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  • 153: Luke Hohmann
    Proft Streams BookTranscript:Agile FM radio for the agile community. Today I'm thrilled to have Luke Holman with me in the podcast here of Agile FM and I can't believe After all these episodes I had so far I haven't had you on the show, which is a big miss. You are a renowned expert in agile methodologies an author. And I think a lot of people know you from the innovation games which is a framework for collaborative decision making problem solving.You have experience that dates back way, way back into the 1990s, pre Agile, but also I heard recently that you were involved in the 2003 Agile conference. So yeah, a while back. Welcome to the show, Luke. [00:00:46] Luke Hohmann: Joe, I am so happy to be here. I've known you through the community. We've seen each other at conferences.And so it's a, it's quite an honor to be here. Thank you so much for inviting me to participate. Thanks [00:00:58] Joe Krebs: Yeah, no, absolutely. We could talk about the innovation games and fill an entire show, but today we could, but today we want to talk a little bit about value profit stream, the agile community as often. This is the recordings taking place on the 25th of June, 2024 is a little bit in a turmoil. The Agile community as a whole, there seems to be some different kind of directions people are going, looking at the roles. It's maybe a good time to talk about what value is, how we can present value because at the end of the day is, it's like, how do we sell agility within an organization or for organizations?[00:01:44] Luke Hohmann: I think it'd be a good thing to talk about. There, there's so many aspects of this that are interesting, but let's try a few. And I'll also talk about the rule of self interest in the Agile community. When we talk about value we think about it in terms of our Profit Streams book and our Profit Streams work as What are the set of tangible and intangible benefits that a product or service we use solution as the single term for product and service or any blend thereof.So it's just a little easier because we're here to solve problems for our customers. So we think of both the tangible and intangible benefits. And for the tangible benefits, we help companies create mathematical equations that capture the benefits. And we often work with our clients because technical people are good at being efficient in terms of doing things like saving time.But the reality is most companies don't need to save time. They need to have the time converted into a metric that they can understand for their business purposes. One of the examples we use in our book, and it's been proven in many of our client engagements, Is we were working with a trucking company, and they were going to be buying software that saved their drivers time.So drivers in the trucking industry have to keep detailed logs of their hours of service to make sure they're taking breaks, etc. And this solution enabled the data to be acquired automatically by connecting into the engine bus. And they knew if the truck was on and if it was moving and all that kind of technological internet of things capability that we love.And there's so many things that we can do. So the company that we were working for, and this was Qualcomm had the solution. They went to the trucking organizations and said, Hey, we can save you 20 to 30 minutes a day in driver time. And Joe, we were able to prove this. Absolutely through, the data, like the data was very clear.And the trucking company's executive said we don't really care about that. Because our drivers are union and they are paid for eight hours. So saving me 30 minutes of a driver's time doesn't actually save me money. It doesn't do anything for me. So we had to go back to the drawing board with Qualcomm and find out how to reroute drivers using the new systems so the trucking companies could deliver another package or two in a day because that's how they made money through package delivery.Or the other part of this would be the intangible side and intangible benefits can be quantified on the intangible side for challenging deliveries. We were able to allocate more time in the driver's schedule so that customer satisfaction improved. And as customer satisfaction improved, we would see less churn among customers.Oh, my package was delivered well. I want to use this company again. My, my package was delivered without any breakage. I want to use this company again. So the first step of value is to actually take a step back and try to quantify the tangible and intangible aspects of value. And then I'll just real quickly, I'll finish that off.The second of the determination of value is what we call direct and indirect benefits. A direct benefit is something that you will recognize as a benefit and it materially affects your purchase or use decision. An indirect benefit is something that you recognize, you'll say, yes, the benefit exists, but it doesn't influence you.And I'll give you a kind of a standard example. My wife and I were out shopping for a new car. I cared a lot more about the styling and color. She just doesn't care about that. And and she would readily agree yeah, that's a good looking car, but it doesn't affect my purchase decision.Whereas I was, hey, that's a really good looking car. I think I bought it. And so now let's take it into the business context. The solutions that we're creating, which are often very sophisticated, there's a collection of benefit. It's not a single benefit. And collection of benefits, you create a network of how the customer perceives those benefits.So let's go back to a trucking company that is focused on customer satisfaction is not going to really care about the not care as much. I shouldn't say they care. They don't care at all, but they're not going to care as much about like driver satisfaction. But let's say you're a trucking company and a