Las Vegas 2018

Want to Mandate One Set of Prescriptive Practices? Don't.

You want to increase organizational agility and flow across your large, traditional enterprise. Perhaps you are considering or others have decided to impose a scaling framework. Frameworks can be good, in their context. Equally they can and are being mis-applied in contexts where they may not be the optimal way of working. Organizations are complex adaptive systems, there is not a one-size-fits-all solution. This talk, which is based on lessons learnt from leading agility at scale across a 320+ year old organization with 80,000 people in 40 countries, shares an approach to enterprise transformation which appeals to intrinsic motivation, is invitation over imposition, has a clear focus on outcomes and is context and framework agnostic. You will leave with an approach which you can try as soon as you get back to the office.


Jon has 25 years experience of taking and leading an agile approach to change, starting out as a developer on the trading floor of an investment bank. Jon has, until very recently, been leading on Ways of Working across Barclays (328 years old, 80,000 people in 40 countries). Jon is a member of the Programming Committee for the DevOps Enterprise Summit and is a board member of the SD Learning Consortium.

JS

Jonathan Smart

Former Head of Working Ways, Formerly of Barclays

Transcript

00:00:03

The talk I'm giving today is, uh, about not imposing one way of working on people. Uh, it's about giving people a voice, uh, not imposing one set of prescriptive practices. That's the topic of the talk. I'm gonna do it in two halves. The first half I'm going to, uh, cover some anti-patterns that I've seen. And the second half I'm going to suggest an alternative. So it's not just a whinge, it's not just a moan, but it's actually, here's a suggestion of something that we've done that I've done, um, to try instead. Uh, so my name is Jonathan Smart. Um, I, until very recently, have been leading on ways of working at Barclays. Uh, Barclays is 80,000 people in 40 countries. Um, and, uh, as I said very recently, so this talk I'm giving in a personal capacity. So anything I say is my own personal opinion and is not a reflection of my past employer

00:01:01

<laugh>.

00:01:03

Um, I have about 25 years experience of, uh, agility of applying, uh, agile ways of working agile principles and practices. I started as a developer on the trading floor in investment banking. And in those days you did all the jobs. I was, I was sitting on the trading floor, doing the coding, doing the, doing the deployments, getting a call at three o'clock in the morning, uh, and for, for a good amount of time. Um, as I took on more responsibility, I didn't hire any other role than an analyst programmer. Um, so there's a lot of back to the future in this for me personally. Um, so we're gonna have a bit of fun for the first half. Um, we're gonna do a bit of role playing, uh, for the anti-patterns. So I'm gonna transform and I'm gonna become Mike, the CEO, specifically Michael Scott

00:01:48

<laugh>.

00:01:49

Okay, good. You got that one. Nice. Um, so I'm gonna become Michael Scott to act out the anti-patterns. Now, doing a computer science degree, I never thought I'd be acting on stage.

00:01:59

That's true.

00:02:00

Um, and you are gonna be the human resources. So you've got a role play as well. You need to be resources. Okay? Um, and you need to exhibit some learned helplessness. So you need to just be basic, just passive. Just sit there and wait to be told what to, what to do. Was that okay?

00:02:18

It's easy.

00:02:19

It's easy. It's very easy. First of all, a disclaimer. All names, characters, and incidents portrayed in this presentation are fictitious and poorly acted. No identification with actual persons, living or deceased organizations, places, buildings or products is intended or should be inferred in the following. Fictitious and frankly ludicrous scenario. This is because I am an independent and I just don't wanna get into any trouble. So John is leaving the stage, and Mike, the CEO, is about to enter the stage. Hey, resources, welcome, welcome to the Town Hall. Welcome to the Acme Walking Shoes, ultra Mountain Awesome Corporation, town Hall.

00:03:11

Woo.

00:03:12

Okay. See, this is the difference between an American audience and a British audience. So, super excited. How you feeling? Yeah, awesome. This is the awesome Town hall, and I'm your awesome CEO Dear awesome resources. Now, l

00:03:36

<laugh>.

