• Agile Coach

Focus and creativity don’t mix? They do with Rose-Anne.

FOR RENT: barren houseboat in the Jordaan. That headline catches Rose-Anne’s attention as she hangs out on Marketplace one dark autumn evening. ‘Sounds perfect,’ goes through the mind of the future behavior change designer and coach. That bare houseboat in the Jordaan will later prove to be her first successful Agile project. In the 12 years and dozens of Agile projects that follow, Rose-Anne develops a strong vision of her own for working Agile: “The challenge is to be both focused and creative.”

Back to the Jordan for a moment. Toilet group, bathroom, kitchen, sewer, furnishing. Just a few items on the to-do list for making the houseboat habitable. Impossible when you only have three weeks to renovate. Most people would drop out. But Rose-Anne gets right to it! A mess; she sees through it. Problems; Rose-Anne sees opportunities. Sounds nice and positive, but how do you make sure you don’t drown in all those opportunities and ideas? She focuses. Completes the to-do list, prioritizes work and rolls up her sleeves. That’s how she makes the remodel her first Agile project, already balancing focus and creativity. In 2024, with names like ING, Ahold and Nuon on her resume, it will still play a leading role in her vision of Agile working.

Call focus focused attention, creativity is then open attention. You want to be able to switch between those two forms of attention

Focused attention

“So often I hear that people find it difficult to focus and really get deep into one topic,” Rose-Anne says of what she, as an experienced coach, encounters in many teams. Why that focused attention is often difficult? “We keep getting sucked to the surface by our mail, phone and little in-between tasks,” Rose-Anne explains. She often literally sees it happen in her dynamic training and in-company programs. Because, “I like to let teams work on their own. I am of course actively involved, but it is really about the participants and their way of working together.” And in that, focus often turns out to be far from it. So what does she give people? “Create focus by finishing the parts of a project one by one. And work together as a team from the top, the most important part, down.” When people manage to finish things, Rose-Anne finds that they often enjoy the work much more, too. Satisfaction, the word says it all, is doing something completely.

When you really work together as a team on one part of the project, asking questions no longer becomes a distraction, but rather a deepening!

Open attention

You have prioritized. You work as a team on the same part each time. You ask deeper questions. Congratulations: you have created focus. But then comes the next challenge. Becausecutting the work intosmall pieces is very practical and clear, but there is a pitfall in wanting to tick off the pieces as quickly as possible. Job done, on to the next one. Flattened; the danger is that you put blinders on and work in a narrow-minded way. So little room for creativity. “Then it is important to regularly step back, zoom out and look at the big picture again,” Rose-Anne tips. In this way you create open attention and you can make other connections just like that. “Creativity then lies, for example, in the different experts on your multidisciplinary team. An idea from one discipline can be deepened by a team member from another discipline.”

Learning to shift gears

Recap: the challenge is to be both focused and creative. Sometimes your team needs focused attention (focus) to complete components. At other times, the team needs open attention (creativity) to create innovative parts. Sometimes you want to be able to put check marks behind “toilet, bathroom, kitchen, sewer and fixtures. Sometimes you want to look at your houseboat from a distance and come up with a new idea. Training yourself to be able to switch between that focused and open attention is important. And an art Rose-Anne has specialized in. Also learn to shift gears better?