Podcasts about scrum gathering

Ever left a meeting feeling more drained than before it started? That’s the dreaded meeting hangover. Brian Milner and Julie Chickering dive into why bad meetings have lasting effects—and what facilitators AND participants can do to make them better. Overview Bad meetings don’t just waste time, they drain energy, morale, and engagement long after they’re over. In this episode of the Agile Mentors Podcast, Brian and Julie Chickering unpack the concept of "meeting hangovers"—the lingering negative effects of ineffective meetings. They explore why bad meetings happen, the shared responsibility of facilitators and participants, and practical strategies for turning the tide. From fostering accountability to knowing when to walk it off, this conversation will help you rethink how meetings impact team dynamics and productivity. References and resources mentioned in the show: Julie Chickering #137 Stop Wasting Time with Guests Kate Megaw HBR The Hidden Toll of Meeting Hangovers by Brent N. Reed, et al. When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing by Daniel H. Pink Remotely Productive by Alex Pukinskis Working on a Scrum Team Class Subscribe to the Agile Mentors Podcast Want to get involved? This show is designed for you, and we’d love your input. Enjoyed what you heard today? Please leave a rating and a review. It really helps, and we read every single one. Got an Agile subject you’d like us to discuss or a question that needs an answer? Share your thoughts with us at podcast@mountaingoatsoftware.com This episode’s presenters are: Brian Milner is SVP of coaching and training at Mountain Goat Software. He's passionate about making a difference in people's day-to-day work, influenced by his own experience of transitioning to Scrum and seeing improvements in work/life balance, honesty, respect, and the quality of work. Julie Chickering is the brains and brawn behind JC Agile Consulting, believes that Lean and Agile practices are packed with potential — to enable positive culture change, business agility, and breakthrough results. Julie is a past president and board member of the Agile Project Management Network (APLN), a Certified Scrum Trainer (CST), PMI Agile Certified Practitioner (PMI-ACP), as well as a traditional Project Management Professional (PMP). Auto-generated Transcript: Brian Milner (00:00) Welcome back Agile Mentors. We're here for another episode of Agile Mentors podcast. I'm with you as always Brian Milner and haven't got to say this for a while. So I'm happy to say again, welcome back to the show, the fabulous Julie Chickering. Welcome back, Julie. Julie (00:15) Thanks, Brian. Glad to be here. Brian Milner (00:17) Yeah, very excited to have Julie back. Julie is a friend of the show. We've had her on multiple times and it's been too long. We just need to have you on more often again. So thank you for making the time and coming back. We wanted to have Julie on sort of as a little bit of a continuation from our last episode that we had with Kate McGaw. You we talked a little bit about facilitation there and there was a lot that we talked about initially to set that up to talk about Julie (00:30) Sure. Brian Milner (00:44) just the fact that there's an epidemic of bad meetings. There's kind of a harmful thing happening where it's extremely prevalent that meetings are going poorly. There's not a lot of attention that's given to this. There's not a lot of focus in a lot of organizations because it's such a prevalent issue. of our meetings being so bad. And Julie pointed out to me this Harvard Business Review article that sort of became a touchstone, I think, for what we wanted to talk about. It's called the hidden toll of meeting hangovers. And we'll link to this in the show notes. But the idea behind the article was just to say, they quoted a stat early on saying that they did a study and found that more than a quarter, 28 % of meetings left employees with lingering negative effects, such as impaired engagement and productivity. And so that's what they were referring to this sort of this meeting hangover, that bad meetings take a toll beyond just the lost time in the meeting. And that's kind of what we were talking about more with Kate is, you know, yeah, we want to make our meetings better, but there is sort of this ongoing lingering that, you know, from my reading of this and what I've experienced, kind of compounds, you know? One bad meeting then can lead to another bad meeting and another one and that feeling of anxiety and disconnectedness and like I said here, impaired engagement and productivity, those kind of grow and get worse and worse the longer that you have these bad meetings. So Julie, I'll just start with you and say, you know, when you read this article, what was it? What was it that really stood out to you, that jumped out to you, that made you think this was an important kind of area of focus? Julie (02:27) First of all, I love the title because I can relate to it. So when you're having a hangover, you just feel terrible, right? And this person that they talk about first, Jacob, about like, he was so frustrated when he left the meeting. So the introductory story when he was so frustrated when he left the meeting, he canceled his one-on-one right after because he knew he couldn't concentrate. And then he was just like so upset. for the rest of the day and talking about how he just didn't even want to work on the project anymore. So just this, I just got this physical sensation reading this around how it feels when you're in a meeting that's ineffective. And we've all been there and I could just like feel it in my body when I read this story. And I also feel like once you know what I, what an ineffective meeting feels like, the ineffective one is more noticeable and draining. yeah, so and then this this lingering effect of morale and just wasted, just wasted opportunity. And it feels like Brian Milner (03:32) Yeah. Yeah. Julie (03:47) in the corporate world, this is the norm. That we just have meeting after meeting after meeting that's just sucking the life force out of everyone. And then we wonder why nothing gets done. Brian Milner (04:00) Yeah, I mean, this article is packed with statistics and it's tempting for me to just kind of read them all off to you. I'm not going to do that. But there's a couple of things that kind of jump out to me. they talk about how around half of people have this feeling of that as a result of the hangover from the meeting, that they have negative or harmful impacts on their interactions with coworkers. They feel more disconnected from their team. and they want to spend more time alone based on the fact that, I went through this really kind of, there's no other way to say it, traumatic experience of having this really harmful, bad meeting. they connect the dots by saying, people will leave these meetings and oftentimes they will then go commiserate with coworkers and say, share their frustrations, which is helpful, it's good. But it also, you know, they noted here, this can kind of spread some feeling of negativity or hopelessness, you know, that it's always going to be this way. You know, yeah, I had a meeting like that as well. Boy, I guess this place is doomed. It's always going to feel like this. And so they have this kind of ongoing, as I said, compounding almost nature of it that one bad thing leads to another leads to another leads to another. And pretty soon you've got this really harmful, negative work environment and it's not necessarily something that's just happened. It's just the repetition of going through those things lead to this ongoing negative psychological impact in the organization. Julie (05:28) Yeah, I'm just smiling because I can just think of some meetings that I used to have a leader that would always show up late. Always show up late. We'd be halfway through the topic and then he would show up and we'd have to stop what we were doing and go circle back and just speed and you could just feel. the whole mood of the meeting change. We were actually making progress and we have to stop and we have to go all the way over. And this is constant. So what we would do afterwards is then have meetings after the meetings to complain about the leader doing that. The more adult thing would have been of course to say to the leader, when you do this, Brian Milner (06:15) Yeah. Julie (06:22) This is the outcome. Brian Milner (06:25) Yeah. So, so that's kind of, you know, what we want to talk about a little bit in here as well is, in the last episode, we, focused a lot on facilitation and the idea that, Hey, there's a lot of responsibility to the meeting organizer, whoever's facilitating this to not have it be this negative kind of environment. And I don't disagree with any of that, that we talked about in the last episode. I think there is a lot of that, that is true, but I think it's, it's. important for participants to not look at that as, it's all the facilitator then, right? I'm just a participant, I'm showing up and it's your job to get all this stuff out of me. And if the meeting goes poorly, that's entirely your fault. And I think it's important for us to recognize, no, if I'm a participant, if I accept that meeting invite and I'm here, I have a role to play. I have a contribution to be made and I can have, you Julie (07:14) Right. Brian Milner (07:19) as kind of Pollyanna-ish as it sounds, I can have a negative impact or a positive impact on this meeting. And I think that's an important kind of responsibility to take a hold of. Julie (07:25) you Yeah, I agree. And I think about that in a couple of ways. So actually, in both Scrum Master and Product Owner class, I remind them at the end of every meeting to ask two questions. The next time we have this kind of meeting, what would you want to do differently? But you gotta ask the question. And if you ask the question and nobody says anything, then they can't feel victim to a poorly run meeting. But you gotta be able to listen. You gotta be able to listen to it. Doesn't mean you have to say yes in the moment. It could be that you would follow up after, but just ask the question. What would you wanna do differently the next time we have this type of meeting And then ask them, what did they like? Brian Milner (07:48) Yeah. That's good. Julie (08:11) I used to do it the other way around. I don't know if I told you this story before or not, but do you remember Daniel Pink did the he was our keynote speaker at the Scrum Gathering, our conference a few years ago when he talked about. OK, when he talked about timing. OK, so something he said is like, yes, he said, as people, if there's two, if there's good news and bad news to always start with the bad news first. And end with the good news, because as people, we remember the last thing we talked about it. Brian Milner (08:20) Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Julie (08:40) So if I say to you, okay, the next time we have this type of meeting, what would you want to do differently? And nobody says anything. Okay. What did you like? And then they leave going, we actually got something done. Unless of course we didn't get anything done. Brian Milner (08:57) That's awesome. Yeah. I mean, I think about like how in classes, a lot of times when we talk about forecasting and estimation, you know, I make a little joke. It's not really a joke. It's the truth. But when I present, I've learned over the years when I present information to stakeholders about timings, I, know, if, if I do calculations and it says it's going to take between five and six sprints to do something, I've learned to say the maximum amount of time it will take is six sprints. there's a chance it could come in as soon as it's five sprints and yeah. Yeah. I mean, I learned to do that because what I say in classes, I've learned a lot of people stop listening after the first one. And I think actually though, I may be wrong. It may be more what you're saying that, you know, we, we remember the last thing that we hear. but it may be a combination, right? Cause if, if I hear the low number first and I I'm happy with that, I stopped listening and I don't want to hear the bad news. Julie (09:27) Brilliant! Brian Milner (09:50) So if I say the bad news first, it could take as long as this, but there's a chance it could come in earlier, then I'm leaving them with the good news that it could be this, you know, as soon as this, but they've set their expectation that, you know, it could take as long as, you know, the bad news that I gave them initially. So I don't know, maybe there's a combination of that there as well. But yeah, I agree with what Daniel Pink says about that. And timings do make a big, difference for sure. and how we present things. Julie (10:18) Okay, so a key though in that is that you can only ask those questions if you're staying within the time box and you've allocated time to actually ask the question. And like some of these things that came up as the root causes of like poor time management, like running over or stuff like that. If you're running over, nobody's going to really want to take the opportunity to give you feedback. So what do you think about, so what you talked with Kate a lot about when we talking about here is the role of the facilitator. And I think we should talk about what people can do if they are feeling like they're the victim of the lack of facilitation or poor facilitation. So what do think about that? Brian Milner (10:52) Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I think we have several roles to play, right? I I agree. If I'm not the facilitator, then it's important for me to come into that meeting, well, knowing what the expectation is. know, like if I'm coming into a meeting as a participant, I don't think it's responsible. to show up to the meeting. And I've shown up to meetings like this, showing up with the attitude that, hey, it's not my meeting. It's the other person's meeting. You got me. I'm here. But now it's on you to get out of me, whatever it is that you're hoping to get. And maybe I put in very little prep work for it. So there is some kind of interplay here between the facilitator and the participant. Because you could say, well, that's the facilitator's responsibility to help you understand. Yes, it is. That's, this is what I'm trying to say is I, I think it's a mistake to shirk that responsibility entirely and say, I'm not the facilitator. Don't look at me. Right. If, if they didn't ask me to prepare or, or, you know, here's what I need you to, to, come prepared to talk about. Well, then I've got a bad facilitator and you know, we're just, we're hopelessly going to be in a bad meeting. No, when I get the invite, you know, Kate said last week, you know, Julie (12:17) Mm-hmm. Brian Milner (12:22) You can decline invitations to meetings. You don't have to accept every meeting invite that you get. But if you do accept it, I think that there's an accepting of responsibility there to say, all right, I'm going to be a participant in this meeting. What do you need from me? And in advance, making sure you talk to that meeting organizer and saying, hey, I agree. This is probably a good thing for us to meet about, but I want to prepare. I want to know that I can come to this meeting armed with information that's going to be helpful to others and I can play my part. So meeting facilitator, meeting organizer, what did you have in mind for me in this meeting? What is it that you were hoping to get from me in this meeting so that I can show up prepared? And that small little question, I think, does several things, right? mean, one, it says, to the facilitator, do you know what it is that you want from this person? If they come back at you and say, I don't know, I just thought maybe you needed, well, if they say, you know, we just thought maybe you needed to be in the loop or whatever, well, I might come back at that and say, that sounds like an email, you know? Julie (13:31) Yeah, I'm also thinking though there's the flip side of then people, there's two different things. I want to go back to how I can also help. what also struck me when you were saying that is that I think there's also this cultural part of am I being excluded? That, you know, that sense of They're not inviting me. A lot of times people don't need to be there. What you're afraid if you're not there, does that mean something? Does it mean you're being cut out? You're not important? There's that whole ego part. Yeah. Brian Milner (14:04) Yeah. Right. Sure, mean, especially if there's a decision to be made, right? You could feel like, they don't want my voice in that decision. And I think that that's a legitimate concern. If I'm responsible for an area and decisions are gonna be made in the meeting and I'm left out of that invitation, I might have a concern and say, if there's gonna be a decision made around this, I probably should have an input. Is there reason why you didn't want my input in this meeting? And, you know, even asking that question can sometimes just trigger, well, this is lower level things. This is not really at the level that you weigh in on. Usually we didn't want to waste your time, you know, something like that. You might find out it has nothing to do with the fact that they didn't want your opinion. It was more of, we were trying to be conscious of your time and, and, and didn't think that this was the kind of thing that you would need to weigh in on. So you might have a micromanaging kind of problem there that you need to address as well. Julie (15:11) Yeah, this is all people's stuff. It's what makes it fun. Brian Milner (15:14) Yeah. I want to, want to just, I'm sorry. I don't want to mean to interrupt you, but there's one thing I've been thinking about this whole time as well, because we've been talking about bad meetings and bad meeting hangovers. And I think initially the first thought that kind of comes to our heads about that is facilitation and maybe the meeting not being organized well. But I think there's another thing that makes a meeting a bad meeting that it's important to call out as well. Julie (15:37) Mm. Brian Milner (15:40) I'll just give you an example. I remember there was a job I took the very first day of the job. It my first day on the job. We had a meeting with some of the other leaders in that organization, and I got called into this, and they introduced me. Hey, this is Brian. I remember them saying, he's the new whatever, whatever the last guy was that had my position. OK, he's the new whoever. And we got into discussion about upcoming things, the status of different projects and other things. in the middle of that meeting, there became a shouting match and there were F bombs dropped left and right. And I remember walking out of that meeting going, what the hell did I get myself into? You know? so what I'm trying to call out there is there are sometimes bad meetings. It's not about the facilitation or the order or the agenda or anything else. There's sometimes bad meetings because we don't bring kind of the Julie (16:15) Mm-hmm. Brian Milner (16:29) best parts of ourselves to the meeting. We bring the worst parts of ourselves to the meeting. And sometimes we don't censor that and we don't let those, we don't kind of, I don't know how to put it. We're not engaging civilly, right? And I know that sometimes when I've been in those and I've had multiple of those kinds of meetings like that, that I would say, yeah, that was a bad meeting. But it wasn't because the facilitator did a bad job. It's because the participants were kind of letting their inner demons manifest through themselves in the meeting and they weren't really treating everyone with respect. They were very disrespectful to their coworkers. And I think that that's maybe more common than we care to admit. Julie (17:05) Mm-hmm. Yes, when you're sharing that to me, that goes back to meeting working agreements. like, what can I, so if we go back to, if you're in a situation where you're in a bad meeting, even if the facilitator is doing the best that they can, there's things that you can do. So to me, if we've had, and I know you were brand new, but you said that that was not. uncommon. If we had meeting working agreements and you let out an F-bomb and that was against the meeting agreements that anyone else in the room can say, you just broke one of our, you can, you, anyone can call people on that behavior. shouldn't have to be just the facilitator because the facilitator might be like just trying to run through, okay, now what am I going to do? It might be needing to just take a little breath to figure out what do, right? But I can imagine if that was the norm in that environment that people got that disrespectful in the meeting that when people left, there was a hangover effect. Like you kind of was like, what am I doing? Brian Milner (18:07) Right. Julie (18:27) What's happening here? What's going on? What did I sign up for on day one? This is day one. What's day two going to be like? Are we holding back? Right. Here's the new guy. Let's be on our good behavior. We'll only drop three F bombs instead of four. So, at, I was very fortunate that at, Brian Milner (18:27) Right. Right. Right. Yeah. Yeah, they were on their best behavior, right? Guess I was new. Yeah. Julie (18:50) rally software, just, this was norm. It was normal to learn, everyone learned how to facilitate and be good participants and all that, except it was really quite funny at our coaches events because we had to have the working agreement that the facilitator actually got to choose how to facilitate, but we didn't get to facilitate the facilitators. But anyway, I have started recommending Alex Bukinski's book, remotely productive. took a lot of what Jean taught us and help is helping people apply that remotely. So like chapter four is how to help in a bad meeting. So if you're a participant and it's going bad, how can you help get back on track in a respectful way? So not being, not being a jerk about it. But even, so he just even gives examples of things like. when somebody makes a recommendation. like noticing when people agree on an action and you type it into chat. It doesn't have to be the facilitator who types it into chat. Like as a participant, you can go, okay, the action was or a decision was made noting decisions, decision, write the decision down, but helping the facilitator be like, we would talk about that. Actually, I forgot until I just started speaking out about it that often, especially in Brian Milner (19:54) Yeah. Yeah. Julie (20:11) big significant meetings, would have a scribe, a facilitator and a scribe. So this is what he's talking about actually is somebody scribing. Brian Milner (20:22) Yeah, yeah, that's a very important component because if we just shout things out and no one's really capturing what the next steps are, those are going to get lost. And we could have to repeat this meeting because we just didn't really follow up in any way. We didn't take any action. So I agree. That's an important component of it is at least designating that it doesn't have to be one person, but just designating that, hey, here's the expectation. Here's what we're going to do. Yeah. Julie (20:49) Um, yeah. So there's a bunch of really good tips in here and like the Kindle version's 1499 or something. So I've been telling people like, if you can have just one meeting that sucks less, you're going to get your 1499 back. So if you could have one less meeting hangover, you're to get your 1499 back, think for sure. Brian Milner (20:49) That's a great tip. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I should clarify with my story earlier that I'm a big boy. It wasn't the language that bothered me. It was directed at someone else, like kind of F-U, that kind of thing. That's a very different dynamic than just saying, those effing suppliers, I sure hate that. That's fine. Or maybe more fine for others than some, but. Julie (21:21) Mm-hmm. Right. Brian Milner (21:38) That didn't bother me, was more just that the attitude behind it was a negative one towards someone else. But yeah, that's a great tip there, just understanding that when I'm a participant there, when I show up, that I have a role to play in it as well. There's things I can do and if there's not notes being taken, then I can maybe step up and do that. Hey, someone said we're going to need to do this? All right, let me put that in the chat. Remember, this is what needs to happen. Julie (22:05) Yeah, and he gives nice, some like a template here on when we're making decisions like data, diagnosis, direction, do next. So he's given a nice, he gives a lot of really great tools. I'm really, and like liking it quite a bit. back to your, your example that is, in the, the behavior part. was a lack of respect versus really the content. Yeah, I get that. The conflict that's going on. Brian Milner (22:42) Yeah. The tip from the book you just mentioned kind of aligns also to something that's in this article, the Harvard Business Review article. One of the things it says is they have some tips in this as well. And one of the things they say is demand accountability every time. And I think that's a good kind of takeaway as well is they're specifically talking about these action items, things that we would do as a result. As a participant, think it's important to, I like that language, demand accountability. If we have this meeting, all right, what is it that you're hoping to get out of this? I'm showing up, I'm here, what do you need from me? What are we gonna do as a result of this? Any participant can ask that. Any participant can say, so that we don't just waste this time, what are we going to do next? Julie (23:11) Mm-hmm. Brian Milner (23:29) I think you demand accountability when you do that. Julie (23:33) Yeah, and I would say too, the first thing we should ask is what's the purpose of this meeting? And so if you go up to turn agendas into action plans, Jean taught us is you have a purpose statement. And then actually she taught us that what are the questions we need to answer in order to meet the purpose? Those are our agenda topics. When we've answered those questions, we're complete with this meeting. And then like where the Brian Milner (23:39) Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Julie (24:01) come back down here to make every minute count. Don't run over. Alex also gives some nice gentle waves of doing like we would say time check. We have 10 more minutes left. You could just put that in chat time check. We have 10 more minutes left. You don't have to be the facilitator to be like time check. So I do like that. He's helping people think about what they can do versus just being victim to Brian Milner (24:05) Yeah. Julie (24:29) the lack of facilitation. Brian Milner (24:31) Yeah. And as a participant, I can, I can check in at the start of the meeting and say, all right, just, want to, I want to, have a time box check here. Our meeting is scheduled from this time to this time. That's our time box, right? We can't, is there, or I have something right after this. just so you know, here's my time box. can't go further than this. and you know, I think as a participant, it's. Julie (24:46) Hmm. Brian Milner (24:56) you can have those same effects just like you said, hey, time box check, it's this, we got this much time left. And as a facilitator, I know I've reached the end of our time boxes sometimes when we haven't really gotten as far as I had hoped, but I've been okay saying this was a good start. This was a good start to what it is we need to decide. Obviously this is gonna take more time. We are at our time box, so we're gonna have to wrap this meeting up, but we'll schedule follow-ups and we'll take it from here. If I'm entering a meeting where I need a decision by the end of that time box, then by all means, make sure people are aware of that from the start. If I'm a participant or if I'm the facilitator, we're here together, but we all need to understand that we need to leave this with a decision on this. Julie (25:37) Yeah. So the other thing, Kia, I believe, around the decision is, and also be clear about how we're going to make the decision. So is this going to be a collaborative decision? We're all going to vote? Or are we getting, everyone going to give their opinion? Somebody else is going to make the decision? And then we'll check, like, how are we, how is the decision going to be made? So that's not a surprise as well. Brian Milner (25:50) Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, extremely important. I know when I talk about in our product owner classes about doing things like buy a feature as a way to prioritize, one of the things I always try to say to the stakeholders is, hey, we're going to play by a feature, but this is no promise that this is going to be what the final prioritization is. You're helping me to prioritize, but I want to set the expectation. I have to take into account your opinions and other people's opinions and market factors and lots of other things. So make sure we're on the same page. We need to understand this is a component of the decision. I will make the final decision outside of this meeting, but I really appreciate the input and I need your input to help me make the decision. Julie (26:32) Right. Yeah, love that example. So moving down when they say press paw, how to recover how to press. Brian Milner (26:55) Yeah, yeah, yeah. If you find yourself having a hangover from one of these bad meetings, yeah. Julie (27:01) Well, even if it's a great meeting, I am a fan of Adam Grant and I can't like pull up the where he said it. And he said it someplace that the studies show that people actually need like 10 minutes between topics. So if you're going to finish a meeting, you should have at least 10 minutes before the next meeting to be able to. Brian Milner (27:19) Yeah. Julie (27:27) focus and reframe. So I also feel like sometimes these meetings are bad because people are rushing from meeting to meeting. They don't have time to take a bio break or get a bite to eat. So now they're hungry and all that kind of stuff. But we do this to people on a regular basis. Brian Milner (27:46) Yeah, yeah. But, and I agree with that. if it's a good meeting or a bad meeting, I'll find myself, because I work from home exclusively. Well, I shouldn't say exclusively. Sometimes I'll go and work on site with different companies. But when I'm working from home, I'll leave the meeting of something I've just talked about and I'll have to go get more tea or something. And there's a little decompression of, wow, let me kind of throw that off, right? Let me take a deep breath. And now I can reset and I'm ready for whatever the next thing is. But I find I do that kind of naturally and I can't imagine not doing it. I can't imagine kind of going one thing to the other all the time and never having that break. That would kill me. Yeah. Julie (28:31) It happens all the time. It happens all the time. back to meeting working agreements. That's another one that I suggest is people don't start like at the top or the bottom of the hour. Like they offset it a bit to build in breaks. But when you're setting that time box, you got to set, you got to leave space in your agenda time. You have to leave space in your time, your meeting time to close your meeting properly. Brian Milner (28:59) Yeah. Yeah. Julie (29:01) We don't think about how much time that takes either. So it all adds up for sure. Brian Milner (29:09) I like the idea too that they have in here of walking it off. I know just in my work history, kind of like the example I gave you, there have been times when I've been through meetings where I feel like, yeah, I just got to get this off of me. And I have taken... remember, know, in certain circumstances, I'm not a smoker at all, but I, I had, I've always had developers that smoke in some way, shape or form. I, I wouldn't be uncommon for me to go and just stand outside with them while they smoke. or I'll walk down to the corner and get a drink or something and come back. there's something about taking that walk, getting outside the office. or if I'm here working at home, you know, maybe I'll even just go take the dog for a quick walk around the block. And by the time I come back, that's such a good way to. just kind of let whatever that is go away and reset. Now I'm ready to do what I need to do next, but it all goes to know, eliminating that hangover effect that I might have that came from a bad meeting. Julie (30:12) Yeah, so another facilitation tip around that, especially if you've just done a big meeting, if you can, walk it off with someone else. But do it in a debrief way, like what did you learn? And so we would talk about walking the walls. If we're physically together, we have stuff all over, like grab a friend. Brian Milner (30:21) Mmm. Yeah. Julie (30:34) or grab something you don't usually talk to and then walk the walls, so to speak. So at the end of class when I do have enough time, I like them in their breakout rooms to just debrief each other. Like what are a few things you want to try and remember? Because we all remember different things. So there's different ways you can do it. The way they talk about walking it off is it Brian Milner (30:38) Yeah. Julie (31:01) to avoid the hangover, but hopefully we're gonna switch the culture and people are gonna have good meetings and they're gonna wanna talk about positive stuff at the end. I mean, there's both ways of thinking about that physically, I think. Brian Milner (31:13) Yeah. Yeah, I agree. Well, I hope people have gotten a lot of this. You know, we kind of debated, we do this? Should we talk about this? It's so close to kind of the last topic, but I do kind of see it as a part one and part two. You know, there is a part one of that that is, bad meetings sometimes are very much a cause and effect of not facilitating well. But I would hate for people to entirely think, well, it's just the facilitator. there are only one person in the room. And if all the other people think that's not really my responsibility and I don't really have a part to play in this, then the facilitator can only do so much. Julie (31:45) Yeah. Yeah, and depending on what type of meeting it is, like really big, significant, like quarterly planning meetings, then the facilitator needs to do more work, in my opinion, to set everybody up for success. So depending on the size, the length, the... Some meetings need more structure than others, but I agree that as participants, you gotta have accountability to and how it's going and do I need to be here? What's the purpose? If the purpose isn't introduced, then you would ask kindly, what's the purpose of the meeting? What are we trying to accomplish here? I'm just wondering, I'm just checking in. just, not like, the hell am doing here? Brian Milner (32:38) Right, right. Julie (32:39) was to make sure that I'm, you know, whatever. But I do like what Kate said. don't know. You should be able to ask the questions. You should be able to decline all of that. So here's what I'm thinking now, Brian. Another thing people could do, though, is if they start to pay attention to the cost. Brian Milner (32:44) Yeah. Julie (33:05) of being in meetings just through their own health and well-being, then yes, they can be proactive. They can learn a few tips from Alex, but then maybe they, even if they're not the Scrum Master or someone who would normally be assigned to becoming a facilitator, maybe they can get some of the facilitator training because... The training that Kate was talking about really is applicable to any kind of role. It doesn't have to be the scrum master or product owner or team lead or manager. It's really applicable to all people. And then the other thing too, if it's something that say you're in the developer level role, even if you're a business analyst, quality, whatever, quality engineer, whatever, and you wanna become a facilitator. get the training and see if you like it. Then you can kind of be stealth-like in there with, and I feel like that's some of the things Alex is trying to teach people as well. If you're going to be the facilitator or the participant, that there's ways that you can make a difference in a positive way. Brian Milner (33:59) Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely agree. agree. Well, this has been a great conversation. We got to have you on more often. So I apologize it's been so long, but I really appreciate you taking the time and bringing this topic up. And it's a great, great focus for us, I think. thanks for bringing it, Julie. Julie (34:21) Beautiful. Well, I don't have a meeting hangover, do you? Brian Milner (34:36) I do not. I feel great. I don't need to walk anything off right now. Awesome. There we go. I'm right there with you. All right. Thanks, Julie. Julie (34:39) Me either. I'll just go back to drinking tea. Okay. right. Thank you. Yep.

