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From YouTube: Crowdsourcing Empathy: Humanizing an organization using Lean, Agile, and DevOps - Gautham Pallapa
Description
Crowdsourcing Empathy: Humanizing an organization using Lean, Agile, and DevOps - Gautham Pallapa, VMware
Speakers: Gautham Pallapa
Making empathy part of an organization's culture has to be organic, and leadership cannot mandate empathy as a core tenet for the organization. I firmly believe that the best way to start the empathy engine within a workplace to crowdsource ideas that improved people's quality of life in the organization. In this session, I tell Project Athena's story, an initiative I spearheaded to improve empathy, leadership, collaboration, and sharing within an organization. I will share successes, failures, celebrations, and emotions that my teams and I experienced, phenomenal results that we were able to accomplish over a short period of time, and how we succeeded in making empathy a core tenet of our organizational culture through Lean, Agile, and DevOps. I dive into the need for psychological safety and how innovative and joyful work can be in a generative culture.
For more Continuous Delivery Foundation content, check out our blog: https://cd.foundation/blog/
A
The
world
has
completely
changed
over
the
last
two
years.
We
have
shifted
from
a
physical
interactive
world
to
something
that
has
become
very
contactless
digital
and
remote,
and
there
are
companies
that
are
trying
to
adopt
this
new
way
of
working
and
interacting
with
customers,
and
that
has
caused
so
much
of
stress
and
anxiety
for
them.
In
addition
to
that,
most
of
the
remote
workforce
is
now
remote
and
they
are
not
just
working
from
home,
but
they
also
have
their
loved
ones.
A
A
We
need
empathy,
I'm
gautham
palapa
and
I'm
an
executive
advisor
at
vmware,
where
I
focus
on
business
transformations
for
enterprises
that
are
trying
to
convert
to
a
contactless
digital
and
a
remote
world.
Today.
I
am
extremely
excited
and
happy
to
talk
about
empathy,
which
is
a
huge
passionate
topic
of
mine.
A
A
This
kind
of
empathy
doesn't
require
any
kind
of
emotional
engagement.
It's
a
very
rational
and
independent
approach,
and
a
lot
of
people
who
are
in
a
negotiating
role
or
who
are
sales
executives
or
maybe
in
the
field
or
executive
leaders,
are
very,
very
prone
to
using
cognitive
empathy
in
their
day-to-day
life.
A
A
But
for
me
my
guiding
principle
for
empathy
is
that
when
I
can
look
at
a
human
being-
and
I
can
put
myself
in
their
shoes
if
I
can
understand
the
pain
and
the
stress
that
they're
going
through-
and
this
is
the
most
important
part
if
I
can
value
their
happiness
about
my
own
and
do
something
about
their
pain.
That's
when
I
really
feel
I'm
impacted.
A
So
here
are
some
basic
benefits
of
empathy.
When
you
have
empathy,
you
have
trust
and
respect.
When
you
have
trust
and
respect
within
your
teams,
you
have
team
burning,
you
have
collaboration,
you
have
communication
and
as
a
result
of
that,
your
psychological
safety
increases
and
when
people
feel
really
safe,
they're
able
to
take
risks
and
when
they
take
risks
they
can
experiment
better
and
they're
comfortable
with
failure,
and
so
their
innovation
increases
and
that
overall
breaks
down
the
silos.
A
A
A
It
took
around
35
days
on
average,
for
requirements
and
design
to
actually
come
back
to
the
development
and
the
testing
teams,
and
this
was
like,
after
interactions
with
the
customer
and
going
back
and
forth,
and
there
was
a
considerable
waste
there
from
a
dentist
perspective,
there
was
a
constant
friction
between
them.
It
was
in
us
versus
them
mentality,
dells,
would
just
throw
something
over
the
wall
and
expect
the
test.
A
Just
to
test,
and
then
whenever
testers
would
open
bugs
the
dells
would
just
say,
work
just
works
as
designed
or
works
on
my
laptop,
I
don't
know
what
the
problem
is,
and
so
there's
a
constant
friction.
That's
going
on
over
there
and
then
in
after
it
passed
all
those
various
things
we
had
the
change
advisory
board.
We
had
manual
oversight
committees
where
we
had
to
assign
our
names
to
every
single
release.
So
if
something
went
bump
or
something
went
wrong,
it
gave
in
the
concept
of
one
throat
to
choke
and
deployment
was
a
nightmare.
A
A
A
In
addition
to
that,
we
had
high
attrition
because
of
all
these
pressures
and
because
of
all
these
various
interactions
and
and
undercurrents
within
the
organization
we
had
high
attrition
of
up
to
42
percent
in
some
departments
had
a
very
low
and
enps
score.
