Toby Rao
Enterprise Agile Coach
Washington, Washington, D.C., United States
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Toby Rao is an agile leader, speaker, coach, and community builder based in the Washington DC Metro. He specializes in the areas of Strategic Agile Transformation, Change management, Program management, Leadership development, and organizational development.
Toby enjoys coaching organization leaders and teams on how to address and navigate through the growing challenges of today’s VUCA world by understanding, living, using, and evangelizing Lean and Agile concepts and practices. He is an ICF-credentialed Coach, an accredited IC Agile trainer, and a certified Executive coach. He is passionate about developing people's capabilities through coaching, consulting, training, and mentoring.
Toby strongly believes in volunteering to serve the Agile community. He co-founded and led A20 Agile conference in 2020. He co-founded and actively serves 2 Agile meetups in the Washington DC Metro (1300 members). He is a frequent speaker at agile conferences and industry events across the globe.
www.tobyrao.com
https://www.linkedin.com/in/tobyrao/
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Area of Expertise
Topics
Why Your Agile Transformation will Fail without OCM!
**Abstract**
Culture eats strategy for breakfast! It will eat yours too, if you don't plan for effective organizational change management (OCM). OCM is a pivotal part of any technology change, organizational change, or transformation. Due to the faster pace of Agile projects in regards to delivering value, it is important to include OCM practices from pre-planning through implementation to properly lay the foundation for successful change.
This fun and interactive session will provide facts, guardrails, and tips to effectively manage the people side of change on Agile projects. It will also provide techniques to efficiently utilize simple changes that can bring the best ROI and impact on the transformation efforts.
**Outline/structure of the Session*
The session will start with a pulse check , and revelation of the impediments that threaten, and often stop progress with Agile Transformations. I will discuss typical challenges that impede mindset changes toward adaptability, iteration, collaboration, and embracing change. I will present ideas on how the objectives of transformation must be clearly understood and adopted by everyone involved and the critical need for Leadership support.
I plan to keep the session lively and engaging. During the presentation, I will share tricks and tips for using OCM, user adoption, and strategic communications to help with Agile transformation.
**Learning Outcome**
Attendees will walk away with a good understanding of the ways in which Organizational Culture directly affects Organizational Performance.
They will learn about how culture can impede Agile transformation, and the key drivers of culture . Attendees will also learn about the steps needed to address the cultural paradigm shift around the way work is designed, developed, and delivered, and also how to incorporate OCM into agile programs from pre-planning through deployment
Leading without formal authority
Leadership and authority are frequently mistaken. To lead, you don't need a title or a position. Leadership is defined by your actions, not your role within the organization. How we behave, communicate, act, support others, and deliver results matters.
Toby Rao's engaging talk challenges traditional thinking and delves into the true meaning of leadership in the modern workplace. He discusses ideas and practices that promote distributed leadership and decentralized decisions in Agile projects.
You will learn how to develop capabilities to encourage, convince, and influence team members. Attendees will learn how to earn credibility, communicate, lead, motivate action, and make an impact through influence.
Is leadership synonymous with authority?
To lead, do you really need a formal title or a position?
If you are curious to know the answers, and if you want to be successful in your agile career, regardless of your job title, you must attend Toby's talk at Agile & Beyond 2023!
How to deliver successful, volunteer driven Agile events!
1000s of Agile events and initiatives across the globe rely on the skills and services of volunteers. Initiatives. However, there are a lot of challenges involved in attracting, recruiting, preparing, motivating, deploying, retaining, and managing volunteers. The management approaches and styles that work with paid staff do not really work with volunteers! Many event leads, and organizers are not experienced or knowledgeable in effectively leading volunteers, and are unable to attract, motivate, engage, and lead volunteers
This talk helps demystify the art and science of effectively leading volunteers for successful Agile events. The speaker shares eye-opening data, real-life examples, intriguing insights, pragmatic advice, and easy-to-use tips. It prepares attendees to connect better with volunteers to co-create and deliver impactful events and agile initiatives.