Missed some episodes this year? Don’t worry—Brian’s got you covered with a highlight reel of 2024’s most memorable moments, featuring game-changing insights from Agile thought leaders and innovators. Tune in to catch up, reflect, and set your sights on a stellar 2025! Overview In this special year-end episode of the Agile Mentors Podcast, Brian takes us on a trip down memory lane, sharing highlights from some of the most impactful conversations of the year. Featuring insights from Agile legends like Mike Cohn, Clinton Keith, Heather McGowan, and more, this curated selection is packed with golden nuggets that you can revisit or discover for the first time. Whether you missed an episode or want to relive the best moments, this recap is a perfect way to close out 2024 and prepare for what’s ahead. References and resources mentioned in the show: #79 Navigating Agile Trends and Challenges in 2024 with Lance Dacy #86 Revisiting User Stories with Mike Cohn #90 Mastering Agile Coaching with Cherie Silas #93 The Rise of Human Skills and Agile Acumen with Evan Leybourn #100 Navigating the Future of Agile and Scrum with Lance Dacy & Scott Dunn #111 Adapting to the Future of Work with Heather McGowan #120 Agile in Gaming with Clinton Keith #123 Unlocking Team Intelligence with Linda Rising Subscribe to the Agile Mentors Podcast Want to get involved? This show is designed for you, and we’d love your input. Enjoyed what you heard today? Please leave a rating and a review. It really helps, and we read every single one. Got an Agile subject you’d like us to discuss or a question that needs an answer? Share your thoughts with us at podcast@mountaingoatsoftware.com This episode’s presenters are: Brian Milner is SVP of coaching and training at Mountain Goat Software. He's passionate about making a difference in people's day-to-day work, influenced by his own experience of transitioning to Scrum and seeing improvements in work/life balance, honesty, respect, and the quality of work. Auto-generated Transcript: Brian Milner (00:00.622) I'm Brian Milner and this is the Agile Mentors Podcast, a show about both the personal and organizational journey towards agility. My friends and I will be sharing with you what we've collectively learned from seeing thousands of companies Agile implementations, apparels and pitfalls, as well as the secrets to success. We'll share our personal in the trenches experiences so that you can apply what we've learned in a practical way in your careers. We also hope to hear and learn from you as well. If you're like us and are always in search of better ways of working together, you're in the right place. Join us, mentor, and be mentored. Let's get started. Brian Milner (00:53.288) Welcome in Agile Mentors. We are back for the final episode of 2024. Believe it or not, we have reached all the way to the end. You might be thinking, wait, there's a few more weeks left. Yeah, there's a few more weeks left, but the next release date would have been on Christmas Day itself and the one following would have been on New Year's Day. So we're gonna take two weeks off to be with our families after this episode. And we encourage you to enjoy that time, take the time with your family as well and friends, and truly wish you the best over that time period. But before we get there, we do have one more episode for you. We thought what we'd do for today's episode might be tiny bit different than normal. In fact, I don't think we've done anything like this before. What I wanted to do is, since it is the last episode of the year, is to look back over the past year and play you some portions of some of the really fantastic discussions that we had over this past year. Just pull out a handful of these to talk to you about. If they sound interesting to you, maybe you can go back and take a listen to those episodes. So let's get right into it, because I don't want to waste time setting it up any more than that. For starters, I want to go back to something that's now kind of a tradition for us, and the next one you'll hear from us after this episode will be the continuation of that. The beginning of this year in 2024, we started things off and we kicked it off with friend of the show, Lance Dacey. And that episode was really about looking forward into 2024. And for us to talk about what we maybe thought was coming and what we saw in the future, and then trying to somehow make some predictions or give some advice about how we might be better prepared for it. And one of the areas that came out in that discussion was really talking about how leadership affected an Agile transformation and Agile with the culture of an organization. So I'll play you a little clip here from Lance's discussion. One of the thoughts that he had in that episode, really talking more about how we need to go to the next level with our organizations and with the leadership in our organization. Take a listen. We've been trying to scale Scrum and Agile for a long time and we've written the practices on how to do it. Brian Milner (03:13.23) but we're not allowing the people to practice that. You know, just got through coaching. My youngest son is in fifth grade and we coach his football team. It's like, we're going to sit down and tell you during this play, here's the stance that you take to block. You're basically a robot. Do everything that we say, even if you don't understand it, because the whole scheme for that play is built on everybody doing their job exactly as prescribed. But as you evolve into professional football or high school football, they've learned so much about those mechanics. that's really fun now because they've got the IQ to respond to what's in front of them. That's agile. And that to me is what we have to start learning in organizations, is we know how to run the play at the team level, but how do we build up the people to run the play correctly in challenges when there's adaptations that need to be made? And a lot of times management and leadership is the suffocating part of that where they don't allow for that. It's always interesting to go back and look at those conversations that we have at beginning of the year. and see kind of how it played out. Were we right? Were we wrong? So if you're interested in that, check out that. That was just episode 79 was the first one that we did in 2024. Next up, I'm gonna jump to episode 86. This was one with our very own Mike Cohn. Mike had come back on because quite frankly, we've had for many years a set of user stories that were sample user stories that you could come to our website and download just as a resource for people if they wanted to see what... samples of user stories look like, try to imagine what that would look like in their particular context. So that's why we had this collection of user stories. Well, Mike went back to re-edit those recently, and then he took kind of another look at it and had forced him to kind of reconsider some things, wanted to share some thoughts about those new ideas and thoughts he had about user stories, just in re-examining ones that he had put together previously. So in this next clip, what you'll hear Mike talk about is really kind of a controversy maybe just his own controversy internally, but kind of a shift that he had over the years and really the template itself for a user story. So take a listen to this. I had a bunch of slides. I looked at them a few years ago to confirm this. I looked at them and they all said, I want to blank, right? And it was what the user wants. And sometimes it's not what the user wants. So if you look at slide decks that I create today, they all say, I. Brian Milner (05:36.866) They don't say I can, they don't say I want to, they just say I, and then you fill in the verb. For example, as user, I am required to enter a strong password. I don't want to enter a strong password. I want to type in my dog's name and let the system know it's me, right? So I am required to enter a strong password that doesn't fit with I want to or I can. I can enter a strong password? Well, that doesn't really help. I don't want to. I can enter a strong password. I can enter a weak password. Is that possible? So I do think there's problems with I can, but I leave all of that out of the template and I let the situation determine what that verb should be. Always an interesting conversation there with Mike Cohn. Very, very lucky and fortunate to have him come on usually multiple times per year. And that was just one of the times that Mike came on our show this last year, but really, really interesting stuff there about user stories. If that's something you're interested in, I encourage you to check out that. That was episode 86 with Mike Cohn on user stories. Now we're gonna jump ahead to episode 90. Episode 90, we had a friend of mine, Sheree Silas, come on. Sheree is a very authoritative, knowledgeable person on Agile coaching. In fact, she is the person that I most likely am going to point you to if you come to me and want to find out more about Agile coaching. She has some really great classes and other things that she teaches. And we had her on to talk about Agile coaching, obviously. And one of the things that came up is something that I hear sometimes in classes that Some of this coaching stuff you talk about sounds a little bit like counseling a little bit. Is there a crossover there with counseling? Is this a counseling job? So take a listen to what Shree had to say in response to that question. As an adult coach, you are not an organizational psychologist. You are not a counselor. You are not an organizational therapist or any of those things. That is not the job. The job is consulting, mentoring, training. and some coaching, helping people how to learn how to negotiate, learn how to collaborate, learn how to have good, healthy conflict. And there's helping them to get the business results they want. And it's very frustrating when you kind of hear this taking all the way to the other end of, we're just there to do woo-woo touchy feely stuff. I'm the psychologist. No, that's not your job. And you're not trained to do that. And that's part of the coaching work. Brian Milner (08:03.136) is to help them understand what they need and what they don't. And even as a professional coach, it is my job to make sure my client understands what coaching is and what it's not. And as an Agile coach, that's part of the work is to make sure the client understands what this work is and what it's not. Yeah, really good stuff there about Agile coaching. If you're interested in finding out more about that, listen to that episode. You'll hear more from Sheree on episode 90 about Agile coaching. Next up, I have a relatively new friend of mine, but one that, you know, feel like brother from another mother. Mr. Evan Layborn was on and he came on to talk about some research that his organization had done in partnership with the Scrum Alliance. And in particular, there was one component of that that I wanted to question him about because when I initially read it, it gave me a little bit of some misgivings about it. One of the things I mentioned was that traditionally we have always talked about being a T-shaped individual on a Scrum team that had a depth of experience in one area. but a breadth of experience in other areas that you just weren't an expert in. You were only really looking to be an expert in one area. But this report kind of brought to bear this idea of what they're calling a pie-shaped individual. So think about the mathematical symbol pie and how it has two lines going down. It's kind of like a T with two lines going down from it, right? And when I saw that, initially my first thought was, well, is this just organizations trying to get by with less head count? Take a listen to what Evan had to say about that. I want to be clear that when we're talking about pie-shaped individuals and companies looking for pi-shaped individuals, we're not talking about companies who are looking for one person to do two jobs. They're not looking for someone who's got two skills because they're trying to fill two roles. They're trying to fill two jobs. We're talking about one person, one job, and using multiple skill sets to do that job better. more effectively. In the technology world, we've had a word for this in the tech world for 10 years, full stack developer. A full stack developer is a pie-shaping, it's a developer with test competence and operations competence. They can deploy a DevOps environment. That full stack developer is a prime example of a pie-shaped person. It's not one person doing two jobs. It's one person doing one job with a variety of skill sets. Brian Milner (10:30.752) and doing that job better, exponentially better because of it. There's some really interesting other insights that Evan had in that episode. highly recommend that to you. That was episode 93 with Mr. Evan Layborne. Next up, well, we celebrated a milestone. We had our hundredth episode, if you can believe it or not. And we thought it would be appropriate to celebrate by having two people that we have on quite frequently on the podcast, Mr. Lance Dacey. and Mr. Scott Dunn. So we had something that we don't often have here on the show where we had multiple guests, but we had Lance and Scott on to really look back over the past 100 episodes and look ahead a little bit into what we thought might be coming. And one of the interesting kind of conversations we had there was thinking about some of the changes taking place in the workplace today. You'll hear Scott kind of start in on this with. thinking about the kind of dilemma organizations are facing with the work from home versus work from office kind of situation. And then Lance will come in and kind of relate it more to some larger agility issues as well. Take a listen. Thinking back to the time when people didn't really want to go agile because they thought it was a fad. And it didn't take but a few years, like, I could be wrong. Maybe that is a thing we need to do, right? And then everyone gets on board. But there was a lot of kicking and screaming and doubting the early years. I think we're going to see that with remote work is made like the proving ground of do you really work this way or not as a manager? you get this or not? You cannot lead and manage people currently how you are going to in the future because they were talking about how the new generation. is coming on board and they just won't tolerate certain things. And I think you hit it on the head with that Scott, that if these managers don't learn how to lead and manage with this newer generation, two or three removed from what I'm talking about, you're not going to have any employees because they will not tolerate it. They do not work that way. It was always such fun to have both those people on our podcast and it was even more fun to have them both on at the same time. So I really appreciate both Lance and Scott really helping us celebrate there. The fact that we crossed that threshold into a Brian Milner (12:38.326) our 100th episode. Next up is someone that I found really fascinating. is Miss Heather McGowan. And she was the keynote speaker at the Scrum Gathering this year in New Orleans. And she was so gracious to come on the podcast and talk with us a little bit. She had some really great insights. Just listen to what she had to say here in thinking about sort of the place of work in general as a part of our lives today. But what I think what's really happening is we've outsized what work is in our lives. So community used to consist of social interactions, religious affiliations, clubs and groups we belong to, all of those kind of, if you think of them as circles, because everything's visual to me, all those circles shrank and work became bigger. So now part of this generational change, but more and more people are looking for work to provide their purpose. work to provide most of their relationships, work to fill these. It's a little bit in terms of how we're interacting with each other that's causing illness, but it's also an outsize expectation we have around work. So now it becomes table stakes for a lot of organizations for work to be my self-expression, work to be my sense of purpose, work to be where I think about my values. And it wasn't like that a few decades ago. I heard from a couple of people after this episode, just friends of mine talking about it. I want to make sure I'm clear about something here that Heather was saying, she's not saying that we should find our values from those places. She's just saying that's kind of how society has shifted a little bit. So you can debate whether it's good or bad, whether the other circles that she mentioned had shrunk or grown or anything like that. But really that's kind of the reality we're left with is that there's a lot of people who find their belongingness from work today, as I said, whether that's a good or bad thing, you can debate. but that's certainly a reality I think we have to live with. And this was a really interesting discussion. So I highly encourage you to check that out if you want to. That was episode number 111 with Heather McGowan. Next up was someone I found really interesting as well. This was Mr. Clinton Keith. Clinton is a veteran of the gaming industry. And I know there's always some interest in that in our listeners and in the Agile community about how you really can apply some of these Agile principles and things. Brian Milner (14:55.704) to an industry that's so fast moving like the gaming industry. Well, as I said, Clint has worked in that industry for a very long time and he's seen pretty much everything there. He's worked in all different kinds of gaming companies. He's helped them to learn and apply these agile principles along the way. So I'll just share a snippet of the conversation that we had. In this clip, he's talking really about how some of these principles we talk about like, individuals and interactions over processes and tools and are we letting something like a new technology drive how we do things or is it really more about what's the value we're trying to deliver, right? And in the gaming industry, it's fun. It's delivering something that's fun. So take a listen to what he had to say about kind of one of these experiences he had about really finding the fun. The big light bulb moment was having a short deadline on showing something of value. led to people making better choices from the player's perspective, not this challenge of, what can I do with artificial intelligence over the next two years? That's part of the big challenge with these big, huge games of saying, it's like, hey, if there's not a payoff, if you can't see value, and this was an early lesson I learned working with Nintendo of Japan, the guy that made Mario and Donkey Kong, we worked with him directly, Miyamoto. You always had this thing, it's like, the fun fast, show the value of it. And it always stuck with me. When you have these short deadlines, you want to encourage the teams and the product owners is judge the game. Not what you see in the potential in two years. Judge your vision of the two years against what you're seeing every other week and adjust your expectations. Don't fall in love with your vision. Judge the game. Don't fall in love with your vision. Such great advice there, and I think it's so applicable to really industry. Don't get caught up in that word game, right? Judge the product. Think about it that way. I think sometimes, especially for us as product owners, sometimes we can look at that and say, we've got these grand visions and grand designs for our product, in two years we're gonna have this incredible product that's gonna do all these things. Well, you may not make it to two years. You may not make it to two years if you don't. Brian Milner (17:16.897) deliver a value earlier, right? If you don't capture the imagination and attention of your customers, if you don't solve a problem for them upfront, we know the big idea is gonna take longer to get to, but I think what Clinton is saying here, and it's really an important point, I think, is that that's part of what we kind of focus on as Agilist is trying to find the value and deliver it early. So just a really fascinating episode there as well with Clinton. Encourage you to check that out, especially if you have interest in the gaming industry, lots of good content there from him in episode 120. Lastly today, I'm gonna leave you with one last one that wasn't too long ago here, but we had someone that is kind of a beloved figure in the Agile community. She's often referred to as an Agile visionary. That's Ms. Linda Rising. And she came on to talk about multiple things with us, but one of the things that she talked about in our conversation, was about a research project that Google did several years back called Project Aristotle. They were trying to figure out kind of the components, what went into making a high-performing team. So just listen to what Linda has to say about what their scientific research kind of uncovered about really what goes into making a team high-performing. All these different researchers made the same mistake in the beginning. and it's the same mistake organizations make. They thought in the beginning that what makes a smart team is smart people. Wrong. Not that you don't want smart people. You can have a team of very smart people that doesn't have any of these other characteristics that is not intelligent as a group. We really have to wake up and realize, first of all, that we're doing that, that we're valuing IQ or individual intelligence, smartness, you went to this school or you got that particular SAT score. It has nothing to do with that. It's not that there's no correlation, but it's weak. It's much better to have people who have these other characteristics. I just have to say Brian Milner (19:38.444) We are so spoiled Agile mentors with some of the great people like Linda Rising that we get to hear on this podcast and learn from really as sort of a masterclass from some of the best thinkers in this industry. And I know I'm very thankful for them taking their time and thankful for people like Linda Rising coming on the show. If that dialogue that you just heard there sounds interesting, check out that episode. It was episode 123. Linda talks about a lot of lot more great stuff there in that episode. But yeah, we get so many great guests on our show and that was just a handful. It's hard to even pick out just, I think we just had eight of them there. It's hard to pick out just eight over the past year, because there were just so many. And any of the other guests on here, I hope you don't feel like you were not in the top eight or anything. This was just a sampling. I just wanted to pull some different kinds of episodes and I think there was quite a variety of guests and topics and things that we had on the show this year. It just makes me excited about thinking about what's possible in the next year. I know we're gonna be trying some new things. I've been interacting with some of you at the Agile Mentors Community and you've been talking to me about some suggestions about things that maybe we can do. And we're gonna try that. We're gonna try some new things going into the new year. So you may see some shifts from time to time of just a few experiments that we might be trying. As always, we'd love to hear your feedback on any of those things, but we're always in search of making this the most valuable use of your time. We think that the quality of the people, like you just heard, is pretty good. We're pretty happy with the people that really decide to come on the show, and we're very humbled by the fact that they choose to come on our show. I just wanna always make it the most valuable use of your time. We want this to be the most valuable Agile podcast that's out there. As always, if there's anything we can do to change that, I'll go ahead and just say that now. email us podcast at mountegoatsoftware.com. Put that at the end of every episode. Truly mean it. If there's things that you want us to experiment with or try, if there's guests you want to hear, in addition to some of these great guests you heard today, there's other people that maybe that you think would be good on the podcast, send us an email, podcast at mountegoatsoftware.com. Or if there's a topic that you want us to cover, let us know that as well. We'd be more than happy to try and put that in. In our planning, Brian Milner (22:01.666) we try to always put the listener's suggestion kind of towards the top of our backlog. It may not be the very next thing we do, but we try to make that as soon as possible. Oftentimes we have to find the right guest, but as soon as we find the right guest, we want to get that listener suggestion on as soon as possible. So thank you for those that have made suggestions in the past and keep them coming. I'll just go into a few other things then and wrap up and get you on your way. It's been fun looking back over the last year. And as I said, I'm excited about seeing where we go next year. Speaking of that, just make sure that you like and subscribe to the podcast. That way you don't miss any of these things, like any of these great episodes that you heard little snippets of here in this podcast episode. And with that, I guess that'll be a wrap for another year. So Agile Mentors, my heartfelt happy holidays to you. Whatever you celebrate this season, I truly, truly hope that you get to spend some time with your family, your friends, your loved ones. truly hope that you get some time to reflect on what you're grateful and thankful for. I hope you come back next year refreshed, ready to go. I hope that's part of your sustainable pace, that time of renewing with the people in your life that are closest to you. We look forward to seeing what happens with you in the new year. So join us back next year. We'll kick things off. We'll be back here in just a few weeks. And on the 8th of January will be our next episode that we release. And we'll have our... of annual sit down with Lance Dacey to look ahead to 2025 and see what's coming up then. So join us and hope you have a very, very happy holidays. See you next time on another episode of the Agile Mentors Podcast.

What makes a team intelligent? Brian and Linda Rising explore the surprising factors that foster group intelligence, from psychological safety to diversity, backed by groundbreaking research from MIT and Google. Overview In this episode of the Agile Mentors Podcast, Brian Milner sits down with Agile thought leader Linda Rising to explore the concept of group intelligence. They dive into what makes teams intelligent, discussing the importance of diversity, psychological safety, and social perceptiveness. Using research from MIT and Google, Linda also highlights how storytelling and a growth mindset can enhance team dynamics, leading to more effective and innovative collaboration. References and resources mentioned in the show: Linda Rising Fearless Change: Patterns for Introducing New Ideas by Mary Lynn Manns & Linda Rising MIT Center For Collective Intelligence Project Aristotle The Fearless Organization by Amy C. Edmonson Amy Edmonson’s TED Talks 3 ways to better connect with your coworkers - Mark T. Rivera’s TED Talk Advanced Certified Scrum Product Owner® Advanced Certified ScrumMaster® Agile For Leaders Mountain Goat Software Certified Scrum and Agile Training Schedule Join the Agile Mentors Community Subscribe to the Agile Mentors Podcast Want to get involved? This show is designed for you, and we’d love your input. Enjoyed what you heard today? Please leave a rating and a review. It really helps, and we read every single one. Got an Agile subject you’d like us to discuss or a question that needs an answer? Share your thoughts with us at podcast@mountaingoatsoftware.com This episode’s presenters are: Brian Milner is SVP of coaching and training at Mountain Goat Software. He's passionate about making a difference in people's day-to-day work, influenced by his own experience of transitioning to Scrum and seeing improvements in work/life balance, honesty, respect, and the quality of work. Linda Rising is an internationally recognized consultant, speaker, and author with a Ph.D. in object-based design metrics. Known for her expertise in agile development, retrospectives, and the intersection of neuroscience and software, Linda has authored five books and numerous articles. In 2020, she received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the World Agility Forum for her impactful contributions to the industry. Auto-generated Transcript: Brian (00:00) Welcome in Agile Mentors. We're back here with you for another episode of the Agile Mentors Podcast. I am with you as I always am, Brian Milner. And I wanted to introduce you today to someone I think you're really gonna enjoy here on this episode. I have the one and only Linda Rising with me. Linda, thank you so much for coming on. Linda Rising (00:09) Okay. It is my pleasure, Brian. Thank you so much for inviting me. It's a beautiful day here in Nashville, Tennessee. Brian (00:32) In Nash Vegas, yes. I actually spent a couple years in Nash Vegas. So I know that area back in the day, back in the day, because I worked at Opryland. So that'll tell you how long ago it was. Yeah, back in the dark times, right? But Linda, for those, if anyone who might not be aware, Linda is an author. She is... Linda Rising (00:33) Yeah! wow okay Brian (00:58) really what people would call an agile luminary. She has been involved with this movement for quite a while and has really, I don't think it's too far of a stretch to say shaped the conversation around this a lot with her research and other things that she's provided. we wanted to have her on because she, well, because it's Linda Rising, right? We wanted to have her on for that, but. Recently, she spoke at the Scrum Gathering, the regional Scrum Gathering that took place in Stockholm, and her topic just sounded really fascinating. I thought it would be fascinating for us to talk about. It was a topic of group intelligence. So Linda, I'm sure there's a lot of people out there like me that when they heard that the first time thought, I have no idea what that means. What does group intelligence mean? Linda Rising (01:43) Yeah. Actually, normally when I do anything, give a keynote or an interview on a podcast or the interviewer or the person who's inviting me will say, what would you like to talk about? That's what you did. What would you like to talk about with the idea that I could come up with a list of things I was interested in that I wanted to talk about because I knew something about it. Brian (02:09) Yep, it's true. Linda Rising (02:20) But in this case, no, it was, want you to be the opening keynote for this amazing gathering in Stockholm. and by the way, we want you to talk about group intelligence. So. That was about a year ago and I thought to myself, I don't know anything about, well, maybe I do. Maybe I do know something about group intelligence. But I have spent the past year getting ready for that talk. It was just a few weeks ago and along the way, what I found was it pulled together the research around this topic. pulled together a lot of things that I have been thinking about and it is still not over. I had to give that talk, there was a date for that, but now there are little threads that, as you say, I'm following those down various rabbit holes because they're connected to other things that I'm interested in. So this turned out to be, even though I didn't pick it and I didn't know a whole lot about it, It's turned out to be a great introduction to a different way of thinking. So we know what intelligence is, I think. Don't you? Do you know you have an idea? And aren't you intelligent? Brian (03:41) That's so awesome. Well, that's a quite a loaded question, right? Linda Rising (03:53) Of course you are and and so are our listeners our listeners are intelligent and what's interesting is that the psychologists who measure that They don't really have a definition for intelligence. What they do is they can test for it So have you ever had you know an intelligence test You know, an IQ test. Have you? Have you ever had one? Brian (04:25) You know what, I don't think I ever have, but I know my wife has, my daughters have, I'm very familiar with them, but I can't point back to one to say, hey, I know what my score was. Linda Rising (04:28) I'll bet you have. Well, sometimes you're given that test at a particular point, maybe in high school, and they didn't tell you that it was an intelligence test. You just took it along with the other battery of tests that you were taking at the time. And maybe they didn't tell you, you have an IQ of 145. They didn't tell you how smart you were. Brian (04:47) Yeah. Linda Rising (05:06) but somebody, somewhere, somehow along the way, they did. They measured it. And that's without having a definition for whatever it is. So what that test does is it says you're pretty good at solving a bunch of problems. And that's what the test is. Brian (05:17) That's amazing. Linda Rising (05:32) it asks you to look at some math problems, logic problems, spatial problems, different kinds of problems, and you either solve them pretty well or not so well, and when they are finished with that, that score on that test says something about how well you do at solving those problems. And that's what they're calling intelligence. Brian (06:03) I think I see where you're going with this because to me, if we're going to try to be very precise with words on that, I would say that sounds more like education. If I know how to solve a particular kind of math problem, that's because I've been educated to learn that. It's not a measure of my... Linda Rising (06:13) Yeah. Yep, yep. And so those tests, yeah, those tests do have a bias. They're biased toward people who have a certain kind of education biased against people who maybe didn't have that kind of education. Also, it doesn't even begin to talk about music. Here I am in Music City. Doesn't talk about musical talent. Brian (06:43) Yeah Linda Rising (06:46) It doesn't talk about your ability to perform, say, some sports activity, whether you're going to be a great basketball player or a baseball player. There are a lot of things that intelligence tests don't even, they don't even think about. Now, it doesn't mean this isn't a valid exercise because those IQ tests have been around a long time and they do measure what they measure, they measure it very well. And they do correlate with a lot of performance activities. In fact, if you were hiring somebody, the absolute best thing, if you could just do one thing, would be to give them an IQ test. That correlates most strongly with any kind of performance on the job. So it's a valid test, even if it has some biases, some problems. So that's individual intelligence and we call that IQ. So now the question is, can you do that for a group or a team? Brian (07:53) Yeah. Linda Rising (08:03) Could you say this group, could we measure it somehow? And if so, would it have the same kind of validity? That is, if they do well on this test, would that mean they would do well in the workplace? If we had that, then could we use it to say, all right, this team. is really going to be great for whatever it is that we wanted them to do. Is that possible? So obviously the answer is yes, or I wouldn't be here talking about it. Yeah. So the research is fascinating and it would take a long time to actually go into it, but it was started at MIT. The organization is called the MIT Center for Collective Intelligence. and they have been doing this now for over a decade. So this is not brand new out of the box. We're not sure where this is going. This has been happening and has been happening successfully. They do have a test. They can give it to a group. And what they find is that if the group does well, that group will also do well on other, just like IQ, other kinds of things that the test measures. And so, yes, they can measure group intelligence. Brian (09:38) Very interesting. This is really fascinating. Yeah. It's fascinating. I'm going to interrupt you for just a moment because I know, and forgive me if I'm taking you off track with where you were intending to go. But I know, having heard some of your other talks in the past on agile mindset and what you've written about, I know there's kind of this fundamental idea of the fixed verse. Linda Rising (09:39) It is interesting. Yeah. No, no, no, it's okay. Brian (10:05) growth mindset and the idea of intelligence being not necessarily a thing you're born with, but really something that you have the potential to change and grow. And how does that translate then to the group environment and the group's intelligence? Linda Rising (10:23) Yeah, so that's a great lead in because the next part of it was, well, okay, so we have this test and we can give it to a group, but we'd like to tease out some attributes of teams to say, you know, the teams that do really well on this test, they all seem to have, and they found there were three things that characterized Brian (10:26) Yeah. Linda Rising (10:52) intelligent group. The first one was called social perceptiveness. That is, are the people on the group, are they able to relate to each other? If one of the persons in the groups having a struggle for some reason, are they able to pick up on that? It's kind of hard to say, well what is that social perceptiveness? and we can come back to that, but that's first on the list. The second attribute is that when they have any kind of a discussion, that everybody talks. And that's pretty easy to see, and I know that you've probably been on teams as I have, where really not everybody talked, where maybe mostly one or two Brian (11:24) Yeah. Okay. Linda Rising (11:49) You know the loud people they did all the talking and the rest of us We just kind of sat in the corner and we said well, you know, whatever Yeah We've been there. Well, have we have we have seen that and I don't know how you're gonna feel about the third one But we all are concerned about diversity Brian (12:00) Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Linda Rising (12:17) We know that diversity is an issue. All organizations are struggling with the best way to deal with that. But the third attribute has to do with the percentage of women on the team. Brian (12:34) Really? Linda Rising (12:35) So this isn't like 50-50. This doesn't mean that you should have some women. It means the more women you have, the better. Ooh. You wanna think about that one? Brian (12:38) Yeah. You know what? I would not argue with that one bit because all the women that I've had in my life have been the most intelligent people I have known. So I would wholeheartedly concur with that. We're just a bunch of knuckleheads, the guys are. So I completely... Linda Rising (12:58) Ha! Brian (13:17) You know, I'm having some fun, but you're right. I can see that, you know? Like, I could see how that would be a really distinguishing characteristics. Linda Rising (13:22) Wow! So the researchers say maybe it's really not a gender thing because women are very good at social perceptiveness. And maybe what this third attribute, and they did a lot of statistical analyses, you you have to really dig down into the statistics and we don't want to do that. Maybe this third attribute is really a reflection of the first. And then if you, and here we're going to come to your growth mindset, if you could work with the people on the team who were not women, but who were these nerdy guys, know, could you somehow have them grow, improve, get better at social perceptiveness, then that would have the same effect as having more women on the team. And that's kind of where they are right now is can you do this? Are they equivalent? Are they really measuring the same thing? But they know that somehow that's what you've got to have is this ability to read. It's called theory of mind. Read the minds of the people on the team and that typically You know, we're stereotyping here. Typically men are not as good. So can you, could you, can you grow that characteristic? Can you get better? Can you get better at that? Brian (15:06) Yeah, I'll take a slight little side trail here and say that that makes perfect sense to me because one of the things that I found when I was doing my research on neurodiversity and specifically autism was that there's a book out there that I think I've shared on the podcast before, but it's called Autism in Heels. And basically the point of the book is to really examine autism in women. And one of the key points that's made in the book is the fact that when you see statistics about autism, you'll find that there's a huge number, there's a disparity. There's a large number of men, of males that are diagnosed and a few, a smaller percentage of females. And it gives the impression when you look at the data that you might think, well, this is a male thing, right? It's something that happens much more often than male. But this book is making the point that really, Linda Rising (16:02) Yeah. Brian (16:04) the criteria that was set aside to designate whether someone was autistic or not was really geared towards how it presents in males. So women were vastly underdiagnosed and still are to this day vastly underdiagnosed. And one of the things that makes it difficult to diagnose them is women are better at masking their symptoms. very much, they adapt to the environment around them. They pick up on the people around them. Linda Rising (16:18) Yeah. Brian (16:34) and they will mask the things that maybe are naturally a part of them, but they've learned in other parts of life how to do that. And so they're applying that to their autism as well. So that makes perfect sense to me. Linda Rising (16:43) Yeah. Yep, exactly. And of course, if we want to talk about women who have this tendency or on the spectrum, we have to mention Temple Grandin, who is one of the most famous female autistics in the world. I she's done more to gain attention for this problem, and she's definitely female. yeah, it's not it's not a male thing. But you're right that what's happened is that the women have had a growth mindset and whatever they inherited or were born with, they've done a better job at learning how to adapt given what they had as a limitation, adapting to working with others and using that as a strength. So that means that possibly, We could do that kind of thing to improve our teams if we included men in, well, what would it be? Would it be a training program? Would it be just coaching? Maybe this could be the job for a coach can certainly watch. The behavior of the team can notice, for instance, for that second attribute, is the discussion. Brian (17:54) Ha Linda Rising (18:10) Does that involve everybody equally? That could be a first step. And to encourage the growth in that direction. So one of the experiments that was done to follow on with that was to try to get male members of the team who didn't do well, you can actually measure social perceptiveness. And you mentioned autism, one of the tests. for autism is called reading the mind in the eyes. And with that test, you can show that people are better than others. And so maybe this could help us identify people who might benefit from this experimental approach. And that is to have something like, you know, I'm a patterns fan. So a collection of patterns that we used to talk about back in the day was written by Joshua Kerievsky and it was for running a study group where you read a book together a chapter at a time and you talk about it. So in the experiment the hypothesis was that reading a book together would improve the theory of mind or the social perceptiveness if it were a book that was fiction. Brian (19:37) Huh. Linda Rising (19:37) It's a story. A story. There's a hero and a beautiful princess and an adventurer and a bad guy and a good guy. in reading that, you learn to identify with the characters. And you talk about it. What was the character feeling when the handsome prince ran in to rescue the what was he thinking? Brian (19:39) Yeah. Linda Rising (20:05) So in a structured study group situation like that, reading fiction together and the results so far are positive but not enormous. It does help. It does help. Brian (20:20) Yeah. Yeah, I can see that, because you're trying to collectively interpret and you're getting a peek into someone else's mind of how they might interpret a situation and that can help you to interpret other situations. Yeah, I can see that. Linda Rising (20:23) May not. Yeah! Yeah, especially if someone was not in the habit of doing that. There are a lot of people who say, I've never even stopped to think about how the other members of my team are feeling. Brian (20:43) Yeah. Linda Rising (20:56) So attached to all of this is an enormous project that Google also started called Project Aristotle. And their idea was we wanna know what the secret is, what makes great teams. And they looked at everything. They spent years. mean, Google collects data, data they've got. and statisticians and analysts, they got it. And they spent years collecting and analyzing. And the summary at the end of all that was they found nothing. Brian (21:38) Hahaha Linda Rising (21:40) Did you read that? Did you read about that study? Yeah. Brian (21:44) I I'm familiar with that study. I really like what they did. Because when you have that kind of data available to you across cultures, across business units, it was an ambitious kind of study. I'm really thankful that they did it because I think they had some good findings there that came out of that as well. you're right. Linda Rising (21:52) Yeah! Yeah. Yeah? Yeah, they didn't find anything. Brian (22:12) Right, they thought it was gonna be, you know, it's a skill, it's the right mix of skills that makes it a high performing team or expertise and none of that really had a bearing. Yeah. Yeah. Linda Rising (22:15) Get off! And what was interesting about all of this is it sort of all came together because the folks at Google kind of looked over and said, well, look at what these folks at MIT are doing. And they said, maybe we're just not looking at the right thing. And they had talked about this social perceptiveness and what is that anyway? And it was kind of serendipity at about this time. Amy Edmondson wrote a book called The Fearless Organization, and it was about something she called psychological safety. And it was bigger than what the folks at MIT had identified. This has, I am free, I feel safe. Well, that would mean that you could speak up in a discussion and that would make the discussion more, okay, now we would think about what, I mean, what she talked about kind of put a big blanket around all of it and said, hey, I think we might be all talking about this. And the folks at Google said, well, you know, that makes sense. Maybe that's what we're looking for. And how do we do it? How do we do this? So your listeners might wanna just wander out to the Google site because now Google's been very transparent about this. How do you make this work? How do you bring about this psychological safety? How do you get people feel free to talk and to discussion? How do you help people be aware? of what other people are feeling. And they've got a whole raft of suggestions for managers, suggestions for team members, for, you know, and they're really all singing the same song. It's about this awareness of others, feeling that you are safe and that thinking about what other people are thinking. can lead your team to behave in more intelligent way. Brian (24:41) That's so, that's awesome. Right, right. Linda Rising (24:41) It's kind like a miracle. It's like a miracle. It all just came together. They weren't planning that. know, here at MIT, going one direction, Google going another direction. Here's Amy Edmondson at Harvard, and that it all kind of came together. Brian (24:48) That's awesome. You came together now. Yeah, Amy Edmondson is definitely one of my heroes. we've tried to get her on. We tried to get her to come on, but I know that there's layers to get to people like that. so if anyone's listening and has an end to Amy Edmondson, tell her that this is a welcome, this is a psychologically safe podcast to come on. We'd love to have her, but yeah. Linda Rising (25:07) Yeah. Well, yeah. think she did go out and talk to Google. I think there's a Google talk about psychological safety. So they did have her come in and give them some ideas, some suggestions or yeah. And she's on to failure now because her book, After Fearless Organization, which was about psychological safety, the one that, in fact, I just finished it is about failure. Brian (25:44) Yeah. That, Linda Rising (25:59) and their case studies of failures and what can you do about failure and yeah but anyway so she she's on she's she's on to whatever but yeah. Brian (26:07) That's awesome. Yes, she does great research and it's it's chock full in her book So I highly recommend her writing to anyone who's listening if that if this interests you Yeah, definitely read Amy Edmondson's work. You'll really enjoy it Linda Rising (26:14) Yeah Yeah. So, and if you do, then the story is not over, it's still going, which is, not just Amy Edmondson, but there's a fellow named Kevin Dunbar. This is not Robin Dunbar who did the 150 is kind of the magic number. This is a different Dunbar, same last name, but he did a lot of studies about thinking and. especially in science, how do scientists think? And in particular, he was interested in failure. And you know that as a scientist, you propose some hypothesis and then you test it in an experiment and then you stand back and you do an analysis and you say, well, did this work out or not? And he found that some scientists don't... like it when things don't go well. What a surprise, huh? Brian (27:26) Yeah, right. Linda Rising (27:28) Yeah, and they just ignore it. They either pretend it didn't happen or they put it in a drawer saying, we'll come back and, you know, we'll look at it later. But some scientists do a really good job of accepting that failure, working with it, and building on it. saying, hey, this is something we didn't think about. Maybe we can, they, you know, and they're off and running. It doesn't slow them down at all. And it turns out that the scientists who have that characteristic, who are able to do that, are scientists in groups. and they're in groups that are intelligent. They're diverse and open. They let everybody speak. They think about what other people are thinking if they're discouraged or not with this bad result. So the characteristics of those groups of scientists who do well with failure is the same. Brian (28:22) you Linda Rising (28:40) as the groups that MIT identified, the groups that Google is trying to grow. And I think it's really what we want in Agile development. We want groups like that. Not just because we think, intelligence is what. No. We want groups that have that characteristic. We want groups that feel psychologically safe. We want groups that feel free. Brian (28:54) Yeah. Linda Rising (29:08) to express their ideas. We want groups of people who are aware of what other people are thinking. That's what we want. Brian (29:16) Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. That's so cool. Linda Rising (29:18) So they're all talking about the same thing. They may be using different words, but they are really, and one thing that we might wanna note right here is that all these different researchers made the same mistake in the beginning. And it's the same mistake organizations make. Is they thought in the beginning that what makes a smart team is smart people. Wrong. Not that you don't want smart people. Brian (29:48) Yeah. Right. Linda Rising (29:53) But that's just an okay thing to have. You can have a team of very smart people that doesn't have any of these other characteristics that is not intelligent as a group. So I think we really have to wake up and realize, first of all, that we're doing that, that we're valuing IQ or individual intelligence, smartness, you went to this school or you got that particular SAT score. It has nothing to do with that. It's not that there's no correlation, but it's weak, it's very weak. It's much better to have people who have these other characteristics. Brian (30:33) Yeah, let me just, yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Let me connect it just a second to maybe someone who's listening who's a Scrum Master or someone like that, right? You might hear this and think, those foolish leadership people, they make these kinds of mistakes. I wouldn't make that kind of mistake. I know better than this kind of thing, right? Well, how much emphasis are you placing on whether your team knows all the details of what they should be doing in Scrum versus... helping them to know and understand each other, communicate with each other, right? How much effort and energy are you putting into those things versus the facts, right? I think that's where it can hit home for us is, these other areas, I think are, as you said, really much stronger predictors of success. And I think as Agilist, that's where we should be pouring our attention into because that's what's going to make the most significant difference. Linda Rising (31:40) Yeah. And I think since software development and I've been in it for a long time has had this really strong emphasis on smartness. We like smart people. And it's not that that's a bad thing necessarily. It's that it's not enough. So as a mathematician, you could say necessary, but not sufficient. Not even close. and that all of these researchers all said the same thing, that we thought it was going to be about smart people. We thought it was about IQ, that teams of smart people would be smart. And you and I both know that's not true. Brian (32:32) Right, right, right. I've been on some teams with some very smart people that were horrible teams. Linda Rising (32:35) Yes. Yes, yes, exactly. And I guess without belaboring it or beating it up, what's happening to me right now is that in reading about all of these different research activities, more and more things start to bubble up. that sort of are like the glue that holds all of this together. And the one that just, it just happened yesterday has to do with brainstorming. So I've been on a ramp to not, you know, I'm against brainstorming because there's plenty of evidence that it doesn't work. They've done experiments, they've said, okay, here's a group of people and they're gonna get together and they're gonna come up with ideas. Okay, we know how many ideas they came up with and whether they're any good or not. And now let's just take individuals and tell them individually, you come up with ideas and then we'll just measure. And the results are always the same, the individuals do better. So I have come up with explanations for that and I'm like, okay, well here's what. Well, I was wrong. Because in the research, it just was like an accident. I just happened to discover it in one of the papers that the groups that are intelligent, the groups that are aware, the groups that embrace failure, the groups that do well also do better at brainstorming. Why is that? Well, because everybody feels free to talk. Everybody feels psychologically safe. Everybody's aware of how other people are feeling and that impacts how they come up with ideas or think about things that other people suggest. So as a group, they do superbly at brainstorming. So it's not the brainstorming, it's the group and how they... Brian (34:43) Yeah. Ha Linda Rising (34:48) get in a room together and discuss things and share ideas. And so, you know, I hate to say this is gonna be the answer to all our prayers. And of course we still don't, we're still working on, well, how do you do this? How do you make this happen? And I remember a story. It's in fact, it's in one of the documents, I'm trying to think now on the Google website. It's a story of a team. Brian (34:58) Hahaha Yeah. Linda Rising (35:18) where the team leader tells the other people on the team that he has a terminal illness. And when he did that, everybody else on the team realized that they didn't really know anything about this guy. And they in turn began to share, well, I'm also having some struggles and here's my story. And going through that. cause that team to move up a notch, if you will, to become more intelligent, to be more aware, to suddenly be a little more respectful of how the discussions were. It was just telling stories about what you're going through so that everyone will be aware of how you feel, what you think is gonna be your... Brian (35:48) Yeah. Linda Rising (36:11) future in the next six months that they didn't have any training or study groups or they just told stories. Brian (36:26) They got to know each other as humans. And it's amazing how often we forget that that's who we work with. At least right now, we work with other human beings. And I hope that never changes, because that's where the best ideas, that's where the best creativity comes from. And yeah, it's fascinating, but you're absolutely right. I can see that point. Linda Rising (36:28) Yes, exactly. think for me, this is all, it's been really a hopeful journey because in the beginning, I wasn't even sure how it would go. I didn't know anything about the intelligence of groups. And in the beginning, it was all, okay, here's what MIT is doing and reading through, I mean, there were a lot of papers that I slogged through and it wasn't until about halfway through that, I discovered. Project Aristotle and I saw, this really connects. And now all these other things start to bubble up that really make a lot of sense. And of course, that it fits. It fits with Agile. It fits with the Agile message that the big things like that cause you, especially if you've had any experience with Agile, to sort of wake up and say, how do I miss this? Brian (37:50) Ha ha. Linda Rising (37:52) I should have seen this and it's news to me. So, wow, we're all still learning, I guess, aren't we? Brian (38:03) Yeah, I mean, you get presented with something like that and think, I've kind of intuitively known this all along, but I didn't have words for it. And now, now there's a vocabulary that can describe it. And I agree, right? That's exactly what it is. So yeah, you're absolutely right. Well, Linda, this is, this is such a fascinating discussion. And, you know, it's, I had no idea where, you know, group intelligence would lead us, but that it's all just fascinating. Linda Rising (38:09) Yeah Brian (38:32) the different threads of the spider web and where this kind of ends up. So I know it led you in a lot of places with your research and everything else. I really, really appreciate you sharing that with us and helping us to try to understand a little bit of the journey you've been on and kind of discovering this over the past year or so is what you said. Linda Rising (38:53) Yep. And I was going to say, anybody, I know most people don't want to spend the time reading the original research papers, and I don't blame you, that does take a lot of, you know, have a lot of investment in that. But there are some, I would call them sort of lightweight. There's some excellent, excellent Harvard Business Review articles that do a very good job of talking about. what is happening at MIT, what is happening at Google, that kind of a high-level summary, like Harvard Business Review does that like nobody else. And of course, there are TED Talks that Amy Edmondson has given, and there are all the Google Talks, of course, are also out on YouTube. And she has been to Google as well, so you can go listen to what she has to say there. So if you want to dig into this for yourself, there's a lot that you can get without having to read the book or read all the research papers. Brian (39:57) Yeah, we'll try to link to as much of this as we can in the show notes of this. So anyone who's listening, if you want to go down one of these rabbit holes like we talked about, maybe we can point the direction and say, hey, try this one. So we'll also include in the show notes some links to some of Linda's work as well so that you can find out more about her and maybe read one of her books as well and see some of the Linda Rising (40:11) Yeah! Brian (40:27) some of the insights she's already brought to this Agile community. And if you like what you heard here, I know you'll like her books as well. So Linda, thank you so much for making your time. I know it's very busy. Thank you for coming on the show. Linda Rising (40:41) It's been my pleasure. Can we close with some good wishes, some thoughts and prayers for all the people who are in Western North Carolina or in Florida who have just been two horrible disasters and are going to be a long time recovering. And that includes my good friend and co-writer Mary Lynn Mans who's in Asheville, North Carolina. So fingers crossed, prayers, good thoughts. Brian (41:11) Absolutely. I wholeheartedly concur with you on that. So I agree. Well, thanks again, Linda.