00:03:39

Unfortunately, we have had a very bad year ever since Yank c Inc released the amazing walking shoe. AWS people, people don't want the Ultra Mountain shoe anymore. We are not so awesome. Frankly, you should be disappointed. You've let the company down. You've let your colleagues down. Most importantly, you've let me down. And when I speak to my team, what I hear is that the offices is like the Walking Dead. Everyone's moping around, not happy, not trying hard enough. Now, I wouldn't know, 'cause I've never done a gemba walk. I've never actually been to your workplace, so I wouldn't actually know what's happening. But I think you're not trying hard enough. So we're going to change. We are going to do a skiing transformation because all companies are currently doing a skiing transformation here we are at a ski ops enterprise summit. So we are going to ski because shoes are not quick enough. So we're gonna ski instead. And this is how you are gonna be skiing. So currently it's the rage, it's very fashionable. And we're going to adopt the spit model because some very expensive consultants that told me that this is the best approach.

00:05:29

The spit model, you're going to adopt squads. This is the Blue Squad, and in particular, you are going to adopt Nordic skiing. I have decided with literally no input from any of you whatsoever, that you will adopt Nordic skiing. Just look how efficient they are, and you can tell by their hats which guild they're part of. I just hope they don't meet the Green Squad. And because we believe in your personal development, starting on Thursday, you'll commence two days of mandatory Sheep Dip training, certified ski master. So you can tell people what to do. And certified peace owners. So you can tell people what to do.

00:06:17

<laugh>,

00:06:18

You don't need to do any skiing for these whatsoever. And they're renewable by reading a book, watching a video, or attending a skiing conference.

00:06:24

<laugh>

00:06:34

And I empower you to be empowered.

00:06:36

<laugh>,

00:06:39

Yes, Carmen, you want a snowmobile? I'm sorry, Mike, that's not possible. We're doing Nordic skiing. This is a Nordic skiing transformation. You're not in that empowered. My, uh, Carmen <laugh>. You, uh, no, you have to do Nordic skiing, but you're empowered. 'cause you can choose to be either a certified ski master or a certified product owner. The choice is yours. And if any manager comes to me with a list of team names already predetermined, I'm going to tear that up and I'm gonna say, no, you are empowered to choose between one of those two roles. You still have to ski. So on Friday of this week, this is what it will look like in the offices like zombies. We're gonna do a big bang transformation. So on Monday when you come in, you're gonna be in your new roles, having done your training, and on Monday of next week, you're gonna be all smiling and laughter, and you'll look just like that on the right. And we are going to do this at scale. We're gonna do it overnight, a big flip, and then you've got 18 months to completely transform the organization. Any questions?

00:07:52

<laugh>?

00:07:53

Good. 'cause you've got learned helplessness, so that's good. So that's the end of the town hall. Get back to work. Okay, this is John, not Mike <laugh>. John is back. Uh, how do you feel?

00:08:16

Normal. Awesome. Normal, <laugh>

00:08:18

Normal. Awesome. Awesome.

00:08:21

Triggered,

00:08:21

Triggered. Sorry. Enraged. Enraged. Does, does any of that ring true for any of you?

00:08:32

Yeah. Yeah. I'm getting lots of, yeah. Nods and hands going in the air. Um, yes. So a whole bunch of anti-patterns there, unfortunately quite common in terms of the agile imposition and inflicting agility upon people. Martin Fowler spoke about this at the Agile Australia Conference. He was writing about it in 2006. Um, and, uh, so yes, there's a whole bunch of antipas there. Maybe that's not the best approach for, uh, for ways of working and for flow and improving business outcomes. So the point of this talk is don't mandate one way of working. We're at the beginner level, uh, across the planet on this topic for organizational agility, which, which, you know, dev as per gene, Kim's definition of DevOps at the beginning of day one. It's all about end-to-end value streams about products around services, uh, and around delivering better outcomes. Mandating one way of working is not the best approach to do this.

00:09:24

And unfortunately, lots of organizations are doing just this. Um, the agile imposition, the, uh, agile industrial complex forcing ways of working on people forcing one set of prescriptive practices on organizations. Um, and I have a hypo a hypothesis that it's probably not the best approach. Um, and, uh, organizations are complex adaptive systems. Uh, you are a complex adaptive system. Your team is your family, is your department, is your company, is your organization. You are complex adaptive systems. So you cannot fit one size fits all. It just, it just is not possible. And complex adaptive systems are emergent. Um, you know, the, you, you don't know what the outcome's going to be. So a butterfly can flap its wings and there can be a tornado a thousand miles away. Um, so you just cannot apply one size fits all solution. And then the second part of the anti-patent is mandating, you know, mandating practices on people, uh, is not in line with an agile mindset. It's not empowering for people. Um, and there's no autonomy in doing that. So instead give people a voice. Um, so voice is an acronym. Uh, this is a suggested alternative approach to the, uh, imposition of one set of practices across an organization.

