuals and teams and orgs.
There's been a misunderstandingof what agility is from the
get-go and that misunderstandinghas just continued down the
path and long into the journeyindividuals and teams and orgs
(21:18):
have got to thinking that thisactual apple is an orange and
they've got it all wrong fromthe get go.
And then when somebody givesthem an actual orange.
They're like oh, I don't likethe way this tastes, I don't
like this at all.
The second example of the twothat I mentioned that I can
share with you that comes tomind in terms of genuineness
(21:38):
here is I was working withanother agile coach once and we
were late one day it was likepast 6pm and I was walking him
out to his car in the parkinglot and he was a great agile
coach, as an agile coach goesvery academic and his
disposition not very human, andI got deeper insight as to why
(21:59):
that might have been thatparticular evening when I was
walking him out to his car and Inoticed that, in addition to
the outside of his car beingreally dirty and it looked like
it hadn't been washed in monthsand months, his car was a real
(22:21):
mess.
There was like food wrappersand half eaten food on the floor
and what looked like dirtylaundry and just it was just
really messy inside the car.
And that sort of you know gaveme some insight as to how this
what this person thinks aboutthemselves to begin with, and so
what that means to me, mark, isone of the other things I love
(22:42):
saying is, in order to be areally great agile coach, you
first need to be the right agilecoach to yourself.
You first need to look in themirror and do the hard work of
showing up as the greatestversion of yourself.
And if you have the honestconversation with the person you
(23:03):
see in the mirror and there'ssomething lacking there, then
that's the hard work to do first, before you come out into the
world and attempt to preach andteach agility when you know to
you it might just be nothingmore than a nine to five, a hat
(23:24):
that you put on at 9 am and takeoff at 5 or 6 pm.
And I personally the reason Iuse those words is because
that's not the kind of Agilecoach I am.
It's not a nine to five for me.
It's not a hat that I can takeoff and put back on.
Agility is a way of life for me.
It extends into my personalbeing.
(23:46):
It extends into my home, intomy lifestyle.
It extends into my friendships,everything I do.
It's a living, breathing thingfor me when I go out into the
Agile world.
Of course, the low-hangingfruit for me are all the
measurable metrics that orgslike to look at to make
(24:08):
processes and systems better.
But in addition to that.
I like doing a lot of theshadow work, which I call shadow
work, by working on the actualhumans and trying to make them
actual, better human beings.
And one side effect of that is,I can almost guarantee you, if
(24:29):
we work on Mark Metz, by makingMark Metz the greatest version
of himself, a great side effectof that will be whatever Mark
does will improve whatever Markdoes will improve.
Speaker 1 (24:43):
So, kamal, it's pretty fair to say I mean, I
don't know any successfulhypocrites out there, right?
Nobody really likes to hear themantra do as I say, not as I do
, right, exactly, I never usethat as a parent.
Never, ever, never use thatphrase as a parent.
(25:04):
Absolutely Amen, ever, neveruse that phrase as a parent.
Absolutely Amen to that.
But I love your genuinenessthat you bring.
I love how you care deeply forpeople and how you feel the need
to be open and honest andsharing both the successes as
well as the challenges.
I do want to pivot justslightly for one, because I want
(25:27):
to be sure we get to this, andyou and I talked you've got an
80-20 rule and I want you totell our listeners out there
what is this 80-20 rule thatyou've come up with?
Speaker 2 (25:39):
Sure, yeah, so my 80-20 rule is something that I
came up with personally many,many years ago and it's kind of
like it's a thing that I doevery morning when I wake up.
I wake up an hour before Iactually have to, so I can
consciously plan my day andthink about my day, no matter
how simple or complex it may be.
(26:01):
And the moment I turn theelectronic devices on, the
messages start coming in and thefires start coming in, and it
tends to absolutelyparasitically dominate your day
in terms of how you're going togo about handling that day.
I came up with my 80-20 ruleand what it simply means is I
(26:26):
spend 80% of my time and energyon the fires that need to be put
out, and I always try to spendat least 20% of my time and
energy on the systems that mighthave helped create those fires
to begin with, to help createenvironments where those fires
(26:50):
don't necessarily exist to beginwith.
And those fires can be personal.
They can be personal issues,they can be professional issues,
and that's what my 80, 20 ruleis.