Explore the dynamic future of work with Brian Milner and Heather McGowan as they discuss the essential shifts in mindset and culture needed to thrive in the augmented era. Overview In this episode of the Agile Mentors Podcast, Brian Milner interviews Heather McGowan, a renowned future of work strategist, about the rapidly changing landscape of work in the augmented era. Heather emphasizes the importance of adaptation, empathy, and human connection in response to technological, societal, and cultural shifts. They discuss the pervasive issue of loneliness in the workplace and the critical role of leaders in fostering a culture of trust, agency, and high expectations to drive performance and productivity. Heather also shares insights on finding personal purpose and intrinsic motivation to excel in the future of work. This conversation provides valuable strategies for individuals and leaders to navigate the evolving work environment successfully. References and resources mentioned in the show: Heather McGowan Heather’s Website The Adaptation Advantage by Heather McGowan & Chris Shipley The Empathy Advantage by Heather McGowan & Chris Shipley The UpSwing by Robert Putnam Agile Training for Teams & Leaders Subscribe to the Agile Mentors Podcast Mountain Goat Software Certified Scrum and Agile Training Schedule Join the Agile Mentors Community Want to get involved? This show is designed for you, and we’d love your input. Enjoyed what you heard today? Please leave a rating and a review. It really helps, and we read every single one. Got an Agile subject you’d like us to discuss or a question that needs an answer? Share your thoughts with us at podcast@mountaingoatsoftware.com This episode’s presenters are: Brian Milner is SVP of coaching and training at Mountain Goat Software. He's passionate about making a difference in people's day-to-day work, influenced by his own experience of transitioning to Scrum and seeing improvements in work/life balance, honesty, respect, and the quality of work. Heather McGowan is a leading strategist and keynote speaker on the Future of Work, known for transforming mindsets and organizations with her insights on continuous learning, leadership, and culture. Her groundbreaking approach has empowered employees, enhanced leaders' effectiveness through empathy, and driven businesses to achieve their goals in a rapidly evolving market. Auto-generated Transcript: Brian (00:00) Welcome in Agile Mentors. We're back with you for another episode of the Agile Mentors podcast. I'm with you as always, Brian Milner. And today we have someone I'm very, very excited to have on. She was the keynote speaker that kicked off our Scrum Gathering in New Orleans this year. It's Ms. Heather McGowan. So welcome in, Heather. Heather (00:20) Hey there, thanks so much for having Brian (00:23) I'm so excited to have Heather in. If you're not familiar with Heather's work, she has, think, the best job title I think I've ever heard. She is the future of work strategist. And like I said, that's awesome. I love that. But beyond that, there's a lot that I could say about Heather to introduce her to you. But I'll give you a couple of things just so you kind of understand the perspective of her coming home. First, She was named one of the top 50 female futurists by Forbes. So let that sink in. She also has two incredible books out there. One called The Adaptation Advantage. has more than two books, two recent books. The Adaptation Advantage, Let Go, Learn Fast, and Thrive in the Future of Work. That's one. And her latest one that just came out recently, it's called The Empathy Advantage. leading the empowered workforce. And I'm very, excited to have her on because her talk at the Scrum Gathering really captured my imagination. And I think everyone's imagination there. so let's just dive in, Heather. Let's talk about this whole concept of the future of work. And I think one of the ways you started in the presentation, I think, was really important to try to understand where we are on the timeline of the work. the way we have progressed through ways of working. So where are we? Where would you put us on the timeline? Heather (01:57) Yeah, so first of all, the title, Future Work Strategist, was not something I applied for. It's a title. Brian (02:03) Really? Because I want to fill out that job application. Heather (02:07) It's a title I created because I felt like there was a need for many of us to be working in looking at the future work, which is something that will never be done. It often gets conflated with being about where we work or DEI issues, but really it is about those things. But for me, it's about leadership, it's about workforce, it's about learning, it's about adaptation, it's about purpose. It's about adapting right now pretty rapid changes that are not only technological, but societal and cultural and demographic and generational. And we're wrestling with just a lot of change at once. one of the things I say to folks is sometimes I think that the majority of what we're going to be doing in the near term is helping each other adapt. Because we're to have to adapt at a clip we've never had to adapt to before. Prior generations had maybe one paradigm shifting change in a generation. Now we might have three or four. Brian (03:02) Yeah. Heather (03:03) So in terms of where we are, we had the agricultural era and the industrial era and the information era. Well, we're now in the augmented era. So we're dealing with technology consuming tasks that we do at a faster and faster clip. And a lot of people kind of catastrophize it about technology taking away jobs. We're the only species that would invent things to make ourselves irrelevant. that's how what people, but it doesn't make any sense. What we're really doing is inventing technologies that augment our potential. And it requires us to not only learn and adapt and think about differently about who we are, which is what the adaptation advantage was really about, but how do we relate to each other? How do we get the best out of each other? And that's really what the empathy advantage was about. So we're in the augmented era. Technology is going to continue to come at a faster and faster clip. But it's more important for us to think about how we learn and adapt and how we lean into our uniquely human skills. Because... The technology can provide the answers, but it's up to us to find the questions. Brian (04:04) That's awesome. Yeah. I think that's such an excellent point that, you know, just trying to think about the fact that, yes, in previous generations, there may have been one paradigm shifting kind of change that comes through a lifetime in the way that we work. But in our lifetimes, we've dealt with the Internet coming on board and we've dealt with multiple revolutions since then, mobile and AI. And these things happen. it's such a greater clip that it really does shift even even things like COVID changing, a lot of places working from home previously was always in the office. It seems like change is the constant now and that change is kind of the thing that we need to get good at is being adaptive and able to change. Why do you feel like, I'm just kind of curious of your opinion on this, why do feel like we're so resistant as humans to just change in general? Heather (05:00) I think we have a fear of obsolescence. then in times like right now, I delve into this sometimes in some of my talks, is we're going through some pretty significant division and polarization. It's really acute in the US, but it's happening all over the world. You look at the elections in France and the UK recently. I think it's important to understand how that happened because a lot of people think that's just social media. And technology did come into play, but if you look back in the US anyway in the 70s and 80s, that's when we started to see a real erosion in our social fabric. We started having fewer people over for dinner and being part of fewer fewer clubs, talking to our neighbors less. So we got more and more isolated. And then we had a loneliness epidemic that's been around for at least a decade or so, which, and when you're lonely, your amygdala, the kind of reptilian part of your brain goes into overdrive. So you go into fight or flight mode. So you have a lot of change, isolation, fight or flight mode, and then you throw in social media that kind of catastrophizes things. And we're all in this us versus them mode. And we've stopped seeing, hearing each other. And one of my messages in almost all my talks is we have so much more in common than we have in difference. They show lots of studies from it. So if we just could start talking to each other again, we may not vote for the same candidate. We don't vote for the same teams, but we both love the sport. And that's what we need to get back to is understanding how much we have in common because so much of the work we're going to be doing, especially when technology comes in, is communication, collaboration, exploration. And all of those things require us to relate to each other because you're going to see something that I don't see. And if I only hired people who think like me, it would be tragic because I wouldn't see the entirety of the opportunity. So if you want to really drive profitable growth in your company, you want those diversities of inputs and you want to set a culture that has people see and hear each other so you can see optimally the opportunity space. And because that's what we're going to be doing. It's most of the work we're going be doing. Brian (06:55) Yeah, yeah, this is a fascinating fact to me because I, one of the things I start in your presentation is just this idea about loneliness. And I absolutely agree. You know, there's, I think we all can kind of recognize that even though we've tried to create these social media companies that to try to, you know, get a, gain a stronger sense of connection in some ways it's driven the opposite of this sort of loneliness factor. But I'm curious from from some sort of a sociological perspective, that has, it seems, transferred into our workplace. And I know one of your stats there was about how we feel more lonely at work. And I'm just curious, what do you think is driving that, the kind of sense of loneliness that we have while at Heather (07:48) Yeah, know, some folks will point that to being about where we work. That's not my area of expertise. There plenty of people who look at where we work. That may be a factor for some folks if you're working remotely and you don't see other people, certainly a factor. But what I think what's really happening is we've outsized what work is in our lives. So community used to consist of social interactions, religious affiliations. clubs and groups we belong to, all of those kind of, if you think of them as circles, because everything's visual to me, all those circles shrank and work became bigger. So now part of it's generational change, but more and more people are looking for work to provide their purpose, work to provide most of their relationships, work to fill these. So it's a little bit in terms of how we're interacting with each other that's causing the loneliness, but it's also an outsize expectation we have around work. So now it becomes table stakes for a lot of organizations for work to be my self -expression, work to be my sense of purpose, work to be where I think about my values. And it wasn't like that a few decades ago. Brian (08:49) Yeah. Yeah, that's, I just, I love that point. think you're absolutely hitting the nail on the head with that. And, and, know, just so everyone listening doesn't, doesn't misinterpret this in any way, you know, we're not, we're not saying in any way that those other kinds of organizations like churches or community groups or anything are bad or that you shouldn't see community and those kinds of things. It's just that our society has sort of moved away from those as being the foundational, places where we get community and you're I absolutely agree. is, work has sort of filled that. Sort of analogous, I think, to the way that police have become the front line of our mental health, Heather (09:27) Mental health, yeah, exactly. Exactly, and that's not fair to the police and they're not prepared to do that and, you know, we suffer. I think the point with work is that that is where we are. So if you're leading an organization today, that is a reality. I hope that changes. I'm a big fan of Robert Putnam. He wrote Bullying Alone in the late 90s and he pointed out the sort of phrase we're having in ourselves, of fabric. He had another book that came out in, I think it was 2020 or 2021, in the middle of pandemic where he... which was called the upswing, where he says we go through these kind of, you you think about it like a pendulum, we go through periods of high collectivism, you know, the kind of the eye to the we. And we're at the highest, you know, the lowest level of the we and the highest level of the eye in terms of being isolated and all that we do. And we're primed to go back into a we phase. So I'll be interested to see what forms of community start to emerge because we're primed to have that happen. Soon, like I notice is a, live most of the time in Florida, part of the time in Massachusetts. It's a restaurant I go to in Florida. And I was like, why do we love that restaurant so much? I do like the food. It's very good. But it has a situation that an empty seat is is a, is anywhere you could sit. So if I come in by myself or with one other person, they would sit me at the table with one other person or two or 300 people. It's community seating. So you end up sitting with people that you don't know having conversations. It's kind of like a forced community. It's fantastic. Brian (10:53) Yeah, that's awesome. I love that. I mean, I will say, you know, the introvert part of me is like, I don't want to sit down. Right. Yeah. I identify with that. Yeah. Awesome. Well, so if we have this problem, right, we're dealing with, with a fear of change. We're dealing with a work in place that is lonelier than it's ever been. And we were dealing with a population that's seeking belongings, sinking. Heather (10:59) I'm an introvert too, but when I'm forced, it's good for me. Brian (11:23) connection and community while at work. I think you're right that that has a profound impact on the way we work even. And I know you talked a little bit about just kind of the main drivers of productivity, the main drivers of being successful. And I think that this is maybe counterintuitive to what some people think. Help us, talk us through that a little bit about what you found as far as what really drives productivity. Heather (11:58) Sure, so just to give you a little background on me that relates to this point. So I spent the last, prior to when I started speaking full time, which is about 10 years ago, I spent 10 to 15 years working on the corporate side, industrial design, product design, design strategy, so new innovation stuff. And every organization I went into, I felt people really weren't equipped. to propositionally think. They could reiterate on the existing solutions. If they had a product, they could make another version of that product, but they couldn't jump entirely to a white space and think of something where we didn't have a contextual reference. And then I found myself working in higher ed because I had a mentor who became president of university and he said, I want to create a new college focused on innovation. And I think you understand it better than anybody else. So I built a new college focused on innovation. From those two sides, I saw the supply and the demand side of talent. And what I saw happening, and this is what kind of led to my speaking career, is we're not preparing people to do the kind of work we need people to do. We're hiring people based on past skills and experience degrees. We've now like edged all the way up to skills -based hiring. But what that really is, is hiring somebody who can demonstrate that they can do something you need them to do. What happens when they get there three or four months later and you need them to do something that's never been done before? So we need to prepare more people to do work that's never been done before. And how do you do that? I think you look more at behaviors. And then how do you activate those behaviors? So what you look for in people is some level of skill, but also behaviors that will tell you what they'll do when they don't know what to do. And that is basically what culture is. Culture is collective behaviors. So that's how you screen for people. And then how do you set the conditions to activate those behaviors? What we've done in the past is hire the skills and exert some hustle culture. And that's going to rev the engine of productivity. We did that until we hit burnout and we're still hitting burnout and we're still hitting burnout and unhappiness and disengagement. So we went from hustle culture to going, we need more engagement. we need shared purpose. we need psychological safety. Well, what's behind all of that is we need humans who feel seen and heard. Somebody cares about me. I trust my leader. You set those conditions to people who have agency and they'll activate those behaviors for which you hired them. And so they have some of the skills you need. They're going to have to acquire so many more because you don't know the work they're going to be doing. So we got to focus on what I say is culture and then people who want to build their capacity. Brian (14:29) Yeah, yeah, I love that point. And I think you're absolutely right. I'm kind of so we've been building towards skill based kind of hiring instead of behavior based hiring. And we should be looking more at building people who have the right behaviors to learn and grow and change and adapt. So I'm kind of curious your take on this, because I know that in the past few years, especially, I don't know if you've seen this, think I've noticed this in multiple sections, but there seems to have been sort of this segment of management that has returned a little bit, kind of tried to turn the clock back and gone back to a little bit of Taylorism and kind of the idea of, you you need to push and drive your employees to work harder. And I even see that in some job postings and things about how, you know, there's sort of a rise more traditional project management, is really more based on pushing and driving than enabling. I'm just curious, what's your take? Why do you think that's resurfaced? Heather (15:41) I think we got a lot of fatigue coming out of COVID. I remember us doing the sort of the press tour and everything for the Empty Advantage last spring. one, I was talking to a group of CEOs and they said to me, you know what, we're just tired of caring. And because they were being honest with me. And I said, well, explain to what you mean. And they said, well, I get it. We have to be empathetic and we have to feel bad for people and expect less of them. And I said, there's compassion and you should have that instances. And there's empathy and they are not the same thing. When I'm talking about empathy, it's about understanding the people that you're hiring and what motivates them so you can help them become what I call self -propelled. Because you cannot get people to learn and adapt at the speed, scale and scope we're gonna need through just extrinsic pressure. And there's a return to that right now. I think it's some COVID fatigue of just, you know, exhausted because people did have to care a lot for their people. But you know what, we had higher levels We had higher levels of engagement. had higher levels of productivity at the height of the pandemic because we were caring. And that was a little care fatigue. so the care fatigue hits a little economic uncertainty. We've been waiting for a recession. Inflation's been sticky. It's harder to run your business tomorrow than it was yesterday. Again, all those things. But a return to kind of the beatings will continue until the morale improves has never worked. But there is certainly a push to try that now. And I get But you're not going to get the performance out of people that way. just don't believe it. A very small percentage of people that works on most of us work best when we feel like we can trust our boss. We have agency. We have high expectations. I mean, all the studies that I've seen, the best jobs people had with the highest level of performance were when they challenged themselves, they had respect, they had autonomy, and they had agency. Brian (17:33) Yeah, yeah, absolutely agree. It just, it fascinated me when I saw that kind of return and rear its ugly head again and think, and my thought was, we've tried this, you know, like this is, it's not that this hasn't been tested and tried, we've run this experiment and it failed and we've progressed into this new era. And I think sometimes there's a leadership kind of misunderstanding that we're just trying to be nice. Like people just want us to be nice. And it's just about being kind of more friendly and kind. And that's what all these management consultants want us to be. there's a purpose behind it. It's because it works. It's not because it just makes you a better person, though it does. But it actually is better for your business to do Heather (18:21) Yeah, I think what happened is we had such a long stretch of Taylorism that we presume that that is the model that works. had four years of caring and we had good performance. And that gets sort of conflated with where we work, which I think is a completely separate thing. I think we've got to return to, not return to, we've got to go forward and to say, what did we learn in those four years? What are the things that really worked? How did we really better performance out of people. Because at the end of the day, it's what you're to do. It's why you run your organization. We are in a capitalist society. You're going to run your organization getting the highest level of performance. Highest level of performance and productivity is getting the highest level of performance out of your people. Highest level of performance out of your people comes when you trust them, they have agency, you hire for the right behaviors, you set the right conditions, and you encourage them to do things they never thought they could do. And that's what comes out of all the studies. Brian (19:11) Yeah. Yeah. And I know you, you, you drawn kind of this, this really interesting connection, I think between performance and, and mental health and sort of the idea of, you know, that we, again, building on what we've said, right? If our organizations are where we're seeking community and we're feeling lonely, then that this does impact how we work. so it shouldn't be that far of a leap for people to understand how, Hey, if, if, our work environments are damaging people's mental health, that directly impacts performance. Heather (19:47) Yeah, and you just look at the studies like, know, the companies that are ranked best places to work, they're ranked best places to work by the employees, because the employees are happy there. And you know what? Their performance is something like 16 % higher than the companies that are on the list. So it's pretty clear. You're getting the performance when people are happy, not you're going to get the performance. You're going to be happy when you get the performance. It's the other way around. We're looking at it backwards. Brian (20:12) Yeah, I agree. And one of the stats that jumped out at me in your presentation was this stat about how big of a role your direct manager or leader has on your mental health, just in general and overall in life. So tell us a little bit about Heather (20:32) Yeah, there were three different studies I think I cited in the piece you're talking about. First, the employer has a greater influence on your mental health than your spouse, partner, or therapist if you have one. Brian (20:46) That's so, I just got a full stop there. Like that is so amazing to me. Your boss has more impact on your mental health than your spouse. That just blows my mind, sorry. Heather (20:57) And the greatest source of stress in your life is your job. And then there was another study, which I thought was fascinating, and it was looking at lower paid workers generally not highly educated. The relationship, this was a longitudinal study, and it was only like four or 500 people, but they looked at your relationship with your direct supervisor. If your direct supervisor treated you with respect, gave you agency, gave you autonomy, you trusted them, you went home and raised your children such that they had higher levels of economic, social, and financial success. So not only is your boss influencing your life, you're influencing the next generation and thereby the next workforce. So there's a lot more we should be doing preparing these leaders for having this what is now an awesome responsibility. It's a really profound responsibility. And it's because I think work has become so outsized in our lives. And it's going to be. It's going to continue to be. Brian (21:58) Yeah. Yeah. So no pressure, leaders, right? I mean, no pressure on the fact that not only are you concerned with your business and your employees, but the future generation of workers. Right. Heather (22:09) And we need to help those leaders. We need to help them put on a gas mask before they try to help anybody else. Brian (22:14) Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. So, you know, we're in this, first of all, I think this is this huge dichotomy of, you know, as we said, we're in the age of people feeling lonely at work. While when we look at our process kind of evolution, we're in a teaming phase of process. We value, especially here, you know, an Agilist and people who practice Scrum. We're all about teamwork. It's all about working together as a team. So I'm curious, kind of your take on that. Why do you feel like we still have this sense of loneliness, even though we're trying to move more and more of our process towards being collaborative and team -based? Heather (22:58) I think we forgot to know how to connect to each other. And we can't get it all from work, but since we're looking to get so much of it from work, we need to figure it out there. I mean, how many, you know, they found these studies that, you know, you're happier at work if you have a best friend at work. It used to be that people met their spouse or partner through church work, or I can't remember the third one. Now it's mostly online. So even though we're in work, we're not. forming our social circles around work as much anymore. And it's not really, because this started long before the pandemic, so it's not just that we're working remotely and that's why our social circles aren't happening there. I think we forgot how to connect with each other. We forgot to say, how are you and mean it, instead of just waiting for fine. We forgot to have conversations that had something other than to do than what we're doing. We just forgot how to be human and have meaningful connections. And I think when you start having conversations with people about that, like I was just in Prague last month for a talk, and there was another speaker. And we connected beforehand, we sort of knew each other, and his talk was on human connection, my talk was on the future work as human, because all my talks are bespoke to the audience and what they need. And so we coordinated our two talks. And then while I was there, in his talk, he talked about how both of his parents died suddenly, within like three months of each other. And it was a really impactful part of his talk and an impactful part of the most important conversations you have in his life, in your life, et cetera. And then when I was in Prague, I got a call that said my father was dying and I had to leave. And I messaged him. And now we message each other every single day to check in with each other. It was a catalyst for a human connection you don't normally have when you share a stage with someone for five minutes. But I'm noticing more and more that people are trying to do They're trying to make more meaningful and lasting connections that are, you know, we talk about speaking, but really we talk about how are you? What are you going through? How's your breathing going today? What do you have on store for the weekend? And I've done that with a number of speakers who've become close friends. And I think more and more folks need to be, feel comfortable just reaching out and doing that and having a real connection with folks that doesn't have to do with a product that's due or a deadline or a financial goal or what have you, but has to do with. What we all want is humans, which is ultimately connection. Brian (25:14) Yeah, boy, I can't agree more. Well, we're getting towards the end of our time. before we wrap, one thing I wanted to ask is, we have listeners here that are leaders. We have listeners that are involved in Scrum teams. We may have some Scrum masters and product owners that are listening. And they're hearing this, probably agreeing a lot with what they're hearing from you. So my question for you then is if you were to talk to that group, if there were some advice you could give them, tips you could give them to better prepare them for the future of work, for where we're headed, what kind of advice would you give people currently working on Teams? Heather (26:02) I think the most important thing to figure out, and some people take a lifetime doing it, some people are born doing it, is what do you really care about? What kind of impact do you want to have on the world? How do you like to work? What kind of problems do you like to work on or find or frame? Where do you like to work in the process? Because more self -awareness you have about what really drives you, because that's really your fuel source, the better you're going to be in whatever you do. We tend to tell people, funnel people into careers based on what they're told they're good at, or more likely what they're told they're not good instead of focusing on what gives them energy. Because if we're going to have to learn and adapt, and we are, then we ought to be learning adapting around something we're intrinsically motivated to do. Brian (26:46) That's awesome. Yeah, I agree. It sounds very close to, you know, Simon Sinek's kind of find your why basis there of just, you know, that being so important in what drives us. So couldn't agree more. That's that's awesome. Well, I want to be respectful of your time and our listeners time. So, Heather, I can't thank you enough. Every time I hear you talk, I feel like I've taken another leap and have more stuff to go research and and study based off of it. So. Heather (26:53) Sure. Brian (27:15) Thank you so much for taking some time here to talk with us on the podcast. Heather (27:19) Thank you. And I just want to close with one thing because I'm a belligerent optimist. So we have some hard problems ahead of us. We've got division, we've got technology, et cetera. But we have done more in one human lifetime to improve the human condition than all of human history. We've more people out of poverty. We've almost solved literacy. We've connected the globe. It's time for us, in the words of JFK, take longer strides and do hard things. We are up to and we are more than capable of this. So I'm really optimistic about the future that's ahead of us. I think we just have to face some of our challenges. So thank you very much for having me. Brian (27:53) Amen, amen. All right. Thanks so much, Heather. I appreciate you coming on. Heather (27:58) Thanks a lot for having me. Take care.

