This is Johanna Rothman's December 2025 Pragmatic Manager newsletter. The Unsubscribe link is at the bottom of this email.
In the first part of inviting culture change, I wrote about Stephanie, a senior leader who wants more organizational agility. She's used the flow metrics to invite that culture change. So far, she's succeeded with the teams and the senior leaders. However, the middle managers feel nervous and adrift. How do they see the value of flow efficiency thinking and short feedback loops, especially as experiments? What do these managers measure to see project and product progress? How does everyone know the state of the work?
There's another big question. Managers often ask: “If I'm not supposed to measure activities, how do I show my value?”
Stories help explain the answers to these questions. That's how we can use stories to change the culture: what we discuss, how we treat each other, and what we reward.
How Flow Metrics Change the Stories of Project and Product Progress
Product development teams deliver increments of product value. Managers deliver increments of decisions.
The more we treat each increment as a small experiment, the more likely we can see the actual value of these increments. Here's how this can work:
- The faster the product leader decides on the next smallest piece of product value (decision cycle time), the faster the teams can finish it (team cycle time). Instead of trying to decide everything now, the product leader selects just the next most important thing as an experiment.
- When teams finish that one small increment, the product leader and the portfolio team can study the customers' reactions and decide what to do next.
- That study allows all the various leaders to replan the next bit of work.
See Multiple Short Feedback Loops Support Innovation for more details.
Now, the organization can change its stories about project progress from easy-to-game measures such as velocity and schedule variance to stories like these:
- Because we deliver frequently, we can capitalize our software investment faster. In addition, we use deliveries to test hypotheses and learn from them.
- Those hypotheses help us choose how often to change our strategy and tactics to attract more customers. We can choose how to use Cost of Goods Sold and Cost of Delay to change our strategy and tactics.
- Once our customers are satisfied for now, we can interview them or otherwise learn how they use our products. We can learn how to attract more customers.
That's how the flow metrics change the stories and therefore the culture of project and product progress. But that's not enough. Managers can change how they define the value they offer.
How Flow Metrics Change the Stories About a Manager's Value
Many managers define their value by how they contribute to specific projects and products. Stephanie's organization was the same way. And Paul, the Platform Director, was a prime example.
Even though Paul had assigned people on the platform team to the cross-functional agile teams, the platform team chose to do design and code reviews as a functional team. They felt they needed to plan and experiment with many of the platform changes. Paul participated in every design review and most of the code reviews. He knew he offered substantial value to the platform team with his comments.
However, because Paul was part of these technical decisions, the platform team was often late with their deliveries. That's because Paul was also busy with management decisions. Worse, Paul felt overloaded with his management and technical work. His WIP (Work in Progress) was too high.
Stephanie worked with Paul to change his perspective from “I must add value to the technical parts of the conversations” to “I can facilitate these conversations if I have time.” (That's called a rule transformation.) In addition, she suggested Paul move from the informal community of practice to a formal community. That way, other people could join that community and share knowledge about the platform.
Previously, Paul thought his value arose from his personal deliveries. Now, he sees his value in how he facilitates other people's learning, often through experiments.
Our Stories Change How We See Ourselves
Stephanie did the same with the other directors. Instead of direct involvement in the teams, each director created their function's community of practice. That encouraged everyone to optimize up for the organization's strategy, for the product strategy, and for everyone's learning from experiments.
That helped reinforce people's thinking about any project's Cost of Delay and the investment question before creating or committing to long roadmaps or a year-long project portfolio. In addition, the managers had time to work together on the strategic questions across the organization. Not just in technology, but in HR, Finance, and Sales.
When we change how we see ourselves, many other possibilities emerge.
Experiments Are Part of Our Stories
Because each middle manager now considers experiments part of their work, they can explain their progress through stories. That has changed how the organization plans:
- They have more experiments in the roadmaps, especially because middle managers can discuss what everyone has learned so far.
- They are more willing to create much smaller MVPs and use options for what to do next.
- Because everyone is thinking about what to study and learn next, they are able to use shorter feedback loops and release interim value faster.
The entire organization feels less pressure for long plans—all because the managers collaborate as a team focused on learning from experiments.
Stephanie now has to manage the compensation system, so the managers' value matches their compensation.
Stories Change People's Minds
I use a lot of data when I work with clients because the data helps people see the dynamics of how they work. But what changes other people's minds is the stories about the culture.
When we change our stories about what we can discuss, how we treat each other, and what we reward, we can create an organization that is more likely to succeed. That's how we can invite culture change and be much more effective.
Read More…
This newsletter touches on topics in these books:
- Agile and Lean Program Management: Scaling Collaboration Across the Organization
- All three Modern Management Made Easy books
- Project Lifecycles: How to Reduce Risks, Release Successful Products, and Increase Agility
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I hope you have a lovely holiday season and I'll see you next year,
Johanna
© 2025 Johanna Rothman
Pragmatic Manager: Vol 22, #12, ISSN: 2164-1196