Sebastian Krempel: So, so we have a question, there’s something coming in. What’s yours? So um the question is, uh might be easy, um question is um how you visualize tactics, tactics, yes. So if you have an, I don’t know, company or whatever, and you’d like to visualize your tactical tactics situations, so how you do this? Do we use this on a board, do we use just digital? I don’t know, whatever, yeah.

Gereon Hermkes: So I think that’s actually a tough one. Um so the question is, do you actually want to visualize tactics or do you prefer to visualize the positions, right? So if you think of a computer game or a war movie or whatever, you have a bird’s eye perspective at some point of time and you see the Roman Legions standing there and waiting to clash with the enemy. And I think you have to have that bird’s eye view first of like what’s the position of the players or the units, and then that’s the foundation for actually developing tactics. So I think that’s first of all, that’s a very good question because a lot of people don’t like draw the picture for themselves, so I think that’s something that’s not really being talked about, so I’m sure there’s if you Google, there’s going to be a lot of systems that actually deal with um political positions and strategic positions, but as with a lot of leadership topics, nobody actually ever tells you that, right? So either you know it or you don’t know it, and then sure, if you’re lucky, maybe you have done a degree in in university that had something.

Sebastian Krempel: Yeah.

Gereon Hermkes: So you’re a developer, so you probably didn’t have it. But right, if you do political science or maybe you did business strategy and you at least have some inkling of what you might be able to do. So I think it’s very important to actually realize that there is such a thing, you can kind of draw a map of what’s going on. I personally wouldn’t draw the tactics, I would draw the positions, or like first of all, I would identify the players, right? So who’s actually in this situation? And there’s different systems, and in the agile world, systems thinking is a big part, right? So that’s not necessarily really like a political influence map or anything like that, but um you try to look at the whole system as a whole and look at the interrelation between the different parts, and you can just do that for political players in different situations and then like kind of map that out. Um I always want to say because politic politics has often often has a bad name, and I think that might be culturally contextual, but um so you know when we’re talking about political stuff, people often think about like Machiavellian evils, you know what evil clients are best. But the fact of the matter is that in leadership and in Scrum, like almost everything is political, right? If you don’t know how to play the game, you are going to lose. And so for me it didn’t come naturally, I didn’t like it, and at some level I still don’t like it, but in the end, if you want your team to win, you know, if you want to achieve the mission, one of you on your team better have some political skills, hopefully. Yes, and and ideally it’s the Product Owner, and he or she is so fit at it that you don’t even have to worry about it. But maybe they aren’t, and at the same time it’s always good to have like more than one person being capable at it, right? And so I think that the difference is like how you actually use that skill, you know? You can use it in that mean-spirited way, you’re just destroying, playing a zero sum some game where you’re just taking stuff away from other people, but you can actually try to achieve good missions, right? If you’re politically smart, you can actually achieve good stuff. So it’s kind of it’s kind of like a weapon, right? So you can use it for good and for both for bad. And you know, if I’m in trouble and a policeman comes to help me, I kind of like to have have them have a gun, right? So I don’t want him to be completely helpless and we’re just two people becoming the victims maybe of a crime. So I I sometimes want good people to have the right weapons, and politics is such a weapon. So what I would do is or first try, I then try to identify who are the players in this situation, right? And most often they’re not, these situations tend to be stable over a time. So you can like do always do it at heart, but usually you are in a setting, in a corporation, in in a sports team or whatever, so you have a set number of players, and we’re just write them down on a piece of paper and be very careful with that piece of paper, nobody can ever see that, right? So it’s not only that they can that they could kind of almost read your mind when they see it. Just the fact of somebody seeing you do this is a very bad sign because then they’re exactly going to assign this, „Oh, he’s he’s scheming, he has his evil plans ready,“ right? And so even though you might have the best intentions and you’re just trying to protect a co-worker for example, and you realize, „Well, this is actually a political situation, maybe I need to think about this before I start running around and talking to executives,“ maybe let’s just step back and do that. So you might have the best intentions, but people will just assume if they see this piece of paper from you that you’re evil. And so this is, I think this is one of the other reasons why you rarely see that out in the world, because those managers that are successful they either keep it hidden or they just do it in their mind, right? So the fact that you put it on paper should be a transitory state, and at some point of time you should just have have done it so often that it’s in your mind and you can just arrange this.