Explore the hidden barriers to successful Scrum adoption as Brian Milner and Lucy O'Keefe dive into organizational dysfunctions and cultural impediments in this insightful episode of the Agile Mentors Podcast. Overview In this episode of the Agile Mentors Podcast, Brian Milner sits down with Lucy O’Keefe to unpack the organizational dysfunctions highlighted in their talk at the Scrum Gathering. They delve into how culture can significantly hinder Scrum adoption and discuss other common impediments like resistance to change, command and control leadership, and siloed teams. Emphasizing the importance of transparency, inspection, and adaptation, Brian and Lucy offer actionable insights to help organizations overcome these challenges. Listeners will also learn why leadership understanding and stakeholder participation are crucial for successful Agile adoption and the necessity of training in Agile values and principles for true organizational change. References and resources mentioned in the show: Lucy O’Keefe Dart Frog Consulting Path to CTC - Monthly Cohorts #109 Leadership and Culture in DevOps with Claire Clark Agile for Leaders Join the Agile Mentors Community Mountain Goat Software Certified Scrum and Agile Training Schedule Subscribe to the Agile Mentors Podcast Want to get involved? This show is designed for you, and we’d love your input. Enjoyed what you heard today? Please leave a rating and a review. It really helps, and we read every single one. Got an Agile subject you’d like us to discuss or a question that needs an answer? Share your thoughts with us at podcast@mountaingoatsoftware.com This episode’s presenters are: Brian Milner is SVP of coaching and training at Mountain Goat Software. He's passionate about making a difference in people's day-to-day work, influenced by his own experience of transitioning to Scrum and seeing improvements in work/life balance, honesty, respect, and the quality of work. Lucy O'Keefe has over 28 years of IT experience and has worn multiple hats in the Agile world - developer, Product Owner, Scrum Master, and now, Certified Scrum Trainer® (CST) where she uses her experience to ensure each student has a great training experience. Auto-generated Transcript: Brian (00:00) Welcome in Agile Mentors. We're back for another episode of the Agile Mentors Podcast. I'm with you as always, Brian Milner, and we have a favorite back with us today. We have Ms. Lucy O 'Keefe with us. Welcome in Lucy. Lucy O'Keefe (00:12) Thank you so much, Brian. Happy to be here again. Brian (00:14) Very happy to have Lucy back with us. Lucy and I saw each other recently. Actually, I think it was the first time we saw each other in person, right? Yeah. We finally saw each other in person at the Scrum Gathering that took place recently in New Orleans. And I had the pleasure of getting to see Lucy's talk that she had there at the Scrum Gathering. And... Lucy O'Keefe (00:22) It was the first time, yep. Finally. Brian (00:41) She gave a talk with Joe Miller called, Scrum Unmasked, Unveiling the Dysfunctions Within Our Organizations. And I thought it would be a good opportunity to bring Lucy back and talk a little bit about this topic, because this is an important topic. And it was a packed room, it was full of people that wanted to know about this as well. So I thought it'd be a good chance for us to share this with the audience. But to start this, actually, before I even begin, I get ahead of myself. myself here a little bit. For those who maybe haven't heard Lucy on the podcast before, Lucy is a CST. She has a CTC. Her company is called Dart Frog Consulting. And she also has started recently this mentoring program with a new smally that is kind of a really interesting concept. It's a CTC mentoring cohort. So if that's something you're interested in, We'll put links into our show notes that you can get in contact with her about that. But if you're interested in pursuing certified team coach certification with the Scrum Alliance, that's a really great way to do that. You get a group of people around it and kind of go on that journey together. But let's talk about this topic. And I thought a good way to start was actually to be a little bit meta about this. I want to go behind the scenes a little bit. and think about where this topic came from, what's the genesis of where this came from and how you and Joe hooked up on this. So give us a little bit of the backstory of where this idea came from. Lucy O'Keefe (02:20) So to start, Joe and I have worked together. We worked at a consulting firm together. And funny enough, we actually were both speakers at a virtual conference a few years ago. He was on the panel and I was an actual speaker, but we never met. Back then we met actually when we started working in the same consulting firm. And of course I left the consulting firm a few years ago to go independent, but we just kept in touch and we always wanted to do something together. so when, when I was trying to figure out topics for the scrum gathering in New Orleans, I reached out to him and I asked if he would want to do a talk with me. A lot of times it's much easier to do it with somebody else. And I thought it would be fun because he and I see eye to eye on a lot of stuff. And I think we, we complement each other pretty well. But when we were talking about what topics we'd want to talk about, I kind of always go back to the things that I've experienced when I've been in organizations. And I think, I think a lot of us have experienced kind of something, something similar where people are going to say, scrum just doesn't work for us. Right. I actually, it was actually one of my first blogs that I wrote probably six, seven years ago was about that, about people saying, it just doesn't work for us. There, you know, it's not something that we can do. So I kind of got this idea that this is what we should be talking about. And I always go back to. Ken Trebers quote, and I said this during the talk, you may recall, you know, scrum is like your mother -in -law, it points out all your faults. So this idea that scrum is holding up this mirror, you know, to the organization is something that I always talk about. And I think it's important for scrum masters and others in organizations to understand that, no, it's not scrum that's the issue. It's that we have all this stuff that's not, going well in our organizations and we're just putting Scrum on top of it without fixing the issues, right? So we're trying to put a band -aid on what's going on in our organization instead of looking at the root cause. So I just thought that that would be a great topic to talk about. Brian (04:27) I love that. And I think that's a great way to look at it because you're right. It's not something that's going to fix everything, but it does make it very revealing. I remember the phrase I've always heard people use is it's not a silver bullet, it's a silver mirror. You know, like it's going to reflect back very honestly to you what's going on. Awesome. Well, that's that. Thank you for the backstory. I really appreciate that because I know a lot of people, you know, if you're listening to this, you may be considering, you know, do I want to submit and try to speak at a conference? So. Lucy O'Keefe (04:41) Yep. Brian (04:57) just to give a little background to where those kind of ideas come from. I thought that would be interesting little sideline there. So let's get into our topic. Let's talk about some of these dysfunctions because I know the main point of this was talking about organizational dysfunctions, kind of some common problem. So hit us up. Give us a few of these big organizational dysfunctions that you guys talked about. Lucy O'Keefe (05:22) So I think the main one and one that's probably going to resonate with a lot of people is culture. For me, culture is always the biggest issue. People are the biggest issue, right? You know, as you know, you probably remember this, right? In the previous Scrum guide, it would say, Scrum is simple to understand, but difficult to master, right? Or difficult to implement because it involves people. So culture is the biggest issue and culture encompasses... quite a few things, right? It could be resistance to change within an organization. It could be a lack of empowerment. It could be command and control, which I'm sure you've seen in plenty of organizations. I've seen plenty of organizations, even though we know that we are hiring the best people, a lot of leaders or managers actually I'll call them, you know, still want to be in control, still want to be the people telling people what to do. And it's very hard to go to... to a way of working where it's like, okay, I need to remove myself from the equation and trust that these people are gonna do what they should be doing. So I think culture encompasses a lot of the other things that we talk about when we're talking about organizational impediments. Another thing is organizational structure. Are we highly hierarchical? Are we a matrixed organization? Do we still have these silo teams, right? That work on just specific skills? And I'm sure you've seen this. I'm sure you've worked in waterfall just like I have in the past, right? You have your business analysts on one side. You have your designers on another side and then your developers and then your testers, right? And they're all reporting into a business analyst or tester or developer or anything like that. So there is no cohesive team that has one. focus or one objective. You know, we're matric, you know, getting these people out of that matrix and putting them into a team. But they're all just interested in their own thing, right? It's a very siloed way of working. So it's very hard to make that transition into, okay, we are a product team and we work together. And we have to be dedicated and stable. Because we're not used to seeing that in a lot of organizations, people are not dedicated to teams. And we're talking about waterfall. I have barely seen any of that. I used to have a team where, and there was already a scrum team, but we had three BAs on the team and they were each 33%. And that's something that is very normal. And even when I'm teaching my classes and I'm sure you have the same questions or comments, a lot of people are like, well, this is very hard for us because we have John Doe here who, you know, he's in five different teams. How is he going to go to all these events? So that's definitely another organizational impediment, which for me kind of goes back to culture as well. Right? So those things are big things. Leadership not understanding. Yeah, sorry. Yeah, no, go ahead. Brian (08:10) Yes. Yeah. I was thinking, I was thinking, sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt you, but I was just, I was thinking the same thing that when you said that, that just, yeah, it is very, the hierarchy of the organization is very cultural. And if you, you know, if we're, we're trying to empower teams and instill in them this idea that, Hey, you need to, in order to move fast, you've got to have autonomy and you've got to have the ability to go and make decisions. that's, that's very. much ingrained in how we structure our organization. If I have to get approval for everything I do, that's going to run counter to what we're trying to do in a Scrum environment. So I love that you made that connection. I absolutely agree with you. It's a very cultural thing. Lucy O'Keefe (08:59) It is, it is. Yeah. And as I said before, I think a lot of the impediments we see go back to culture, leadership, understanding leadership participation, a lot of organizations when they're thinking about agile, they're thinking about scrum. It's like, okay, the teams need to do that. All right. Let's, let's start in IT and our IT teams are going to start doing scrum and who cares about the rest of the organization. We're going to keep thinking the way that, that we've always been thinking. We're going to keep budgeting the way we've always budgeted. And then we have. We have a lot more resistance, a lot more conflict because we have a team that's trying to work in a certain way. And then you have stakeholders and leadership that are expecting things to be the way that they always were. So stakeholder participation, for example, you know, a lot of stakeholders are going to be like, well, I already told you what I want. Why are you coming to me every two weeks or, you know, however long our sprints are, you know, for to get feedback. You know what I want. I shouldn't have to talk to you about it. Right. So there's that lack of understanding of what's in it for them. So back to culture again, right, understanding that this is a whole cultural shift. It's not just a team shift. So leadership needs to understand that. And of course, as you know, you know, we have, you know, certified agile leadership programs that I'm trying not trying to do a plug here for those classes. I don't even teach them. But. Brian (10:03) Yeah. Ha ha ha. Lucy O'Keefe (10:22) it's so important that leadership understands what it means to be an agile organization and what it means to lead in an agile organization. And I think when they do that, when they're able to get that understanding, it's going to make it a lot easier for everybody to succeed. So once again, that is another big impediment that I've seen is the lack of leadership and stakeholder understanding. Brian (10:46) Yeah, absolutely agree. I mean, it's almost like the concept seems to be more, like you said, we'll start from the team and build up when really it should be more of a from a top down or even not even kind of whole, right. Right, it's kind of, it's a whole organization thing. And if we try to compartmentalize it and say, no, we're just gonna do this group. Lucy O'Keefe (10:57) up and down. Or even from both extremes and meet in the middle. Right? Yeah. Brian (11:13) then we're already kind of setting ourselves up to fail a little bit because I can't change the culture of just one segment of my organization. If I do that and they have a different culture than the rest of the organization, then we have cultures at odds with each other and they're set to fail. The more dominant one's gonna overtake the lesser one, which is usually gonna be the scrum side of things. So yeah, I completely agree. Yeah, yeah, frustration. Lucy O'Keefe (11:37) Exactly. Yeah. And it causes a lot of frustration. Yeah. It causes a lot of frustration for the team. Right. So I was actually at a, I was contracting at an agricultural manufacturing company. I may have brought this up before, but like the, the stakeholders didn't understand why they had to come to sprint and review, why, why they had to talk to the product owner instead of just talking to the engineers themselves. And it wasn't until I had. the lunch and learn with the stakeholders and help them understand what's in it for them because that's what's so important. How am I going to, how is it going to improve things for me if I abide by what you're trying to do? It wasn't until we did that, that they were like, I understand now why I need to talk to the product owner. I understand now why I shouldn't be dealing with the developers or the engineers themselves. I understand now why my feedback's needed. Yeah, it's great that now I have a say in the process. I have a say in the outcome. So it's not like people are trying to just be difficult. They just don't know any better, which brings us to one of the other organizational impediments, which is lack of training and understanding. Cause we can't just train the team. We have to, yeah, I mean, we don't have to train everyone in, you know, a CSM or anything like that. That's, that's not it. Right. But they need to understand the basics of how, how agile works. What are the values? What are the principles? What, what are the benefits of working in this manner? Right. It's, it's not about doing the thing, but it's how is this going to impact who is and how, how are things going to be better after you start working this way? Brian (12:52) Yeah. I've had a lot of conversations about this in the CSM class of just talking to different people and saying, you look at these agile manifesto values and principles and if we can't get an alignment on these things, right? If we can't look at these things and say, yeah, I agree. My philosophy is one of that's responding to change over following a plan. I believe that you should be more. able to respond to change, then you should be about following a plan. That's a fundamental kind of core value. And if my organization or if leaders in my organization, that's kind of the key here, right? If the leaders in the organization think, no, no, no, it's about following the plan. We have to establish this amazing plan and then follow the plan. Well, it doesn't really matter what we do at the team level because... somewhere up the chain of command, we're going to have to have that perfect plan that we try to execute on and the leadership is driving that. So we have a mismatch on just our core kind of understanding. Lucy O'Keefe (14:26) Exactly, exactly. So when I go into a new organization, one of the first things I do during my assessment phase, I actually go through every single one of the values and principles with leadership and with the teams. And I ask, which one of these are you doing well? And then we talk about that it's the minority usually. And then it's like, okay, what do we need to do to ensure that we are responding to change or following a plan or that we are... you know, focusing on working software instead of measuring something different. So we go through every single one of those because, as you said, that's where the value is. Understanding those values and principles, it's not about doing scrum, kanban, whatever it is. But if we are following those values and principles, then that's when we're truly going to be algebra and that's when we're going to see the benefits of working in this manner. It's not about the practice, but it's about your beliefs as an organization. Brian (15:24) Yeah, yeah, there's no practice that we're gonna put in place that's gonna solve it all, right? I mean, there's practices that can assist and help us, but the practice isn't the cure, right? The practice is just something that can assist. It's like having crutches, you know? The crutches aren't gonna heal you. Lucy O'Keefe (15:30) Not at all. A way to get there. Yeah. Exactly. Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The practice just a vehicle, but you have to do the work to get there for sure. Brian (15:51) Yeah, that's a great point. Lucy O'Keefe (15:53) Yeah, so I think those were the main ones that we talked about there. You know, of course, we only had an hour, so it wasn't, there wasn't a lot of time to talk about every single one. But I think that, you know, and you were there, of course, but a lot of people came up with their own impediments that they were seeing in their organizations. And I think a lot of them aligned to what we had to say as well, because I think it is pretty standard in organizations that are just starting out. Brian (16:02) Sure. Yeah. Lucy O'Keefe (16:22) that you are seeing a lot. I mean, not just starting out actually. I mean, I've seen an organization that they say they've been agile for years and they still have a lot of these issues. So it's pretty clear that the culture again is the biggest issue with being able to adopt Scrum correctly or adopt an agile way of working correctly. Brian (16:43) Yeah, and I think you hit the nail on the head with the fact that it's just, there's not the time always spent to try to get to the root cause. We're a culture of quick fixes. We want to find something that's going to put in place and take this pill, do whatever, and then it's just going to be solved and everything's going to be fine. But you know, it... For instance, we've used this analogy quite often, the idea of weight loss. There are things that can assist you with that. There are things that can give you help along the way, but there's not a silver bullet to do that other than changing the way that your lifestyle is. You have to change. And please, anyone who's listening, don't think I'm saying this because I have this perfect, because I don't. I'm very bad at this. But I know that the way that I change You know, my overall health is by changing the lifestyle, changing what I eat, changing, you know, my exercise patterns. And that's hard work. It's hard to change that kind of core value in my life, but that's what actually makes the impact. The other things are dressing around it. Right. Lucy O'Keefe (17:58) Yeah, that's what's gonna make you change. Exactly. I mean, think about people who go for, and just staying with the same topic, right? For some bariatric surgery, right? So a lot of times, like the doctor will say, I used to watch my 600 pound life, don't judge me, a little bit, just because it's kind of, it's interesting. And yeah, I mean, they'd have to lose weight before they had the surgery. Brian (18:06) Yeah, yeah. Hahaha. Lucy O'Keefe (18:25) And the majority of people after they had the surgery and kind of lost weight, they just went back and balloon back up because they didn't change their lifestyle. So as you said, yeah, it's great that these band -aids exist, but if you're not going to do the work yourself, then it's really not going to work. So what is the root cause in this case, right? We're eating badly and we're not exercising. So that's what we need to change and not just, you know, take a pill or do a fad diet or get a surgery that... It's not gonna work if we don't change our ways. Brian (18:55) Right, and just for the listeners too, I mean, Lucy and I are not medical professionals in any way. So, you know, we do not mean in any way to try to belittle, you know, treatments and therapies that people use for legitimate purposes and all that stuff. Please understand, right? Gotta make that disclaimer. But I think you're right. You know, like I know in my life, there's been times when I thought, there's some diet supplement or there's something else that, you know, is gonna... Lucy O'Keefe (19:01) No. No, no, no. Brian (19:25) be the thing that really cures this and changes it. But what I've experienced time after time is, no, you really just got to do the hard work. You got to go to the gym and you got to get up and you got to change what you eat and that kind of stuff. And that's what really makes the impact. Well, the same thing here with our organizations. There are practices and the things we can put in place. And there's always hot ones that will be the hot one of the day. I remember when DevOps was kind of the... And we just talked about DevOps in our last episode. It is an important thing. It is a very important thing, and it can give you a lot of boost. But it's a set of practices. And our last guest, when we talked about this, talked about how it's really more of a mindset. It really is more about how we have to change the way we see things. So even there, when we approach things like DevOps, yes, there are practices, there are tools we can put in place. But if we don't change kind of our approach to how we do things, then it won't matter. It's just another thing that we have to learn and put into the workflow. Lucy O'Keefe (20:32) Yeah, yeah, exactly. I mean, you know, the definition of insanity, right? Doing the same thing over and over and over again and getting the same results because that's what happens if you just keep putting band -aids on things, you're going to end up, you know, encountering the same issues over and over again. So if we don't have that mindset that we are going to make the change and the foundational change to ensure that everything works out, then, you know, then it's we're going to keep having the same issues and we're going to keep hearing this crime just doesn't work for us. Right. Brian (20:37) Ha ha ha. Lucy O'Keefe (21:02) So, yeah. Brian (21:04) There's something that also comes up in classes sometimes that I think one of the things that I found is that getting back to that transparency inspection adaptation, that if we as an organization really value that process and value the idea that, hey, we're going to be transparent about how we do things. We're going to not just ignore when there's a problem, but we're going to inspect it and get to the root cause. And then we're going to find a new way of doing things. that we can just latch onto that. That's a huge cultural change, right? And just kind of buying into those concepts. And what I found is in a lot of instances, I talked about this in the ACSM, a lot of instances, you can directly relate it back to a lack of one of those three things. Are we not being transparent? Are we not actually inspecting? Are we not actually adapting? Lucy O'Keefe (21:57) Yeah, yeah, yeah, those three pillars are definitely important. And I think that they're the foundation of what we are trying to do. And you're right, if we're not being transparent, inspecting and adapting, then we're not being agile, first of all, but that's something that needs to exist throughout the organization, not just within our work, within our teams, but are we being transparent in our relationships? Are we inspecting and adapting how we are dealing with our employees? Are we inspecting and adapting how we are budgeting? I mean, everything, right? We need to be... using that empiricism on a daily basis to ensure that we are headed in that direction. And if we do that, as you just said, the culture will shift organically when we're employing those three pillars, for sure. Brian (22:42) Yeah, absolutely agree. Well, let's, I want to meta this a little bit more here at the end, because I want to know kind of how it, how the fallout from this happened. So, so you, you have this idea, you work with Joe, you, you come up with this topic, you go, you present this. What kind of a follow -up did you get from this? Did you get a lot of good questions from people afterwards? How did the talk go? What did you, what, what, what kind of learnings did you take away from it after you gave the talk? Lucy O'Keefe (22:47) Yep. So I think it was received very well. There were quite a few people that came up to us afterwards and started asking questions to the point that I was actually late to a meeting after that. But anyway, I've had quite a few people reach out to me on LinkedIn, you know, talking about, we really loved your topic. And I actually, I got my reviews from it. And I think a lot of people appreciated that we had action items at the end. Brian (23:22) Hahaha. Lucy O'Keefe (23:38) So for those of you who are listening, we actually had an action plan where people could create an action plan on how they are going to start dealing with the organizational impediments in their organization. So a few people appreciated that. So it was pretty good, you know, pretty good feedback, I think, that we got from that. I would have loved for it to have been a little longer, so we could have gone a little deeper because it is, there is a lot that we can unpack. when we're talking about organizational impediments, one hour just isn't enough time for that, especially when you're trying to make it a more engaging session and not just talking at people. But I think if I had to do this again, I would probably try to do a little less and maybe go a little deeper instead of trying to talk about maybe so many things and barely touching the surface. But I think it was... Brian (24:28) Yeah. Lucy O'Keefe (24:36) I think it was pretty good. I know you're there, so you let me know. Brian (24:38) It was great. Yeah, no, it was great. And so, yeah, I hope you're encouraged by that. But yeah, it was a great talk. And like I said, I heard a lot of good comments from people afterwards. And I think that's pretty natural for us as speakers to kind of rethink afterward and say, maybe I could have done this a little bit different or I could have done this a different way. But, you know, it's tough. Like you said, you've got an hour. And within that hour, you're trying to work in some... interactivity, so it's not just you talking the whole time and you're trying to keep the group engaged. But then you get a lot of information and you just, I got to share all this stuff and I only have an hour to do it. Especially, as CSTs, we're used to talking for two days at a time. So, yeah, an hour is like, you know. Lucy O'Keefe (25:26) Exactly. So an hour is nothing. Yeah. Yeah. Brian (25:32) the break or something, but yeah, you're not used to trying to fit all that information down into a one hour stretch. Lucy O'Keefe (25:40) Yeah, and for me it's like I love answering questions. Like if I could do a talk and then do an hour of just answering questions, I think I'd be like really, really happy because I mean, even when I've, you know, taught with Mountain Goat and all that, you know, being able to answer questions at the end of class, that's like my favorite and I do that in my classes as well. So not being able to give time to actually answer, you know, Brian (25:47) Yeah. Lucy O'Keefe (26:04) questions from the people who are having the issues for me was very difficult not being able to do that because that's something that I enjoy. And, you know, but at the end of the day, I do love speaking. You know, I just, it's one of my passions now, which is kind of funny because I used to be really introverted. But yeah, I think, I know it was a really good experience. It was my first time speaking at the Scrum Gallery. I've spoken at smaller conferences before, but that was my first big one. So it was, it was great. Brian (26:19) Ha ha. Awesome. Lucy O'Keefe (26:34) I hope I'm able to do it again. Brian (26:36) Awesome. Well, it was great. It was a great talk. And I appreciate you coming on and sharing this information with us, because not everyone can come to the Scrum Gathering. And that's one of the reasons why we try to have some people come on that do speak at it, so we can share some of that information in these small little podcast windows. So. Well, Lucy, thank you again for coming on. I appreciate you sharing your talk with us and kind of the behind the scenes of it. And hopefully we can have you on again soon. Lucy O'Keefe (27:11) Thank you, Brian.

Join Brian and Ken Rickard as they delve into why agile transformations get stuck and uncover strategies for creating adaptive, resilient organizations and people. Overview In this episode, Brian sits down with coach, author, and Lean Change agent, Ken Rickard to explore the common pitfalls of agile transformations and the commodification of agile practices. Ken emphasizes the need to focus on people rather than processes and introduces the art of change, which includes self-awareness and adaptability. And shares the six big ideas of adaptive organizations, such as sense-making strategies and leadership agility. Tune in to learn how to navigate transformation challenges and create an environment that fosters resilience and adaptability. References and resources mentioned in the show: Ken Rickard Insight The Six Big Ideas of Adaptive Organizations: From Frameworks to Sensemaking by Ken Rickard and Jason Little Agile Manifesto For Software Development Lean Change Mountain Goat Software’s Agile for Leaders Training Join the Agile Mentors Community Mountain Goat Software Certified Scrum and Agile Training Schedule Subscribe to the Agile Mentors Podcast Want to get involved? This show is designed for you, and we’d love your input. Enjoyed what you heard today? Please leave a rating and a review. It really helps, and we read every single one. Got an Agile subject you’d like us to discuss or a question that needs an answer? Share your thoughts with us at podcast@mountaingoatsoftware.com This episode’s presenters are: Brian Milner is SVP of coaching and training at Mountain Goat Software. He's passionate about making a difference in people's day-to-day work, influenced by his own experience of transitioning to Scrum and seeing improvements in work/life balance, honesty, respect, and the quality of work. Ken Rickard is a spark for transformative good — a change alchemist, deep thinker, and a catalyst for personal growth and organizational evolution. With over 15 years in the agile community, he's honed the art of navigating change and embracing adaptation as the true essence of agility. Auto-generated Transcript: Brian (00:00) Welcome in Agile Mentors. We're back for another episode of the Agile Mentors Podcast. I'm with you as always, Brian Milner. And today I have a really special guest with us. I have Mr. Ken Ricard with us. Welcome in, Ken. Ken Rickard (00:12) Thank you. Nice to be here. Brian (00:14) Glad to have Ken here with us. Ken recently spoke at the the global Scrum Gathering, in New Orleans that I was at as well and had a really interesting, actually had a workshop slot there for a workshop titled Humans Agile and Change, How to Get Your Transformation Unstuck. And wanted to have Ken on to kind of talk through that a little bit. But before we do, for those people who aren't familiar with Ken, let me give you a little bit of an introduction here. Ken is an enterprise coach and change alchemist. I love that. At a company called Insight, he co -authored a book called The Six Big Ideas of Adaptive Organizations, which I know we're going to get into here in this conversation. He's a licensed facilitator of Lean Change. He's an IC Agile authorized instructor. So he's got just a load of credentials and a load of experience to bring to the table here with this. So Ken, let's get into this. Let's talk about humans agile and change and how to get transformations unstuck. What do you think is the main cause of transformations getting stuck? Ken Rickard (01:31) Yeah. So I think, you know, we're all feeling the effects of the high of agile. And I think now we're, we're starting to come down a little bit in the industry. I think everyone's feeling that effect. I mean, I see so many agile coaches on LinkedIn that are still looking for roles and whatnot, scrum masters, you know, a good bit of that, though, I think it's a blowback from the industry and just companies in general who, when they need to tighten the belt, they're actually beginning to look at the roles they've got and figure out which ones that they can do without for now. Or maybe they can do with roles they've already got. And so the effect of that, I think is coming from this idea that, you know, the agile industry, let's even narrow that a little bit more and talk about scrum specifically, has really kind of in the industry has become commodified around this idea that it's a process. And that we just like, we used to do this thing over here and we can just go to the shelf and purchase like scrum in a way. And then like. take that and just drop it into the spot and the practices we used to do. And so when it was only viewed as a process replacement for what they're doing now, it's very easy when, things get rough or tough in the industry as they've been over the past year, year and a half, two years, that our natural, you know, kind of inclination is to kind of hunker down and that hunkering down is to go back to what's comfortable to us, which is typically non -agile, non edge. things because that edge is actually kind of uncomfortable. And so we want to kind of go back and go back into our hole and actually like do the things that we're most comfortable with as an organization or as leaders. And so, yeah, I think that's been kind of what's been happening. And it's just, you know, the follow up from that, I think it's just now hitting the industry, I think in the current times now. Brian (03:10) Yeah. Yeah, I agree. I mean, you talk about it being a commodity and I can definitely see that across the different organizations that do certifications with this, and we're both trainers, we both do trainings. The hard part for me as a trainer is that I don't wanna... discourage people from getting training because I think the training is an important step, right? I think it's you know, you got to know the basics before you can play a sport and You know, if this is the team sport, but it's it's so much easier for me to tell someone all right Well, there's these roles these events and these artifacts Ken Rickard (03:49) Mm -hmm. Brian (04:05) and they can just go, you know, start putting it into their schedule. Here's the events we're going to do, and we have these meetings at this time. It's easy to do that, but it's hard to say, all right, what is openness? And how do we operate in an open environment, you know, or how do we treat each other with respect as we go through this kind of thing? That's hard to train, you know? Ken Rickard (04:10) Right. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And coming from the, you know, I've spent a three and a half, almost four years now, I think with lean change and Jason little, and, and obviously we co -wrote co -wrote the, the book together, but the, I think the thing that I've learned from all that is, I mean, I want to say that at the beginning, the intention of the folks that created the agile manifesto for software development, their intention was really to help the industry change, but from a software development and probably an adjacent request would have been that the project management kind of behavioral patterns that were there and existing already. They could have actually kind of caused that trajectory to start to shift. And they obviously did over time. I think the one thing, if I had a time machine and I could go back and I could just plant a little seed with those 17 folks, it would be to not look so narrowly at the organization, like just the software development part. Because I think that's what's caused agile and scrum to become that thing that those IT developers do. And it's actually in a way done a disservice, I believe, to the industry at large and then just kind of the trajectory over time and where we kind of landed over these past few years. And it's why with lean change, what I'm trying to do, and I'm not the only one trying to do this. There's a number of folks out there trying to do this as well. But I think Jason and I, what we're trying to do and all the lean change facilitators is to get people to realize. that at the end of the day, everything is really about change. So scrum is just a process. It has all these, like behavioral patterns that come along with it. You're going to need to change, but those things aren't laid out necessarily exactly explicitly in the scrum guide. So you can read through that with your current understanding and your current lens of the world. And you can go, okay, I got this. And okay, all I need to do is go and create a scrum master position and I need a product owner and we need to do these events and then we need to set up these artifacts. And, and that can very easily lead to that kind of mechanical approach to scrum because that's kind of the world they've come from, right? If they've come from kind of project management world where everything is very laid out, very kind of straightforward and linear and then sequentially executed. And I think what we would all probably agree is that what's really missing is that mentality shift and. and the perspective shift. And to get there, we got to really focus on people change. Like, and I don't mean just like, Hey, we're doing a new process. So what do I need to do differently? Or, Hey, we put, we installed this new piece of governance software. So what buttons do I need to push differently? I'm talking about like actual evolution of the individual, their beliefs, their behavioral patterns, and the rituals that match up to those behaviors and beliefs that set underneath them as a person. Brian (06:52) Yeah. Yeah. Ken Rickard (07:14) And so that's what we're really trying to focus on from Lean Change is we're really trying to help people understand that, that to do those things well, to do things like Scrum well, you really have to focus not just on the process change or the technology change, but actually on the people change. You may even have to focus on structures and strategies as well. Brian (07:31) So I'm trying to channel my inner listener and try to think of what they might be asking or thinking about in hearing this. And I mean, what I think about is, all right, well, let's say I'm an organization and I buy an end to all this stuff. And I'm like, yeah, yeah, yeah, we've tried that. We've tried to implement this stuff and it's all about process and we'd rather not do that. We want to do it the right way. Where do you start? How do you start to... Ken Rickard (07:38) Yeah. That's it. Yeah. Brian (08:00) you come in and just say, hey everybody, we're gonna change how you think and how you, how do you start to get the organization to shift like that? Ken Rickard (08:06) Yeah, that's tough. Yeah. Yeah. And I would actually, I would point the finger right back at ourselves first. I mean, this is the journey I've been on for the past five years. You know, I mean, I, I actually talked about this in the session at the global scrum, scrum gathering. I told the crowd there. I was like, like five years ago, Ken, like if anybody challenged anything or didn't understand how scrum worked, I would essentially kind of like, Brian (08:14) Ha ha ha. Ken Rickard (08:34) just picture this idea of Ken taking them by the arm and leading them over to the Scrum Guide and being like, look, here's what the Scrum Guide says. And that was kind of my go -to thing in a way, variations on that, obviously. But at that time, it was mentality -wise, I was just like, okay, well, we just need to do Scrum. If we just do it well and we do it like it says we're supposed to do it, then it'll fix all the things. And that didn't really get the best response out of it. everyone. You know, it wasn't until I started to shift myself and my own perspective and start to really understand that, okay, I'm not the snake oil salesperson that they probably think I am. I'm actually somebody who's trying to help them change. And so if I look at it from that perspective, now it becomes less about the process or the framework and all the specifics of the framework. And it becomes more about, okay, where are they now? Brian (09:18) Yeah. Ken Rickard (09:29) What mentality do they have now? What are the attitudes that they have about the things that I would hope to put in front of them? Like, are they, are they like, yeah, this is great. Let's do it. Or are they like, no, I don't know. Not so sure. Or are they like, no, that's a stupidest thing I've ever heard of. Like we would never do that here. so better understanding them as an individual and then being able to better show up in a way that is going to be conducive for them to see the need to change is actually the very first. Brian (09:42) Yeah. Ken Rickard (09:55) best thing that I ever did in the way that I shifted my own perspective and how I showed up. And then that started to actually unlock them and their ability to actually pay attention and realize how they needed to change. And then therefore the change started to go. It's a much slower route because you can just go take stuff off the shelf and be like, Hey, we need to do it like this. And you probably will get some traction with some folks, but you're probably going to miss a good bit of them too. So. Brian (10:20) Well, let me, let me ask you this because this is something I've kind of been wrestling with with some other guests on the podcast as well. It's just this, this concept that, you know, partly, I think what's behind some of the problems with this is, is also the short kind of nature of, of how we view change in organizations. And, you know, we want quick results. We, you know, we have a change initiative to do something and we want to see that, that, that benefit of that change in the next three months. Ken Rickard (10:42) Sure. Brian (10:49) And all of a sudden things are going to be completely turned around and we're going to do things differently. But that's driven a lot from this short -sighted nature of, you know, we got to increase our profits quarter by quarter. We got to, you know, please our shareholders and they don't have the long vision that we used to have in companies of, you know, 10 years or something. Ken Rickard (10:54) Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I'm going to, I'm going to say something and I'm going to meet it in a completely different way. Planning. Let me explain what I mean by this. all right. And I don't want to make this into the lean change show either, but I'm going to talk about a concept, from lean change real quick. so bear with me, but, so there's this idea that has been created in lean change. It's called, we, we, we refer to it as a big next now. Really what it is is it's like. Brian (11:17) Okay? Hahaha. Ken Rickard (11:42) Think of like an overarching rainbow at the top of like, Hey, what's the largest, biggest thing we're trying to accomplish? And what's the strategy around that? And if we can define a high level strategy around that, it will help us be, get like an orientation towards what outcomes are trying to seek it at the grandiose level. Let's say it's an agile transformation. All right. Underneath there are like a series of smaller humps that are like, okay, what are the goals we might want to actually achieve? Let's make sure those are really loose. except for the ones that are in the very beginning. Does this sound familiar? I'm basically describing breaking down and iterating incrementally changing the organization, right? So, underneath that you'd have like what's referred to as like the lean change cycle. This idea that we go out and actually look at the organization and get data back on what might need to change instead of actually telling people what needs to change. Like, Hey, we're becoming a scrum team, or this is what scrum is, and this is how it works. Brian (12:21) Yeah, yeah. Ken Rickard (12:41) well, what if they just start where they are and maybe the first thing I add is like a daily, you know, maybe they don't have any kind of coordination events at all right now. And then their tolerance level to change is just minimal. So, okay. So as a coach or as a less even a scrum master, the first thing I might help them do is to actually just put in some frequency of a regular sink. That could wind up turning into something that we would recognize as a daily scrum or a daily standup, but. In the beginning, maybe they don't have the tolerance to go right directly to the thing. Maybe they'll reject that or resist that. So as, as a coach or as a scrum master who's focused on change and not the process of the framework, I would go in and actually help them figure out what the best changes for them right now. And that's the approach I've been using and it just works. It works pretty well. versus coming in and being like, Hey, here's what scrum is. Here's how it works. Let's go through this training. You know, we got to get all these things set up. We need, here's what perfect looks like. Brian (13:14) Yeah. Ken Rickard (13:39) guess what we can't get there. So yeah. Brian (13:43) Yeah, I mean, as I'm listening to you, I'm thinking, you know, it's a difference of listening versus telling, you know, like there's a, there's kind of a telling mindset of going in for a lot of coaching of, you know, what we would typically frame more as a consulting approach. You know, I have answers. Here's the answers for you. Just do the way that I've always done it and everything will be fine versus let's actually hear what your situation is. And. Ken Rickard (13:59) Yeah. Brian (14:10) what your needs are and what you're seeing going wrong and how can we address those issues? I love that. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Ken Rickard (14:14) Yeah, and experimenting through it and honestly showing up, showing up as, or knowing when to show up in a coaching stance, who is going to be more empathetic and more understanding and not going to give them all the answers and it's going to let them explore and figure it out. And it's going to shine the light in the dark corners of the room versus the consultant stance, which is going to show up in more of an advisory. Hey, If I see you all struggling, I'm going to kind of tell you what to do or show you what to do. And they may not be ready for that. So it's about knowing when to actually do one stance or the other and be able to be very fluid in those things. Brian (14:47) Yeah. Yeah, there's a, there's a phrase I'll use often in class when I talk about the coaching kind of mindset to say, you know, what we're trying to do is not build knowledge, but build capability. And if you build the capability, then people can then adapt and change when, when something similar comes along or something in the same realm, they can say, yeah, I remember last time when we had something like this, here's how I responded. So that, that ability, I think to. deal with change like you're saying. And if we have it ingrained in our mindset that, hey, we identify problems, we inspect them and we adapt as we go along, to me, that's so much more important to build into how we do things than it is to know, we got these four meetings or five meetings that we're gonna make sure we hold at a certain time. Awesome. Well, you know, I'd like to hear a little bit because I know, you know, your talk is somewhat loosely based on your book as well. And, you know, with a title like the six big ideas, help us understand. We may not have time for all six, but give us some of these big ideas. Ken Rickard (16:00) Yeah. Yeah. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. I'm also still, I think Jason and I are still trying to figure out if, how the word or the phrase big ideas is resonating with folks too, because in the agile community, you know, big, big is not a word that I think people will gravitate to very quickly, but, we're also trying to straddle the fence on the change community and the agile community. Honestly, what we're trying to do is I was joking around and I think we, I'm. Brian (16:21) Yeah. Yeah. Ken Rickard (16:31) might've wrote this either in the book that's out now or the bigger book that we're working on for later this fall. But I wrote somewhere that really the change community and the agile community should really go on a blind date because they never should have really been two separate communities in my opinion. And I think Jason would hold the same opinions and a lot of our lean change facilitators, I think would hold the same opinions. So yeah, so the book is really about trying to get Agilist to understand that their role is really about change. Brian (16:47) Yeah. Ken Rickard (17:02) They already know the agile bits and the iterative incremental and all that kind of stuff. And that the change community really needs to better understand the agility community and take some of those practices and apply it to the change. And if both sides do those things, we're going to wind up in the middle and everybody's going to be the same type of person or the same type of thing. Because at the end of the day, getting to agility, like this idea of the characteristics of being nimble and being able to adapt to what's going on with a certain grace and resilience. Brian (17:25) Yeah. Ken Rickard (17:31) that set of characteristics is really, I think what the agile industry is hoping to go for. And yet a lot of the folks that find these things come to it with their current understanding and they don't really, aren't really looking to change themselves and how they see things, their perspective. And so that's how we get into this commodified kind of off the shelf version of it. And so I think we're just trying to get people to realize that. Look, if you look at these big, these six big ideas, which are really just sense making strategies. At the end of the day, that's what they are. You should be able to sense your way through what your context, your organization, given the changes that are going on. you know, what are those circumstances? How well do you know those circumstances? If you can understand those things in a sense making way, you'll be able to show up in a way that it actually be conducive to help that organization change, no matter what the scope of the changes. Let's say you're a store master. It could be your scope of your change is essentially your team or teams. Brian (18:25) Yeah. Ken Rickard (18:29) And the product that they're building, let's say you're an agile coach. Okay. Maybe it's somewhat wider than that. I don't know. I'm still on the fence about what the difference between agile coaching and scrum master is. That's another podcast though. I think, or let's say you're somewhere higher up in the organization. So whatever your purview is, whatever your scope is, that context is really what we're trying to do. We're trying to help you and the others around you understand what it is that you're not paying attention to, what it is that you don't understand. Brian (18:39) Yeah. Ken Rickard (18:58) or that you might think you understand about your organization. So it's really six ideas to help people kind of unravel that about their organization and themselves. Because like, for instance, one of the six big ideas is something that Jason had created quite a long time ago called the four dimensions of change. And what it says is that there's four things that you really probably need to focus on as, as a agent of change. And that is yourself. So like, Brian (19:07) Yeah. Ken Rickard (19:26) Your set of beliefs about things, you know, how you show up because how you show up actually affects how others receive or perceive you. And then that impacts your ability to influence others and actually help them change. And then it goes on to say there's, the big ideas or strategies that you can deploy from, from a change perspective, typically minimally viable practices, or strategies. And then the last bucket in that four dimensions is, tools and practices. You know, the things that we have the most affinity for and tend to go to first, and kind of ignore the other three things. So it's, so that particular big idea is trying to get people to recognize that, no, there's like a bigger kind of art and science here to helping people change. It's not just about the science, like the strategy and the tools and practices to be good at those things. Most likely you got to focus on the art of change, which is yourself and your stance or how you show up. Brian (19:59) Right. Right. Yeah, I'm gonna share one of my geeky subdivisions here in making this quote, but it reminds me of in the musical Hamilton, there's a line in there that George Washington says to Hamilton where he's talking about, you know, Hamilton has these visions of going off and dying like a martyr and George Washington says, dying is easy young man, living is harder. And. Ken Rickard (20:30) Yeah. Yeah. Brian (20:51) That's kind of how I see this. I'm not saying we're dying or making a choice between dying or not, but I am saying that the practices side of thing, practice is easy young man, culture is harder. It's just harder to try to implement those things. And I think a lot of times, I don't know if it's, I think individually sometimes as coaches we can get lazy. Ken Rickard (20:55) Yeah. Brian (21:18) and go to the things that's easier to tell people about. But I also think that it's an institutional thing because it's much easier for me to certify somebody or give them a credential saying that, hey, this person knows their stuff when I can test them on facts and figures and how long is that meeting and that sort of stuff versus. Ken Rickard (21:20) Mm -hmm. somebody. Yeah. Please. Brian (21:41) you know, how do you change the mindset of the culture of the organization when they're really into quick solutions and they're into trying to get things out the door as fast as possible and not focus on quality. It's harder, right? It's just, it's more difficult. Ken Rickard (21:55) Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You're hitting on one of the other six big ideas right now. Actually two of them, but we can start out with the explain the one. So there's another one that we made called the, the two change strategies of effective organizations. And so what this one says is that there's two ways that you can probably improve or change your organization. And that's a fractal statement in an organization because again, we're only talking about whatever context you have. Brian (22:06) Hahaha. Ken Rickard (22:27) Cause if you're a SCAR master, we're talking about the context you have of the teams you're working with. Agile coach or something higher up than that, whatever context you have. So, okay. So within your context, you probably have two ways to think about and try to help your organization change. And those two ways are either optimizing what they already do to make it better, faster, cheaper, or evolving the way they think about what they do so that they can actually succeed in ways that they never have before. And I'd be, I'll go out on a limb and say that every, at the very least, every single company I've come across that's doing agile and whatever way they call it, is really trying to do it from the purpose of the optimization, better, faster, cheaper. I think there are very few companies around the world that are actually taking it seriously enough to do the evolution part to actually change the way they think about how they do things in such ways that they're actually elevating. their set of beliefs and behavioral patterns, not just as individuals, sorry, as individuals, but as a collective and then ultimately as an organization. And so it's really trying to get you to, to focus on what is it that we actually are trying to improve? Is it just that we're trying to optimize what we're doing now? Cause that's a take scram off the shelf and just drop it in, you know, or that's send people to training and like come back and be like, cool, you're certified. Brian (23:33) Chief. Ken Rickard (23:49) But if we don't ask the hard questions around, okay, well, what are you gonna change about your behaviors? Then they're likely not focusing on evolution. And if we're not coaching them through that, yeah, not really going anywhere. Brian (24:01) Yeah, do you think organizations just don't know what they don't know? I mean, because I know you're right, they do want better, faster, cheaper. And that's sort of the end goal that they're coming at a lot of this stuff with. They just not recognize that it's really the change capability that they should prioritize. Ken Rickard (24:05) It's like. Well, I think it's because they focus. So what's really easy for a lot of organizations to change. There's a, we're going to keep tying these five, sorry, these six big ideas together, I guess, because there's another one called the five levers of change. And what that one is, is a, it's a circle of five things with people being the biggest circle in the center. And then on the four corners of it, it's basically process and technology strategies and structures. Brian (24:32) No, that's great. Ken Rickard (24:48) And so if we look at that as a systems approach to changing an organization, the reason why it's called the five levers is because they can pull any levers in any combination they want in order to try to change their organization. But the easiest levers to pull are process and technology. So, Hey, let's do scrum and we need to install Jira or Azure DevOps. Right. And that's generally where these kinds of things start because it's within the control of the teams oftentimes to make those changes. It doesn't impact a larger organization to, well, it can, but probably to a lesser extent initially. So the teams have some level of autonomy or local control to start making those changes. They don't run into problems or impediments or just kind of organizational dysfunction until a little bit down the road so they can kick that can down the road. And so I think it's, I think it's that that causes us to gravitate towards a process and then just pull that lever pretty easily. And, and that's an optimization lever. So if you tie those two ideas together, it takes the other side of those five levers, the structure and the strategies, which are all built on beliefs. You know, like if I'm a leader in a hierarchy who's worked 20 years to get to my lofty management position, I'm going to be a lot less likely to take a empathetic kind of delegated approach to my management style because I put in a lot of hard work to get to where I am now. And there's no way you're going to tell me now. Brian (25:48) Yeah. Ken Rickard (26:18) 20 years that I now have to change the way I operate? Like, no, I'm in control here. So I think we're also battling that a little bit too. Brian (26:20) Right. Yeah, what I've done got me here. So why would I do something different now? Right? Ken Rickard (26:32) Right. Exactly. Brian (26:34) Yeah, I've battled that in multiple occasions, for sure. One of the places I worked was a newspaper. And if you want to talk about people not wanting to change their mindsets of, hey, what do you mean that people don't want to have delivery of their newspaper on their front doorstep every day like they've done their whole life? Yeah, it's crazy. Well, this is great stuff. I'm really enjoying this. Ken Rickard (26:49) Yeah. Yeah. Brian (27:03) Do you have one last big thought, big idea to leave us with here? Because we're almost out of time, but what have we missed in these big ideas? Ken Rickard (27:13) Yeah, probably the other big one that comes up a lot. one of the other six that I haven't talked about yet is the, what I call the three agilities. And we'll tend to focus on the delivery agility, which is like, Hey, we, we can help you team better and people better at the team level where you're delivering. And we can help you become more product led. And we can also help you with your technical excellence, you know, like DevOps types things, right? Brian (27:21) Okay? Ken Rickard (27:38) And I think we could probably draw a circle around those three things and go, you know what, for the vast majority of the agile industry, this is what they think agile is. But in my opinion, that's only one of the agilities an organization needs in order to actually possess the characteristics of agility. And the other two would be change agility. The idea that we are adaptable to the change that we cannot control and that we actually can adapt well in a resilient way to the change we can control within our organization. And that we're constantly evolving to get better at that so that we can sustain change in a graceful way over time. So that's change agility. And then the third one is probably possibly the most important one. And that is leadership agility. This idea that if we don't create the environment for change to take place in a conducive way that is productive and adaptable. then we won't change and we'll stay stagnant and we'll stick to our standardized approaches in a stagnant way. And then delivery will suffer even though we can put new things on top of it and we can call things new words, it won't actually change. And the leadership agility is really about not just trying to teach leaders to be more competent. That's generally what management consulting and a lot of other folks are focused on. It's really about trying to help leaders address their ability. to actually have a consciousness about themselves, that they can show up in ways that are actually enabling and empowering the organization to be adaptable and flexible and to be able to deliver and change in ways that are graceful and resilient. And so in my opinion, it kind of starts there even though a lot of them don't start. Brian (29:14) I love that. No, I love that. I think that's great because, you know, a lot of times you hear the complaints of people who come through classes that are kind of more team level in the organization. And it's, there's a lot of complaints about how management just doesn't understand, or we're bumping up against the glass ceiling, you know, kind of in our organization, we can't really Institute change or make the change permanent because, you know, leadership still wants things exactly in the old way. They haven't actually shifted. how they think about things. So I love that, I love that concept. I would agree there. Well, this is great stuff. And obviously, like I said, the workshop that Ken did at the Scrum Gathering was an hour and a half. And this is just a short little taste in half an hour. So there's no way we're gonna be able to cover it all here. I strongly encourage people, if they're really interested in this topic, if they're really interested in what Ken is saying, Ken Rickard (29:53) Thank you. Yeah. Brian (30:15) Check out the book the six big ideas of adaptive organizations. It's a great book And it'll go into detail on all of these these six big ideas that we talked about here And what we're gonna put lots of the links in our show notes here so if you want to just head on over our show notes you'll find links over not only that but to to Ken's organization the six big ideas network and you can find the website there and find the the Ken Rickard (30:24) Mm -hmm. Brian (30:44) classes and trainings that Ken is doing in this area. So we'll make sure that everybody can get to that. Ken, I can't thank you enough. Thanks for coming on and sharing your knowledge with us today. Yeah. Ken Rickard (30:54) Yeah, thanks for having me. It was fun.