part of.The world where it's hard to attract drivers. Now your network of benefits might emphasize driver satisfaction. So understanding not just what benefits are, but how a given market segment is going to perceive the collection of benefits is really the foundation of our approach, and then from there, what we do is from the benefits, We can derive the customer return on investment model.We can derive your pricing and packaging model. We can help you develop your solution so that you know that you're building a sustainable offering. And I'll close with this Joe. The foundation of profit streams is sustainability. If you're running a business, Or frankly, if you're running a household, you have to have a positive flow of cash coming into your business or your house, right?We can't, other than the government who prints money, right? Like a business has to have a profit to survive, to sustain itself. Now, in some cases, profits can be misused or we can have unsustainable business practices. But if you look at true sustainability involves.Three related areas. One is your solution itself has to be sustainable over time as your customers evolve as their needs evolve Your solution has to evolve to be relevant and to meet their needs So with the first part of this is solution sustainability The second part of this is economic sustainability Are you charging a price that will keep your company in business?But are you also factoring in your customers total cost of ownership? So that your customer perceives what you're selling to them as a good value something they want to keep The relation going right? We want to have economic sustainability and then the third kind of sustainability is relationship sustainability when we Sell software.We're not actually selling software. We're selling a license to use the software So the distinction is that i'm holding in my hand a pen You If I sell you my pen, I've transferred rights to you. You now own the pen. You can do what you want with it. I don't sell you software. I license software for you to use.So there's a license agreement and that license agreement determines our relationship as the provider to the customer. There's other relationships that matter. Every software package that is created has technology and licenses associated with it. So the provider is in licensing work, and there's relationships that they need to maintain.And of course, the kind of the capstone of all of these things is our relationship to society and to other parts of the world. Of the global infrastructure in which we live. And what I mean by that is if you're in Europe, you need to honor GDPR. If you're in the United States, you have to honor California CCPA.If you're selling certain kinds of fintech software, you might have to be PCI or SOX two compliant. If you're in the healthcare industry, you'll have to be HIPAA compliant. If you're in the education industry, you have to be. FERPA and COPA compliant. So the idea of compliance to us is part of that relationship.What is the relationship your company wants to have with various regulatory agencies? Are you going to try and be an organization that honors those relationships and fulfills your compliance requirements? Or are you going to be an organization that's going to try and skirt those requirements? And perhaps engage in questionable or provably unethical behavior, and so all of that is what comprises profit streams.[00:10:42] Joe Krebs: Yeah, this is it's very interesting. And as you were elaborating on this, especially on the economics, sustainability It's interesting, right? Because I think we all have seen situations as a consumer before where we felt like I need a certain service or a product, but I felt like this was too, too expensive.I've felt abused based on a very specific situation I'm in and I'm requiring a service or a product. I feel like everybody can relate to that. So finding that kind of fair spot, yeah. In terms of sustainability, I can totally see that as well as the other ones as well. So I think that's a great example.Now, if somebody hears the word profit stream, at least the first thing that came to mind for me said, what's the difference to value stream, right? [00:11:24] Luke Hohmann: That's a great question. And we should know the distinction between a profit stream and as a value stream. I credit this to my friend Avi Schneider who is well known in the scrum community.Avi, after reading the book, he said, Luke, I've come to learn and realize that all profit streams are value streams, like all squares are rectangles. But not all rectangles are squares. So the distinction that I like to talk about Joe is that typically a profit stream is going to be more aligned to what SAFe calls an operational value stream and the development value stream of SAFe would be a cost center.So now let's look at value streams and let's look at specifically operational value streams. We think of profit streams as those operational value streams that are generating revenue for a company. And so not all value streams generate revenue. For example, there are value streams provided by. Government entities that don't provide revenue, but provide services that maintain our society, which we need, and those are fantastic.But not all not all value streams are profit streams. And that's a good distinction. When the other thing that's interesting, and I give a talk on this. Is when we look at value streams, especially the operational value stream, you start to find that. We have a starting condition and we go through a sequence of steps and we get an ending benefit.Actually map in your operational value stream. When revenue occurs, you'll find that many things are costs until the very end. It's like value streams are rainbows, right? The pot of gold is at the end. And so you really have to make sure that you're understanding the steps in that operational value stream.And what we work on with our clients is that we try to help them understand the economic sustainability of looking at that sequence of flow to make sure that you are generating enough revenue at the end to support the whole flow and looking at ways you might be able to pull revenue sooner so that you can sustain yourself.