Attendees gain insights into what management and leadership styles work effectively. They develop a deeper understanding of the data and metrics that are needed to develop and execute an effective volunteer program. They walk away with easy to implementable steps, and techniques for successfully handling common situations that arise in volunteer operations.
'Crash course' on developing High Performing Agile Talent!
Finding 'agile ready' and high performing team-members in a truly Agile environment can be a real challenge. This is true for organizations that are new to Agility as well as those with mature Agile teams….
Let’s face it - with highly matrixed teams that are always on the move - it can be difficult to assess, train and develop team members. Hiring, retaining and developing people is not someone else’s job. We are all responsible for developing the ‘right’ talent.
Come join me for a fun, engaging and interactive 45 minute ‘Crash Course’ where I will share with you some pragmatic approaches that you can start using immediately to start identifying, assessing and managing the 'right' talent in your organization.
In my talk we will cover a lot of ground on identifying, assessing both performance and potential, and making decisions on talent investment and management.
You will learn how to assess your team for both performance and potential, understand the difference between potential, performance and readiness.
You will learn how to facilitate simple discussions that can help you to develop a solid succession plan for your top performers and a plan to develop the others.
Agile Transformation: People + Culture over everything else
Abstract:
The truth is that Agile Transformation is an extremely complex journey, and despite the best strategic plans, a very large number of transformations just fail. People and culture play an extremely pivotal role in any transformation, but leaders often focus a lot more on the technical and financial aspects and neglect the impact of the people side of change.
Toby starts the session by making a solid business case for transformation backed by eye-opening data from the 14th State of the Agile report 2020. He shares insights and anecdotes to drive home key points about Transformation initiatives. He then conducts a ZOOM Breakout session to diverge and converge ideas on the topic of 'Challenges to Transformation Sucess'. After the readouts, he reveals the 9 top factors that impede transformation success, and highlights the ways in which transformation progress can be catalyzed despite volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous conditions.
Toby highlights the importance of cultures by facilitating a discussion on the 4 drivers that define an organization's culture.
He then shares his Top 5 Organizational Change management Challenges pertaining to People and provides insight bu using the Satire model of change and the Kubler-Ross model. Toby provides pragmatic guidance on how to navigate through the typical challenges by using Emotionial Intelligence tools and the ADKAR model to improve an organization's transformation journey. He shares his insights on 9 focus areas that deliver the best return on investment. He ends the session with a strong call to action, and opens the floor for questions
Key Takeaways:
Participants develop a good understanding of the role of 'People and Culture' in transformation. Toby's industry metrics, facts, guardrails, and tips help attendees get a holistic understanding of the people side of change on Agile projects. They learn pragmatic techniques to that can bring the best ROI and impact on transformation efforts. Attendees also learn about 4 drivers that define an organization's culture, 9 top factors that impede transformation success, and Top 5 Organizational Change management Challenges pertaining to People. They will also understand the science behind change with the models presented by Toby (Kubler-Ross, Kotter's 8 steps, Satire model). Attendees can start implementing simple changes almost immediately in their programs.
SAFe Summit 2018
Why Your SAFe Transformation Will Fail without OCM!
Culture eats strategy for breakfast! It will eat yours too, if you don’t plan for effective organizational change management (OCM). I will share tricks and tips to drive OCM, user adoption, strategic communications with your SAFe transformation.
http://2018.safesummit.com/sessions/lightning-talks-415pm-430pm/
Agile 2018
A simple tool to help you develop a pool of high performing agile talent
can be a real challenge. This is true for organizations that are new to Agility as well as those with mature Agile teams….
Let’s face it - with highly matrixed teams that are always on the move - it can be difficult to assess, train and develop team members. Hiring, retaining and developing people is not someone else’s job. We are all responsible for developing the ‘right’ talent.
Come join me for a fun, engaging and interactive 45 minute ‘Crash Course’ where I will share with you some pragmatic approaches that you can start using immediately to start identifying, assessing and managing the 'right' talent in your organization.
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