Angela Druckman Of The Druckman Company On The Book That Changed Her Life

An Interview With Sara Connell

Be willing to give of yourself without expecting anything in return — I spend many hours each month answering questions about Scrum from people who have never and possibly will never take any of my courses. That’s ok. If I can give them something of value, even just a paragraph or two that they can take and use in their lives, then I feel I have made a difference.

Books have the power to shape, influence, and change our lives. Why is that so? What goes into a book that can shape lives? To address this we are interviewing people who can share a story about a book that changed their life, and why. As a part of our series, I had the pleasure of interviewing Angela Druckman.

Angela is a Certified Scrum Trainer, Agile Coach and owner of The Druckman Company. She is also the author of the acclaimed book “30 Days to Better Agile.” Angela’s clients include Fortune 50 companies to small start-ups and everything in between. You can learn more about Angela’s work at www.thedruckmancompany.com .

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dig in, our readers would like to get to know you a bit more. Can you tell us a bit about your “backstory” and how you grew up?

I grew up on a farm in the Midwest and, I can tell you, Midwestern work ethic is a real thing! One of the things I really appreciate about my upbringing is that my parents taught us about the value of hard work. They also taught us the importance of family. I am one of six siblings and I myself have four children, three of whom have worked for my business. So you could certainly say The Druckman Company has been a family venture.

Let’s talk about what you are doing now, and how you achieved the success that you currently enjoy. Can you tell our readers a bit about the work you are doing?

I work with my clients to help them implement a type of agile project management called Scrum. Scrum is used in a variety of industries but is most commonly found in software and technology environments. It allows my clients to focus on short iterations and regular customer feedback which, in turn, helps them build better products and services.

The vast majority of my work is through referrals and repeat business. I’ve been working with some of my clients for 10+ years, and they use agile practices like Scrum to improve their organizations and the way they do work. My job has taken me to five continents and 23 countries. This is one of the things I like best about what I do — the constant variety. On any given day, you might find me in Chicago or Warsaw or Buenos Aires. It has been a privilege to work with so many organizations in so many places in the world.

You are a successful leader. Which three character traits do you think were most instrumental to your success? Can you please share a story or example for each?

First and foremost, you have to be comfortable with uncertainty. I see this as one of the key differences between a typical employee and a typical business leader. The employee wants to know the “five-year plan.” The business owner knows there is no five-year plan. You can make one and that is fine for goal setting. But it is going to have to be tweaked and changed many times as new information becomes known.

Second, you have to be quick to pivot when necessary. When the pandemic struck, most of our certification courses moved online. My in-person classes are highly interactive and focus on work in small groups. We had to figure out how to give that same rich experience online. Because things were changing so rapidly with COVID, I had only four days to prepare for my first online class. But it turned out great. We got great feedback and have discovered that people actually love having on online option.

Lastly — well, its that work ethic thing again. Most successful people I know love to work. I certainly do, sometimes to a fault. My daughter (who works for my business) and I have been known to fall into work discussions at Thanksgiving dinner. At such times, the rest of the family is quick to point out another characteristic of a good businessperson: work-life balance.

What’s the WHY behind the work that you do? Please share a story about this if you can.

I will feel eternally grateful that the very first large technology project I was involved with…was my worst project ever. It was a classic IT disaster project where, by the time we delivered something, it was so late and so over budget that everyone — customers, our leadership and us (the project team) — were miserable.

I didn’t realize it at the time, but this planted a seed in my mind: “There has to be a better way.” I started looking for a different way to manage projects where the risks were high, the resources were limited and requirements were changing. Enter Scrum.

Scrum focuses on working in short iterations, incorporating regular customer feedback and focusing on working product as the primary measure of progress. I still remember my first Scrum project. All the useless metrics I had learned as a project manager, like green/yellow/red, percentage complete and risk weightings went away. Instead, now what I wanted to know from my team was simply the answer to two questions: What’s done? What’s left to do? For the first time in my professional life, I had some confidence that I knew what was going on in my projects.

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?

I believe teachers are the most under-appreciated profession in our country. Too often, teachers labor away, frustrated by shrinking budgets and increasing bureaucracy, wondering if they are really make a difference in kids’ lives.

I was very involved in music in school and my band teacher, Mr Paul Heidemann, was an extraordinary influence on my later life. He took a special interest in me, giving me piano lessons after school for free and getting me a scholarship to a prestigious music camp that my parents would not have been able to afford. It was Mr. Heidemann that taught me a saying I still use today: “Practice doesn’t make perfect. Practice makes better. So keep practicing!”

Awesome! Let’s now jump to the primary focus of our interview. I’m an author and I believe that books have the power to change lives. Can you please tell our readers about “The Book That Changed Your Life”? Can you share a story about how it impacted you?

People who take my courses are constantly asking for books and other materials they can study to become better at servant leadership, a hallmark of Scrum. A book that is always at the top of my recommendation list is “Just Listen” by Mark Goulston. Mark’s background is fascinating. He is, by training, an MD, a psychiatrist. But early in his career he spent much of his time working with the FBI and law enforcement in hostage situations. He taught them de-escalation techniques so that the perpetrator would let those people go unharmed.

Then Mark realized that those same fight-or-flight feelings that a gunman, holding 20 people hostage, might feel were the same feelings people were having at work. He began to teach these principles in corporate settings and eventually documented his approach in “Just Listen.”