00:10:37

So the voice acronym. So V stands for values and principles. So first of all, agree what your values and your principles are as an organization, and that needs to be unique to your organization. So even if you take a, for example, a credit card business like Capital One or American Express or Barclay Card, each of those are completely different and won't necessarily have the same values and principles, don't have the same heritage, don't have the same background, don't have the same people, don't have the same leaders, the same impediments, and so on, and so on and so on. So you have to identify what your values and principles are in your context, first of all. And they are context agnostic. Those principles apply across contexts. For example, focus on flow might be one principle. For example, customer obsession, respect for teams, respect for people might be another principle.

00:11:23

So agree, your principles. Secondly, focus on the outcomes. It's not as we, you know, we've heard this, uh, a few times, you know, it's not DevOps for DevOps sake. Agile for agile sake. It's about business outcomes. And in terms of buy-in, you know, uh, in my previous role, we made the mistake. We were using the A word a lot and the D word and the T word for transformation. Um, and then we flipped the message to outcomes and better value, sooner, safer, happier. And then the resistance just drops away because you're not trying to impose, uh, agile or DevOps or, or even a transformation on people. Um, so the resistance just drops away. Of course, I want help de delivering better value sooner and safer, happier, um, and also purpose. So the reason for change, the why, you know, you've gotta have the why there.

00:12:07

Why are we doing this? Is it about survival? Is it because there's lots of VC money? Is it the age of digital? Or actually just let's not change at all. Do we? Do we even need to change? Maybe you don't need to change. I is intent-based leadership. Um, so I think this is probably one of the biggest gaps at the moment, uh, is around leadership. And the three most important things on this journey are leadership. Leadership and leadership. You know, leadership are either gonna kill it or make it successful. Um, and there needs to be a flip from taylorist command and control ways of working, as we saw with Mike Scott, uh, to, uh, empowerment and autonomy, to transformational leadership, to servant leadership, um, to getting outta the way of people to commander's intent, which I'm gonna talk about in a second. And then there's coaching and support.

00:12:57

Uh, so you have to, because again, because, because of complex adaptive systems, because there isn't one size fits all, and because it's emergent, people at the beginner level need support from people who have been there and done it and been on the journey. So you have to provide coaching and impediments are not in the path. Impediments are the path. So that's where you need the support, because it's just about your theory of constraints. Identify your biggest impediment to flow, tackle it, move on to the next one. So you've got to have that, that support in the organization to be able to bubble up the impediments. Some of those impediments are firm wide. Some of those impediments require somebody, which is the role that I was doing previously until very recently, someone, uh, across the whole firm to tackle the big gnarly, uh, constraints that need to be tackled.

00:13:41

And in the absence of that role, um, there's gonna be limited progress. Um, and then experimentation. Uh, because complex adaptive system. So probe sense and respond. I've taken this from conne, um, and this is, uh, yeah, this is for complex work where the outcome is not knowable. So first of all, you probe, you have a hypothesis. So those outcomes are your, are your hypothesis better value, sooner, safer, happier? We believe that doing this thing will lead to a better outcome sooner. Run some experiments, run a probe sense, respond. An important point here is these experiments are not reversible, uh, because this is, uh, social science, not natural science. Um, so that, so it's a bit like putting milk in coffee. You can't undo it. Um, you know, a, um, a, uh, a natural science experiment, generally reversible, but social science experiments in, in a complex adaptive system is not reversible.

00:14:37

So you can do it, but you've, you've changed the system. The system will never forget what you just tried. Whether you succeed or fail, that system will never forget the fact you tried that experiment. So you can only fix forward. So you might fail, and you need psychological safety, and you need intent-based leadership, and then you fix forward on what, on the experiments that you've run. So, so this is what I am proposing as an approach instead of imposing a set of prescriptive practices, um, and it, and it's harder and it requires, um, it requires more ownership. Um, and it's not, uh, in the absence of a framework, to be clear, it's not hashtag no framework, uh, topo, it's, it's hashtag all frameworks. Because in that experimentation, and this is what we did in my previous role, uh, we didn't say to areas or teams what they could or couldn't do, or how they should or shouldn't work.

