Three distinctive features of SAFe which I highly appreciate

Three distinctive features I highly appreciate about SAFe are:

• Dual operating model: decoupling of org structures from value streams. Honestly, in many companies it was a real cracker to start transformation promptly as the restructuring efforts of the functional hierarchy was a fragile topic. The org structure usually represented decades history of how senior managers were building the organization according to their vision, and yes some of them were also building their kingdoms, trying to shape the organization by how they thought was best for it. Thanks to the decoupling of these two aspects, it is possible to start a transformation swiftly while giving the re-structurization as much time and respect for people, their ambitions, and visions, as it needs. From my perspective the nature of these two processes: organizing around value and organizing functionally is indeed of a different nature, and the timelines are of different magnitute, and as such it deserves to be treated separately.
• Organizing into operational value streams. Designing the value streams, as described by SAFe is logical and elegant. It is an exercise I recommend to all organizations, even to those that think they have it sorted. Why? Because it will add transparency to why we organized the way we organized. I believe, to know this logic is highly important to everybody in the organization. Not only will people understand that it is an act of conscious design, but they will also respect it. Trying to design the value streams surface the choices that have to be made and the multitude of options there usually are to choose from. People quickly realize there is a degree to which the design decisions are tough as there usually are multiple equally good designs. On the other hand, the usual lack of such transparency weakens the belief that leadership knows what they do when they announce a re-org to employees, causing people to spend too much time divagating. 
• PI Planning. Planning at scale always seemed a daunting task to me. All those hundreds of people on one hand and the will to invite them all into the planning process, to make sure decisions are made where knowledge is. That has always been a challenge in my career. And here SAFe offers invaluable help for me. It offers me a template of a facilitation scheme for the PI Planning event that does exactly that. Whatever people say, I rarely see such great support.

p.s. Give any tool to bureaucrats and they will turn it into a heavy process that will make people suffer

p.p.s. Give any tool to skeptics and they will prove it does not work in our case

Attribution: Photo by Tony Hand on Unsplash

The Joseph Pelrine's Team Health Index

Finally! It turns out that I am a part of a bigger group of people who think that Psychological Safety itself is not a sufficient factor in a team's health. Yes, psychological safety is a necessary condition for teams to be healthy yet, there is more to it.

 

According to Joseph Pelrine to assess the team's health it actually takes three factors into consideration. Here is the full equation: 

The Team Health Index = Psychological Safety + 

                          Empathy + 

                                      Thought Diversity 

or actually this should be a multiplication equation to highlight that the combination of these three factors is what impacts the final result:

The Team Health Index = Psychological Safety x 

                          Empathy x 

                                      Thought Diversity

Only now I feel comfortable that we have set up the stage properly. This triad of factors as a whole is what really matters when we talk about team health. I think this equation should be called somehow and framed together as "Pelrine's Team Health Index" ;) .

Countless number of times I met teams who were "just" safe. Safe ot the extent that there was no development possible. They missed empathy and rejected any thought provoking challenges from external stakeholders and/or clients. Many times all other voices were treated as endangering the status-quo. And those teams were let to proceed with their limited worldview and produce solutions. And those solutions reflected the worldview of those teams as a natural consequence. Only when solutions turned to be suboptimal with hard evidence, the status-quo could be challenged and a space for a wider discussion was opening.
To some extent it is called a learning loop, yet there is a thin line between the necessity to learn by failing versus getting things done effectively by upfront collaboration through empathizing and being open.

In terms of system dynamics, an exchange and mutual benefit between a team and its stakeholders / clients, one could say that a team needs to give back for Safety with Empathy and be grateful to external voices for enriching their Thought Diversity.

Thank you Joseph Pelrine for bringing the full picture together in your post!