The Idealcast with Gene Kim by IT Revolution
Business:Management
In this episode of The Idealcast, Gene Kim sits down with Team of Team’s coauthor and CEO of Crosslead, David Silverman, and Director of Research and Development at CrossLead, Jessica Reif, for a two-part interview.
In Team of Teams, David and his coauthors explained how the Joint Special Forces Task Force in Iraq was struggling to achieve its mission, and how they turned it into a success. Their experience led to a deep and critical rethinking of almost everything in US military services and in the commercial industry. Now at CrossLead, David works with Jessica Reif to continue researching and codifying these practices into their management framework.
In Part 1 of the interview, Gene and his guests discuss the structure and dynamics of the transformation described in Team of Teams and how these leadership characteristics are needed today in the new ways of working. This leadership framework reinforces the concepts of common purpose, shared consciousness, empowerment, and trust within organizations to help teams work together more effectively in complex environments, particularly when they have to continuously adapt to change. Stay tuned for Part 2.
BIO:
David Silverman
Entrepreneur, bestselling author, and former Navy SEAL, David Silverman is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of CrossLead, Inc. Founded in 2016, CrossLead is a technology company whose leadership and management framework is used by leaders and companies around the globe.
In 2015, David co-authored the New York Times bestselling leadership and management book Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement for a Complex World. As a thought leader on culture change, high-performing teams, and leadership, he is a frequent guest speaker for business leaders and conferences around the globe.
After his 13-year career as a Navy SEAL, David and a group of like-minded friends sought to reinvent the way the world does business in today’s dynamic environment. Based on their collective service in the world’s premier Special Operations Units, they devised a holistic leadership and management framework called CrossLead. Today, CrossLead is a leading framework for scaling agile practices across the enterprise. Implemented in some of the world’s most successful organizations, CrossLead drives faster time-to-market, dramatic increases in productivity, improvement in employee engagement, and more predictable business results.
Prior to CrossLead, David co-founded the McChrystal Group where he served as CEO for five years. A graduate of the United States Naval Academy, David served as a Navy SEAL from 1998-2011. He graduated Basic Underwater Demolition School (BUD/S) Class 221 in 1999 as the Honor Man. David deployed six times around the world, including combat deployments to Iraq, Afghanistan, and Southeast Asia where he received three Bronze Stars and numerous other commendations.
David serves on the advisory board of the Headstrong Project and is a member of the Young Presidents’ Organization. David lives in Washington, DC, with his wife, Hollis, and their two children. He maintains an active lifestyle as a waterman and runner.
Twitter: @dksilverman
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-silverman-648035a/
Website: https://www.crosslead.com/
Jess Reif
Jessica Reif is the Director of Research & development for CrossLead Inc, where she leverages the latest management research to develop new approaches to increasing business agility for CrossLead’s clients. She leads CrossLead’s education efforts and has developed training programs that have been delivered to over 20,000 leaders. Previously, Jessica served as a Product Delivery Manager for applied machine learning and engineering teams at Oracle Data Cloud, where her role was to facilitate agile development among a team-of-teams. Jessica holds a B.S. in Industrial and Labor Relations from Cornell University. In her free time, she enjoys golfing, baking, and hiking.
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Jess_Reif
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessica-reif/
Website: https://www.crosslead.com/
YOU’LL LEARN ABOUT:
RESOURCES
TIMESTAMPS
[00:08] Intro
[03:26] Meet David Silverman
[05:50] Meet Jessica Rief
[06:59] Writing down his experiences to teach
[12:58] Who are David’s students and what he was teaching
[14:05] Applying these techniques to COVID-19
[17:54] Comparing David’s experience to General Stanley McChrystal’s experience
[23:30] Remembering Defense Information Systems Agency CTO Dawn Meyerriecks’ org chart
[25:30] Getting out of own way
[28:31] Top differences in what David was trying to achieve
[33:46] Compare and contrast the leadership characteristics
[37:24] Jess reflecting on changes required at various levels of leaderships
[39:58] A look at structural changes or lack thereof
[47:50] The chessmaster vs the gardner
[49:18] Changing the middle management
[56:28] DevOps Enterprise Summit Las Vegas - Virtual
[58:04] The frozen middle
[1:00:06] Advice to define the work
[1:06:10] Ops Intelligence Update Call
[1:15:29] Create concrete manifestation of the vision
[1:23:30] The dynamics of having the Ops Intelligence Update Call
[1:26:03] The need for middle management to augment the process
[1:30:55] Gene’s favorite part of Team of Teams
[1:34:43] Creating these relationships in a large scale
[1:39:55] Successful execution drives strategy
[1:41:51] How to reach David and Jessica
[1:43:06] Outro
Behind The State of DevOps Research, Favorite Aha Moments, and Where They Are Now: Interviews with The DevOps Handbook Coauthors (Part 2 of 2: Dr. Nicole Forsgren and Jez Humble)
Personal DevOps Aha Moments, the Rise of Infrastructure, and the DevOps Enterprise Scenius: Interviews with The DevOps Handbook Coauthors (Part 1 of 2: Patrick Debois and John Willis)
Simplifying The Inventory Management Systems at the World’s Largest Retailer Using Functional Programming Principles with Scott Havens
(Dispatch from the Scenius) Fabulous Fortunes, Fewer Failures, and Faster Fixes from Functional Fundamentals: Scott Havens’ 2019 DevOps Enterprise Summit Talk with Commentary from Gene Kim
Open Source Software as a Triumph of Information Hiding, Modularity, and Creating Optionality with Dr. Gail Murphy
Exploring COVID-19 and Just-in-Time Supply Chains, Chaos Engineering, and the Soviet Centrally Planned Economy with Dr. Steve Spear
Unleashing Human Creativity To Deliver 8K+ COVID Vaccines Per Day and Improve the Overall Healthcare System with Trent Green
Patterns of Generative Cultures: How They Can Be Destroyed and the Importance of Trust with Dr. Ron Westrum
The Sociology and Typologies of Organizations, and Technical Maestros with Dr. Ron Westrum
Leadership, Radical Delegation, And Integrated Problem Solving with Admiral John Richardson
Leadership Development and Balancing Creativity and Control with Admiral John Richardson
The Rise of Knowledge Work, and its Structure and Dynamics with Jeffrey Fredrick
The Principles and Practices Behind Team of Teams (Part 2) with David Silverman & Jessica Reif
(Dispatch from the Scenius) David Silverman’s DevOps Enterprise Summit London 2020 Talk
The Surprising Implications of Architecting for Generality with Michael Nygard
Dispatch from the Scenius: Tempo, Maneuverability, and Initiative Subtitle: Micheal Nygard’s 2016 DevOps Enterprise Summit Presentation with Commentary from Gene Kim
Architecture as the Organizing Logic for Components, and the Means for their Construction with Michael Nygard
The Topography of Problems, and the Importance of Distributed Problem Solving with Dr. Steve Spear
(Dispatch from the Scenius) Dr. Steve Spear’s 2019 and 2020 DOES Talks on Rapid, Distributed, Dynamic Learning
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