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Join Brian and John Barratt as they delve into the current state of the agile industry, exploring the impact of economic downturns on agile coaches and Scrum Masters, and discover innovative strategies to navigate these challenging times. Overview In this episode, Brian and John Barratt dissect the current state of the agile industry, focusing on the effects of economic downturns on agile coaches and scrum masters. They discuss the reasons behind organizational layoffs and cost-cutting measures, emphasizing the need for innovation to thrive during challenging periods. The conversation shifts to redefining the roles of scrum masters and agile coaches, highlighting the importance of delivering value and outcomes rather than merely facilitating meetings. John introduces two essential resources—the Agile Coaching Growth Wheel and the Agile Coaching Code of Ethics—to support agile practitioners in their professional development. The episode concludes with a discussion on the significance of mentorship and continuous improvement within the agile community. Tune in for invaluable insights and practical tools to enhance your agile journey. Listen Now to Discover: [1:08] - Brian welcomes Certified Scrum Trainer®, Certified Team Coach®, & Certified Enterprise Coach®, and host of the Clean At Work podcast, John Barratt. [4:42] - John reveals the core issues behind struggling organizations and shares how innovation can allow an organization to thrive during challenging times. [5:50] - Brian and John analyze the impact of economic downturns on organizations and agility, offering strategies to navigate these challenging times successfully. [10:04] - Brian and John explore the role of Scrum and Agile in an economic downturn. [16:08] - Join Brian and the Mountain Goat Software team for not only a Certified ScrumMaster® class but a full year of membership, learning, and support from Mike Cohn, Brian, and the Agile Mentors Community. You don’t have to lead alone. [17:09] - Brian poses an opportunity to expand the definition of done of Scrum leadership. [19:43] - John introduces the Agile Coaching Growth Wheel and the Agile Coaching Code of Ethics as powerful resources to help Agile practitioners and leaders enhance their skills and progress in their development. [23:42] - John shares the tool of Agile Scoping, based on From Contempt to Curiosity by Caitlin Walker, to lean into Scrum success within an organization. [32:25] - Brian shares a big thank you to John for joining him on the show. [33:04] - We invite you to share this episode with a friend and subscribe to the Agile Mentors Podcast. [33:57] - Do you have feedback or a great idea for an episode of the show? Great! Just send us an email. [34:16] - If you’d like to continue this discussion, join the Agile Mentors Community. You get a year of free membership into that site by taking any class with Mountain Goat Software. We'd love to see you in one of Mountain Goat Software's classes, you can find the schedule here. References and resources mentioned in the show: John Barratt Clean At Work podcast Scrum Events Meetup #93: The Rise of Human Skills and Agile Acumen with Evan Leyburn The Agile Army - John Barratt Agile Coaching Growth Wheel Agile Coaching Code of Ethics Agile Scoping From Contempt to Curiosity by Caitlin Walker Agile 2024 - The European Experience - Manchester Agile Coach Camp UK Certified ScrumMaster® Training and Scrum Certification Join the Agile Mentors Community Subscribe to the Agile Mentors Podcast Mountain Goat Software Certified Scrum and Agile Training Schedule Want to get involved? This show is designed for you, and we’d love your input. Enjoyed what you heard today? Please leave a rating and a review. It really helps, and we read every single one. Got an Agile subject you’d like us to discuss or a question that needs an answer? Share your thoughts with us at podcast@mountaingoatsoftware.com This episode’s presenters are: Brian Milner is SVP of coaching and training at Mountain Goat Software. He's passionate about making a difference in people's day-to-day work, influenced by his own experience of transitioning to Scrum and seeing improvements in work/life balance, honesty, respect, and the quality of work. John Barratt is a Certified Enterprise Coach® (CEC) and Certified Scrum Trainer® (CST), passionate about helping individuals, teams, and organizations achieve their best through agile coaching approaches. With a background in the military and a keen interest in systemic modeling, John constantly seeks new ideas and innovations to support organizational resilience and agility. Auto-generated Transcript: Brian (00:00) Welcome in Agile Mentors. We are here for another episode of the Agile Mentors podcast. I am with you as always, Brian Milner, and with me today, I have a good friend of mine that I've been trying to get on the show for a while. Mr. John Barrett is with us. Welcome in, John. John Barratt (00:14) Thank you for having me Brian. It's been a while. We've been trying. We're here today. I'm really pleased. Brian (00:18) Yeah, very, very excited. John and I have seen each other at conferences for years. We've crossed paths. And I kind of jokingly said to him, I'm threatening to have a conversation with you not at a conference at some point. And that was kind of how we started this. For those who aren't familiar with John and his work, John works with a company called Agile Affinity. John Barratt (00:34) Hahaha! Brian (00:43) He is a certified Scrum trainer, a certified team coach, and certified enterprise coach. So he has the holy trifecta of Scrum Alliance certifications there from the guide community. He's a coach and trainer. Couple of interesting things. First of all, we'll talk a little bit about this, but John has his own podcast called the Clean at Work podcast that we can talk about here a little bit. But another interesting thing that he told me before, I didn't realize this, but John actually started in the military. So do you want to say anything about that? How long were you in the military? John Barratt (01:19) Yeah, so I was in the military for six years, joined accidentally when I was 18. So I went into the career office with a friend who was joining. And they were like, you're a bright lad, you can earn all of this money. So it was either go to university and getting lots of debt or join the army, get lots of training and get paid and see the world. So no thoughts of joining before that day accidentally joined. Did six years including a tour of Iraq. And the important thing about that for me is when I left, I felt really isolated. So Army is all about team, right? Team focus. Left the Army, was in IT, and it felt totally different. People were there stabbing me in the back, not supporting me. And then I found this thing called Agile, which was about teams again. And this thing called Scrum, where it was a team game. I was like, this is what I've been missing. Where's this been for the last two years since I left the army? And the rest is history. I did do a keynote at Central Agile Spain. I'm not sure what year, but it is on YouTube for anyone who's interested in hearing more about how the army is actually rather agile in my humble opinion. Brian (02:22) Yeah. That's awesome. We'll find that and put that in the show notes here. So if people are interested in finding that, they can go and watch that. John Barratt (02:45) Yeah, we'll have to dust it out of the archives. Brian (02:48) Well, yeah, yeah, I'm sure we can find it. But we were talking before this about our topic and I think this is going to be a topic that's interesting to a lot of people. Really, really kind of diving into the state of the industry right now and what we're seeing as far as the economy in the agile industry. You know, there's there's several organizations that have laid people off You know, there's there's less demand at the moment in the coaching kind of realm So kind of what's behind that the the shifts and you know What might be driving this kind of thing? So I know John you got some opinions on this. So let us have it John Barratt (03:18) Mm -hmm. Yeah, so I don't want to talk too much about the global economics. I don't pretend to be an expert on why we're seeing a recession. We can talk about, you know, COVID and the cost of that and also the war in Ukraine and, you know, all of the pain and suffering that that's caused much more than, you know, what we're seeing, which is, you know, a few people being laid off. So I don't want to go into that. But what I do want to really explore is, so if an organization is struggling, there's two elements. for that. Do they try and cut back as much cost as possible or do they try and innovate themselves out of that recession? Do they try and do something different and in a unique way? Unfortunately what I'm seeing a lot of is the first one which is cut back, reduce cost as much as possible and that's to the detriment of the the Scrim masses and and agile coaches that we see and I'm going to talk a little bit why they are the ones that often are in danger in a minute. Instead of where they should go, which my bias opinion should go, right? What I'm trying to do in the company that I run is to actually lean into that as an opportunity and try and innovate and see, well, what is possible in this new, exciting world that we're perhaps moving into? Where do we need to go when organizations are struggling? What are the opportunities, an example, AI that we've seen and what difference will that make in the next few years? I mean, who knows? Brian (05:14) Yeah, yeah, I think it's fascinating and you know, there's something I've talked about with some friends for several years and that is that I think there's sort of a, boy, I don't know how deep we want to go on this, but you know, you have a lot of executives now that get hired to come into a company and it's gamesmanship because the idea is I've got to increase our... our stock price by however many percentage points. And my bonus is tied to that. The more I can increase it, the more I get a bonus. Well, it's kind of like if you go to a team and tell them, hey, can you do more story points? They can certainly game that and all of a sudden have more story points. Well, the same thing with a short -term kind of executive. If you're in an organization and you're only going to be there for a couple of years, And you know your site is, if I can raise it three percentage points, I get a bonus. Well, there's a lot of easy cuts I can make that all of a sudden I've gone up three percentage points. But the long term of that company has not benefited. It's only the short term. And it just feels like, I don't know if it's a day trader thing, if that's really why this is kind of becoming more prevalent or not. But it seems like investing is kind of more of the short term. Now, and it used to be when you buy a stock, you'd buy it for 10, 20 years because you believed in that company and you expected to pay off over the long run. There's still a little of that, but it seems much more short -sighted. And I think that's trickled down to our, like I said, I don't know how deep we want to get on this. I think that's trickled down to our executives. And I think from the executive, that's trickled down to the employees. And that's really affected how... John Barratt (06:41) Mm -hmm. Brian (07:06) you know, when we've had layoffs and we've had downturns in the economy that just, hey, this is an easy way for us to show an increase in profits. John Barratt (07:15) Yeah, I think that's a really good point. It reminds me of Craig Lammon's laws, structure leads culture. And when we talk about structure, we don't ever just mean the hierarchy, we mean the bonus system, how people are rewarded and paid and all of those things. And so if you're rewarding shortism by giving these execs bonuses based on Brian (07:34) Yeah. John Barratt (07:41) profit for this year or as you said stock increase by 3 % then they will cut costs because what looks good for short term and for stocks is to have the minimum operational expense possible right if they can keep that as low as possible then that looks like a solid company because they're keeping controlling costs they talk about and and If they're working on margins and profits start to go down, which is what we're seeing as a trend at least UK, US, I can't say if it's completely global, but it seems like a large percent of the company and the organizations are going in that way, then what they do is to keep their margins so that they get their bonus is they start to reduce that, right? Because they need to keep that buffer. If they were to do what I'm suggesting, which is to lean into that and perhaps spend a little bit, spend some money to make some money, or at least keep it lying and try some innovative stuff, then that's high risk for them. Hmm. Brian (08:50) Yeah. Yeah, I've seen things before that have said that when there is economic downturns, that their evidence shows that the companies that invest more during the economic downturns actually end up increasing their positions to a much greater extent when the downturn starts to turn around because... John Barratt (09:02) Mm -hmm. Brian (09:14) they haven't just set idle or they haven't tried to reduce, they've tried to invest and now they're positioned to really take advantage of it once the economy starts flowing again. I'm not like you, I'm no economic expert, I'm no economist. So I don't know all the ins and outs of what's causing that. But it certainly has caused pain in our sector. And I think a lot of sectors, because I have I know lots of people who have gone through layoffs, not just in the tech industry recently. So I guess kind of the question that I ask about this as far as the agile community is concerned is, if we were delivering value, right? If it was undeniable that what we were doing was increasing profits, increasing value to our customers, I think that would make it a lot. harder for these kind of layoffs to happen. So I don't want to entirely say, hey, it's bad leadership, right? I think we have to take ownership a little bit. John Barratt (10:23) Yeah, and I'm going to say something I think is quite controversial here, which I actually blame servant leadership for this. So I know in the latest version of the Scrum Guide, we use the word true leadership, but I still like the word servant leadership. And I've actually changed my mindset and how I teach these things over the last few years because of this, because we've started to see this trend. Brian (10:28) Go for it. All right. John Barratt (10:51) And I've seen it in organizations where I've worked, I've left one year later, and then they've made all the agile coaches redundant. And I think it's down to how we use and perceive servant leadership. So historically, I was always, you know, Scrum Master or Agile Coach is the great person in the background. They let everyone else take the credit. They're there to help and support the team and to do all of that stuff, which is great, right? until someone with a balance sheet comes along and goes, what are all these scrum masters who aren't delivering any value, right? They're an overhead. They're seen as an overhead. Not delivering any value. No one can even tell me what value they've created. These developers over here, they're doing great. And the product owner is really maximizing the value of this product. But these scrum masters, they don't add any value. Because that's what we told them to do, right? We taught them to... Brian (11:29) Yeah. John Barratt (11:49) give everyone else the credit and serve everyone else and be in the background. So I think we've got a lot to blame, Brian, as trainers for, well, I don't know how you've taught it in the past, but I feel a little bit guilty. Don't worry, I've got the answer, but I just want to hear from you, what you, where you are with that one. Brian (12:04) No, no, no, no. Yeah. I'll tell you my opinion and you'll tell me if I'm correct or not. Yeah, no, I agree. I definitely think that's part of it. But maybe this will be a little controversial. I kind of spoke about this recently at the Scrum Gathering in my talk. In the trend that we've seen, John Barratt (12:15) Yeah! Brian (12:40) that I kind of talk about the diminishing of the perception of value of the Scrum Master. And I think that there's kind of multiple parts to that. I think part of it could be, hey, leadership doesn't really understand the value. But I think that there is a secondary part of that, that they're not seeing the value. And if they're not seeing the value, then I think that that's John Barratt (12:48) Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm. Brian (13:08) that rest on us. I think that we have to partly do a better job of helping them to understand it, but partly doing a better job of delivering it. And again, don't want to get too controversial here, but in our industry, in our training industry, You know, we've done lots of two day classes. We've done lots of things where we get people out the door and then they're in place and they're doing things. And the follow -up, you and I both know the follow -up is so important. You can't just take a two day class and then you're set for life. It's two days, but that's a kickoff and you got to continue that. and if I, if I take a two day class and I kind of slide backwards a little bit from that class and I get in and I'm a scrum master, there's, John Barratt (13:43) Mm -hmm. Yeah. Brian (14:01) Unfortunately, I think there's a lot of scrum masters out there who see their job as meeting scheduler. I'm here to schedule meetings, and that's the value I bring. Well, I can't blame a leader for letting that person go, because anybody can schedule meetings. It doesn't really take a lot of skill to do that. John Barratt (14:08) Mm -hmm. Yeah. Brian (14:26) The skills that we should be adding are those soft skills, the conflict resolution and understanding the personality types that make up our team. And essentially what I talked about in my talk was that first phrase of the Agile Manifesto, individuals and interactions over processes and tools. It's about individuals and interactions. We have to know the people that make up our team, not every team in the world, but our team. And we have to know. how they work best together. And I think people who do that, there's enormous value for that. So I would propose to you there's a shared blame, right? I think there's a blame there that we need to do a better job of showing the executives, but we also need to do a better job of actually providing value for the executives. John Barratt (14:58) Mm -hmm. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, I'm just, I was just, you know, I'm new to running CSMs and things like that. And one of the things I've brought in is a follow -up session. So, you know, a month after the training, they can have 30 minutes and we can talk about stuff. And that's really where you appreciate that the CSM isn't enough, right, to be a Scrum Master because you... There's only so much you can do, but the thing that always lacks, at least I haven't managed to perfect it yet, is those soft skills, right, which are the things that are important because you can't cover that in half an hour, an hour, right? All of those things are a full one, two, well, I'm being generous, just touching the sides with a one, two day course in some of those. And it's good to see the Scrim Alliance moving into some of those, you know, competency based or what they call skills based. courses where we can go a bit deeper into those key things. Because they're talking about, well, how can I do this? And in my head, it's obvious, but it's clearly not. So there's a huge gap between putting someone on a two -day course and thinking they can be a scrum master. And we do see a lot of bad scrum masters in the industry. And it certainly does cost everyone, even the good ones, some credibility. Right? Because... And if there's more ones, and it's not bad because they're bad people or trying to do a bad job, it's just that they haven't been equipped to do the job, right? Yeah, it's as simple as that. Brian (17:03) Yeah. At one of the tables I was at at the recent guide retreat at the Scrum gathering, we were having a discussion around this. And one of the things that kind of struck me as that was going on was, you know what it sounds like? It sounds like we don't have a stringent enough definition of done. Like when we think about someone who's you're now ready to be a Scrum master, well, that definition of done right now is a two day class. Right? And. John Barratt (17:22) Mm -hmm. Brian (17:32) I think we have to put in the expectation that, no, this is a component of that definition of done, but there's actually more that you need in order to, you know, this is an important role. This is somebody who is shepherding and guiding a team to be successful in this. So if someone's not qualified in doing that, it's no wonder that we see a bunch of bad scum out there because the person leading it isn't qualified, you know? John Barratt (17:38) Hmm. Yeah, and actually, I was just thinking an apprenticeship approach would be a much better idea, right, for this type of work. I often give the metaphor in my classes that agile coaching is a craft, Scrum Mastery is a craft. And imagine you're a carpenter, you don't get better at being a carpenter by reading lots of theory about good joints and all of this stuff. You know, you pick up a few things, you get better at Scrum Mastery or agile coaching. Brian (18:07) Yeah. John Barratt (18:29) by working and getting feedback. Our work is with the people, right? And people are a lot more complex than would, so we have to do even more of it to get any good. And of course, in carpentry, you wouldn't think about, we'll do a two -day training course. You would do an apprenticeship, right? And they do it for years before they become like a master carpenter. Yet we have scrimmasters after two days. Brian (18:58) Yeah. Yeah, no, I completely agree. And for the organization, I know when you've seen organizations that have sort of that layer, that hierarchy of we have Scrum Masters, but we have coaches, and we have enterprise coaches. When you have that kind of structure where you can have the phrase we use as mentor and be mentored. And if you can be in that place where you mentor others and you're also being mentored, John Barratt (19:21) Mm -hmm. Brian (19:28) That I think is really key to reaching the next level, to being able to kind of grow into what it is that you want to become in this industry. John Barratt (19:39) Yeah, I mean, I can't solve that problem very easily myself. You know, we've got a certified team coach and enterprise coach in the Scrim Alliance. It needs to be a bit more of a gap, I think, between that and CSPSM and we'll see what comes out in the next few years. But there is a couple of resources that I have worked on to try and help with this. So I've been on a mission to try and professionalize the world of agile coaching for at least five years. And the two things that I've found that have helped most people, is something called the Agile Coaching Growth Wheel, which you may have heard of. We'll put the link in the chat to that, which has kind of all of the competencies that we think you need in Agile Coaching, which is the set of competencies that a Scrum Master needs. So not Agile Coach, Agile Coaching, Scrum Master, Agile Coach, or any, you know, job title could be anything, right? It doesn't really matter. So that's a really useful tool. gives you all the areas, but it also gives you guidance, like a one to five guidance that almost uses the apprenticeship type thing. I can't remember all the levels, I think it uses like the Drift for scale, but it says at level one, you should be able to do these sorts of things. At level two, you should be able to do these sorts of things. And that gives people at least a starting point. You don't know what you don't know, right? Brian (20:58) Right. No, I think that's awesome. And we definitely will put that in our links and make sure that people can find that. Yeah, you're right. That kind of apprenticeship idea, I know that I could not have gotten to where I am without the mentors I've had. John Barratt (21:15) Mmm. Brian (21:18) And it's people who have, for no benefit of their own, have taken their own time to say, I'm going to invest time in this person and help them reach the next level. And I've tried to carry that forward as I've grown in this career as well, because I think it's important. I think we have to help the next group that's coming along. Yeah. John Barratt (21:44) Mm -hmm. I was thinking becoming a CST is almost like that apprenticeship type system, right? Where you have to do the co -trains with different people. They're like mentors, right? Different diversity, different types and groups. And you learn, both people learn from doing the co -train. And I think personally, it'd be a shame if they ever... Brian (21:54) Yeah. John Barratt (22:16) remove that concept because I think it's the closest we've got to an apprenticeship. Brian (22:21) Yeah. Yeah, and it works, right? I mean, I think that it does a good job of getting people to the level they need to be. There's still a lot, I mean, that doesn't do it all on its own, but it is, you know, I think anyone who's been through it, I think you would probably agree with this as well, is, you know, that was a foundational part of becoming a CST for me, is being able to observe and watch others and learn from them and... get feedback on how I was doing it. So I think you're right. That could be a very intriguing addition if there was someone who kind of incorporated that into the process. And I think that would give organizations kind of a confidence to say, I can trust this person. John Barratt (23:10) Which is what we really want with the CCCTCs, right? It's that stamp. I can trust that person. Second tool I wanted to highlight was the Agile Coaching Code of Ethics. So this was an initiative we did with the Agile Alliance. And the beauty of when we created this code of ethics, it was for people who were just starting out as well as experienced professionals. So you can read through that and that's kind of your rule sheet of Brian (23:25) Yeah. John Barratt (23:40) I'm new to this. This is the minimum standard we expect from a Scrum Master or an Agile coach in this industry. Because you don't know what you don't know again. But we've tried to make it as simple as possible. A simple list of these are the things you should definitely do if you want to be ethical in your work. Brian (24:00) Yeah. Yeah, that's a good resource as well. And we'll make sure we have that linked. Was there another resource as well that you wanted to mention, or is it just those two? John Barratt (24:12) So it's the Agile Coaching Growth Wheel and the Agile Coaching Code of Ethics. So we've talked a lot about the problem of where we're at, and we've given a couple of pointers. I wanted to talk a little bit about how I've changed my direction from this original kind of servant leadership type focus, which seems to be having some... Brian (24:36) Yeah. John Barratt (24:40) traction and benefit and value to people. And it's a couple of tools combined. So I created something a couple of years ago called Agile Scoping, which was based on Clean Scoping. So Clean Scoping is something that Caitlin Walker created based on Clean Language around how she scoped out a new piece of work. If you want to know more, then I highly recommend her book from Content Curiosity. Brian (24:44) Awesome. John Barratt (25:10) Bit biased, but one of the best books I've ever read. Not an agile book at all, but just a truly incredible story about how she's used clean language and something we call systemic modeling, which is using clean language in groups, with youths that have been kicked out of school, for example, and how they went from all individuals to suddenly kind of helping and supporting and understanding each other. Brian (25:31) Hmm, yeah. John Barratt (25:40) So great book. But anyway, Agile Scoping was based on that and it starts off with a discovery phase. We call that initial scoping, which is setting out kind of, is this work set up for success? So is the person in charge actually got enough influence over the system to actually make any change? So if you are doing Scrum. Do they have permission to actually change the structure into something that is actually going to help Scrum succeed? Have they tried different things before? And also this thing called congruency. So it's what they're saying aligned to what they're doing. So asking for those examples of, okay, you're saying that this, have you tried that before? Those sort of things. Very high level, just checking it out. And you can do that in an interview as well. So this isn't just for an external person. I always think that interviews should be two -way, right? It's not just a one -way thing. I want to check that if I'm signing up 40 hours a week or however many, that this is an organization that actually wants to be agile. I mean, I always put my hand out to the people on my training and people I meet at conferences where they're really struggling, right? And it's a really hard environment. And I always think, wow, you've got way more patience than I have. I really respect that. but my patients' levels are very low. So if I'm going to work with a client, I need to have a feeling that they can work at a pace, right? Brian (27:20) Yeah, right. Right. John Barratt (27:21) So that's level one and that's fine. Then we do an organizational scoping phase where you work with as many people as possible. You're looking at the problems that the organization says they've got, what the culture is now, where they want it to be, running some workshops, finding out what's happening. And again, we call it scoping because you can scope it to the level that you've been brought into. So if you're a Scrum Master working with one team and it's... One product owner, small product, that's fine. That's your scope if it's a whole organization, much wider. At the end of that, you create a coaching plan with the organization. So you have a session and you agree up to four outcomes is what I've found. So we move into outcome -based approach. So even if you skip all of the other stuff, what I would say is move away from any output thinking. As a scrum -rosterer, Brian (28:10) Yeah. John Barratt (28:18) even if it's just in your yearly appraisal, make it clear these are the outcomes that we're looking for. And these are more business related outcomes or things that are going to actually make a difference to the organization. So it could be things like make more money for the organization, could be increase employee engagement, increase customer engagement, number of active users in your mobile app, whatever those are. But they're nothing to really do with Agile, they're to do with... Brian (28:42) Yeah. John Barratt (28:47) that the organization wants to set. Those go into a coaching plan. We have a coaching agreement canvas that you can use to put all of that in. And then it's really clear, like these are the things that I'm going to help and support you with as a Scrim Master or Agile coach. There's a bit more risk, right? Because if you don't meet them, then you've got to have a conversation, but at least then it's visible, right? These are what I'm saying I'm going to help with. This is what you've said you want help with. And now we're going to do a number of experiments to try and get there. And that's where we get into that continuous improvement cycle of trying to involve, adapt, inspect, work on all of those things that are happening within your team, within your department, within your organization, depending on where your scope is, constantly evolving and looking at. where we're at. We might have some lead -in indicators as well, perhaps in there to help us cycle time, lead time, throughput. Those can be useful, but really we're looking at end value and we're measuring our performance of a Scrum Master Agile Coach based on the value being given. We're not letting the product owner take all of that praise and credit. Of course, we don't want to be too arrogant and go too far the other way. It's a team effort. but we're at least putting our, you know, more, I think skin in the game is the thing. What I've seen in the past is, you know, bit of a puppy dog type thing, Scrum Master, ooh, shiny over here, great, shiny over there, no, skin in the game, this is a partnership, and we're gonna work on this together. Sorry, I spoke for a long time, though. Brian (30:16) Yeah. Love that. No, no, no. I love that. You were saying great stuff. And I mean, I love the bit about outcome -based kind of approaches to it. I think that's really, really important. I've always thought, you know, like the performance, I'm always really hesitant about performance -based kind of metrics. And I always want to shift more to output outcome -based kind of metrics, not output. And I think that because that's, You're right. A business doesn't care how agile we are. A business cares if we're increasing our bottom line, if we're increasing our membership, all the business goals that you might have. That's what they care about. And agile -ism means to that. John Barratt (31:17) Yeah, I have a big shiver when teams have like agile maturity models. Like the word maturity, first of all, like if I say to you, Brian, you're immature, Brian. You know, that's just like, why would you do that? And also if I, you know, it's many people have said agile is never the goal, right? We're never trying to be agile for agile sake. We're doing it to help organizations and, you know. Brian (31:23) Ha ha ha. John Barratt (31:44) Therefore, why would you want to know how mature a team is when that's not actually that important, right? Could be a very leading indicator, perhaps, of where you're trying to get to, but it scares me when I see those sort of things. Brian (32:04) Yeah, this is great. This is great stuff. And there's so I mean, from what you've said, there's so many good links that we're going to be able to put in our show notes for this. We'll also, by the way, make sure that people can get in touch with you, John, if they want to follow up and learn more individually from you, because that's always really important here as well. And I know it's conference season. There's a lot of conferences going on. And you were telling me you're going to be at the Europe. John Barratt (32:12) Mm -hmm. Brian (32:33) Agile 24 conference, right? John Barratt (32:36) Yeah, so I've decided to do my part for the environment and not fly out to America for the third time this year. So I'm going to be in the Agile Alliance Manchester in July. I'm doing two sessions there. One looking at product refinement using clean language and the other one how to help and support self -managing teams with Caitlin herself. So if you like the idea of the stuff I was talking with Caitlin. and that's the session for you. Also going to be in Agile Prague this year, Agile Coach Camp UK, which I run, but unfortunately that is full. So there is a waiting list if you did want to try and sneak into that. And I'm sure I'll be at a few other places as well. There's also my monthly meetup that I run with a number of other colleagues called Scrum Event. It's actually the second largest Scrum Alliance user group in the world. Brian (33:33) Awesome. John Barratt (33:34) and we tend to have some pretty cool speakers there, so watch out for that. Brian (33:40) That's awesome. Yeah. We'll try to link to all of that so that people can find it. But yeah, if you're going to be at any of those conferences or if you're on the fence about going to the conference, you can hear great speakers like John there. So make sure that if you do, that you go up and say hello and tell them that you were listening to the podcast and heard this and were interested. And that's why you're there. Well, John, I appreciate your time. We're recording this on a Friday afternoon for you. And I know that's really precious time at the end of a week. So I really appreciate you giving us your time here and sharing your knowledge with us. John Barratt (34:19) Thank you for inviting me and having me. It's been a blast. Brian (34:24) Absolutely.

