Chris Ford

🎭 Hidden dynamics: The #Coaching Moment I Almost Missed There was a moment, about three weeks into this engagement, when I almost made the wrong call. The team was stuck. Again. Same conversation, third time. A UX decision that should’ve taken 10 minutes was dragging across three time zones and four roles. My instinct? 💡 Facilitate. Frame the options. Push for a decision. But something in the background, the tight shoulders on video, the side-Slack messages made me pause. So I asked: “Who’s not speaking right now, that usually is?” Turns out, the most junior developer had flagged the design issue a week earlier, quietly, in a thread no one saw. They didn’t bring it up again, because “someone more senior had already taken over the thread.” That moment hit me quite hard. Not because I almost missed it, but because I realized how easy it is to coach the work, and miss the system. Here’s the uncomfortable truth: Distributed teams don’t fail because people aren’t smart or committed. They fail because we normalize micro-silences, invisible hierarchies, and time zones as excuses. And sometimes, even as coaches, we play into it. So I’ve started asking myself this more often: “Who holds insight, but not permission, in this team?” That’s where the real leverage is. That’s where the coaching starts. Better Change #RealCoaching #TeamDynamics #DistributedTeams

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We had a great discussion during lunch at #LeSS2025 conference about #LeSSworks removing middle managers. Here's my take on this. 𝗟𝗲𝗦𝗦 𝗱𝗼𝗲𝘀𝗻'𝘁 𝗿𝗲𝗺𝗼𝘃𝗲 𝗺𝗶𝗱𝗱𝗹𝗲 𝗺𝗮𝗻𝗮𝗴𝗲𝗿𝘀. 𝗜𝘁 𝗿𝗲𝗺𝗼𝘃𝗲𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘀𝗵𝗼𝗿𝘁𝗰𝘂𝘁𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗺𝗮𝗱𝗲 𝗺𝗶𝗱𝗱𝗹𝗲 𝗺𝗮𝗻𝗮𝗴𝗲𝗿𝘀 𝗻𝗲𝗰𝗲𝘀𝘀𝗮𝗿𝘆. Most LeSS adoption stories sound like: "We flattened the hierarchy and now teams coordinate directly with senior leadership." But here's what actually got removed: 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝘀𝗵𝗼𝗿𝘁𝗰𝘂𝘁 𝘄𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝘀𝗼𝗺𝗲𝗼𝗻𝗲 𝗲𝗹𝘀𝗲 𝗵𝗼𝗹𝗱𝘀 𝗰𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗲𝘅𝘁 𝗮𝗰𝗿𝗼𝘀𝘀 𝘁𝗲𝗮𝗺𝘀. Middle managers used to know what seven teams were building and why it mattered. Now every team has to hold that context themselves. You can't outsource knowing anymore. 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝘀𝗵𝗼𝗿𝘁𝗰𝘂𝘁 𝘄𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝗽𝗿𝗶𝗼𝗿𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗲𝘀 𝗮𝗿𝗿𝗶𝘃𝗲 𝘁𝗿𝗮𝗻𝘀𝗹𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗱. Middle managers used to sit between executive strategy and team execution, turning "improve customer retention" into something a team could actually build. Now teams sit in the room with stakeholders who have competing definitions of what retention even means. 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝘀𝗵𝗼𝗿𝘁𝗰𝘂𝘁 𝘄𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲 "𝘀𝗼𝗺𝗲𝗼𝗻𝗲 𝘄𝗶𝗹𝗹 𝗲𝘀𝗰𝗮𝗹𝗮𝘁𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁." Middle managers used to carry problems upward and decisions downward. Now if your team's work conflicts with another team's goals, you negotiate directly. No intermediary. No protective buffer. 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝘀𝗵𝗼𝗿𝘁𝗰𝘂𝘁 𝘄𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝗹𝗼𝗰𝗮𝗹 𝘀𝘂𝗰𝗰𝗲𝘀𝘀 𝗺𝗲𝗮𝗻𝘁 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝘄𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝗱𝗼𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗳𝗶𝗻𝗲. Middle managers used to shield teams from system-level questions. Now you're asked: "Did the product actually improve? Did we learn something that changes our strategy?" And the answer might be no, even if your team delivered everything. Most teams can't carry that load. So they recreate the shortcuts informally: senior engineers who "facilitate" but actually broker all cross-team decisions, product owners who become mini-executives translating strategy, one person becoming the hub for all coordination while everyone else routes through them. Same cognitive outsourcing. New vocabulary. But that's not failure. That's the diagnostic. When teams rebuild the middle layer, they're revealing where the actual constraint lives. The vertigo tells you what you were actually optimized for before LeSS arrived. The question isn't "can we remove the layer?" The question is "can we carry what the layer used to carry for us?"

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There is a lot of confusion about explicit (visible) vs. implicit (hidden): dependencies and hand-offs. While the former are easy to identify, the ladder - not so much. For some reason, and unfortunately, they are not given as much consideration. A functional team, made of I-shaped developers usually has: >>>hard cross-team dependencies >>>lots of explicit hand-offs >>>very long Cycle Time, per PBI >>>high, end-of-sprint integration risks >>>low learning opportunities, due to a structural (team) separation A cross-functional team made of I-shaped developers STILL has: >>>some intra-team dependencies >>>some implicit hand-offs >>>overall, shorter Cycle Time, per PBI >>>lower end-of-sprint integration risks >>>higher learning opportunities Finally, a cross-functional team made of T-shaped (sometimes, even M-shaped) developers has: >>>no hard dependencies but rather, opportunities to swarm >>>no hand-offs >>>shortest Cycle Time >>>lowest integration risks >>>highest learning opportunities To improve from "left to right" requires not just team restructuring a.k.a. #organizationaldesign improvements. It also requires revisiting #compensation /incentives, promotion and #careerpath areas (KSTS Consulting). Notably, cross-functional teams give rise to product/feature teams, whereas functional teams remain, for them most part, component/application teams.

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