And and there's another smallcaveat to that rule that I can
share so I'm a big uh racing fan, I'm a big motorsport fan, and
(27:12):
one of the things we say inracing is slow is accurate and
accurate becomes fast.
No-transcript.
(27:50):
Actually slow the processesdown and work on accuracy of
information received andaccuracy of the why behind the
desired results.
And what I like to tellleadership is you will
eventually.
You will initially see aslowing of things, and that's by
(28:13):
design by me, so that we canget a handle on the accuracy of
things.
And once the accuracy of thingsstart becoming better, and once
the accuracy of things startbecoming better, a fantastic
organic side effect of that willbe the speeding up of things
and that is that's directlyrelated to my 80-20 rule.
Speaker 1 (28:34):
So that's wonderful.
So I'm thinking about how I canapply that, and what's bitten
me on that, and so I'll justopenly share, is that I've been
looking for a job, I've beenunemployed and I've been looking
for my next role.
Unfortunately, I was in asituation where I was let go
(28:57):
rather unexpectedly not evenrather like extremely
unexpectedly and so my firstreaction was oh my gosh, I just
need to apply to as manypositions as I can, as fast as I
can.
You know, it's kind of like ina baseball game.
The thinking is well, the moretimes that I come to bat, the
greater of a chance I'm going tohave of getting a hit.
But if you think about that, ifyou're just literally running
(29:21):
up to the home plate and noteven getting your feet set and
you're just swinging okay,missed that one, now go run up
again and try another howeffective is that approach
really going to be?
And so I had to intentionallyslow myself down and say okay,
I'm going to stop just sendingthese blind applications out,
(29:44):
just hoping that one persondecides to give me a callback,
because it just wasn't working.
The data spoke for itself.
I wasn't getting any returncalls, and so it wasn't until I
was very intentional to buildrelationships and have strong
connections and focus my time onthose, not on let me just put
(30:05):
as many applications as possibleas I can in, but let me focus
on the ones that I feel like arereally worth the time and
investment in.
That's when I started seeingsuccess.
So, applying that 80-20 rulethat you talked about, I'll
second and third that that isabsolutely fantastic advice
because it's easy to get caughtup in the busyness of life, in
(30:29):
the busyness of work, and when amillion different requests are
coming your way.
And in our work, like insoftware, you've got so many
people requesting to have somany things done, how do you,
how do you shut out the noise?
And it's very important for youto not have to say yes to
everything but to say I hear allthese requests but I'm going to
(30:53):
say no to 90% of it.
The top 10%.
That's truly the most important.
That aligns with the companygoals, that's going to give
value to our customers.
We're going to focus on thatand I'm sorry for that 90% that
I'm and it may seem like I'msaying no to everything.
Just understand I am saying noto some things so that we can do
(31:14):
other things really well, andso that's what I get from your
80-20 rule.
And the other visual that I getis you and I talked about this
is you're in a boat and the boatis taking on water and you're
so busy bailing out water out ofthe boat that you're never
making time to try to fix thehole that's in the hull.
(31:38):
I don't have time for that.
I've just got to bail the water.
Yes, you need to spend that 80%bailing the water out, but at
some point you've got to givesome time to fix the root
problem or you're going to bebailing water forever.
Speaker 2 (31:50):
Absolutely, mark.
I love everything you said, andit's the right organizations
that understand this, thatunderstand agility, and the
organizations that didn't, thatgot into agility without
properly understanding it.
They're the ones that are justcontinuously focused on trying
(32:12):
to dump the water out of theboat without actually plugging
up the hole chaos that ensues.
Speaker 1 (32:29):
There are some people that really, I will say, thrive
, but they really welcome thatchaos, so much so that they're
really, you know, it's almostlike an endorphin rush for them,
because they get to swoop inand be the hero and to to save
everything, because they wereable to avert this crisis.
And so have you had situationslike that, where it seemed like
(32:51):
chaos was just a way of lifeuntil the Superman or Superwoman
came in to save the day.
And it's like, wait a minute,we're falling into a pattern
here.
Speaker 2 (32:59):
Yeah, oh my God, that totally hits home.
Yeah, oh my God, that totallyhits home.
Yeah, there's examples that Ican share that I've been in,
where you know there's people,that sort of individuals, that
self-sabotage their environmentsjust so they can create a
reality where they're alwaysseen as the magical firefighter,
(33:22):
where they're always seen asthe magical firefighter.