Join Brian as he delves into the powerful response to his talk on neurodiversity at the Global Scrum Gathering in New Orleans, which emphasized small but significant changes to make environments more accommodating. Overview In this episode, Brian shares his memorable experience at the Global Scrum Gathering in New Orleans, emphasizing the event's stellar organization and inclusive atmosphere. He reflects on the success of his talk on neurodiversity, which resonated deeply with attendees and sparked meaningful conversations. Brian also underscores the importance of attending conferences for networking, learning, and expanding professional connections. Encouraging listener feedback and engagement, Brian hopes to inspire more inclusive practices within teams and the broader Agile community. Tune in for insights on fostering inclusivity, the value of professional gatherings, and much more. Listen Now to Discover: [1:08] - Brian warmly welcomes listeners and invites you to join an engaging conversation about the value and insights gained from Agile conferences. [2:45] - Brian kicks off with heartfelt gratitude to the behind-the-scenes teams whose hard work and dedication ensure these conferences run seamlessly and effortlessly. [5:04] - Brian celebrates the often-overlooked joys of conferences, from hearing fresh voices and engaging in hallway conversations to making meaningful connections and sparking innovative ideas. [9:57] - Brian highlights and commends the Scrum Gathering for its intentional efforts to accommodate and include attendees with neurodiversity and those with additional needs. [14:15] - Brian shares that the goal of his talk was to demonstrate how small changes can create a more inclusive environment, such as playing neurodivergent-friendly music, dimming bright lights, and establishing quiet spaces. [20:18] - Brian discusses the overwhelmingly positive response to his talk and expresses his hope that these inclusive practices will be adopted widely, transforming the way we all work with our teams. [23:08] - Brian encourages listeners to attend future conferences to gain new insights, broaden their horizons, and forge valuable connections. [24:20] - Do you have feedback or a great idea for an episode of the show? Great! Just send us an email. If you’d like to continue this discussion, join the Agile Mentors Community. [24:33] - We invite you to like and subscribe to the Agile Mentors Podcast and pass this episode along to a friend. References and resources mentioned in the show: Slide Deck From Brian’s Talk #76: Navigating Neurodiversity for High-Performing Teams with Susan Fitzell Scrum Alliance’s Global Scrum Gathering AJR Brothers Subscribe to the Agile Mentors Podcast Join the Agile Mentors Community Want to get involved? This show is designed for you, and we’d love your input. Enjoyed what you heard today? Please leave a rating and a review. It really helps, and we read every single one. Got an Agile subject you’d like us to discuss or a question that needs an answer? Share your thoughts with us at podcast@mountaingoatsoftware.com This episode’s presenters are: Brian Milner is SVP of coaching and training at Mountain Goat Software. He's passionate about making a difference in people's day-to-day work, influenced by his own experience of transitioning to Scrum and seeing improvements in work/life balance, honesty, respect, and the quality of work. Auto-generated Transcript: Brian (00:00) Agile Mentors, how the heck are you? How's your week going? Hope it's going pretty well for you. I wanted to spend some time with you on this week's episode because I just had an event that took place that was really, really a phenomenal event. And I wanna kind of share with you some personal insights that I had from it and just sort of give you a picture of what it's like. If you've never been to a conference before, Maybe I can entice you to maybe go to one. I think you'll benefit from it. And I think you'll kind of see your career maybe even go in new directions if you decide to go to one. We just had the global Scrum gathering that took place in New Orleans. That was the 2024 conference. And the Scrum Alliance has changed things up a little bit. I don't know if people are familiar with this or if you're aware of this, but... Scrimmelines used to have two conferences every year. They used to have one that was somewhere in the US, and then they would have another one that was mostly in Europe. But now they've kind of switched up their strategy. They're going to have one in the US one year. And then next year, it'll be somewhere else globally. So they're really leaning into that global title here for global Scrum gathering. Next year's, I believe they announced here at the end of our conference, is going to be at Munich. So still staying within Europe, but that's not always going to be the case. So there won't be one in the US next year. It'll be the first year that that happens. So every two years, if you're here in the US, you get a chance to attend. If you're somewhere else in the world, maybe there'll be one that appears in a location near you. And that might be a little bit more convenient for you to attend. But I want to talk about this one that was in New Orleans. And I have to start by just, I want to say to all the support staff, to all the people who volunteered their time from. from the teams that helped set up the rooms to the program team that helped kind of put this all together and create the environment and select the talks and everything else. Phenomenal job. Just phenomenal job. I couldn't have asked for it to have been run any better. I saw zero hiccups in my time there and just had a fabulous conference. It was a great time. Enjoyed the heck out of it. Enjoyed New Orleans. It's always great to realize I had not actually visited New Orleans prior to this of all the places. It's not very far from where I live, but for whatever reason, it was just one of those black holes in my map. It was one place I had never been to and it was a place I loved. I thought it was just amazing to meet some of the local people there. and to get a flavor of what it was like on Bourbon Street and Frenchman Street and some other parts of the town after the conference. It was just a really great experience. I was very pleased with the whole thing. And so I just want to make sure that that's out there, right? There's a lot of volunteers that go into working for a conference. I've been a part of that group from time to time. I've reviewed different submissions. If you're not familiar with that process, Speakers at a conference submit their ideas. It's no guarantee anyone's going to get picked. In fact, it's a very, very small percentage. They end up getting picked. So it's a very tough process for the reviewers. And it takes a team of them. They have different tracks that they take submissions in. And they kind of have to whittle those down. One of my friends who was on the team was describing to me, you might have one talk on, or you might think about a topic like daily scrums. And you might have five submissions on daily scrums that are all amazing talks. They all sound like they'd be incredible with great speakers. But somehow they have to whittle that down. They can't have five talks on Daily Scrums. They've got to limit it. And they've got to have talks on things that they feel the majority of the visitors are going to be interested in. So it's a thankless job that goes on behind the scenes. And I just want to publicly thank them. I know I got to rub shoulders with several of the people on different aspects of the teams and just really, really appreciate all the work that you guys did to make it such a successful conference. I really always enjoy the scrum gathering conferences. I think they're, they're, they're a fun event. they, they always have a Monday mingle kind of activity. That's always, something you, you write home about if you will, just something fun to do. this year we had a location was not very far from, the hotel so we could walk there. And just had lots of things that were going on there, food and drink and that sort of stuff. But it just gives you a nice kind of off campus place to unwind and interact with other people and kind of maybe meet some people that you wouldn't get a chance to otherwise. So I always appreciate some of those social events. Even though I'm an introvert, I just enjoy having different space, kind of a different opportunity to do that sort of thing. And I just want to say, you know, the talks I heard this year were incredible. I heard some really good first time speakers that had never spoken before. And I love the fact that, you know, they're doing that, that they are expanding and it's not just the same crop of people that you hear every single conference. You know, it's a different set of people and it really depends on your topic. It depends on what it is you're trying to talk about. So I was really thankful to get to hear some new voices there in our community. And the only thing that I wish I could change about that, and this is the same no matter what conference it is, every conference I have this issue, it always seems like the ones you want to go hear the most are if you're speaking, they're happening when you're speaking, or they're all grouped into the same time slot. And you'll get three or four talks that you really wanted to go to. And you got to pick. You got to choose one of those that you can go to and kind of just plug in there. I'm not one that likes to bounce between the different rooms. I don't have any problem if someone does that. I don't have any problem if someone does that in my talk. But I just like to commit. And that's kind of the way I look at it, is when I come in there, I'm committed, I'm here, I'm giving my full attention. I want to learn from this person. and leave with something I didn't know in advance. So really, really enjoyed that. There was a talk that was put on by women in Agile that was three new speakers that were three women who had not spoken before. Really enjoyed that and loved their approach. They have a mentor for each person that kind of helps them prepare and get ready for it. So that was awesome. Really enjoyed listening to that. And just... I don't want to call out any specific talk because they were all so good. I will say there have been years in the past when I have had sort of slots where I've thought, there's not really one I want to hear in this slot. So maybe I've set out or I've done something else. That wasn't the case for this one. Every slot had something I was like, I've really got to go hear that. I've got to hear that person talk or really want to hear about that topic. So just really enjoyed that. Couple milestones, kind of, I noticed that happened here. One of my mentors and someone I've had in the podcast, David Hawks was there and he's kind of publicly announced this now that he's retiring, he's stepping back a little bit from doing this stuff and he gave his last conference talk. So it was neat to be there to see his last one. He's a really engaging speaker and always has really deep kind of... needy content for you to chew over that you leave thinking about. So it was kind of an honor to be there for the last thing that he did at a conference. And the other thing to say is that I really kind of just enjoy the one -off conversations, the hallway conversations. There's breakfast and lunch every day. And when you do those, you sit down at a table, you've got to find a spot. And sometimes I'm just trying to find any open spot. But what I'm trying to do is find the table with people that I don't know, that I haven't met before, that I want to. maybe rub shoulders with and learn a little bit more about what they're doing their organizations. So those are a great time that they're kind of built in naturally to try to meet some new people. And you know, I'll tell you, I wore a little thing at this conference before it broke on me, but I had a little pin that was kind of my emotional, no, it was my social meter. That's what it was. And it had like a high and a low ranking on it. And you know, I'd start out every day with it on the high ranking. I'm ready to go. I'm excited. And as the day went on, it would kind of go a little bit further down. And by the end of the day, I was spent. I didn't really have any more I could give out. And I just wanted to wear that sort of a visual fair warning to people. If they saw me and they saw where my meter was, they could say, OK, Brian's kind of running low. Maybe. Maybe I'll wait till tomorrow and have that conversation. Not that I'm going to be mean or rude to anyone, but just there are times when you just are all empty. You're just out, and you don't have anything more that you can give. And that's certainly the way I feel sometimes at the end of some of these long days. I've been known sometimes to just go up and spend time taking a nap in my room, maybe doing some emails or something, just something to give me a break to go away. And that's sometimes something I need in these kind of big social environments. I do want to really, really congratulate the Scrum Alliance on one thing that I noticed particularly here in this conference. They clearly made an effort to make some accommodations for some different personality types, neuro types, and you know, I've shared with this podcast before that my talk here at the Scrum Gathering was on neurodiversity and how to be more inclusive of different neurotypes in your teams. I'll get to that talk in just a second. But there were things that I had been studying and learning about that were small accommodations that people could make that helped some of these different neurotypes. And it was clear that the Scrum Alliance had deliberately made an effort to do that. One thing that I didn't know was going to happen until I got there, for every keynote presentation they had on their big video monitor, they had transcription. So there was closed captioning of anything that was being said, which is a very important feature for some various neurodiversity types. And I was very, very pleased to see that. I just thought that was a good change that they made. Small change, not really anything big that they had to do to do that, but it makes a big difference for a segment of the population. And I'm really thankful that they did that. The other thing that I noticed that they did was they had a quiet room. There was a room that was right in the mix of all the other conference rooms where presentations were going on that was a quiet room. It was dim lighting. They had some nice cushy soft like beanbag chairs that were in there. They actually had like some soft quiet like atmospheric kind of effect noises going on like waterfalls and that sort of thing. Rain rainfall, ocean waves, things that were very peaceful and quiet. And they also had made available in that room earplugs for people. And for those that have noise sensitivities, sometimes you can walk into these conference rooms and I can say, I've been guilty of this as a speaker. I want to create an exciting atmosphere. So I blare the upbeat music as people are coming in just to get people in the right kind of excited mood. Well, if I have noise sensitivities, that's going to not only not be exciting, it's going to be painful. And having the ability for someone to self -regulate that and say, I'm going to put my earplugs in for this, because it's just a louder place. It's a louder room. Even just listening to certain talks, you would hear a talk next door where a speaker would just their plan for their talk was much more interactive. So there'd be a lot of audience participation and shouting outs and clapping and laughing and that sort of stuff. And it can be disruptive for the room next door. I don't fault any rooms for being more interactive or fun for the attendees, but you know, noise has a bleed through effect. And I was just happy that they thought that far ahead and said, you know, we're going to have some people here who might have that sensitivity to noise. And it doesn't cost very much for us to provide a handful of earplugs. I don't know how many of them were taken, but I would imagine there wasn't a ton. They didn't run out, as far as I know. But having a place like that, I took advantage of the quiet room. I knew that it was a place where I could go and collect my thoughts. And I would sit down with my laptop and maybe just make some notes of things I wanted to make sure I captured. No one was going to interrupt me. That was kind of the rule of the room. There was no talking in that room. So I could focus. I could come in there and do what I needed to do without disturbing anyone and really kind of recenter before I headed back out. There were some who used it for meditation and other things. And I have no problem with that. If that works for people, then I'm happy for them to do that. For me, it was just a quiet space. And I just needed a quiet space, somewhere away from all the hustle and bustle, what was going on. So just kudos to the Scrum Alliance there for that. I think that they made a couple of really intentional moves there to be more inclusive. And I, for one, as part of that neurodivergent community, really, really appreciated it. So thank you there to the Scrum Alliance. If anyone here is from the Scrum Alliance listening. Big kudos there for you on that. The other thing here is I do want to talk about my talk just briefly. And just to let you know that I did a lot of preparation for this talk. It really was the culmination of about a year's worth of research. I've done talks at other conferences before. I tried to let people know that this one was different for me. This one was very different because it was very personal. I was gonna be sharing things about my own medical diagnosis. And that's just not something that's common that I have in conference talks. I don't normally go into a conference talk and say, hey, here's what I was diagnosed with. So that made it very, very personal. But it's also something that is prevalent throughout my family. So I was sharing information from my family as well. Again, like I've said here on the podcast, I wouldn't share that if I didn't have permission. I don't volunteer that for others in my family. If they say that it's OK, then I will. If they don't, then I don't share that information. But it was very personal. And I was much more connected, I think, to the material. I really, really had a vested interest in the outcome. You know, I wanted to show some real practical ways that people could make small changes and become more inclusive. So that was my goal. And one of the things I tried to do, if you attended my talk, you may not even recognize all these things, but I wanted to first teach by demonstration. I wanted to kind of have things in place that... that would show that you can make small changes to be more inclusive. So just a couple of things I want to highlight here. One was a very, very, very subtle thing that I don't think anyone caught. But I did have music on that I turned down fairly quiet. I didn't want it to be that loud. I wanted to be loud enough for people to hear, but I didn't want it to be very loud. And I just had a playlist that was playing where I was playing one band in particular. I was playing a band called AJR. Some of you may be familiar with them, some of you may not, but AJR is a trio of brothers who are neurodivergent and their music is very neurodivergent friendly. They've sort of been seen as kind of, I don't know how to put it, but... figureheads, I guess, of neurodivergent movement. There's lots of neurodivergent people who go to their concerts. There's lots of commentary and stuff about how they're very open about that in their lyrics. So that was a slight little nod there. If anyone caught that, then congratulations. You caught the most subtle way that I did that. But that was one of the ways I was trying to make it a little bit more friendly. One of the other things I did, I turned down the lights in the room. There was overhead cans that you would have kind of typical in any kind of conference room. But they also had some like a chandelier that was over the middle of it. There were kind of some circles. And I found the light control panel and found out I could turn off the cans that were in the room and just have the overhead kind of chandelier. And it really kind of brought the light level down. It wasn't dark. It wasn't... so dark that you couldn't see in the room or anything like that. It was still enough that you could see. No darker than you would find in maybe a restaurant, right? But it was a lower level of light. And that was very intentional. I was trying to help people who had light sensitivities to not have to struggle or worry about that. So that was something I did intentionally. I. Probably the biggest thing I did was I set aside two tables at the back of the room that I call quiet tables. Most of the time you go to a conference, there's an expectation that you do some interactive kind of work there. I had a lot of data to get out, so I couldn't do as much interactivity as I normally do in a talk. But I did have one big activity that I did kind of towards the back part of my talk. And I wanted to have a couple of tables that if people just were not comfortable, group participation. They didn't want to have to talk to others. They wanted to just come and show up and take in the information. I wanted them to be able to do that. So I set aside two tables. I put a little sign on the table that said, this is a quiet table. If you sit here, please understand these seats are designated for people who don't want to be a part of group activities and would rather just sit quietly while we have any kind of a group activity. And I set those aside. And I. As people were coming into the room, I saw people that were starting to sit at those tables and I walked over and I just wanted to check on the people that were some of the first people sitting there and saying, I don't want to interrupt you. I just want to make sure that you've seen the sign so that you know what to expect here at this table. And I had these three wonderful women that were sitting at one of the tables and they responded very emphatically like, yes, no, we absolutely read that. We loved it and we felt like, hey, he gets us. And that just made my day. I was just so excited that they felt that way and they felt welcomed, right? That's kind of what I was trying to do is create a welcoming atmosphere that nobody felt left out. Everybody felt included, normal. I did some other things too, like we put out some little badges that said, embrace neurodiversity, that people could put on their name badges, just to kind of raise awareness across the conference from that point on. I also put little fidget toys at each spot that people could take with them. Just a small little fidget keychain kind of thing that people could have. Not anything terribly elaborate, but just a small little thing. So all these things were just ways I thought of in advance to try to make it a more welcoming environment for people to participate. Getting to the talk itself, as a speaker, I'm pleased with how it went. It kind of went the way I'd hoped it would go. One small technical thing with a poll that I did at the beginning, but you know now I'm kind of insider baseballing this and I don't really Didn't really Contribute hugely in any negative way. I was able to call out the numbers and we just moved on right That was not a major part of the presentation anyway So, you know, I'm I'm as pleased with how it went as I probably could have been for anything like that I I could tell things were resonating with people. I got nods. I got verbal agreement from people in different parts of the talk. So, you know, and we stay within our time box. We met that the way we needed to. So that all went pretty well. But you don't really know until after. And it's after that really kind of made my conference for me because... not just immediately after, but for the remainder of that conference. I spoke on Tuesday. It went on, the conference was Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. So for the remainder of day on Tuesday, into the night on Tuesday, and then before I left on Wednesday, I just had random people that would come up to me at various points and thank me for giving the talk. I had one person tell me, thank you and said, I felt seen. And that just almost brought a tear to my eye. I was so excited to hear that. And that was part of what I was really attempting to do there, is I wanted people to understand that there are differences in how people process things and how people's brains work. And hopefully we can take that back to our teams and change how we approach how we work with our teams. I'm not going to go too much into the detail of the talk. We will make the slides available here in our show notes. So if you want to see the slides like I gave the presentation, I gave it the presentation, we'll make that available for you. There's no recording of it, unfortunately. The Scrim Alliance doesn't do that. They don't record them and then publish them later. Some conferences I know do. do that, but the Scrum Alliance is not one of them. But I will make the slides available to you if you want to dig into that more. The other thing I'd say is if you really want to dig in the topic more, find my previous podcast episode, which we'll also put in the show notes. That was with Susan Fitzell. She is a specialist in that area and helped me to understand some things. And that was a kind of key episode. on that topic. So those are some places I can point you to if you want to get into that, the heart of that, that topic area. But, you know, hearing those kinds of things, those personal kind of congratulations and just people who I didn't know who'd come up and say, you know, they felt seen and that just made the conference for me. I was so pleased that that was the case. Because just as it was very personal for me, it was personal for them too. It connected to them on a very personal level. And I hope that that can make a change in our teams. I hope that that's something that some of those people who are in the room can take back and implement just one thing. One thing they can change in how they work with their teams. All in all, it was a great conference. I really enjoyed it. And Scrum Alliance just put on a great conference this year. as they always do. They always put on a great conference. So thanks to my friends at Scrum Alliance for inviting me and having me there to speak. Thank you for all the volunteers who worked on it. Thank you to each person that I had a conversation with, especially the new friends that I didn't really know before the conference. I... I really enjoy, and the ones that I haven't seen for a while that I kind of got to rub shoulders with there. Again, I really appreciate you coming up and saying hello. And I did have a few people from the podcast who came up and said, hey, listen to the podcast. That's always a pleasure when that happens. It just helps me to know that, hey, this is actually resonating. This is making an impact for people. So. I heartily appreciate that. If you ever see me at a conference, please do. Don't hesitate. Come up and say hello and tell me that you listen to the podcast. You'll make my day if you do that. So that wraps up Scrum Gathering 2024, New Orleans. I should say global Scrum Gathering. And if you didn't attend this year's, if you're in Europe, maybe consider attending the Munich one next year. I don't know where the following year is going to be in 2026, but it will be back here in the States somewhere. And we'll have to wait and find out where that's going to be. On my calendar, the next conference I have coming up is an exciting one for me. It's Agile 2024 that's taking place in Dallas. So if you go to the Agile Alliance, agilealliance .org, you can find information about that conference and join me there. I'm going to be talking about conflict and how we can have conflict competent teams. So I'm excited to talk about that and dive into that topic with everyone in Agile 2024. So. Just wanted to give you a brief recap of what happened there and what it was like, and give you an insider view of what it's like. If you haven't ever attended a conference, I encourage you to give it a shot, especially, you know, I'm based in the Dallas area. If you happen to be in the Dallas area and you're on the fence about attending the conference there in July, you got no excuse. It's in your backyard, right? It's right there. You'll hear some amazing speakers. You'll widen your network. You'll be surprised at kind of the connections you make and what you walk away with from a conference. So just highly encourage you to give it a shot. So that'll wrap us on this episode. It was just me, so I won't do a separate little closing thing. If you wanna give me any feedback on this, just reach out to me and send me an email podcast at mountaingoatsoftware .com and I'll get that. Or you can go to our Agile Mentors Community and post in our discussion forum there. That's a place where you can interact with me. As always, like and subscribe, all that social jazz. Make sure that you... You keep this in your inbox. We always appreciate that. And as we always ask, tell a friend. If you liked the episode, if you liked any of our episodes, pass that on to a friend and let them know about this podcast that you found. That's it for this time. We'll see you again on another episode of the Agile Mentors Podcast.

In this podcast conversation, we discuss navigating imposter syndrome and its relationship to knowing your own value. Having a strong supportive network and tapping into your own bravery is critical as you're pursuing success in your career. About the Featured Guest Carrie Driscoll, Agile coach and president of Reef Consulting, leverages 20+ years in project and operations management to drive growth and innovation. Her firm specializes in business agility coaching and digital transformations for Fortune 500 companies. She is a Scrum@Scaled Trainer, SAFe Program Consultant, Certified ScrumMaster, ICAgile Certified Professional, and is a dedicated speaker and mentor.   Follow Carrie Driscoll on LinkedIn    The Women in Agile community champions inclusion and diversity of thought, regardless of gender, and this podcast is a platform to share new voices and stories with the Agile community and the business world, because we believe that everyone is better off when more, diverse ideas are shared. Podcast Library: www.womeninagile.org/podcast Women in Agile Org Website: www.womeninagile.org    Connect with us on social media! LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/womeninagile/ Instagram: www.instagram.com/womeninagile/ Twitter: www.twitter.com/womeninagileorg    Please take a moment to rate and review the Women in Agile podcast on your favorite podcasting platform. This is the best way to help us amplify the voices and wisdom of the talent women and allies in our community! Be sure to take a screenshot of your rating and review and post it on social media with the hashtag #womeninagile to help spread the word and continue to elevate Women in Agile.   About our Host: Leslie Morse is an agilist at heart. She was leveraging agile practices and appreciating agile principles long before she even knew what they were. Her agile journey officially started in 2010 and she never looked back. Her career has taken many twists and turns. She led a digital marketing start-up in college, was involved with replatforming Lowes.com while they adopted agile practices, provided training and coaching for agile transformation across a wide array of industries, and now serves as a Product Owner for Scrum.org. She is trained in Organization and Relationship Systems Coaching (ORSC) and has been involved with Women in Agile since its original inception at Scrum Gathering 2013 in Las Vegas. You can follow Leslie on LinkedIn   About our Sponsor Scrum.org is the Home of Scrum, founded in 2009 by Scrum co-creator Ken Schwaber focused on helping people and teams solve complex problems by improving how they work through higher levels of professionalism. Scrum.org provides free online resources, consistent experiential live training, ongoing learning paths, and certification for people with all levels of Scrum knowledge. You can learn more about the organization by visiting www.scrum.org.

Kate shares her experience at the recent Scrum Gathering in New Orleans, highlighting the emerging themes and topics. She also discusses her perspective as a sponsor and other key takeaways from the event.

Keeping up with what is happening in AI is no small task. You probably know some folks who spend a lot of free time learning how to bend (insert AI flavor of the week) to their will, there are folks who are preaching to anyone who will listen about all the amazing things that are right around the corner, and then there are the folks who just periodically peek over their shoulder and say “Yeah, um… let me know when you've got this bit actually working.” And then there are people like Snehal Talati. I met Snehal last year at the Scrum Gathering and we did a podcast about http://aiagile.org, the community he started to bring Agilists together to ensure that the intersection between the Agile space and AI happens in an intentional and thoughtful way. It's been 8 months since that podcast was posted and that's like 20 years in the AI space. So Snehal is back to share what's been happening in AI and Agile. and to talk about the free course he built for the Scrum Alliance to help folks get started. During our conversation, Snehal gives an update on some of the newer changes and challenges in AI and he also offers real-life examples of how AI is becoming a powerful part of his personal productivity. If you'd like to check out the Scrum Alliance's AI course, that is here: • AI & Agility: A Comprehensive Introduction: https://resources.scrumalliance.org/Course/ai-agility-comprehensive-introduction AI Links to get you started: • AI Agile: https://www.aiagile.org/ • Agile GPT: https://www.agilegpt.com/ • ChatGPT: https://openai.com/blog/chatgpt CONTACTING SNEHAL • Web: https://www.boostaro.com • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/snehal-talati-124a38b6/

In this episode, our host Leslie Morse explores topics related to mentorship with our guest Dominika Bula. This episode was originally inspired by Dominika's participation as a mentor in the Women in Agile Mentorship program, sponsored by ICAgile. In addition to sharing tips and tricks for success in mentorship relationships, Dominika also shares details about a method of speed mentorship that can help you uplift the skills and capabilities of those around you.   About the Featured Guest Dominika Bula is a Senior Consultant working for SAP Signavio, she is also a Mentor with the Women in Agile Mentorship Program and one of the Women in Agile Europe Conference organizers. Dominika's daily job focuses on enterprise Agile Coaching.  She is Certified Scrum Master, PMI Agile Practitioner, SAFe Consultant and ProKanban trainer. Follow Dominika on LinkedIn Follow Dominika on Twitter @DomiBula    References & Resources Women in Agile Mentorship program, sponsored by ICAgile. (https://womeninagile.org/mentorship/) X-Teams: How to Build Teams That Lead, Innovate, and Succeed by Deborah Ancona & Henrik Bresman AnitaB.org Mentorship Circles The Women in Agile community champions inclusion and diversity of thought, regardless of gender, and this podcast is a platform to share new voices and stories with the Agile community and the business world, because we believe that everyone is better off when more, diverse ideas are shared.   Podcast Library: www.womeninagile.org/podcast Women in Agile Org Website: www.womeninagile.org    Connect with us on social media! LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/womeninagile/ Instagram: www.instagram.com/womeninagile/ Twitter: www.twitter.com/womeninagileorg    Please take a moment to rate and review the Women in Agile podcast on your favorite podcasting platform. This is the best way to help us amplify the voices and wisdom of the talented women and allies in our community! Be sure to take a screenshot of your rating and review and post it on social media with the hashtag #womeninagile to help spread the word and continue to elevate Women in Agile.   About our Host Leslie Morse is an agilist at heart. She was leveraging agile practices and appreciating agile principles long before she even knew what they were. Her agile journey officially started in 2010 and she never looked back. Her career has taken many twists and turns. She led a digital marketing start-up in college, was involved with replatforming Lowes.com while they adopted agile practices, provided training and coaching for agile transformation across a wide array of industries, and now serves as a Product Owner for Scrum.org. She is trained in Organization and Relationship Systems Coaching (ORSC) and has been involved in with Women in Agile since its original inception at Scrum Gathering 2013 in Las Vegas. You can follow Leslie on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/lesliejdotnet).   About our Sponsor Scrum.org is the Home of Scrum, founded in 2009 by Scrum co-creator Ken Schwaber focused on helping people and teams solve complex problems by improving how they work through higher levels of professionalism. Scrum.org provides free online resources, consistent experiential live training, ongoing learning paths, and certification for people with all levels of Scrum knowledge. You can learn more about the organization by visiting www.scrum.org.

In this episode we unpack section 9 of the Code of Ethical Conduct for Agile Coaching;  Responsibility to the Profession. We uncover the thinking behind the section, its inclusion in the Code of Ethic and its application in coaching. Important Note: This podcast episode was filmed at the Agile 2024 conference so please excuse the background noise that occurred during the recording. About the Featured Guests Kerri Sutey is the Leading Change Portfolio Manager at ICAgile where she shapes learning journeys that help organizations build the leadership and coaching capabilities they need to achieve business agility.   Follow Kerri on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/kerrisutey/)   John Barratt is passionate about helping organizations reach their full potential. He has developed a unique coaching style that combines the principles of business agility with other coaching approaches. John specializes in helping organizations simplify and become more resilient. He uses various methods, including outcome-based coaching and systemic modeling, to help clients achieve measurable results.   Follow John on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnbarratt1/) Follow John on Twitter @coachjohnuk (https://www.twitter.com/coachjohnuk)   Reference(s) Code of Ethical Conduct for Agile Coaching https://www.agilealliance.org/resources/initiatives/agile-coaching-ethics/   The Women in Agile community champions inclusion and diversity of thought, regardless of gender, and this podcast is a platform to share new voices and stories with the Agile community and the business world, because we believe that everyone is better off when more, diverse ideas are shared.   Podcast Library: www.womeninagile.org/podcast Women in Agile Org Website: www.womeninagile.org    Connect with us on social media! LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/womeninagile/ Instagram: www.instagram.com/womeninagile/ Twitter: www.twitter.com/womeninagileorg    Please take a moment to rate and review the Women in Agile podcast on your favorite podcasting platform. This is the best way to help us amplify the voices and wisdom of the talented women and allies in our community! Be sure to take a screenshot of your rating and review and post it on social media with the hashtag #womeninagile to help spread the word and continue to elevate Women in Agile.   About our Host Leslie Morse is an agilist at heart. She was leveraging agile practices and appreciating agile principles long before she even knew what they were. Her agile journey officially started in 2010 and she never looked back. Her career has taken many twists and turns. She led a digital marketing start-up in college, was involved with replatforming Lowes.com while they adopted agile practices, provided training and coaching for agile transformation across a wide array of industries, and now serves as a Product Owner for Scrum.org. She is trained in Organization and Relationship Systems Coaching (ORSC) and has been involved in with Women in Agile since its original inception at Scrum Gathering 2013 in Las Vegas. You can follow Leslie on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/lesliejdotnet).   About our Sponsor Scrum.org is the Home of Scrum, founded in 2009 by Scrum co-creator Ken Schwaber focused on helping people and teams solve complex problems by improving how they work through higher levels of professionalism. Scrum.org provides free online resources, consistent experiential live training, ongoing learning paths, and certification for people with all levels of Scrum knowledge. You can learn more about the organization by visiting www.scrum.org.

In this episode we unpack the 6th commitment in the Code of Ethical Conduct for Agile Coaching; Upholding Social responsibility, Diversity and Inclusion. We uncover the thinking behind the section, its inclusion in the Code of Ethics and its application in coaching. About the Featured Guest Deepti Jain crafts innovative learning & networking experiences for her clients & community, help them achieve sustainable transformation and 360-degree growth. She brings a background of agile software & product development, operational excellence, enterprise architecture. In 2015 she founded "AgileVirgin", in then 2018 she joined Agile Alliance as Initiative Director for India Agile Community Dev. Follow Deepti on LinkedIn Geof Elligham is a coach, facilitator, consultant, therapist and international speaker on business agility with 30 years experience in strategy, leadership, management, delivery and education in the public and private sectors.  Follow Geof on LinkedIn Follow Geof on Twitter @geofellingham Reference(s) Code of Ethical Conduct for Agile Coaching https://www.agilealliance.org/resources/initiatives/agile-coaching-ethics/ The Women in Agile community champions inclusion and diversity of thought, regardless of gender, and this podcast is a platform to share new voices and stories with the Agile community and the business world, because we believe that everyone is better off when more, diverse ideas are shared. Podcast Library: www.womeninagile.org/podcast Women in Agile Org Website: www.womeninagile.org  Connect with us on social media! LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/womeninagile/ Instagram: www.instagram.com/womeninagile/ Twitter: www.twitter.com/womeninagileorg  Please take a moment to rate and review the Women in Agile podcast on your favorite podcasting platform. This is the best way to help us amplify the voices and wisdom of the talent women and allies in our community! Be sure to take a screenshot of your rating and review and post it on social media with the hashtag #womeninagile to help spread the word and continue to elevate Women in Agile. About our Host Leslie Morse is an agilist at heart. She was leveraging agile practices and appreciating agile principles long before she even knew what they were. Her agile journey officially started in 2010 and she never looked back. Her career has taken many twists and turns. She led a digital marketing start-up in college, was involved with replatforming Lowes.com while they adopted agile practices, provided training and coaching for agile transformation across a wide array of industries, and now serves as a Product Owner for Scrum.org. She is trained in Organization and Relationship Systems Coaching (ORSC) and has been involved in with Women in Agile since its original inception at Scrum Gathering 2013 in Las Vegas. You can follow Leslie on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/lesliejdotnet). About our Sponsor Scrum.org is the Home of Scrum, founded in 2009 by Scrum co-creator Ken Schwaber focused on helping people and teams solve complex problems by improving how they work through higher levels of professionalism. Scrum.org provides free online resources, consistent experiential live training, ongoing learning paths, and certification for people with all levels of Scrum knowledge. You can learn more about the organization by visiting www.scrum.org.