00:15:28

Teams were free to adopt any of the scaling frameworks if they wanted to, or none of them, or Scrum or Kanban. They could figure it out for themselves, focused on better value, sooner, safer, happier, even smaller waterfalls, if that works for that particular area. So, and then you've got double loop learning. So as you run these experiments, you can then go back to your outcomes and you can update them because you might have got them wrong, or you might have made such fantastic progress, it's time to update them. So have double loop learning. You've got the first loop in the experimentation, and then you've got double loop learning. Um, so effectively this is what we have got to, uh, in my, in my, uh, previous role. This is the approach that we got to. Um, so I'm just gonna drill in a little bit on each of these now.

00:16:08

So values and principles to quote Dan North, figure out your principles, apply your unique context, and you will come up with your own set of unique practices. So take your principles and your context, and from that, derive your practices. Because if you've got two people who are super quick turnaround, uh, kind of, you know, rad development, um, not not big corporate, it, um, their practices are gonna be very, very different. Kind of more like end user, uh, developed applications, um, you know, maybe some stuff in Excel, some kind of vb, whatever. Um, that's gonna be very, have a very different set of practices than if you've got 300 people or a thousand people working on one massive product. You know, if you've got Salesforce or amazon.com or whatever it is, the practices are gonna, are going to be completely different. Um, so that's values and principles.

00:17:00

Um, then, um, having done that, agree, your outcomes, um, as I said, uh, the outcomes for ways of working that we iterated our way towards, um, and it took us, this was the beginning of year three when we landed on this. There's better value sooner, safer, happier. Um, and then again, like I said, it's up to each area to figure out how they achieve that. So be, in our case, how we measure these better is our incidents in production. Um, this, these are like the one metric that matters for these. We've got hundreds of metrics underneath that, um, value you can't aggregate. So we use OKRs objectives and key results. And so it's the key results that are the value. Sometimes you can aggregate them, sometimes you can't. It might be market share, it might be revenue, but it might be diversity, or it might be geographical locations.

00:17:47

You know, the, the value is unique. And then sooner is lead time, release cadence, flow efficiency, uh, safer is control compliance, um, GDPR, information security, uh, all the compliance stuff, um, so that it's agile, not fragile. And then happier employee net promoter score, and also customer net promoter score as well. Happier colleagues and happier customers. So that's what we measure in terms of ways of working outcomes. Um, and then intent-based leadership, um, as I said, this is super, super, super important. Um, to quote Peter Drucker, most of what we call management is about making it difficult for people to do their jobs.

00:18:31

And certainly I've, I've experienced that, uh, being on the receiving end of some, some pretty, uh, crazy decisions that have been made centrally without involving anybody. Um, and as I said, leadership team is team number one. So what, uh, what I've learned through making mistakes and through failing, uh, is in the past we started at the team level and we've kind of, kind of gone across teams. We've had senior leadership support, but we missed everybody in the middle. Um, that's much harder to recover from than if you involve the people in the middle in the first place. So what, what I do now is I will start with the most senior leadership team I can possibly start with. Um, and you will only be as successful as the most leadership team. So you might end up creating a little bubble of agility within an organization.

00:19:15

If you can't get to the top table, start with them. Start with the, you know, kind of the mindset around flow and around autonomy. It's a journey. It'll take a long time. And in particular, just visualize the current system of work at a portfolio level using a Kanban board. So, you know, at a portfolio level, just visualize how much stuff is in the system. That alone is enough for the, oh my god, moments, you know, the light bulb moments of, I can't believe we've got so much work in the system because, um, leaders, very, very, very few leaders actually know the health of their system of work. Very few leaders actually know a single flow metric for their system of work that they're responsible for. Leaders will know their budget, they'll know the number of human resources they have, um, and they'll know the milestones.

