05 Mar How has the agile community influenced your work?

A: How has being exposed to the agile community influenced your new book, Leadership Is Language? For example, the SCRUM  and SAFe cycles?

Q: If we don’t relieve the pressure of the clock, its hard to shift to thinking mode, then collaborateThe play where we learn from others thereby making our product, ideas, and lives better. This play requires us to share ideas, be vulnerable, respect the ideas of others, and admit to ourselves that we don't have the whole picture. Collaborate sounds like: What does everyone think? How safe is it? What do you see that I don't?   with each other (not coerceThe Industrial Age play where we goad, manipulate, order, motivate, inspire, or threaten people to do what we want them to. Using influence, power, rank, talking first, talking more, or talking louder to bring people around to your way of thinking. Coercion sounds like: I need you to be a team player. Everyone needs to get on board. It's time to fall in line. We are ready to go, right? The new play for leaders is Collaborate.) so we get commitments. So, from collaboration you get the internal commitment to completeThe play at the end of redwork where we pause to reflect on what we have accomplished, celebrate that, and invite others to tell their stories..  The CompleteThe play at the end of redwork where we pause to reflect on what we have accomplished, celebrate that, and invite others to tell their stories. play is a parallel from agile.  We work in chunks that end with a deliberate switch from redworkDoing, action, process, production work. Redwork benefits from reducing variability. to blueworkThinking, cognitive, creative, deciding work. Bluework benefits from embracing variability. and that allows us to celebrate, reflect and get feedback. When Ford started making Model T’s he made the same car for over 15 years from 1904 into the 20’s, but by this time everything had changed and he was still making model T’s. And now with the mindset of improveThe play at the end of redwork where we pause to reflect on what we have learned. Improve comes from reflection of the past and modification of current plans, process, designs in order to do or make something better in the future. Improve is the domain of the “Get Better” self. not proveThe Industrial Age play where demonstration of competency or avoiding exposure of incompetency is paramount. Prove is the domain of the “Be Good” self. –it’s about the learning enabled by the predetermined stop point.

For example, we’re going to go for two weeks or three weeks. Then we’re going to stop– deliberately. So when we are head down in redworkDoing, action, process, production work. Redwork benefits from reducing variability., we don’t need to worry about the stopping point, that’s already set up. You just focus all your cognitive energy on doing “this,” and you can throw yourself fully into the work because you know “How far off track can you get in two weeks?” We’re going to reevaluate the work we just did. If it’s no good, we’ve only lost two weeks. That’s much better than “Oh we’re gonna do this forever, we may be way off track in six months.” With not reflecting back on the work for six months, you’re going to worry about that so you’re not really into the work, in flow, so your neither into the work nor out of the work, you’re just sort of “halfing” the work.

*Scrum is an agile process framework managing complex knowledge work. It is designed for teams of ten or fewer members, who break their work into goals that can be completed within time-boxed iterations, called sprints, no longer than one month and most commonly two weeks, then track progress and re-plan in 15-minute time-boxed daily meetings, called daily scrums.