Backlogs Aren't Meant to Hold It All - Mike Cohn Backlogs are like dessert: best in moderation. Having a backlog that's too big is a sign of trouble like an extra-wide slice of pie with two scoops of ice cream.This goes for both product and sprint backlogs. Each should be kept to a manageable size.The Sprint BacklogA sprint backlog can become unwieldy when team members start to use it as a catchall for their personal to-do lists.For example, one of my colleagues was recently working on a submission to the Scrum Gathering in New Orleans that's happening in May 2024.It's important for him, and it's good for our company. So I support the work. But it wasn't on the sprint backlog because nobody else had anything to do with it.It was just one person creating his presentation proposal and occasionally asking a few of us for feedback.Perfecting the proposal isn't a shared goal; the rest of us would never say, "Oh, he's out sick today. Let me jump in and work on his proposal."If others need to know about the work or can sub for you on the work, put it on the sprint backlog. Otherwise, consider leaving it off.The Product BacklogThe product backlog can become outsized when too many half-baked ideas are added to it.When working as a product owner, I don't want to clutter the product backlog with every idea I have. So I maintain a second list: a backlog of sorts. I call it a holding tank. It holds ideas until I either move them to the product backlog or delete them.I'm not trying to hide anything from a team by using a holding tank. I just don't want to bother anyone with some ideas until I've given them more thought.It's kind of like the new recipe I found for key lime pie. I bookmarked it, but the items to make it haven't made it to my shopping list yet. And when it does, one slice will be plenty!Keeping your sprint and product backlogs to a manageable size will help you succeed with agile. How to connect with AgileDad: - [website] https://www.agiledad.com/ - [instagram] https://www.instagram.com/agile_coach/ - [facebook] https://www.facebook.com/RealAgileDad/ - [Linkedin] https://www.linkedin.com/in/leehenson/

In this episode we unpack the fifth commitment from the Code of Ethical Conduct for Agile Coaching; Ensuring value in the relationship. We uncover the thinking behind the section, its inclusion in the Code of Ethics and its application in coaching. About the Featured Guests Vinnie Gill puts people and culture first. She enjoys connecting with people and companies to find their purpose, walking alongside them in their organisational growth journey. Her passion is influencing change at the Enterprise level. She is deeply involved in the Agile community, speaks at international conferences and has a special interest in educating and education being the tool that empowers people. Follow Vinnie Gill on LinkedIn  Tom Cagley is a consultant, speaker, podcaster, author, coach, and agile guide who leads organizations and teams to unlock their inherent greatness. He has developed estimation models and has supported organizations developing classic and agile estimates. Tom helps teams and organizations improve cycle time, productivity, quality, morale, and customer satisfaction, and then prove it. Follow Tom Cagley on LinkedIn  Follow @tcagley on Twitter    Reference(s) Code of Ethical Conduct for Agile Coaching https://www.agilealliance.org/resources/initiatives/agile-coaching-ethics/   The Women in Agile community champions inclusion and diversity of thought, regardless of gender, and this podcast is a platform to share new voices and stories with the Agile community and the business world, because we believe that everyone is better off when more, diverse ideas are shared. Podcast Library: www.womeninagile.org/podcast Women in Agile Org Website: www.womeninagile.org  Connect with us on social media! LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/womeninagile/ Instagram: www.instagram.com/womeninagile/ Twitter: www.twitter.com/womeninagileorg    Please take a moment to rate and review the Women in Agile podcast on your favorite podcasting platform. This is the best way to help us amplify the voices and wisdom of the talent women and allies in our community! Be sure to take a screenshot of your rating and review and post it on social media with the hashtag #womeninagile to help spread the word and continue to elevate Women in Agile. About our Hosts Leslie Morse is an agilist at heart. She was leveraging agile practices and appreciating agile principles long before she even knew what they were. Her agile journey officially started in 2010 and she never looked back. Her career has taken many twists and turns. She led a digital marketing start-up in college, was involved with replatforming Lowes.com while they adopted agile practices, provided training and coaching for agile transformation across a wide array of industries, and now serves as a Product Owner for Scrum.org. She is trained in Organization and Relationship Systems Coaching (ORSC) and has been involved in with Women in Agile since its original inception at Scrum Gathering 2013 in Las Vegas. You can follow Leslie on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/lesliejdotnet).   About our Sponsor Scrum.org is the Home of Scrum, founded in 2009 by Scrum co-creator Ken Schwaber focused on helping people and teams solve complex problems by improving how they work through higher levels of professionalism. Scrum.org provides free online resources, consistent experiential live training, ongoing learning paths, and certification for people with all levels of Scrum knowledge. You can learn more about the organization by visiting www.scrum.org.

In this episode we unpack the fourth commitment of the Code of Ethical Conduct for Agile Coaching;  Navigating Conflicts of Interest. Join host Leslie Morse as she explores Navigating Conflicts of Interest with Natascha Speets and Femi Odelusi.  About the Featured Guests Natascha Speets is an experienced Agile Team and Enterprise coach. Natascha helps her clients reach maturity in Agile by curating focused Agile coaching programs. In 2020, Natascha started an Agile community project to draft an Ethical Code for Agile Coaches, and It only made sense to join forces with the Agile Alliance and create a Code of Ethics that truly reflects the needs of the coaches and their clients. Femi Odelusi is a Professional Coach accredited by ICF and EMCC. He has excelled in organizational change and enabling innovative, digitally enabled business solutions. He has guided a variety of organizations as they transform in today's world of digitisation. Follow Femi on LinkedIn Follow Natascha on LinkedIn Reference(s) Code of Ethical Conduct for Agile Coaching https://www.agilealliance.org/resources/initiatives/agile-coaching-ethics/ International Coaching Federation: https://coachingfederation.org/ European Mentorship & Coaching Council: https://www.emccglobal.org/ The Women in Agile community champions inclusion and diversity of thought, regardless of gender, and this podcast is a platform to share new voices and stories with the Agile community and the business world, because we believe that everyone is better off when more, diverse ideas are shared. Podcast Library: www.womeninagile.org/podcast Women in Agile Org Website: www.womeninagile.org  Connect with us on social media! LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/womeninagile/ Instagram: www.instagram.com/womeninagile/ Twitter: www.twitter.com/womeninagileorg  Please take a moment to rate and review the Women in Agile podcast on your favorite podcasting platform. This is the best way to help us amplify the voices and wisdom of the talent women and allies in our community! Be sure to take a screenshot of your rating and review and post it on social media with the hashtag #womeninagile to help spread the word and continue to elevate Women in Agile. About our Hosts Leslie Morse is an agilist at heart. She was leveraging agile practices and appreciating agile principles long before she even knew what they were. Her agile journey officially started in 2010 and she never looked back. Her career has taken many twists and turns. She led a digital marketing start-up in college, was involved with replatforming Lowes.com while they adopted agile practices, provided training and coaching for agile transformation across a wide array of industries, and now serves as a Product Owner for Scrum.org. She is trained in Organization and Relationship Systems Coaching (ORSC) and has been involved in with Women in Agile since its original inception at Scrum Gathering 2013 in Las Vegas. You can follow Leslie on LinkedIn. About our Sponsor Scrum.org is the Home of Scrum, founded in 2009 by Scrum co-creator Ken Schwaber focused on helping people and teams solve complex problems by improving how they work through higher levels of professionalism. Scrum.org provides free online resources, consistent experiential live training, ongoing learning paths, and certification for people with all levels of Scrum knowledge. You can learn more about the organization by visiting www.scrum.org.

In this conversation, our host Leslie Morse talks with Dr. Lynn Kelley, PhD about creating an environment ripe for change. During the episode they explore different techniques for being best prepared to lead and engage people during change efforts through the lens of questions that help uncover the different dimensions that need to be considered when working with teams and organizations.   About the Featured Guest Dr. Lynn Kelley, PhD is the author of the book, Change Questions. She has spent her career implementing large-scale change at two Fortune 200 companies (Union Pacific Railroad and Textron), has been a key-note speaker at various international conferences, and has taught the hands-on, one-day Change Questions course to individuals and on-site at companies where organizational change initiatives are addressed.   Follow Lynn on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/lynnkelleychange/)   The Women in Agile community champions inclusion and diversity of thought, regardless of gender, and this podcast is a platform to share new voices and stories with the Agile community and the business world, because we believe that everyone is better off when more, diverse ideas are shared.   Podcast Library: www.womeninagile.org/podcast Women in Agile Org Website: www.womeninagile.org    Connect with us on social media! LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/womeninagile/ Instagram: www.instagram.com/womeninagile/ Twitter: www.twitter.com/womeninagileorg    Please take a moment to rate and review the Women in Agile podcast on your favorite podcasting platform. This is the best way to help us amplify the voices and wisdom of the talented women and allies in our community! Be sure to take a screenshot of your rating and review and post it on social media with the hashtag #womeninagile to help spread the word and continue to elevate Women in Agile.   About our Host Leslie Morse is an agilist at heart. She was leveraging agile practices and appreciating agile principles long before she even knew what they were. Her agile journey officially started in 2010 and she never looked back. Her career has taken many twists and turns. She led a digital marketing start-up in college, was involved with replatforming Lowes.com while they adopted agile practices, provided training and coaching for agile transformation across a wide array of industries, and now serves as a Product Owner for Scrum.org. She is trained in Organization and Relationship Systems Coaching (ORSC) and has been involved in with Women in Agile since its original inception at Scrum Gathering 2013 in Las Vegas. You can follow Leslie on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/lesliejdotnet).   About our Sponsor Scrum.org is the Home of Scrum, founded in 2009 by Scrum co-creator Ken Schwaber focused on helping people and teams solve complex problems by improving how they work through higher levels of professionalism. Scrum.org provides free online resources, consistent experiential live training, ongoing learning paths, and certification for people with all levels of Scrum knowledge. You can learn more about the organization by visiting www.scrum.org.  

In the first episode of the Code of Ethical Conduct for Agile Coaching series, guests Leslie Morse and Shane Hastie unpack the origins and purpose of the Code and we introduce each section of the Code. About the Featured Guest Leslie Morse is an agilist at heart. She was leveraging agile practices and appreciating agile principles long before she even knew what they were. Her agile journey officially started in 2010 and she never looked back. Her career has taken many twists and turns. She led a digital marketing start-up in college, was involved with replatforming Lowes.com while they adopted agile practices, provided training and coaching for agile transformation across a wide array of industries, and now serves as a Product Owner for Scrum.org. She is trained in Organization and Relationship Systems Coaching (ORSC) and has been involved in with Women in Agile since its original inception at Scrum Gathering 2013 in Las Vegas.    Shane Hastie is co-chair of the Agile Alliance Agile Coaching Ethics initiative, working to produce a code of ethical conduct for agile coaching. He is the Global Delivery Lead for SoftEd/Skills. He leads the Culture and Methods editorial team for InfoQ.com where he hosts the weekly InfoQ Culture Podcast. Shane is an ICF registered Professional Coach. Follow Leslie on LinkedIn  Follow Shane on LinkedIn   Reference(s) Code of Ethical Conduct for Agile Coaching https://www.agilealliance.org/resources/initiatives/agile-coaching-ethics/ The Women in Agile community champions inclusion and diversity of thought, regardless of gender, and this podcast is a platform to share new voices and stories with the Agile community and the business world, because we believe that everyone is better off when more, diverse ideas are shared. Podcast Library: www.womeninagile.org/podcast Women in Agile Org Website: www.womeninagile.org    Connect with us on social media! LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/womeninagile/ Instagram: www.instagram.com/womeninagile/ Twitter: www.twitter.com/womeninagileorg    Please take a moment to rate and review the Women in Agile podcast on your favorite podcasting platform. This is the best way to help us amplify the voices and wisdom of the talent women and allies in our community! Be sure to take a screenshot of your rating and review and post it on social media with the hashtag #womeninagile to help spread the word and continue to elevate Women in Agile.   About our Host Renae Craven has been coaching individuals, teams and organizations for over 13 years and has spent a lot of time investing in and formalizing her professional coaching skills in recent years. Renae's passion is leading and coaching organizations and as a Certified Team Coach with Scrum Alliance, she helps teams to find their rhythm and pace that balances learning with delivery. Renae established her own company NaeCrave Pty Ltd (www.naecrave.com.au) in 2020 and keeps herself busy with coaching and training delivery. Renae is also a certified BASI Pilates instructor and runs her own pilates studio in Brisbane, Australia. She has a YouTube channel called ‘Pilates for the Office Worker' which features short 5 minute guided sessions that anyone can incorporate into their day, especially those of us who have been sitting down for extended periods. Subscribe to her channel Crave Pilates. Renae has been organizing the Women in Agile group in Brisbane since 2018. You can follow Renae on LinkedIn.   About our Sponsor Scrum.org is the Home of Scrum, founded in 2009 by Scrum co-creator Ken Schwaber focused on helping people and teams solve complex problems by improving how they work through higher levels of professionalism. Scrum.org provides free online resources, consistent experiential live training, ongoing learning paths, and certification for people with all levels of Scrum knowledge. You can learn more about the organization by visiting www.scrum.org.

In this conversation, our host Leslie Morse talks with Andy Golding about the human element of navigating complexity and what we need to be thinking about in order to create more amazing experiences for people in the workplace.    About the Featured Guest Andy Golding believes that the headspace and the heart-space of human beings is the most untapped natural asset on the planet. As a leadership development & people practices specialist she helps companies design work environments and employee experiences that tap into the innate brilliance of human beings. She is a published author 'We are Still Human (and work shouldn't suck)' and a TEDx speaker.   Follow Andy on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/andy-golding/) Follow Andy on Twitter @dreagolding (https://www.twitter.com/dreagolding) Follow Andy on Instagram @dreagolding (https://www.instagram.com/dreagolding)   The Women in Agile community champions inclusion and diversity of thought, regardless of gender, and this podcast is a platform to share new voices and stories with the Agile community and the business world, because we believe that everyone is better off when more, diverse ideas are shared.   Podcast Library: www.womeninagile.org/podcast Women in Agile Org Website: www.womeninagile.org    Connect with us on social media! LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/womeninagile/ Instagram: www.instagram.com/womeninagile/ Twitter: www.twitter.com/womeninagileorg    Please take a moment to rate and review the Women in Agile podcast on your favorite podcasting platform. This is the best way to help us amplify the voices and wisdom of the talented women and allies in our community! Be sure to take a screenshot of your rating and review and post it on social media with the hashtag #womeninagile to help spread the word and continue to elevate Women in Agile.   About our Host Leslie Morse is an agilist at heart. She was leveraging agile practices and appreciating agile principles long before she even knew what they were. Her agile journey officially started in 2010 and she never looked back. Her career has taken many twists and turns. She led a digital marketing start-up in college, was involved with replatforming Lowes.com while they adopted agile practices, provided training and coaching for agile transformation across a wide array of industries, and now serves as a Product Owner for Scrum.org. She is trained in Organization and Relationship Systems Coaching (ORSC) and has been involved in with Women in Agile since its original inception at Scrum Gathering 2013 in Las Vegas. You can follow Leslie on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/lesliejdotnet).   About our Sponsor Scrum.org is the Home of Scrum, founded in 2009 by Scrum co-creator Ken Schwaber focused on helping people and teams solve complex problems by improving how they work through higher levels of professionalism. Scrum.org provides free online resources, consistent experiential live training, ongoing learning paths, and certification for people with all levels of Scrum knowledge. You can learn more about the organization by visiting www.scrum.org.  

In this 2021 conversation with Laura Re Turner, our host Leslie Morse explores the realm of Systemic Coaching and how agilists can bring systems thinking and an overall systemic view into the ways they work with people, teams and organizations.   About the Featured Guest Laura Re Turner is an accredited coach, trainer, and facilitator who works with leaders and teams to develop an Agile mindset, behaviours, and the skills to thrive through change. Before becoming a coach, Laura delivered enterprise software projects as a project and programme manager, technology consultant, and software developer. She is the Founder and Managing Director of Future Focus Coaching. Follow Laura Re Turner on LinkedIn  Follow Laura Re Turner on Twitter @FutureFocusCD  Reference(s) Book: Becoming Agile: Coaching Behavioural Change for Business Results by Laura Re Turner Book: Systemic Coaching: Delivering Value Beyond the Individual by Peter Hawkins and Eve Turner The Women in Agile community champions inclusion and diversity of thought, regardless of gender, and this podcast is a platform to share new voices and stories with the Agile community and the business world, because we believe that everyone is better off when more, diverse ideas are shared.   Podcast Library: www.womeninagile.org/podcast Women in Agile Org Website: www.womeninagile.org    Connect with us on social media! LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/womeninagile/ Instagram: www.instagram.com/womeninagile/ Twitter: www.twitter.com/womeninagileorg    Please take a moment to rate and review the Women in Agile podcast on your favorite podcasting platform. This is the best way to help us amplify the voices and wisdom of the talent women and allies in our community! Be sure to take a screenshot of your rating and review and post it on social media with the hashtag #womeninagile to help spread the word and continue to elevate Women in Agile.   About our Host Leslie Morse is an agilist at heart. She was leveraging agile practices and appreciating agile principles long before she even knew what they were. Her agile journey officially started in 2010 and she never looked back. Her career has taken many twists and turns. She led a digital marketing start-up in college, was involved with replatforming Lowes.com while they adopted agile practices, provided training and coaching for agile transformation across a wide array of industries, and now serves as a Product Owner for Scrum.org. She is trained in Organization and Relationship Systems Coaching (ORSC) and has been involved in the Women in Agile movement since its original inception at Scrum Gathering 2013 in Las Vegas. You can follow Leslie on LinkedIn   About our Sponsor Scrum.org is the Home of Scrum, founded in 2009 by Scrum co-creator Ken Schwaber focused on helping people and teams solve complex problems by improving how they work through higher levels of professionalism. Scrum.org provides free online resources, consistent experiential live training, ongoing learning paths, and certification for people with all levels of Scrum knowledge. You can learn more about the organization by visiting www.scrum.org.

In this 2021 conversation, our host Leslie Morse discusses gender equitable recovery and the dynamics of how COVID-19 has impacted women in the corporate workforce with Denise Purtzer. Together they explore a variety of gender dynamics in the workplace including authenticity, the pay gap and the importance of mentorship. Denise also shares many recommendations to consider for people reentering the workforce which are important not only for those going through transitions, but also for those of us who are supporting our friends and colleagues who had to step away from the workforce.   We considered not releasing this episode since it has been so long since it was recorded, however after we revisited this conversation the insights and take-aways still seem incredibly relevant in 2023.   About the Featured Guest Denise Purtzer loves to connect the right people to make things happen. At the time this episode was recorded she served as the VP of Partnerships and Alliances. During that time she oversaw the partner network at ClearSale, a global fraud prevention system. Denise's 20 years of experience in ecommerce has taken her around the globe, speaking and working in different areas to gain a greater understanding of locales including APAC, EMEA and AMER regions. Follow Denise Purtzer on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/denisepurtzer/ Reference(s) AmericanProgress.org - October 2020 - “How COVID-19 Sent Women's Workforce Progress Backward” https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/women/reports/2020/10/30/492582/covid-19-sent-womens-workforce-progress-backward/ Forbes - February 2021 - “COVID-19 has driven millions of women out of the workforce. Here's how to help them come back” https://fortune.com/2021/02/13/covid-19-women-workforce-unemployment-gender-gap-recovery/ The Washington Post - July 2020, - “Coronavirus child-care crisis will set women back a generation” https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2020/07/29/childcare-remote-learning-women-employment/ The Women in Agile community champions inclusion and diversity of thought, regardless of gender, and this podcast is a platform to share new voices and stories with the Agile community and the business world, because we believe that everyone is better off when more, diverse ideas are shared. Podcast Library: www.womeninagile.org/podcast Women in Agile Org Website: www.womeninagile.org  Connect with us on social media! LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/womeninagile/ Instagram: www.instagram.com/womeninagile/ Twitter: www.twitter.com/womeninagileorg  Please take a moment to rate and review the Women in Agile podcast on your favorite podcasting platform. This is the best way to help us amplify the voices and wisdom of the talent women and allies in our community! Be sure to take a screenshot of your rating and review and post it on social media with the hashtag #womeninagile to help spread the word and continue to elevate Women in Agile.   About our Host Leslie Morse is an agilist at heart. She was leveraging agile practices and appreciating agile principles long before she even knew what they were. Her agile journey officially started in 2010 and she never looked back. Her career has taken many twists and turns. She led a digital marketing start-up in college, was involved with replatforming Lowes.com while they adopted agile practices, provided training and coaching for agile transformation across a wide array of industries, and now serves as a Product Owner for Scrum.org. She is trained in Organization and Relationship Systems Coaching (ORSC) and has been involved in the Women in Agile movement since its original inception at Scrum Gathering 2013 in Las Vegas. You can follow Leslie on LinkedIn.   About our Sponsor Scrum.org is the Home of Scrum, founded in 2009 by Scrum co-creator Ken Schwaber focused on helping people and teams solve complex problems by improving how they work through higher levels of professionalism. Scrum.org provides free online resources, consistent experiential live training, ongoing learning paths, and certification for people with all levels of Scrum knowledge. You can learn more about the organization by visiting www.scrum.org.

In this episode, learn about how Jill Stott, a passionate agilist, navigated her career to becoming the VP of Innovation at NextUp Solutions. In her conversation with our host, Leslie Morse, she shares key learning moments from her career that have allowed her to reach a place where she is fulfilled and feels unstoppable.   For those of us considering a career change, feeling a little stalled, or still wondering who we want to be when you grow up - this episode will have several prompts and inquiries to help get you thinking! We hope you enjoy Jill's career story as she introduces her current motto “Do More Stuff Better”.   About the Featured Guest Jill is the Vice President of Innovation at NextUp Solutions. She works to develop better ways to assist people in improving business outcomes and employee and customer happiness. Her current motto: Agile is simple; people are complicated. Jill knows that culture can make or break and Agile transformation. She focuses equally on developing Agile mindsets and applying stellar mechanics.   Follow Jill Stott on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/jillstott/ The Women in Agile community champions inclusion and diversity of thought, regardless of gender, and this podcast is a platform to share new voices and stories with the Agile community and the business world, because we believe that everyone is better off when more, diverse ideas are shared.   Podcast Library: www.womeninagile.org/podcast Women in Agile Org Website: www.womeninagile.org    Connect with us on social media! LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/womeninagile/ Instagram: www.instagram.com/womeninagile/ Twitter: www.twitter.com/womeninagileorg    Please take a moment to rate and review the Women in Agile podcast on your favorite podcasting platform. This is the best way to help us amplify the voices and wisdom of the talent women and allies in our community! Be sure to take a screenshot of your rating and review and post it on social media with the hashtag #womeninagile to help spread the word and continue to elevate Women in Agile.   About our Hosts Leslie Morse is an agilist at heart. She was leveraging agile practices and appreciating agile principles long before she even knew what they were. Her agile journey officially started in 2010 and she never looked back. Her career has taken many twists and turns. She led a digital marketing start-up in college, was involved with replatforming Lowes.com while they adopted agile practices, provided training and coaching for agile transformation across a wide array of industries, and now serves as a Product Owner for Scrum.org. She is trained in Organization and Relationship Systems Coaching (ORSC) and has been involved in the Women in Agile movement since its original inception at Scrum Gathering 2013 in Las Vegas. You can follow Leslie on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/lesliejdotnet).   About our Sponsor Scrum.org is the Home of Scrum, founded in 2009 by Scrum co-creator Ken Schwaber focused on helping people and teams solve complex problems by improving how they work through higher levels of professionalism. Scrum.org provides free online resources, consistent experiential live training, ongoing learning paths, and certification for people with all levels of Scrum knowledge. You can learn more about the organization by visiting www.scrum.org.

Dana and I chat about facilitation in the virtual space, Liberating Structures and Training from the Back of the Room.  I always learn something when I chat with Dana and I hope you will find something actionable from this conversation. Enjoy

This episode features a new member of the Women in Agile Podcast team, Renae Craven. Get to know her through a conversation with our host Leslie Morse. Together they discuss authenticity and its importance in building our own leadership as well as building successful teams and organizations.  About the Featured Guest Renae Craven is a certified Coach and Scrum Professional, with over 12 years of experience coaching organisations and their teams through their transformation to an agile mindset. She enjoys building delivery teams that can self-organise to achieve commitments and hold themselves accountable for all outcomes. Renae balances hercoaching work with her own pilates studio in Brisbane, Australia. Follow Renae on LinkedIn  Reference(s) Podcast: The Leader's Playlist  The Women in Agile community champions inclusion and diversity of thought, regardless of gender, and this podcast is a platform to share new voices and stories with the Agile community and the business world, because we believe that everyone is better off when more, diverse ideas are shared. Podcast Library: www.womeninagile.org/podcast Women in Agile Org Website: www.womeninagile.org  Connect with us on social media! LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/womeninagile/ Instagram: www.instagram.com/womeninagile/ Twitter: www.twitter.com/womeninagileorg  Please take a moment to rate and review the Women in Agile podcast on your favorite podcasting platform. This is the best way to help us amplify the voices and wisdom of the talent women and allies in our community! Be sure to take a screenshot of your rating and review and post it on social media with the hashtag #womeninagile to help spread the word and continue to elevate Women in Agile. About our Host Leslie Morse is an agilist at heart. She was leveraging agile practices and appreciating agile principles long before she even knew what they were. Her agile journey officially started in 2010 and she never looked back. Her career has taken many twists and turns. She led a digital marketing start-up in college, was involved with replatforming Lowes.com while they adopted agile practices, provided training and coaching for agile transformation across a wide array of industries, and now serves as a Product Owner for Scrum.org. She is trained in Organization and Relationship Systems Coaching (ORSC) and has been involved in the Women in Agile movement since its original inception at Scrum Gathering 2013 in Las Vegas. You can follow Leslie on LinkedIn   About our Sponsor Scrum.org is the Home of Scrum, founded in 2009 by Scrum co-creator Ken Schwaber focused on helping people and teams solve complex problems by improving how they work through higher levels of professionalism. Scrum.org provides free online resources, consistent experiential live training, ongoing learning paths, and certification for people with all levels of Scrum knowledge. You can learn more about the organization by visiting www.scrum.org.

In this 2021 conversation, Marjorie Anderson joins our host Leslie Morse to explore how community building serves our teams and organizations. The episode is aptly named after a quote Marjorie drops early in the episode, “Agile is Community, Community is Agile.” As you listen you'll realize how true this is. During the discussion they touch on the multi-facted nature of nurturing communities and all the ways it has a possibility of serving the work agilists do.  About the Featured Guest Marjorie Anderson is an online community strategist who specializes in building community in the association space, seamlessly connecting community strategy to organization goals to drive sustainable value. She is the founder of Community by Association and the Product Manager for Community at Project Management Institute. Follow Marjorie Anderson on LinkedIn Follow @MarjorieAyyeee on Twitter The Women in Agile community champions inclusion and diversity of thought, regardless of gender, and this podcast is a platform to share new voices and stories with the Agile community and the business world, because we believe that everyone is better off when more, diverse ideas are shared. Podcast Library: www.womeninagile.org/podcast Women in Agile Org Website: www.womeninagile.org  Connect with us on social media! LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/womeninagile/ Instagram: www.instagram.com/womeninagile/ Twitter: www.twitter.com/womeninagileorg  Please take a moment to rate and review the Women in Agile podcast on your favorite podcasting platform. This is the best way to help us amplify the voices and wisdom of the talent women and allies in our community! Be sure to take a screenshot of your rating and review and post it on social media with the hashtag #womeninagile to help spread the word and continue to elevate Women in Agile. About our Host Leslie Morse is an agilist at heart. She was leveraging agile practices and appreciating agile principles long before she even knew what they were. Her agile journey officially started in 2010 and she never looked back. Her career has taken many twists and turns. She led a digital marketing start-up in college, was involved with replatforming Lowes.com while they adopted agile practices, provided training and coaching for agile transformation across a wide array of industries, and now serves as a Product Owner for Scrum.org. She is trained in Organization and Relationship Systems Coaching (ORSC) and has been involved in the Women in Agile movement since its original inception at Scrum Gathering 2013 in Las Vegas. You can follow Leslie on LinkedIn. About our Sponsor Scrum.org is the Home of Scrum, founded in 2009 by Scrum co-creator Ken Schwaber focused on helping people and teams solve complex problems by improving how they work through higher levels of professionalism. Scrum.org provides free online resources, consistent experiential live training, ongoing learning paths, and certification for people with all levels of Scrum knowledge. You can learn more about the organization by visiting www.scrum.org.

In this episode you hear from Queirra Fenderson, the keynote speaker for the WiA 2022 event in Nashville, TN as part of the Agile2022 conference. In her discussion with our host, Leslie Morse, she explores her wisdom in ambition and intuition.  Queirra shares her story of discovering her hidden inner-agilist, how she came to study the interplay of ambition and intuition and offers multiple tips and tricks for honing your “intuitive ambition.” While listening you'll learn about blind ambition as well as different ways to get in touch with your intuitive hits.  We also believe you'll discover this is more than a “woo woo” conversation. Leslie and Queirra explore real-life challenges around privilege, bias, and the complexity of being a modern-day knowledge worker. Throughout the episode you'll also hear a throughline that brings forward Agile values and principles. We hope you enjoy listening.  About the Featured Guest Queirra Fenderson is the CEO of The Ambition Studio, a professional coaching firm on a mission to end the burnout epidemic among leaders and entrepreneurs. As a Certified Coach, Professional Speaker, and Leadership Trainer, Queirra has supported the transformation of leaders across multiple industries that include Emmy-Award-winning entrepreneurs, C-Suite Executives, and U.S. Military Officers. Follow Queirra Fenderson on LinkedIn Follow The Ambition Studio on Instagram @the.ambition.studio  The Women in Agile community champions inclusion and diversity of thought, regardless of gender, and this podcast is a platform to share new voices and stories with the Agile community and the business world, because we believe that everyone is better off when more, diverse ideas are shared. Podcast Library: www.womeninagile.org/podcast Women in Agile Org Website: www.womeninagile.org  Connect with us on social media! LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/womeninagile/ Instagram: www.instagram.com/womeninagile/ Twitter: www.twitter.com/womeninagileorg  Please take a moment to rate and review the Women in Agile podcast on your favorite podcasting platform. This is the best way to help us amplify the voices and wisdom of the talent women and allies in our community! Be sure to take a screenshot of your rating and review and post it on social media with the hashtag #womeninagile to help spread the word and continue to elevate Women in Agile. About our Host Leslie Morse is an agilist at heart. She was leveraging agile practices and appreciating agile principles long before she even knew what they were. Her agile journey officially started in 2010 and she never looked back. Her career has taken many twists and turns. She led a digital marketing start-up in college, was involved with replatforming Lowes.com while they adopted agile practices, provided training and coaching for agile transformation across a wide array of industries, and now serves as a Product Owner for Scrum.org. She is trained in Organization and Relationship Systems Coaching (ORSC) and has been involved in the Women in Agile movement since its original inception at Scrum Gathering 2013 in Las Vegas. You can follow Leslie on LinkedIn. About our Sponsor Scrum.org is the Home of Scrum, founded in 2009 by Scrum co-creator Ken Schwaber focused on helping people and teams solve complex problems by improving how they work through higher levels of professionalism. Scrum.org provides free online resources, consistent experiential live training, ongoing learning paths, and certification for people with all levels of Scrum knowledge. You can learn more about the organization by visiting www.scrum.org.

In this episode you get to meet Emily Lint, a new host joining the Women in Agile Podcast team. During the conversation Emily and our host, Leslie Morse, discuss the story of Emily's career journey as she began embracing agile leadership after starting off as a ITIL process expert.  About the Featured Guest Emily Lint is a Business Agility Coach and founder of Lint Agility Services located in Albuquerque NM. She has 4 of years experience coaching Scrum, Kanban, and SAFe implementations, but with nearly 10 years of experience in Information Technology, Agile coaching is just one of many talents Emily brings to her clients and teams. Follow Emily Lint on LinkedIn  The Women in Agile community champions inclusion and diversity of thought, regardless of gender, and this podcast is a platform to share new voices and stories with the Agile community and the business world, because we believe that everyone is better off when more, diverse ideas are shared. Podcast Library: www.womeninagile.org/podcast Women in Agile Org Website: www.womeninagile.org  Connect with us on social media! LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/womeninagile/ Instagram: www.instagram.com/womeninagile/ Twitter: www.twitter.com/womeninagileorg  Please take a moment to rate and review the Women in Agile podcast on your favorite podcasting platform. This is the best way to help us amplify the voices and wisdom of the talent women and allies in our community! Be sure to take a screenshot of your rating and review and post it on social media with the hashtag #womeninagile to help spread the word and continue to elevate Women in Agile. About our Host Leslie Morse is an agilist at heart. She was leveraging agile practices and appreciating agile principles long before she even knew what they were. Her agile journey officially started in 2010 and she never looked back. Her career has taken many twists and turns. She led a digital marketing start-up in college, was involved with replatforming Lowes.com while they adopted agile practices, provided training and coaching for agile transformation across a wide array of industries, and now serves as a Product Owner for Scrum.org. She is trained in Organization and Relationship Systems Coaching (ORSC) and has been involved in the Women in Agile movement since its original inception at Scrum Gathering 2013 in Las Vegas. You can follow Leslie on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/lesliejdotnet). About our Sponsor Scrum.org is the Home of Scrum, founded in 2009 by Scrum co-creator Ken Schwaber focused on helping people and teams solve complex problems by improving how they work through higher levels of professionalism. Scrum.org provides free online resources, consistent experiential live training, ongoing learning paths, and certification for people with all levels of Scrum knowledge. You can learn more about the organization by visiting www.scrum.org.

This episode is a re-release of a 2019 conversation our host, Leslie Morse, had with Billie Schuttpelz about imposter syndrome and authenticity. This was the 11th episode of our series and it's fascinating how important many of these topics still are.   As you listen, we hope these words of wisdom from Billie stick out to you as much as they did for us. “What if instead of finding my purpose, I find myself... It leads me to fulfilling my purpose?” “People are the most innovative when they're operating in their authentic voice... We shouldn't focus so much on innovation. We should focus on getting our people to their authentic selves, and the innovation will come out naturally.” About the Featured Guest Billie Schuttpelz is an Agile coach at Accenture who is known for her work on conquering Imposter Syndrome, something she has struggled with. A stage actor and advocate for therapy and visualization, Schuttpelz invented an alternate reality called “Oops Land” where people have the safety and permission to fail and also to be their authentic selves. This is in stark contrast to where she often feels she lives: in Perfect Island. Schuttpelz's personal development journey has helped her take back power over her own life, which has sometimes felt lacking purpose. She shares stories of her Imposter Syndrome workshops, as well as her process going through the Shine program fromTenWomenStrong, and the Organization and Relationship Systems Coaching (ORSC) program. Follow Billie Schuttpelz on LinkedIn  The Women in Agile community champions inclusion and diversity of thought, regardless of gender, and this podcast is a platform to share new voices and stories with the Agile community and the business world, because we believe that everyone is better off when more, diverse ideas are shared. Podcast Library: www.womeninagile.org/podcast Women in Agile Org Website: www.womeninagile.org  Connect with us on social media! LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/womeninagile/ Instagram: www.instagram.com/womeninagile/ Twitter: www.twitter.com/womeninagileorg  Please take a moment to rate and review the Women in Agile podcast on your favorite podcasting platform. This is the best way to help us amplify the voices and wisdom of the talent women and allies in our community! Be sure to take a screenshot of your rating and review and post it on social media with the hashtag #womeninagile to help spread the word and continue to elevate Women in Agile.   About our Hosts Leslie Morse is an agilist at heart. She was leveraging agile practices and appreciating agile principles long before she even knew what they were. Her agile journey officially started in 2010 and she never looked back. Her career has taken many twists and turns. She led a digital marketing start-up in college, was involved with replatforming Lowes.com while they adopted agile practices, provided training and coaching for agile transformation across a wide array of industries, and now serves as a Product Owner for Scrum.org. She is trained in Organization and Relationship Systems Coaching (ORSC) and has been involved in the Women in Agile movement since its original inception at Scrum Gathering 2013 in Las Vegas. You can follow Leslie on LinkedIn. Emily Lint is a budding industry leader in the realm of business agility. Energetic and empathetic she leverages her knowledge of psychology, business, technology, and mindfulness to create a cocktail for success for her clients and peers. Her agile journey officially started in 2018 with a big move from Montana to New Mexico going from traditional ITSM and project management methodologies to becoming an agile to project management translator for a big government research laboratory. From then on she was hooked on this new way of working. The constant innovation, change, and retrospection cured her ever present craving to enable organizations to be better, do better, and provide an environment where her co-workers could thrive.  Since then she has started her own company and in partnership with ICON Agility Services serves, coaches, and trains clients of all industries in agile practices, methodologies, and most importantly, mindset. Please check out her website (www.lintagility.com) to learn more. You can also follow Emily on LinkedIn.  About our Sponsor Scrum.org is the Home of Scrum, founded in 2009 by Scrum co-creator Ken Schwaber focused on helping people and teams solve complex problems by improving how they work through higher levels of professionalism. Scrum.org provides free online resources, consistent experiential live training, ongoing learning paths, and certification for people with all levels of Scrum knowledge. You can learn more about the organization by visiting www.scrum.org.