00:20:02

Um, but will they know a flow metric? No, that, and I think that's the most important, one of the most important, uh, metrics to know. Uh, the other, the other things are constraints. You know, constraints to maximizing value. How much money do you have? How much time do you have? How many people do you have? But that's not the end goal, you know? So, um, it's super important. You've got to know your flow, you've got to know your flow efficiency. You've got to know your lead time, and you've got to know the health of the system of work if you visualize it. Um, and typically what I often hear is that leaders, and, you know, hippos, highest paid person's opinion, they're the ones who are pushing more work through the system. So they're not, you know, it's a case of stop starting, start finishing, but actually what's been happening for the last, you know, 20, 30, 50, a hundred years, it's been a case of, you know, um, start, starting.

00:20:47

Just keep on starting. Um, and just keep pushing more stuff down the pipe. Um, you know, which I, I touched on this in the, uh, the DevOps enterprise summit talk in London. Um, so you've, you've got to stem the flow at the head of the pipe, and there's multiple portfolio levels, which I spoke about in London. So start with leadership team, then get the next team down. Get one team. Get one direct reporter from this leadership team who is willing to be an early adopter. Got the right mindset, got the right, you know, natural habitat to do some experimentation, willing to experiment psychological safety. And then the next, uh, manager and team down, and just get a vertical slice of the organization all the way down to a team of doers who are actually delivering value. Um, get nail it before you scale it. Start with that vertical slice and then go sideways.

00:21:34

Um, so that's, that's the approach that I take now, um, psychological safety. Um, I, I'm sure you've all heard this plenty of times here. This is the most important characteristic for high performing teams. According to the Google Survey Project, Aristotle, it doesn't actually matter who's in the team. It, it, it is not correlated to performance of the team as to who is in the team. The number one determinant is psychological safety. The ability to say, I don't know, the ability to experiment, the ability to try something and fail and not be ridiculed by your team members, you know, or not be fired or whatever. This is, this is the highest, um, correlating factor to team performance, psychological safety, high alignment, and high autonomy, uh, commander's intent. So high alignment is the commander's intent is clear. This is the mission. The mission is better value, sooner, safer, happier.

00:22:21

The mission is, uh, we want to help more. Um, I dunno, more people in, uh, uh, lower income bans to get it onto the housing ladder. That might be another outcome specifically to do with mortgages, for example. So provide that high alignment. What's the north star? And then high autonomy. Leave the teams to figure it out for themselves. Run experiments, have it as a hypothesis. Um, you know, have a, have nested cadences, which I think is my next point. Uh, no have nested cadences for getting that feedback and experimentation. Um, and the locus of control. By having that high autonomy and having servant leadership and having intent-based leadership, the locus of control moves from external to internal. So when I am free to decide how I'm going to achieve an outcome, I take psychological ownership of that, or we do as a team. So I, I'm now bought into it mentally I am bought into that and I am going to succeed or fail, um, or learn rather as I do this.

00:23:21

But the locus of control is internal. If, if a leader is telling their team, you've got to be a certified ski master or a certified peace owner, you've got to have two week iterations, they've all got to be synchronized, then the locus of control is external. I'm no longer taking responsibility for the outcome of what happens because, oh, I've just been told that we need to do two week iterations and I need to be a product owner. I don't really know what it means. The locus of control is external. There's a thing in, um, psychology called ag agentic state. Um, does, has anyone heard of Agen state?

00:23:52

Nope. Um, so Ag state is, is what I've just described. It's where someone in a position of authority, uh, tells somebody else exactly what to do. And this is what, uh, there's a bunch of experiments called the milligram experiments, um, where a stranger gives an electric shock to another stranger. There's a person in a white coat sitting next to 'em. They have to answer questions. If they get the answer wrong, they have to give a higher and higher electric shock to the complete stranger. 65% of people in these experiments give a lethal dose, electric shock to a complete stranger. 65% of people. Um, you can look Google it milligram experiment. Um, so that because it's someone in a white coat in a position of authority, and because the locus of control is external, it's a genix state, it explains a bunch of other stuff as well, which I won't go into.

00:24:43

Um, so if in an organization you have a leader who is completely dictatorial, autocratic, telling people exactly how to work, people will do it. And yeah, they will do it no matter what the outcome, no matter if the company, uh, you know, you fly the plane into the ground and the company doesn't survive that. Well, I do. Yeah, the leader said, the boss said, so I'm doing it. Um, so super dangerous. Um, super dangerous. So intent-based leadership is important. To quote Adrian Cockcroft, uh, currently at AWS, uh, he was, he was at a CIO summit, and some of the other CIOs said to him, we can't find the talent. And he said, he looked at them, he looked at what companies they were working for, and he said, we hired them from you and got out of their way.