Sebastian Krempel: Yeah, correct, but sometimes it’s getting complex, right? So then you have to visualize something because then you are in the, I don’t know, you have a call or whatever and you’d like to see where are your players so to decide the right who is it right or is it wrong? Do you should right get get left or get right? I don’t know what happens exactly.

Gereon Hermkes: And I think once you have that, it’s important because we’re talking about system thinking, just as a parallel. The important part is not zooming in on the players and analyzing everything about them, even though you kind of want to do that to a certain degree, you want to look at the relationships between the parts, right? So you want to know who’s actually allied with whom, who likes each other, who hates each other, you know, who’s supporting someone?

Sebastian Krempel: Yes, yes.

Gereon Hermkes: And as always, we want to go deeper, we want to do the root cause analysis, why are they actually allied, you know? What’s the reason? Is it because they want to make more sales? Is it because they just hate the guts of the other person? What’s actually behind that? Because once you know that, then you’re actually in a position to influence that, right? So if you if you know, „Well, this person thinks if they are allying with a third party then they get then they meet their sales targets,“ for example, maybe there’s a way that you can provide them with the sales success that they need and you can break up that alliance. And actually in Sun Tzu, the first and one of the best strategists, like one of his first points is, „Break up the enemies‘ alliances,“ right? Because it is really shady to be fighting all alone, right? So it’s important to know why people are allied, why they are enemies, stick deeper. And and it’s very I think this kind of map is just a starting point to actually dig deep to find out what’s going on, what’s the maybe psychological, maybe political, maybe emotional reason for people acting the way they do and having the relationships. And as always, and this is a very psychological view, but always listen to the language people right? Because language, we can’t look into the brains, that’s kind of starting with Neuroscience, you know, neural imaging, it’s kind of starting to change, but we’re not on a high level yet, and because the brain is just such a black box, such a mystery, and you know like the little stuff that we can see right now, it’s influencing everything and it’s changing everything, right? Um but we’re still at a very early level, it’s it’s early days in that regard, but the language almost always betrays the thoughts, right? So and that’s why you have talk therapy for example, because the language is a medium that you can influence and work with and read. So always listen to the language that people are using, especially if it’s like overly aggressive, it’s kind of deviating from the norm. So it’s very you notice an intimacy of people when they’re talking, „Well, maybe they have a common history,“ and where you you can hear a sharpness in in there. So dig deeper into that and notice it if somebody uses special words or derogatory terms or someone else, and try to try to get into that and also kind of notice their little triggers, right? So I I think was yesterday or the day before, I we were talking on the phone and I was considering buying a curved monitor for the first time, so not a, I’m not a flat um screen for my PC but one that’s curved inside. And you said something and I asked you about it, and he said, „Well, I don’t really know, it’s blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,“ and then you said, „But I’m too old for that, I’m too old school for that kind of stuff, and people have to know that I’m,“ what like, „How old are you? Yeah, 30.“ So I’m 12, I’ve got 12 years on you, and the minute you said that that you owe too old for it, so you don’t care about because you’re still young, but I but I’m older, so for me I have to stay relevant. So the minute you say that, I hit the buy now button on Amazon and I didn’t even listen to the rest of what you were saying, right?

Sebastian Krempel: Great, so you’re doing good.