[00:13:45] Joe Krebs: All right. How do you respond to somebody who is like possibly interested? Here's the word profit stream. Obviously I see dollar signs and signals and cha-ching and all of those kinds of things. For an agile audience out there who might say, Hey, but what about the team spirit? And what about sustainability of a team's, fun and learning environment?Aren't they contradictory to this? I guess the answer to that is no, right? But it's the, [00:14:14] Luke Hohmann: of course, all of those, Joe and for the listeners, Joe and I were chatting before the podcast we often do. And one of the things that I really find disappointing in the agile community is a lot of agile people seem to have this kind of disdain for management or this disdain for leadership.[00:14:32] Joe Krebs: And I think of it exactly the opposite. Business leaders over the last 20, 25 years have shoveled hundreds of millions of dollars into agile practices and transformations between the training and the tooling and the infrastructure. And they've gotten benefit from agile. I'm very proud of all the things that software people do.Earlier today I was getting a blood test. And I walked in and there was a kiosk and you just typed in your phone number scanned your driver's license and you were checked in. Software people did that. And I think what we do as software people is really cool. Yeah. Hardware and software. We designed a solution that was amazing.And of course, Joe, we want to have sustainable practices, not just in our business relationships with our customers, but true sustainability means sustainability with our employees, with our practices. With what Kent Beck wrote about very early in the community with XP, like XP is about sustainability.So to say that profit is antagonistic to sustainability is to have a very flawed understanding of what sustainability is and or what profit is. I've been a serial entrepreneur. I've started and run and sold a couple of companies. And it's really a lot of fun when you're an entrepreneur and you can give out bonus checks because you had a great year Yeah, it's not so fun when you had a bad year and you're cutting salaries or you're doing other You know doing a layoff or whatever.And so for the people in the agile community who talk about humanness of our developers my response is Yes, heck yes, we, those are things that promote sustainability. Those practices, the training the better tooling, the better computers, they require money, they require a profit.And most of us work for a for profit company. It is, I think it's pretty above average that people would be working for profit rather than for the non profit sector. Should we go a little concrete about some data points, metrics, because I don't want to I'm just going to say the word.We really don't have to go down that path at all in this kind of conversation. I think we have debunked the word velocity as a metric or something like that. I don't think we have to talk about that. But what are. Measurements, like if somebody would say, Hey, this sounds very interesting. Definitely trucking sounds good, but I'm in a totally different domain.In terms of this, I would what's a good starting point for people to say, like, how do I measure these profit streams from an IT perspective or, Yeah. [00:17:18] Luke Hohmann: And Joe if I'm not answering the question in the way that you're intending the question that's okay.I started as an engineer and for everyone listening, Joe and I had a really, a geeky out moment when I, when we started, but I started as an engineer. And then I became a manager of engineer and then I became, vice president and all that kind of stuff. And I was always trying to create the best solution for my customers.And along and in that journey, I found product management. I thought, Oh, wait a minute. Product managers are the people who are designing the solution and working with designers on the user experience side. And they're in the center of the world of this thing called creating a great solution for customers.And through that. conversation, I started to realize, Hey, I'm responsible for creating a return on the investment of the company I'm working for. And from there, I started to learn the basics of finance. And I started to, understand how to read a balance sheet, how to read what is EBITDA what's the difference between CapEx and OpEx.What is the terms of the license agreement? What is, what can go wrong in a license agreement? If it's not crafted correctly for a company, how do I know if I'm making enough money, has my economic, let's go back to the engineers has my economic model factored in a pay raise for my team next year, because there's inflation and if there's inflation and I want to pay my developers more money, How do I manage that with my margins?Either my costs are going down, which might happen. And, maybe my software part of the solution is the same price, but my hardware margins are improving because I have cost of scale manufacturing. Maybe I don't, I'm a pure SAAS company and I'm picking up some lower costs because of hosting costs are dropping.How do I economically think about these elements? So the, what I would say is this is one of those areas where Agile has to do nothing more than embrace what has been existing for a long time, which is economic models Don Reinerson's work on flow. Looking at possibly throughput accounting, but educating ourselves, educate product managers, educate themselves on what's in our book, which is not just how do I economically model, but how do I actually. Set the price point. How do I determine the packaging of what features