This podcast was originally recorded in video. You can find that version here: https://bit.ly/3p8YDB8 This episode of the podcast features an interview that I'm hoping will serve as an example of how collaborating in a distributed model can lead to great things. Malene Jacobsen and Mario Melo both became Certified Scrum Trainers during the 2022 Scrum Gathering in Denver this past spring. The story of how they became Certified Scrum Trainers is the focus of our conversation. During the interview, you'll hear how they worked together and supported one another while preparing for their in-person TAC panels. They were also part of a larger team of people who committed to work together until each of them had become a Certified Scrum Trainer. Their teamwork demonstrates how being separated by multiple time zones does not have to be a hindrance. If you are working as part of a distributed team or you are working towards becoming a Certified Scrum Trainer, this podcast offers an inspiring story that is chock full of tips to help you succeed with your geographically distributed team. Links from the Podcast: Scrum Alliance Certified Scrum Trainer Info: https://bit.ly/3p9qNfc Scrumchkin: https://scrumchkin.com Malene Jacobsen LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/malenembj/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/MaleneMBJ Mario Melo Web: https://melomario.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/melomario/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/melomario

This episode is a re-release of a 2020 conversation our host, Leslie Morse, had with Brandi Olson about burnout. We revived this episode because of its original popularity as well as because the content is incredibly relevant.   Listen in as Brandi and Leslie explore how to recognize burnout in ourselves as well as in our organization, how it's all about prioritization (whether proactive or reactive), and whether having grace within our team can prevent burnout in the first place. Join the conversation online with #WomenInAgile #SmallGoodThings About the Featured Guest Brandi Olson works at the intersection between learning, organizational agility, and human-centered design. She says: “We put people in a position of having to choose between doing good work and their humanity, and in most cases that's a false choice.” Follow Brandi on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/brandiolson/) The Women in Agile community champions inclusion and diversity of thought, regardless of gender, and this podcast is a platform to share new voices and stories with the Agile community and the business world, because we believe that everyone is better off when more, diverse ideas are shared. Podcast Library: www.womeninagile.org/podcast Women in Agile Org Website: www.womeninagile.org  Connect with us on social media! LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/womeninagile/ Instagram: www.instagram.com/womeninagile/ Twitter: www.twitter.com/womeninagileorg  Please take a moment to rate and review the Women in Agile podcast on your favorite podcasting platform. This is the best way to help us amplify the voices and wisdom of the talent women and allies in our community! Be sure to take a screenshot of your rating and review and post it on social media with the hashtag #womeninagile to help spread the word and continue to elevate Women in Agile. About our Hosts Leslie Morse is an agilist at heart. She was leveraging agile practices and appreciating agile principles long before she even knew what they were. Her agile journey officially started in 2010 and she never looked back. Her career has taken many twists and turns. She led a digital marketing start-up in college, was involved with replatforming Lowes.com while they adopted agile practices, provided training and coaching for agile transformation across a wide array of industries, and now serves as a Product Owner for Scrum.org. She is trained in Organization and Relationship Systems Coaching (ORSC) and has been involved in the Women in Agile movement since its original inception at Scrum Gathering 2013 in Las Vegas. You can follow Leslie on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/lesliejdotnet). Emily Lint is a budding industry leader in the realm of business agility. Energetic and empathetic she leverages her knowledge of psychology, business, technology, and mindfulness to create a cocktail for success for her clients and peers. Her agile journey officially started in 2018 with a big move from Montana to New Mexico going from traditional ITSM and project management methodologies to becoming an agile to project management translator for a big government research laboratory. From then on she was hooked on this new way of working. The constant innovation, change, and retrospection cured her ever present craving to enable organizations to be better, do better, and provide an environment where her co-workers could thrive.  Since then she has started her own company and in partnership with ICON Agility Services serves, coaches, and trains clients of all industries in agile practices, methodologies, and most importantly, mindset. Please check out her website (www.lintagility.com) to learn more. You can also follow Emily on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/emily-lint-802b2b88/).    About our Sponsor Scrum.org is the Home of Scrum, founded in 2009 by Scrum co-creator Ken Schwaber focused on helping people and teams solve complex problems by improving how they work through higher levels of professionalism. Scrum.org provides free online resources, consistent experiential live training, ongoing learning paths, and certification for people with all levels of Scrum knowledge. You can learn more about the organization by visiting www.scrum.org.

In this 2021 conversation, our host Leslie Morse geeks out with friend and colleague Summer Lawrence as they dance through a variety of topics related to professional development, learning, experimentation and personal empiricism.  About the Featured Guest Summer Lawrence is an Agile Coach and Professional Scrum Trainer. Her passion is helping agilists with powerful ways to grow their skills and maturity. You can usually find her building something in the shop with Science Friday on the radio. Follow Summer Lawrence on LinkedIn  The Women in Agile community champions inclusion and diversity of thought, regardless of gender, and this podcast is a platform to share new voices and stories with the Agile community and the business world, because we believe that everyone is better off when more, diverse ideas are shared. Podcast Library: www.womeninagile.org/podcast Women in Agile Org Website: www.womeninagile.org  Connect with us on social media! LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/womeninagile/ Instagram: www.instagram.com/womeninagile/ Twitter: www.twitter.com/womeninagileorg  Please take a moment to rate and review the Women in Agile podcast on your favorite podcasting platform. This is the best way to help us amplify the voices and wisdom of the talent women and allies in our community! Be sure to take a screenshot of your rating and review and post it on social media with the hashtag #womeninagile. About our Host Leslie Morse is an agilist at heart. She was leveraging agile practices and appreciating agile principles long before she even knew what they were. Her agile journey officially started in 2010 and she never looked back. Her career has taken many twists and turns. She led a digital marketing start-up in college, was involved with replatforming Lowes.com while they adopted agile practices, provided training and coaching for agile transformation across a wide array of industries, and now serves as a Product Owner for Scrum.org. She is trained in Organization and Relationship Systems Coaching (ORSC) and has been involved in the Women in Agile movement since its original inception at Scrum Gathering 2013 in Las Vegas. You can follow Leslie on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/lesliejdotnet). About our Sponsor Scrum.org is the Home of Scrum, founded in 2009 by Scrum co-creator Ken Schwaber focused on helping people and teams solve complex problems by improving how they work through higher levels of professionalism. Scrum.org provides free online resources, consistent experiential live training, ongoing learning paths, and certification for people with all levels of Scrum knowledge. You can learn more about the organization by visiting www.scrum.org.

Pragmatic Talk about Community, Agility, Teams and Organizations - Georgina Donahue | 2201 During this 2021 conversation, Georgina Donahue and Leslie Morse explore what community means, how community and Agile intersect, and the adjacency of Pragmatic Marketing, Product Management and agility. About the Featured Guest Georgina Donahue is an experienced community builder who has worked with companies like PWC, ESRI, and American Express. She currently runs the Pragmatic Alumni Community—A Community of Practice for Product Managers at Pragmatic Institute—and spends a lot of time thinking about how businesses can deliver human authenticity to their customers online. Follow Georgina Donahue on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/georginacannie/) Reference(s) The Community Round Table (https://communityroundtable.com/)  The Community Club (https://www.community.club/) The Women in Agile community champions inclusion and diversity of thought, regardless of gender, and this podcast is a platform to share new voices and stories with the Agile community and the business world, because we believe that everyone is better off when more, diverse ideas are shared. Podcast Library: www.womeninagile.org/podcast Women in Agile Org Website: www.womeninagile.org  Connect with us on social media! LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/womeninagile/ Instagram: www.instagram.com/womeninagile/ Twitter: www.twitter.com/womeninagileorg  Please take a moment to rate and review the Women in Agile podcast on your favorite podcasting platform. This is the best way to help us amplify the voices and wisdom of the talent women and allies in our community! Be sure to take a screenshot of your rating and review and post it on social media with the hashtag #womeninagile to helps spread the word and continue to elevate Women in Agile. About our Host Leslie Morse is an agilist at heart. She was leveraging agile practices and appreciating agile principles long before she even knew what they were. Her agile journey officially started in 2010 and she never looked back. Her career has taken many twists and turns. She led a digital marketing start-up in college, was involved with replatforming Lowes.com while they adopted agile practices, provided training and coaching for agile transformation across a wide array of industries, and now serves as a Product Owner for Scrum.org. She is trained in Organization and Relationship Systems Coaching (ORSC) and has been involved in the Women in Agile movement since its original inception at Scrum Gathering 2013 in Las Vegas. You can follow Leslie on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/lesliejdotnet). About our Sponsor Scrum.org is the Home of Scrum, founded in 2009 by Scrum co-creator Ken Schwaber focused on helping people and teams solve complex problems by improving how they work through higher levels of professionalism. Scrum.org provides free online resources, consistent experiential live training, ongoing learning paths, and certification for people with all levels of Scrum knowledge. You can learn more about the organization by visiting www.scrum.org.

Join Brian Milner and guest co-host Lance Dacy to look at the key capabilities of the product owner, mistakes to avoid, and getting maximum business value from the resources available. In this episode, Brian Milner and guest co-host Lance Dacy take a detailed look at the role of the product owner. They discuss a common source of confusion about what a product owner is, or does: people try to boil down the role to its tactical processes—such as writing user stories. The product owner may be accountable for these processes, but providing direction for what the team is trying to accomplish is their forte. Product owners need to be great communicators and collaborators, with passion for solving problems with their product. Brian and Lance share their experiences of what makes a great product owner, the importance of protecting a team’s capacity, and why saying no is often essential to protecting the vision. Listen now to discover: 04:10 - What’s the difference between a product owner and a product manager? 07:25 - Henrick Kniberg’s criteria for successful product owners 08:57 - Why Scrum Masters focus on the how and product owners focus on the why 09:05 - What does ‘being passionate’ mean to a product owner? 12:48 - The mistake of trying to be too productive as a product owner 19:46 - Can you combine other roles with that of the product owner? 25:55 - What should you find out about a company before accepting a job offer as a product owner? 34:49 - Why one of the most important things you can do is act as a steward of the team’s capacity Listen next time when we’ll be discussing… A special bonus episode with details about Brian’s talks at the upcoming Scrum Gathering on June 6-8 References and resources mentioned in the show Agile Product Ownership in a Nutshell - Henrick Kniberg Want to get involved? This show is designed for you, and we’d love your input. Enjoyed what you heard today? Please leave a rating and a review. It really helps, and we read every single one. Got an agile subject you’d like us to discuss or a question that needs an answer? Share your thoughts with us at podcast@mountaingoatsoftware.com This episode’s presenters are: Brian Milner is SVP of coaching and training at Mountain Goat Software. He’s passionate about making a difference in people’s day-to-day work, influenced by his own experience of transitioning to Scrum and seeing improvements in work/life balance, honesty, respect, and the quality of work. Lance is a Certified Scrum Trainer®, Certified Scrum Professional®, Certified ScrumMaster®, and Certified Scrum Product Owner®. Lance brings a great personality and servant heart to his workshops. He loves seeing people walk away with tangible and practical things they can do with their teams straight away. Show edited by Rhett Gill.

Join Brian Milner and guest co-host Lance Dacy to look at the key capabilities of the product owner, mistakes to avoid, and getting maximum business value from the resources available. In this episode, Brian Milner and guest co-host Lance Dacy take a detailed look at the role of the product owner. They discuss a common source of confusion about what a product owner is, or does: people try to boil down the role to its tactical processes—such as writing user stories. The product owner may be accountable for these processes, but providing direction for what the team is trying to accomplish is their forte. Product owners need to be great communicators and collaborators, with passion for solving problems with their product. Brian and Lance share their experiences of what makes a great product owner, the importance of protecting a team’s capacity, and why saying no is often essential to protecting the vision. Listen now to discover: 04:10 - What’s the difference between a product owner and a product manager? 07:25 - Henrick Kniberg’s criteria for successful product owners 08:57 - Why Scrum Masters focus on the how and product owners focus on the why 09:05 - What does ‘being passionate’ mean to a product owner? 12:48 - The mistake of trying to be too productive as a product owner 19:46 - Can you combine other roles with that of the product owner? 25:55 - What should you find out about a company before accepting a job offer as a product owner? 34:49 - Why one of the most important things you can do is act as a steward of the team’s capacity Listen next time when we’ll be discussing… A special bonus episode with details about Brian’s talks at the upcoming Scrum Gathering on June 6-8 References and resources mentioned in the show Agile Product Ownership in a Nutshell - Henrick Kniberg Want to get involved? This show is designed for you, and we’d love your input. Enjoyed what you heard today? Please leave a rating and a review. It really helps, and we read every single one. Got an agile subject you’d like us to discuss or a question that needs an answer? Share your thoughts with us at podcast@mountaingoatsoftware.com This episode’s presenters are: Brian Milner is SVP of coaching and training at Mountain Goat Software. He’s passionate about making a difference in people’s day-to-day work, influenced by his own experience of transitioning to Scrum and seeing improvements in work/life balance, honesty, respect, and the quality of work. Lance is a Certified Scrum Trainer®, Certified Scrum Professional®, Certified ScrumMaster®, and Certified Scrum Product Owner®. Lance brings a great personality and servant heart to his workshops. He loves seeing people walk away with tangible and practical things they can do with their teams straight away. Show edited by Rhett Gill.

Join Brian Milner and guest co-host Lance Dacy to look at the key capabilities of the product owner, mistakes to avoid, and getting maximum business value from the resources available. In this episode, Brian Milner and guest co-host Lance Dacy take a detailed look at the role of the product owner. They discuss a common source of confusion about what a product owner is, or does: people try to boil down the role to its tactical processes—such as writing user stories. The product owner may be accountable for these processes, but providing direction for what the team is trying to accomplish is their forte. Product owners need to be great communicators and collaborators, with passion for solving problems with their product. Brian and Lance share their experiences of what makes a great product owner, the importance of protecting a team’s capacity, and why saying no is often essential to protecting the vision. Listen now to discover: 04:10 - What’s the difference between a product owner and a product manager? 07:25 - Henrick Kniberg’s criteria for successful product owners 08:57 - Why Scrum Masters focus on the how and product owners focus on the why 09:05 - What does ‘being passionate’ mean to a product owner? 12:48 - The mistake of trying to be too productive as a product owner 19:46 - Can you combine other roles with that of the product owner? 25:55 - What should you find out about a company before accepting a job offer as a product owner? 34:49 - Why one of the most important things you can do is act as a steward of the team’s capacity Listen next time when we’ll be discussing… A special bonus episode with details about Brian’s talks at the upcoming Scrum Gathering on June 6-8 References and resources mentioned in the show Agile Product Ownership in a Nutshell - Henrick Kniberg Want to get involved? This show is designed for you, and we’d love your input. Enjoyed what you heard today? Please leave a rating and a review. It really helps, and we read every single one. Got an agile subject you’d like us to discuss or a question that needs an answer? Share your thoughts with us at podcast@mountaingoatsoftware.com This episode’s presenters are: Brian Milner is SVP of coaching and training at Mountain Goat Software. He’s passionate about making a difference in people’s day-to-day work, influenced by his own experience of transitioning to Scrum and seeing improvements in work/life balance, honesty, respect, and the quality of work. Lance is a Certified Scrum Trainer®, Certified Scrum Professional®, Certified ScrumMaster®, and Certified Scrum Product Owner®. Lance brings a great personality and servant heart to his workshops. He loves seeing people walk away with tangible and practical things they can do with their teams straight away. Show edited by Rhett Gill.

In this special episode, Brian describes the upcoming Scrum Gathering in Denver, including the subject of his talks on the daily scrum and leadership styles. The Scrum Gathering is happening in Denver on June 6-8, so in this podcast episode Brian discusses the conference and shares a preview of his two talks: one on the daily scrum and one on leadership styles. In “Daily Scrums Suck: How I Killed the Daily Scrum and Replaced it with Something Even Better,” Brian shares his advice for making the most out of those 15-minute meetings. For his second talk, “The Opposite of Leadership: The George Costanza School of Agile Leadership,” Brian designed an interactive workshop to encourage you to turn your idea of leadership on its head to perhaps reveal a much better way to lead. Listen now to discover: 02:33 - Daily Scrums Suck - a teaser about Brian’s first session 03:45 - The George Costanza School of Agile Leadership - details about Brian’s 75-minute workshop 08:33 - Why go to conferences? The value is often in the connections as much as the content 14:19 - If you have a Scrum Alliance certification, one conference can help you earn SEUs you need to renew 15:03 - How conferences can help you chart your next career steps 18:29 - The Coaching Clinics available at the event 19:25 - The Open Space - anyone attending can pitch a topic to talk about and Brian shares his tips for getting the best from this opportunity 21:38 - Introverted? So is Brian, but here’s how he survives a conference environment 24:55 - Planning to attend and want to meet Brian? Don’t hold back! Listen next time when we’ll be discussing… Join Brian Milner and Sherman Gomberg as they discuss the importance of the developer role within a Scrum team and why self-organizing teams are at the heart of agile methodology. References and resources mentioned in the show Global Scrum Gathering 2022 Brian’s Talk Descriptions George Costanza turns his life around by doing the opposite Want to get involved? This show is designed for you, and we’d love your input. Enjoyed what you heard today? Please leave a rating and a review. It really helps, and we read every single one. Got an agile subject you’d like us to discuss or a question that needs an answer? Share your thoughts with us at podcast@mountaingoatsoftware.com This episode’s presenter is: Brian Milner is SVP of coaching and training at Mountain Goat Software. He’s passionate about making a difference in people’s day-to-day work, influenced by his own experience of transitioning to Scrum and seeing improvements in work/life balance, honesty, respect, and the quality of work.

In this special episode, Brian describes the upcoming Scrum Gathering in Denver, including the subject of his talks on the daily scrum and leadership styles. The Scrum Gathering is happening in Denver on June 6-8, so in this podcast episode Brian discusses the conference and shares a preview of his two talks: one on the daily scrum and one on leadership styles. In “Daily Scrums Suck: How I Killed the Daily Scrum and Replaced it with Something Even Better,” Brian shares his advice for making the most out of those 15-minute meetings. For his second talk, “The Opposite of Leadership: The George Costanza School of Agile Leadership,” Brian designed an interactive workshop to encourage you to turn your idea of leadership on its head to perhaps reveal a much better way to lead. Listen now to discover: 02:33 - Daily Scrums Suck - a teaser about Brian’s first session 03:45 - The George Costanza School of Agile Leadership - details about Brian’s 75-minute workshop 08:33 - Why go to conferences? The value is often in the connections as much as the content 14:19 - If you have a Scrum Alliance certification, one conference can help you earn SEUs you need to renew 15:03 - How conferences can help you chart your next career steps 18:29 - The Coaching Clinics available at the event 19:25 - The Open Space - anyone attending can pitch a topic to talk about and Brian shares his tips for getting the best from this opportunity 21:38 - Introverted? So is Brian, but here’s how he survives a conference environment 24:55 - Planning to attend and want to meet Brian? Don’t hold back! Listen next time when we’ll be discussing… Join Brian Milner and Sherman Gomberg as they discuss the importance of the developer role within a Scrum team and why self-organizing teams are at the heart of agile methodology. References and resources mentioned in the show Global Scrum Gathering 2022 Brian’s Talk Descriptions George Costanza turns his life around by doing the opposite Want to get involved? This show is designed for you, and we’d love your input. Enjoyed what you heard today? Please leave a rating and a review. It really helps, and we read every single one. Got an agile subject you’d like us to discuss or a question that needs an answer? Share your thoughts with us at podcast@mountaingoatsoftware.com This episode’s presenter is: Brian Milner is SVP of coaching and training at Mountain Goat Software. He’s passionate about making a difference in people’s day-to-day work, influenced by his own experience of transitioning to Scrum and seeing improvements in work/life balance, honesty, respect, and the quality of work.

In this special episode, Brian describes the upcoming Scrum Gathering in Denver, including the subject of his talks on the daily scrum and leadership styles. The Scrum Gathering is happening in Denver on June 6-8, so in this podcast episode Brian discusses the conference and shares a preview of his two talks: one on the daily scrum and one on leadership styles. In “Daily Scrums Suck: How I Killed the Daily Scrum and Replaced it with Something Even Better,” Brian shares his advice for making the most out of those 15-minute meetings. For his second talk, “The Opposite of Leadership: The George Costanza School of Agile Leadership,” Brian designed an interactive workshop to encourage you to turn your idea of leadership on its head to perhaps reveal a much better way to lead. Listen now to discover: 02:33 - Daily Scrums Suck - a teaser about Brian’s first session 03:45 - The George Costanza School of Agile Leadership - details about Brian’s 75-minute workshop 08:33 - Why go to conferences? The value is often in the connections as much as the content 14:19 - If you have a Scrum Alliance certification, one conference can help you earn SEUs you need to renew 15:03 - How conferences can help you chart your next career steps 18:29 - The Coaching Clinics available at the event 19:25 - The Open Space - anyone attending can pitch a topic to talk about and Brian shares his tips for getting the best from this opportunity 21:38 - Introverted? So is Brian, but here’s how he survives a conference environment 24:55 - Planning to attend and want to meet Brian? Don’t hold back! Listen next time when we’ll be discussing… Join Brian Milner and Sherman Gomberg as they discuss the importance of the developer role within a Scrum team and why self-organizing teams are at the heart of agile methodology. References and resources mentioned in the show Global Scrum Gathering 2022 Brian’s Talk Descriptions George Costanza turns his life around by doing the opposite Want to get involved? This show is designed for you, and we’d love your input. Enjoyed what you heard today? Please leave a rating and a review. It really helps, and we read every single one. Got an agile subject you’d like us to discuss or a question that needs an answer? Share your thoughts with us at podcast@mountaingoatsoftware.com This episode’s presenter is: Brian Milner is SVP of coaching and training at Mountain Goat Software. He’s passionate about making a difference in people’s day-to-day work, influenced by his own experience of transitioning to Scrum and seeing improvements in work/life balance, honesty, respect, and the quality of work.

This episode of the Women in Agile Podcast is the final installment of the “Coaching Agile Teams” Mini-Series. Lyssa Adkins and host, Leslie Morse, explore the opportunity agile practitioners and agile coaches have to impact society on a global level. The episode has a balance of serious reflection and inquiry sprinkled with laughter, appreciation, and deep dreaming for the future. You can learn more about this series of episodes by visiting www.womeninagile.org/cat.  The Women in Agile community champions inclusion and diversity of thought, regardless of gender, and this podcast is a platform to share new voices and stories with the Agile community and the business world, because we believe that everyone is better off when more, diverse ideas are shared. Podcast Library: www.womeninagile.org/podcast  Women in Agile Org Website: www.womeninagile.org  Connect with us on social media! LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/womeninagile/ Instagram: www.instagram.com/womeninagile/ Twitter: www.twitter.com/womeninagileorg  Please take a moment to rate and review the Women in Agile podcast on your favorite podcasting platform. This is the best way to help us amplify the voices and wisdom of the talent women and allies in our community! Be sure to take a screenshot of your rating and review and post it on social media with the hashtag #womeninagile. This will get you entered to a monthly drawing for a goodie bag of Women In Agile Org swag! About our Host Leslie Morse is an agilist at heart. She was leveraging agile practices and appreciating agile principles long before she even knew what they were. Her agile journey officially started in 2010 and she never looked back. Her career has taken many twists and turns. She led a digital marketing start-up in college, was involved with replatforming Lowes.com while they adopted agile practices, provided training and coaching for agile transformation across a wide array of industries, and now serves as the Product Owner of Professional Development Solutions for Scrum.org. She is a trained and certified in Organization and Relationship Systems Coaching (ORSC) and has been involved in the Women in Agile movement since its original inception at Scrum Gathering 2013 in Las Vegas. You can connect with Leslie on LinkedIn. About our Sponsor Scrum.org is the Home of Scrum, founded in 2009 by Scrum co-creator Ken Schwaber focused on helping people and teams solve complex problems by improving how they work through higher levels of professionalism. Scrum.org provides free online resources, consistent experiential live training, ongoing learning paths, and certification for people with all levels of Scrum knowledge. You can learn more about the organization by visiting www.scrum.org.

Nada Buhendi, former management consultant turned career coach, joins Women In Agile Podcast host Leslie Morse for a discussion where she shares her story and perspectives on career agility and what she sees impacting both job seekers and those looking to hire agile professionals. Nada does an exceptional job of being vulnerable about how she experienced the workplace and the factors that led her to embark as an entrepreneur focused on aiding others on their career journey.  Leslie and Nada use personal relationships as a reference point for exploring career transitions and evaluating potential employers. It’s interesting how many parallels they create! The episode ends with Nada referencing the “Doctor’s frame” as a way for approaching interviews and she shares stories of working with her dietician as a way to illustrate ways to be successful meeting a prospective employer where they are even if they don’t seem ready to embrace agility. About the Featured Guest Nada Buhendi’s professional background is anchored in 15 years of IT Consulting experience focused on agile and product management. She coached technology professionals at Deloitte, Accenture, and Slalom Consulting towards building their confidence and ensuring job success. She transitioned to being a career coach after discovering her North Star is to help clients take their career to the next level. Over the past 6 months she has helped more than 16 professionals land new offers. Follow Nada on LinkedIn  Follow Nada on YouTube Reference(s) Neurolinguistic Programming (NLP) STAR Interview Response Technique (Learn more on Indeed)  “Business Model You: A One-Page Method For Reinventing Your Career” by Tim Clark Personal Business Model Canvas The Women in Agile community champions inclusion and diversity of thought, regardless of gender, and this podcast is a platform to share new voices and stories with the Agile community and the business world, because we believe that everyone is better off when more, diverse ideas are shared. Podcast Library: www.womeninagile.org/podcast Women in Agile Org Website: www.womeninagile.org  Connect with us on social media! LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/womeninagile/ Instagram: www.instagram.com/womeninagile/ Twitter: www.twitter.com/womeninagileorg  Please take a moment to rate and review the Women in Agile podcast on your favorite podcasting platform. This is the best way to help us amplify the voices and wisdom of the talent women and allies in our community! Be sure to take a screenshot of your rating and review and post it on social media with the hashtag #womeninagile. This will get you entered to a monthly drawing for a goodie bag of Women In Agile Org swag! About our Host Leslie Morse is an agilist at heart. She was leveraging agile practices and appreciating agile principles long before she even knew what they were. Her agile journey officially started in 2010 and she never looked back. Her career has taken many twists and turns. She led a digital marketing start-up in college, was involved with replatforming Lowes.com while they adopted agile practices, provided training and coaching for agile transformation across a wide array of industries, and now serves as the Product Owner of Professional Development Solutions for Scrum.org. She is a trained and certified in Organization and Relationship Systems Coaching (ORSC) and has been involved in the Women in Agile movement since its original inception at Scrum Gathering 2013 in Las Vegas. You can connect with Leslie on LinkedIn.

This episode of the Women in Agile Podcast is another from the “Coaching Agile Teams” Mini-Series. Our Host, Leslie Morse is joined by Lyssa Adkins and special guest Molood Ceccarelli as they explore the dynamics of remote working and serving agile teams while not physically co-located.  Featured Guest Molood Ceccarelli is a Remote work strategist & remote agile coach often referred to as the queen of remote work in agile. She is the founder and CEO of Remote Forever and host of the fully online Remote Forever Summit. Her work has been published in places such as Forbes, Huffington Post and Inc.com. You can learn more about this series of episodes by visiting www.womeninagile.org/cat. The Women in Agile community champions inclusion and diversity of thought, regardless of gender, and this podcast is a platform to share new voices and stories with the Agile community and the business world, because we believe that everyone is better off when more, diverse ideas are shared. Podcast Library: www.womeninagile.org/podcast  Women in Agile Org Website: www.womeninagile.org  Connect with us on social media! LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/womeninagile/ Instagram: www.instagram.com/womeninagile/ Twitter: www.twitter.com/womeninagileorg  Please take a moment to rate and review the Women in Agile podcast on your favorite podcasting platform. This is the best way to help us amplify the voices and wisdom of the talent women and allies in our community! Be sure to take a screenshot of your rating and review and post it on social media with the hashtag #womeninagile. This will get you entered to a monthly drawing for a goodie bag of Women In Agile Org swag! About our Host Leslie Morse is an agilist at heart. She was leveraging agile practices and appreciating agile principles long before she even knew what they were. Her agile journey officially started in 2010 and she never looked back. Her career has taken many twists and turns. She led a digital marketing start-up in college, was involved with replatforming Lowes.com while they adopted agile practices, provided training and coaching for agile transformation across a wide array of industries, and now serves as the Product Owner of Professional Development Solutions for Scrum.org. She is a trained and certified in Organization and Relationship Systems Coaching (ORSC) and has been involved in the Women in Agile movement since its original inception at Scrum Gathering 2013 in Las Vegas. You can connect with Leslie on LinkedIn. About our Sponsor Scrum.org is the Home of Scrum, founded in 2009 by Scrum co-creator Ken Schwaber focused on helping people and teams solve complex problems by improving how they work through higher levels of professionalism. Scrum.org provides free online resources, consistent experiential live training, ongoing learning paths, and certification for people with all levels of Scrum knowledge. You can learn more about the organization by visiting www.scrum.org.

On the eve of #SGCAL, Vic (@AgileCoffee) is joined by Brett Palmer (@brett_palmer), Dale Ellis (@thedigitaldale), Larry Lawhead (@LarryLawhead), Colleen Kirtland (@AgileBohemian) and first-time guest John Eisenschmidt (@jeisensc) for an outdoor session in sunny Southern California. Too many branded flavors of Agile? The need for Leadership beyond "Servant Leadership" Can you be Agile with virtual teams? Ukulele interlude: I'll Fly Away Has your team broken Agile? Ukulele interlude: Blowin' In The Wind Is it Agile or is it People Development? Now part of the Agile Podcast Network! Final rundown of events at Scrum Gathering in San Diego: Festivities kick off Sunday with the CST/CEC retreat, the first-ever CSP retreat, registration and an evening mixer. After an beach-boogie opening on Monday, Jeff Sutherland will take the stage with a keynote address; and the first day closes with Monday Mingle - a short walk down the boardwalk at Wave House, featuring a wave machine and Woodie and the Longboards Tuesday starts with mashups: Chris Li, Ronica Roth, Brian "Ponch" Rivera, Nigel Baker and Sharon Bowman Open space will be facilitated by Allison Pollard and Jake Calabrese Joel "Thor" Neeb of Afterburner will close Wednesday with something fun and exciting Vic was interviewed on episode 34 of AgileNext, a podcast by Daniel Gullo and Stephen Forte. Check it out at agilenext.tv. Announcing the return of the Agile Coffee Conversation Starters: three volumes of cards to kickstart great talks. Now you can get the original decks once again from agilecoachingcards.com, with a free gift of the all new Agile Coach's Toolkit deck.

Now part of the Agile Podcast Network! Recorded at the Scrum Alliance's Scrum Gathering in Munich, Germany. Vic (@AgileCoffee) was joined by Stuart Fish (@fishstua), Anderson Hummel (@anderson_hummel) and fellow #SGCAL co-chair Kim Brainard (@agilebrain1) to discuss some highlights of the gathering. Links, resources and photos coming soon, we hope. HOSH!!

Get to know the co-chairs for next April's Scrum Gathering in San Diego. This episode features Vic (@AgileCoffee) speaking agin with Kim Brainard (@agilebrain1). In July, the Scrum Alliance selected Kim and Vic to serve as co-chairs for next April's Global Scrum Gathering in San Diego. For more info on the gathering, visit scrumalliance.org/sgcal.  

In memory of Jean Tabaka. Recorded at the Scrum Alliance's Global Scrum Gathering in Orlando, FL, this episode features nine voices. Vic (@AgileCoffee) was joined by eight fellow participants (all working with Agile/Scrum teams) to discuss some highlights of the gathering. Guests list: Stuart Young (@Stuartliveart) Laura Powers (@poweredbyteams) Kim Brainard (@agilebrain1) Stuart Fish (@fishstua) Jamie Crews (@jamie_crews) Anderson Hummel (@anderson_hummel) Scott Dunn (@sdunnrocket9) David Gardner Karaoke pics: coming soon Vic rocks the karaoke stage?

Recorded at the Scrum Alliance's Global Scrum Gathering in Orlando, FL, this episode features nine voices. Vic (@AgileCoffee) was joined by fellow participants (all working with Agile/Scrum teams) to discuss some highlights of the gathering (and CSP Fast Pass). Guests list: Brett Palmer (@brett_palmer) Aaron Kopel (@aakopel) Jason Tanner (@JasonBTanner) Leon Sabarsky (@LeonSabarsky) Anderson Hummel (@anderson_hummel) Things we'd mentioned: Peter Green's Lean and Agile Adoption with the Laloux Culture Model Scrum Gathering Rio June 23-25, by Scrum Alliance CSP FAST PASS: the fast track to becoming a Certified Scrum Professional® (on twitter at @CSPFastPass)

Announcing the brand new Podcast Topic Index. Search and sort to find any topic discussed on our podcasts. Victor is once again joined by Dale Ellis (@theDigitalDale), Jason Kerney (@JasonKerney), Zach Bonaker (@ZachBonaker) and Garrett Borunda (LinkedIn) at the Cape Rey in Carlsbad for a lively morning of Agile and Coffee. In this episode, our Agile heroes discuss: Dale reports on the 2015 Scrum Gathering in Phoenix #SGPHX Is PO the only Agile product mgr model? With whom do Agile principles take root? Frederic Laloux's Reinventing Organizations and Dr. Clare Graves' Colour System Intentional practice (at Hunter Industries) kanban, personal kanban, Trello active listening Uncle Bob Martin's S.O.L.I.D. Principles of OO and Agile design (video) Reach out to Vic (@AgileCoffee) and use the hashtag #tellAgileCoffee to interact with us on an upcoming episode. announcements: ACCUSWest 2015 archive at AgileLib.net, courtesy of Tobias Mayer June 6th is Dr. Dave's 5 Saturdays program's final Train the Facilitators workshop of the summer. More info at 5Saturdays.org