Gereon Hermkes: No, I can’t get this complacent, I can’t become this so outdated because, let’s be honest, I I’m older than you but I’m only 42, so I’m probably going to be 70 years old if I start like losing the ball right now, you know? If I’m falling behind the curve now, what’s going to happen in 10 years? If I start lagging now, I’m going to be in real deep trouble pretty soon. I can’t do that, so I have to stay on it, and if people are using curved screens, even though I don’t understand what’s going on, I’m going to do it because you know, right? And so this is something that not everyone does and you couldn’t see it because we were on the phone, but if I were to notice something like this, well you kind of know how to get me now, right? You just have to frame it in a way that makes me look old and suddenly I’m doing your bidding, right? And I’m I’m exaggerating, right? But people have these kind of triggers. So if I notice something, I don’t have a piece of paper, but I remember it, right? So or everything that is kind of out of the norm, that people react very positively towards something or very negatively. So for example, some people might get triggered by feeling used by someone else, right? So I just make a mental note of that. And none of this, and I know that when I say it and look at your face, it sounds so calculating, but it’s actually not, right? I just I just try to notice what’s going on around me, right? So someone else looks at nature and notes as well, „This little bird has like a red red front area or something,“ right? So they’re very acute cued into seeing what’s going on in nature. And I think in our jobs, if you’re a leader, it’s paramount that you are attuned to what’s going on emotionally, psychologically with people, what’s going on politically, and so um that’s something that I try to make note of. And one last thing: so if you have this map, you kind of know what people want, how they could relate to each other, how they are triggered, for example, in a positive in a negative way, almost always because we’re not we’re not living in wartime, right? So it’s not it’s not that often that we really have zero sum games, right? If I gain something and you lose something, people always act like it, but that’s not really the truth, right? A lot of the limitations are just in our mind. We live in such abundant times, and this will change at some point of time, but right now it’s such a bond, there’s such abundancy that we can all prosper at the same time, and actually if we help each other, I think that um everything everyone is going to be better off. And so one of the main tools that I use when I have this map in my head is I try to align people better that weren’t aligned because often there is some form of misunderstanding between the parties, um they are not seeing the whole picture because a lot of people aren’t doing this mapping, right? So they’re not they’re just reacting, they’re just, you know, like driving in the blind, they’re driving in the fork, they don’t have the lights turned on and they they just react, they don’t know what’s going on. But as soon as you have this clarity, often you can see what the others aren’t seeing, and then you can ask them, for example, „Did you realize that this other party there actually providing you with something very beneficial that if if you guys keep on fighting you’re going to be in trouble yourself, and isn’t there a way that we can maybe align you two guys better by doing something?“ Right? And so actually I think you can take this to the dark side, so to speak, but actually this this gives you a way to see what other people aren’t and then use it in a in a light way to um make people align themselves better and understand each other better. So one aspect to also keep in mind once you have mapped out the players is to actually look at how influential are they, right? So maybe if you if you draw little bubbles with the names of the persons or the departments or whatever, maybe indicate how much strength there is in their influence because it’s not going to be the same in all directions, right? So you might have a person that, let’s even have a CEO of a company, and he or she is obviously very influential, but that doesn’t mean that they can impose their will to every nook and cranny of the organization, right? So they generally have a lot of force coming out of them, so you might drop thick arrows coming out of their little area on your map, but it’s really important to nuance it and to see who has influenced in what situation over whom. So I think I would also address the strength of their influence and also a very important thing, a very important part of it is, what’s your relationship to them, right? Because this map at this point is somewhat neutral, but if you want to influence somebody, you got to have a relationship, right? So um if they already hate your guts, well maybe if you need them, that’s going to become difficult. And as in many things, the rule is, „Dig your well before you’re thirsty.“ If you need to dig a well and you’re already dying of thirst, well it’s going to be too late, right? So build the foundation, the relationship that you can then later go on and ask them about something, ask for something. You need to do that well ahead of time. And this is super calculating, right? But if you want to help make your team succeed, then you need to map everything out in the beginning, and then you need to identify who is going to be necessary at some point of time. And maybe you don’t like that person and that’s your choice, and then you can decide to not build a relationship with the person, but that might also mean that you will need that person later on, or actually your team needs it, and you didn’t build the relationship, and suddenly you can’t deploy your systems or you can’t get the interest that you need.

Sebastian Krempel: Yeah, correct.

Gereon Hermkes: Can hire new team member even though you guys are doing overtime, and then you’re going to feel the pain, and even worse, at that point it’s going to be obvious to everybody that you need that person’s help and suddenly you’re sucking up to him, right? And it’s too late, and it’s even more unlikely that you’re going to do it then, right? So it’s it’s really advantageous to have that map on paper or in your mind and see, „Well, who do I actually need to have a relationship?“ because then you can build it before you need it, and it’s not that obvious. Check. So…

Sebastian Krempel: Remember, nothing changes until you do. Correct, but the good news is you are ready. Good. All right. Peace out.