go in? What edition of my offering and do I charge? So those kinds of things are to me they're not taught as much as they should be in the agile community, but that's why we wrote the book. [00:20:10] Joe Krebs: Oh, absolutely. I agree with you.And I think indirectly you are answering the question, at least for me, right? Because I do see certain data points being captured within agile teams that are contradictory to what you're saying right now. These are like the velocity discussions and that are happening within teams. And then all of a sudden they happen on the leadership level, whereas you're saying, actually, some of those conversations are still existent as they were before agile, but they're still applying it.Just they have to be maps. I feel like you're having a much more adult mature kind of conversation about this. And I think we're actually experiencing within teams on the ground. [00:20:48] Luke Hohmann: Yeah I think the Agile community has gotten a little wrapped up around the Axel about, I helped form the first conference in the Agile Alliance series in 2003 with Alistair Coburn and Ken Schwaber and Rebecca Wirfs Brock and a few other people.And Todd Little, and let me tell you, no one at that conference was walking around arguing about the fine distinctions between output and outcome metrics and things like that. We both have a friend, Kenny Rubin, and he's written very beautifully about this. But trust me, in the very early days, we weren't arguing about those.It's like people drink fine wine and argue, Oh, are you getting black current or dark cherry flavors in the wine? No, just have a glass of wine and enjoy it. Um, and what's happening is we're forgetting that sometimes you do need to track certain basic metrics just as a mechanism Of I think consistency and let's say you're an athlete.Let's say you wanted to run a marathon. The number of miles you run in a week or the total miles that you've run in training for American a marathon could be a vanity metric. Oh, but at the end of the day, it's also the truth that you're not going to go run 26 miles if you didn't train And a training program is going to tell you how many miles you need to run Per week and if you're not tracking how many your miles you're running per week You're not going to hit your end goal of running the actual marathon So I think that so many other aspects of what we do, there's a very healthy way to look at velocity and velocity metrics and looking at flow metrics and unhealthy ways of looking at it and rather than throwing everything into a bucket of healthy and unhealthy, we should use the agile principles of retrospection.This metric and the way that we're using us, helping us advance towards our goals. Yeah. And it is, we should probably keep doing it. And if it's not, we should look at what we need to change. [00:22:52] Joe Krebs: Yeah. It's very interesting. I also, while we were talking about the marathon, I was also thinking yes, there's definitely mileage.This is an important piece, if part of your training program, but it's sometimes, and I don't know if that makes sense, I think sometimes we're measuring how many minutes we also have used for stretching, and yes, it is. a great technique to become a marathon runner, but I don't think from purely stretching, you're becoming a good marathon runner.I think it's together. And I think it's also for metrics like these things have to balance each other out. If you're having 90 percent stretching and 10 percent running, maybe that's the wrong [00:23:25] Luke Hohmann: that's where wisdom comes in. And that's where not always trying to invent everything from scratch, right?If you were, if you really were going to go run a marathon, you'd probably go talk with other runners. You'd probably go to some running websites that like runner's world that has reputable training plans. You'd get a sense of the balance of the metrics. So it's. It's very rare that one metric on a development organization is going to be the only metric that you needed.And again, this is where people start to it's good to have these discussions to calibrate. But it's like the definition of done, right? At the definition of done, you might say our definition of done is no stop ship bugs where stop ship is defined as P one and sev zero, like separate priority severity.Then you get into people who are like if I have no stop ship bugs, but I have a bunch of small bugs, can I still ship? And I'm like, I don't know like maybe no, maybe yes. What's the, we should have a conversation about that. And the metrics are designed to use to guide us into the conversations that are most beneficial, just like.So if I looked at a team that had velocity metrics, and they were reasonably consistent. And I saw an anomaly, like a dip. I, as a manager, if I didn't already know, I would go to the team and say, Hey, I noticed that your velocity dip, everything. Okay. And if the team says actually, no Joe went on a ski trip and broke his arm and our velocity dip, cause he was in the hospital.And we're all really worried about Joe. Wow, that stinks. Maybe we should send Joe some flowers or some get well, but now I know why velocity dipped. Yeah, and it was a special cause and it'll resolve itself. Um, now the other element could be our velocity dipped because we completely misunderstood the requirement and I'd be like, okay maybe we should toss that into a retrospective.There's so many good retrospective techniques. Maybe we should toss that into one of our retrospective techniques and see if that's a special cause or if there's some other potential issue that the team might be facing. And then the team goes, Oh yeah, no, we think we're okay. It was just this one time.We didn't really understand the requirements are no, we're actually in a new area of our solution and all of us are experiencing this new thing and we need more training or we need X to really get ahead of the issue. So metrics are important, right? We keep score, right? We keep track of things.