When
I
took
over
this
entire
organization,
I
my
first
step
was
to
do
an
enterprise
nps
survey
and
we
had
a
minus
18,
which
was
extremely
low.
A
There
was
hardly
any
automation,
I
want
to
say
that
maybe
we
had
15
percent
of
it
off
the
stlc,
automated
in
some
way,
shape
or
form,
and
then
the
code
was
extremely
unstable.
We
had
at
least
one
sub
bar
per
week,
and
because
of
that,
we
had
constant
executive
oversight.
Deployments
were
always
on
friday
nights,
and
so,
if
something
went
bump
that
meant
that
there
was
no
weekend
for
all
of
us.
We
had
to
have
all
hands
on
deck,
and
that
was
the
mentality
within
that
organization.
A
A
My
next
belief
is
that
strategic
disruption
leads
to
progress.
It's
not
disruption
for
the
sake
of
disruption,
but
you
want
to
be
very
strategic
about
what
you
are
introducing
into
your
environment.
That
will
lead
to
progress,
and
these
are
my
two
fundamental
benefits,
and
these
are
my
guideposts
that
I've
used
throughout
to
help
transform
organizations.
A
So
the
first
thing
that
I
did
was,
I
talked
to
my
managers,
and
I
said
we
need
to
have
a
work-life
balance,
we're
having
too
much
of
unplanned
work,
and
so
I
sent
a
memo
to
everyone,
and
I
said
that
there
is
no
weekend
work
or
overtime
work
without
my
approval
and
the
approval
has
to
be
given
through
the
directors
of
the
organization
where
they
had
to
justify
why
this
overtime
or
this
weekend
work
was
needed.
What
I
was
trying
to
do
was
trying
to
get
the
patterns
or
trying
to
see.
A
A
We
do
process
analysis
and
flow
and
look
at
how
we
can
modernize
the
process,
but
this
is
slow
and
it
takes
time,
but
this
was
the
very
important
step
for
visibility
and
for
understanding
how
value
is
being
transformed
within
the
organization
and
where
waste
is,
and
so
this
is
an
important
step
for
us
and
then
afterwards
the
third
most
important
thing
was.
I
wanted
to
make
sure
that
we
were
going
to
increase
psychological
safety.
We
wanted
to
embrace
failure.
A
So
I
kicked
off
project
athena
project
athena.
I
named
it
after
the
greek
goddess
of
war,
handicraft
and
practical
reason,
and
it
seemed
very
befitting
for
the
situation
that
we
were
in
and
where
what
we
were
embarking
on.
So
we
wanted
to
have
a
war
on
process
overhead,
so
we
wanted
to
ready,
eliminate
waste,
increase.
The
automation
footprint
reduce
the
manual
toil
and
modernize
the
float.
So,
as
you
can
see,
it's
all
lean,
agile
and
devops
concepts.
A
I
wanted
to
crowdsource
empathy
to
improve
that
collaboration
and
reduce
the
friction
and
treat
people
as
people
right
and
provide
and
improve
that
psychological
safety
that
they
have,
which
brings
and
gives
that
better
culture,
so
that
people
can
embrace
failure.
They
can
fail
fast,
fail,
often
and
feel
cheap.
They
can
innovate.
We
can
change
the
executive
mindset
and
move
towards
that
generative
organization
that
we
were
aspiring
for.
A
A
Then
we
trained
them
on
agile
practices,
so
pair
programming,
tdd
cloud
native
approaches
were
something
that
I
drove
within
the
organization,
and
this
was
for
everyone
within
the
ark.
It
was
not
limited
to
just
the
devs
and
the
tests
and
the
testers
and
then
finally,
a
devops
mindset.
We
wanted
to
bring
in
that
automation,
operational
efficiency,
ci,
cd
and
automation,
and
so
taught
them
about
devops
as
well.
A
Next,
we
wanted
to
bring
that
executive
visibility
right.
We
wanted
to
change
the
mindset,
so
I
identified
a
prime
location
which
was
just
outside
the
elevators
on
the
left
side
were
the
offices
of
the
executives
and
on
the
right
side
we
had
a
couple
of
other
glass
walls,
and
I
I
command
here
those
glass
walls.
I
created
all
the
stickies
and
created
a
large
kanban
board.
We
had
a
progress
meter
which
was
going
to
show
how
much
of
value
we
were
adding
through
this
particular
project,
and
we
had
an
open
backlog.
A
We
said
that
anyone
could
add
to
the
backlog
as
long
as
they
were
able
to
collaborate.
We
must
have
at
least
two
people
working
on
a
particular
card.
We
identified
themes
based
upon
surveys
on
where
we
had
the
most
lift
or
way.