00:25:25

<laugh>.

00:25:29

Um, and then coaching and support. 'cause like I said, it's a complex adaptive system. It, um, Chu Hari beginner, intermediate, and expert. And when you're at the shoe level, you, uh, there's a typo there that should say shoe. Um, when you're at the beginner level, you want prescription, you want to be told what to do. A bit like a martial arts dojo, a bit like dojos, DevOps, dojos. Uh, you want to be told what to do. Um, so the trick there is to be able to have prescription to tell people what to do without telling people too much what to do, and still having them feel in control. So, so really is coaching. It really is a, a case of asking questions and trying to reflect back to that team as to how, how do they think they could improve? And then sometimes nudging them in the right direction. If you are learning to fly a plane, drive a car, or play a musical instrument, you have an instructor, the instructor sits next to you while you do it. If you learn to ski, you have an instructor who sits next to you, who, who skis in front of you, skis next to you, then skis behind you when you're learning to ski. So it should be no different for this,

00:26:29

Uh, fractal COEs. Uh, so we have, in my previous role, we had centers of enablement. Um, uh, I was running the one which was across the firm. And then for each business area, we had a center of enablement. Uh, the number of people we had were always in single digits in each of these teams, and they were there in a coaching and support manner. We have a network of change agents, um, and they are there to support the people who are trying to improve. Um, uh, and that's, and that is a pattern that we, we had some success with guardrails. You've got to have guardrails, um, especially if you're a regulated company and there isn't a single company that isn't a regulated company. So it's autonomy within guardrails. And, and so in my previous role, I was owning the guardrails. I was the one that said, you know, the MVC, minimal viable compliance, which is that awesome acronym, which I think is gonna stick.

00:27:18

Um, you know, we, we defined the MVC, we defined the minimal viable compliance, and then you can experiment within those guardrails. Um, and then the Toyota Coaching Carta. So, so this is, I have found that this is a great approach for middle management. So give middle management an explicit role, which is, which is the Toyota Coaching Carta. So a middle manager is coached by their boss as to how their team is doing based on the total improvement Carter. So you've got a number of improvements you're working on the person, the, the person that you report to is coaching that person and a few others on how they're doing on that. And then that middle manager is coaching their team. Um, and it's, again, it's a coaching relationship. So it's asking questions. So how, you know, dear team, how are you doing on fixing this? It's not prescriptive. Um, but it's like, how and how can I help you? A bit like an handon cord pull servant leadership. So by doing this, it gives leaders at all levels an explicit responsibility for improvement.

00:28:14

Um, and then finally, experimentation. Um, visualize, stabilize, optimize again to quote Dan North. Visualize the work in the system, first of all, which is a shock when you see it. Secondly, stabilize the work stem, the bleeding start to apply, uh, work in progress limits. Um, and by applying whip limits, even if they're super high values to begin with, you're turning the system into a pull based system. So then it is a case of stop starting, start finishing. You cannot pull another piece of work until you've created a slot, until you've freed up a space, even if you've got super high whip limits to start with. And then optimize. So then as like, as the tide goes down, you start to see the rocks that were submerged and the shopping trolleys and the bicycles that were submerged. And then you start to clear them. Theory of constraints, you identify your biggest impediment, you clear it, and then you can reduce your whip limits again.

00:29:06

And you just keep on doing that. And then before you realize it, your flow efficiency has gone from 10%, which is the average for large companies to 20% or 30% or 40%, which is a two times, three times four times improvement on throughput. It's actually not that difficult. Um, probe sense and respond, run experiments, have hypotheses, um, have nested cadences. Uh, so, uh, annual cadence, quarterly cadence, monthly cadence, weekly cadence, daily cadence, hourly cadence. Uh, like I said, I spoke about this in London in June. Um, and to get started, number one, start with the leadership team. Number two, do a vertical slice. Number three with everybody in that vertical slice with an engagement model involving everybody. Um, work on voice. So work on your values, your principles, and your outcomes. Don't just have the leadership team do that in isolation. Number four, start small with an end-to-end view of the work. So start with one or two teams, but look at the whole value stream. Don't just look at it in isolation. Um, and then number five, fan out sideways. So that's my, uh, advice for getting started. In summary, give people a voice. Thank you.