This is partly what I mean byshadow work when I say there's
something deeper about thosetypes of individuals that
deserves to be extrapolated inan effort to help create better,
long-term environments for them.
(33:44):
Like, why does that kind of aperson feel that way?
Why do they feel like theyalways need to be the magical
firefighter and why are theysabotaging you know,
inadvertently sabotagingenvironments and systems so that
they remain on that list ofmagical firefighters?
So, yeah, I can definitelyrelate to that.
Speaker 1 (34:06):
So definitely not the type person that is going to
make your team, make yourorganization, make your group
better.
You have a sense that it's allabout them, right, right?
Speaker 2 (34:18):
Right, absolutely, yeah, and there's something's
something you know, I I I alsominored in psychology and it's
very fascinating to me when Isubjectively step outside of my
role as as a coach or a scrummaster and I think about
individuals like that at apsychological level and it it
shifts my paradigm in terms ofhow I approach people like that
(34:44):
and that's very meaningful to me.
Also, the psychologicalcomponent of my take on agility
is something very powerful to meas well.
Speaker 1 (34:54):
You know the ugly.
Truth is, though, kamal, thatsometimes those people, they do
rise to the top because they areseen as as being valuable, as
being indispensable, as beingneeded, and so it's hard to it's
hard to deal with that, so howhave you dealt with that in the
(35:16):
past, in a in a positive, ormaybe even in a in a in a
critical manner?
How have you dealt with withthat type of situation in the
past?
Speaker 2 (35:25):
Well, that's interesting.
It reminds me of a question Iwas asked by an individual once
who said to me where does anagile coach in the organization
ascend to?
What's the next position for anagile coach?
And I said well, that's a veryloaded question.
It depends on the organization.
(35:47):
It depends on you know their,their size.
There's many factors there.
And this person said well, Iwould tend to think the next
level would be CEO.
And I got a little bit of achuckle out of that.
And this person said why do youlaugh?
I said well, I think I humblysay I couldn't disagree more,
(36:14):
because a great CEO and a greatagile coach are two very
different individuals.
They've gotten to where theyare really really differently.
If they've done it correctly,and how they see a given
challenge are two very differentways and I don't think, in my
opinion, that they'reinterchangeable.
Now, if you have the wrong CEO,the wrong type of CEO and the
(36:38):
wrong type of Agile coach, sure,those might be able to be
interchangeable, but if you'vegot the right type of CEO and
the right type of Agile coach, Ithink those are two vastly
different positions that arefueled by two vastly different
mindsets.
Speaker 1 (36:59):
So, kamal, our time is coming rapidly to an end here
.
I want to bring it back to ouroriginal question and our title
for today's episode and ask youso tell us again, maybe give us
a summary.
Can anyone be an Agile coach?
Speaker 2 (37:16):
So, mark, I would say the short answer is yes.
If we say can anyone be anAgile coach?
Yeah sure, anyone can be an anagile coach.
Yeah sure, anyone can be anagile coach.
But, as with many things inlife, the devil's in the details
If you really want to be agreat agile coach and a
legendary agile coach.
I think the conversation is abit deeper than just a yes or a
(37:39):
no, because I feel, in myopinion, a great Agile coach
needs to have many more humanattributes than just an academic
understanding of Agile.
Speaker 1 (37:52):
Kamal, if our listeners out there want to get
in touch with you, what's thebest way for them to do that?
Speaker 2 (37:57):
LinkedIn.
I'm on LinkedIn.
If you just type in my fullname, Kamal Kalra, you can find
me on LinkedIn.
That would be the best place.
Speaker 1 (38:06):
All right, as always, we'll put a link to that in the
show notes to make it easy forour listeners to get in touch
with you, kamal, thank you somuch for coming on the show,
really enjoyed it.
I just feel like there's a lotof commonality between us and
it's just been a pleasure havingyou on the show, buddy.
Speaker 2 (38:27):
The pleasure is all mine, Mark.
It's always wonderful toconnect with you.
Speaker 1 (38:29):
Thank you so much for this time and space, and that
brings it into another episodeof the Agile Within.
We'll see everybody next time.
Thanks for joining us foranother episode of the agile
within.
If you haven't already, pleasejoin our LinkedIn page to stay
in touch.
Just search for the agilewithin and please spread the
(38:53):
word with your friends andcolleagues until next time.
This has been your host, MarkMetz.
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