We
could
build
the
momentum,
and
then
we
had
a
card
layout
which
had
the
hypothesis
how
much
of
time
could
be
saved.
A
By
executing
this,
we
had
a
definition
of
done
and
we
had
a
measure
of
success
for
each
of
these
cards,
and
I
mandated
that
at
least
one
manual
process
had
to
be
automated
by
this
through
this
particular
card
process,
and
so
we
built
the
backlog
we
used
to
have
a
weekly
stand-up,
we
used
to
celebrate
successes
and
wins,
and
they
used
to
move
through
the
class.
It
was
pretty
simple,
it
was
to
do
doing
and
done.
A
We
vote
upon
the
things
that
would
be
flagged
as
to
do
within
that
particular
iteration,
and
we
kept
the
iterations
really
small.
None
of
the
cards
were
going
to
be
more
than
two
to
four
weeks,
so
two
iterations
and
we
started
moving
them
and
every
time
we
had
a
success
we
would
we
would
celebrate.
We
would
celebrate
loudly.
A
lot
of
executives
started
getting
curious
about
all
these
cards
they
stopped
by
and
they
started
looking
at
it
and
that
he
actually
increased
that
viral
marketing
and
people
started
cheering
for
this.
A
A
A
We
started
really
slow.
The
first
round
was
just
one
card,
but
it
was
a
card
where
a
daily
test
summary
report
had
to
be
generated.
So
for
those
of
you
who
know
how
this
is
done,
it
is
always
at
the
end
of
the
day,
and
that
is
the
only
report
that
prevents
you
from
going
home
and
spending
quality
time
with
your
p,
with
your
with
your
family
or
your
loved
ones.
A
So
much
of
time
for
all
the
test
leads
now
they
could
go
home
a
little
earlier.
They
could,
or
they
could
spend
more
time
with
their
loved
ones,
and
this
was
great
and
that
started
picking
up
the
story
started.
Sharing
people
started
learning
about
this.
They
started
actually
feeling
the
benefits
of
it
and
then
that
juggernaut
or
the
momentum
started
rolling
and
then
it
just
picked
up
speed
and
became
that
juggernaut.
A
A
We
saved
over
9.34
hours
per
person
per
week,
and
that
was
great
because
now
I
could
actually
bring
in
that
80
20
rule
where
fridays
was
actually
dedicated
to
anything
innovative
and
that
increased
and
added
momentum
and
started
driving
much
more
success
to
this
this
project
and
started
improving
people's
quality
of
life.
People
started
feeling
happier.
They
were
more
excited,
they
were
much
more
innovative
and
they
were
able
to
collaborate
better,
and
that
was
really
great.
A
A
A
We
we
assigned
a
team
to
it.
They
they
broke
every
single
record
and
made
phenomenal
progress
on
that
point,
and
so
I
took
them
to
a
cigar
bar
and
I
opened
a
seven
thousand
dollar
bottle
of
bourbon
and
we
smoked
cigars
and
talked
about
all
the
various
things
that
happened
and
how
we
enjoyed
it,
and
it
was
great
so
we
had,
we
had
lots
of
fun.
We
started
becoming
much
more
positive,
we
started
becoming
much
more
collaborative,
we
were
much
more
relaxed,
we
had
less
stress
and
we
were
happier
so
before.
A
As
I
said,
it
was
taking
183
days
from
concept
to
consumption,
15
automation.
The
mindset
over
there
were
about
was
that
you
know
100,
uptime,
zero
defects
and
failure
is
not
an
option
right,
that's
something!
Not
sustainable,
we
had
up
to
42
attrition
in
some
of
the
teams
and
enps
of
-18,
but
after
we
ran
it
our
concept
to
consumption,
just
through
project
athena,
it
went
down
to
21
days.
It
was
phenomenal.
A
We
had
over
87
automation
with
it
our
number
of
incidents
reduced.
We
were
able
to
roll
back
a
roll
forward
really
quickly.
Our
attrition
went
down
to
6.4
percent.
I
had
people
who
had
quit,
learn
about
these
strings
through
their
friends
and
want
to
come
back
and
they
joined
us,
and
that
was
a
really
proud
moment.
For
me.
We
had
so
much
of
psychological
safety
and
innovation.
We
were
able
to
embrace
the
failures.
A
This
is
performance
testing,
which
is
really
painful,
especially
when
you
have
a
new
flagship
product,
a
platform
that
you
want
to
deploy
and
have
your
mission
critical
apps
on,
and
we
wanted
to
do
something
different.
We
wanted
to
rethink
and
reimagine
the
way
that
we
tackle
this,
and
so
this
is
a
story
of
how
I
fondly
want
to
think
of
where
we
hardly
slept
for
48
hours.
We
pushed
people
to
learn
new
things
and
we
ate
a
lot
of
pie.