What was the moment or series of events that made you decide that you wanted to take a specific course of action based on the inspiration from the book? Can you share a story about that?

Mark has a great saying: “Never try to reason with someone who is having an emotional reaction.” When I coach my clients, I am often going into “hot” situations. People don’t hire someone like me because their project is going great and they just wanted me to swing by and see. I often come into situations where projects are bleeding money, people are quitting and tensions are high. Mark’s techniques have helped me “cool” these encounters so we can have a rational discussion.

I have a client that is well along the way to adopting Scrum. The decision has been made that this is how they are going to manage their projects going forward. But there were two technical managers that were very much against using Scrum. They were completely hostile to it. If I had met that energy with reason (“You just need to understand it better. Then you would like it.”) or equality hostility (“It doesn’t matter if you like it. Your management has decided you are doing Scrum so suck it up!”) I would have closed any possibility of communication.

Instead, I used Mark’s techniques to “cool down” the discussion. When I did, I learned that the managers had some very valid concerns that had little to do with Scrum and much more to do with how their leadership was using it to manipulate employees. I could then move my efforts away from convincing those managers to like Scrum and onto solving the greater problem with their leadership.

Can you articulate why you think books in particular have the power to create movements, revolutions, and true change?

There are, of course, many ways to take in information. Today we have almost infinite videos, podcasts and the like to learn from. But books, I think, are unique in that they allow the reader to take in information at his/her own pace. Only with books can we read a paragraph, consider it, think of examples to support or negate what the author is proposing and then re-read it to gain understanding. Books encourage us not just to absorb but to think. And thinking is what leads to insight and understanding.

A book has many aspects, of course. For example, you have the writing style, the narrative tense, the topic, the genre, the design, the cover, the size, etc. In your opinion, what are the main, essential ingredients needed to create a book that can change lives?

The answer to this is perhaps different for fiction and non-fiction, particularly how-to non-fiction. With non-fiction, giving people practical advice that they can implement right away is a key benefit. I wrote my book “30 Days to Better Agile” because I would see my all my clients having the same problems when they tried to implement Scrum. So I thought it might be nice to make a list of those problems and tell people how to fix them. That is the crux of my book. I wanted to create something that would be helpful to people in their work lives.

With fiction, I think the ability to take the reader into the author’s imagination is key. The best fiction writers create a whole universe with its own possibly fantastical but consistent and therefore believable laws of physics. It is a testament to JK Rowling that a whole generation of people know the meaning of the made-up phrase “Wingardium Leviosa!”

What are your “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me Before I Started My Career” and why?

1. Know that every step in your career, though seemingly unrelated, is building on previous work — I worked my way through college as an exercise instructor and personal trainer. I especially worked with runners who wanted to switch to triathlon (swim, bike, run). Most of those people had a deep fear of open water. I worked with them to help them overcome that fear.
2. Even though I have a degree in computer science and decades experience in technology, I find myself using techniques from my personal training days. When I mentor agile coaches, I encourage them to help people get comfortable at their “edge of fear” because that is where all meaningful change happens.
3. You don’t have to be the biggest to be the best — competing in an industry where you are a small fish in a big pond can be intimidating. You don’t have a huge staff or unlimited funds. So figure out, what do you have? What is your unique value proposition? We knew people liked working with us because of our high level of expertise and because they trusted us. In this way, we’ve been able to build customers who have stayed with us for years.
4. You are probably going to be involved in many kinds of businesses…and that’s good — I am sure there are business owners that run their core enterprise and never do anything else. But that’s not me. A few years back, as our business began to be profitable, I got interested in real estate investing. Here was a whole new business with new issues and opportunities to learn about. While I doubt it will ever be my core activity, real estate provides me a way to challenge myself in new and different ways.
5. Be willing to give of yourself without expecting anything in return — I spend many hours each month answering questions about Scrum from people who have never and possibly will never take any of my courses. That’s ok. If I can give them something of value, even just a paragraph or two that they can take and use in their lives, then I feel I have made a difference.

Seemingly disastrous events can often be opportunities in disguise — my first professional job was at a governmental organization. It was a boring job and I was completely under-employed. But I took it because it had great benefits and they had a reputation for never laying people off. Six years later…they laid me off. I decided right then and there that work was going to serve me, not the other way around. After that, I became very strategic about my career moves, eventually becoming a Scrum trainer and starting my own business. That whole experience taught me that, when I felt like life was treating me unfairly, the first question I should ask myself is ‘What’s the opportunity here?”

The world, of course, needs progress in many areas. What movement do you hope someone (or you!) starts next? Can you explain why that is so important?

When I was a kid, we had to take a class called “Home Economics” where we learned what (then) were considered basic life skills, how to cook a simple dinner, sew on a button and the like. I wish now that kids would be required to take a “life skills” class. They would learn basic money management, how to avoid traps with lenders and how to invest. It continues to amaze me how many adults are intimidated by these simple concepts. Truly, becoming financially secure is not rocket science. But it does take some knowledge. I’d like to see kids get that information earlier, before they are drowning in student debt, car and house payments.

How can our readers further follow your work online?

We would love to have readers visit our website at www.thedruckmancompany.com and read our Agile Mindset blog and learn more about our courses. And you can find my book “30 Days to Better Agile” on Amazon and Barnes and Noble.

Thank you so much for taking the time to share with us and our readers. We know that it will make a tremendous difference and impact thousands of lives. We are excited to connect further and we wish you so much joy in your next success.