A
Now
that
was
the
flagship
product,
and
so
we
had
to
perform
every
kind
of
test
on
it.
So
load
stress
soak
spike
duty
cycle,
you
name
it.
We
had
to
do
it
and
if
we
were
to
do
it
in
the
normal
way,
it
would
have
taken
a
lot
of
pain,
a
lot
of
suffering.
It
would
have
taken
four
to
six
months
if
we
went
the
traditional
route-
and
this
was
not
acceptable-
we
wanted
to
find
a
different
way,
so
we
wanted
to
rethink
and
reimagine
the
way
that
we
we
attack
this
problem.
A
It
was
on
march
12th
and
it
would
end
on
march
14th,
which
was
friday,
which
was
which
is
in
my
mind,
the
one
of
the
nerdiest
days.
Ever
it
was
48
hours
of
intense
coding.
We
decided
to
open
it
up
to
everyone,
any
bold
idea,
as
long
as
it
was
legal.
We
wanted
to
improve
that
collaboration
and
we
wanted
to
allow
people
to
fail
fast,
often
and
cheap,
and
so
we
said
that
there
had
to
be
a
team
of
three
or
four
they
had
to
demonstrate
working
software.
A
We
had
a
number
of
functional
experiments
where
we
were
capturing
the
data's,
actual
fire
drills
for
our
platform
operators,
and
we
also
wanted
to
change
the
behavior
right.
This
was
in
the
same
organization
where
it
was
183
days
concept
to
to
creation,
and
the
mindset
was
that
way,
so
we
wanted
to
bring
in
that
failure.
We
wanted
to
teach
our
executives
and
and-
and
you
know,
be
tell
them
and
expound
the
fact
that
perfection
is
like
the
horizon.
A
You
grow
only
when
you
constantly
strive
for,
but
you
never
achieve
it,
and
so
there
were
26
teams.
It
was.
It
was
a
great
success.
There
was
26
streams
across
the
world,
18
finished
with
the
videos.
That
was
great.
We
had
three
patent
filings
through
during
this.
That
was
amazing.
We
even
had
hr
and
accounting
teams
come
in.
We
had
lots
of
data,
but
here's
the
most
important
thing.
We
had
648
comments
in
48
hours.
That
was
unprecedented.
A
That
was
something
that
we'd
never
heard
of
within
the
organization,
and
we
had
a
lot
of
fun
and,
of
course,
we
had
pie.
We
had
lots
of
pie
in
the
celebrations
and
my
teams
being
engineers.
They
decided
to
create
everything
from
scratch.
So
all
these
trophies
are
created
from
scratch.
We
even
had
someone
who
had
a
laser
etcher
in
in
their
basement
and
they
edged
all
these
metals.
A
And
then,
if
you
can
see
on
the
rightmost
side,
we
actually
had
a
prize
for
the
epic
fail,
which
was
to
celebrate
failure
and
the
price
for
the
epic
fail
was
actually
higher
than
the
grand
prize,
because
the
person
who
had
the
epic
fail
they
had
to
share
their
story
of
why
it
failed
and
what
went
wrong
and
this
and
and
everything
that
they
had
to
go
through
so
again
trying
to
embrace
failure
and
trying
to
bring
it.
Those
are
the
things
that
we
did
and
it
was
great.
It
was
a
lot
of
fun.
A
A
I
would
say:
start
small,
identify
some
process
or
activity
that
you
can
rethink
and
reimagine
to
transform
or
innovate
something
that
pain
that
causes
pain
and
do
something
about
it.
Empathize
with
the
people
who
are
going
through
the
pain
you
know
put
yourselves
in
their
shoes
or
from
their
point
of
view,
and
then
over
the
next
six
months,
conduct
experiments
and
track
those
results
see
what
happens
measure
your
success
see
how
much
of
uplift
that
you
had
have
a
progress
meter,
announce
it
share
it
on
social
media.
A
If
you
can,
you
can
use
the
hashtag
lead
with
empathy.
That
is
something
that
I
post
a
lot
of
things
with
so
feel
free
to
tag
with
that
particular
thing
share
it
on
social
media.
Obviously
you
can
anonymize
it
depending
upon
your
organization
or
if
you
don't
want
to
do
that,
and
if
you
want
me
to
be
the
storyteller,
obviously
anonymized.
A
Thank
you.
It's
been
great.
Empathy
is
a
huge
passion
of
mine.
I
really
really
enjoyed
sharing
the
stories
of
how
we
crowdsourced
empathy,
and
I
really
look
forward
to
hearing
from
you
both
on
social
media
and
through
email.
You
can
also
tweet
about
it
and
I
look
forward
to
hearing
your
stories.
Thank
you.