[00:26:03] Joe Krebs: Yeah. So it's interesting, right? Because we, you mentioned before that there is this general amount of metrics. Don't want to repeat them necessarily, but these are like the business metrics. And these are the things that our businesses are already using on an enterprise level with or without agile.Why are we having such a hard time in the agile community to translate that? Obviously, your book will help in the translation of all of those things. But what do you think of the pitfalls? [00:26:29] Luke Hohmann: I actually think one of the pitfalls is how some of the agile methods have defined what a product owner is.You'll see agile methods say a product owner is responsible for value. Which is great, but then they don't define it. And so we've got a generation and I spent most of my formative business careers here in silicon valley, not all of it, but a lot of it So i'm used to a silicon valley style of a product manager Knowing how to run a spreadsheet knowing how to do pricing and being trained And what we're finding, I think, Joe, is that there's this tremendously large number of people who are associated with products, but don't have this training and pricing.They don't have this training and licensing. I'll, one of the things I do with my clients is I'll walk into a situation where they're, they need to, make an improvement economically. And I'll just go to the product managers and I'll say, when was the last time you read your own license agreement, your own terms of service on your website?And they'll be like, Oh yeah. never! Like, okay we should read it. And I'll give you an example of kind of the weird things that can happen in license agreements. We were working with a smaller company. And their license agreement with, so they served larger companies and it was a conversion company.I don't want to go much further than that. Yeah. They had a contract with a larger company that said every time the larger company made a request to the smaller company and the smaller company agreed to that request, their maintenance agreement would automatically extend for one more year. So every nine months, the big company would make a request to the small company.On a very small change, the small company would make a very small change. And then now they're saddled with a responsibility for another year of support. And I said, okay this two sentence clause in your license agreement is now costing you almost 300, 000 a year. Now for a big company, you may not notice it, but this was a company with less than 8 million in revenue.That's a noticeable number for a company with eight million right now. It's still a nice company. Don't it's not it's a very good business but i'm like this two line sentence in your license and the product manager was like wow I didn't know how to interpret that. I think we're seeing this challenge in the agile community because too many Organizations have allowed this skills of pricing and economic sustainability modeling to activity.Yeah, let's say you're, let's say you're agile. I don't care what flavor of agile you're using, pick one. I don't, there's so many, it's like going to the ice cream store. So you pick one and you're putting out more value at what point. Should you raise your prices because you've added so much value?At what point should you adjust your packaging? We work with a client who they kept on shoving features into their solution Which sounds great, right? But then their sales started to slow down and that the head of Product contacted me and said it's really weird luke Every time we're adding more features our sales team is telling us it's harder to sell that's a packaging problem because what's happening is people are saying Your solution now includes Features that are not relevant to me Therefore I want a lower price because i'm not using them.That's right And the right solution is to say okay now that our product has grown in sophistication We're gonna go take this market that wasn't segmented And we're going to make it a finer grain segmentation, and we're going to really understand the needs of these customers and take this wonderful platform we've built and offered these solutions or these features to this market segment, these features to this market segment.And after we did that work with that client. Their sales returned to a healthy growing number because people bought what was relevant for them. [00:30:49] Joe Krebs: This is awesome. Luke, we started off with also with a side comment or I might have started with this agile community being in some form of transition.Yes. And I want to end with this for our podcast as well. Now we talked a little bit more from the company's perspective, from the leadership level what I have noticed, and I don't know if you would share that thought is there's a lot of agile coaches in the transformation space and organizations, and they don't really know for sure if their work actually had an economic impact for the organization.Like they say like it feels better or it feels, we feel more profitable, but do we have evidence of what we had before to what we have now? How could profit streams help future coaching and coaches out there on, not from a product perspective, but more from a transformations perspective, how can profit streams help them to make a case for themselves to actually say, Hey, the agile community is alive and kicking.Why? Why? Because we are. Increasing the economic side of organizations by X, Y, Z, what kind of parameters would, what coaches need to tweak to say okay, these are like the parts of our puzzle where we can actually make a case for ourselves and say Hey, agile coaching is important. Agile teams are important.You call them the ice cream flavors. The agile processes out there are important for you to be successful for whatever is hitting your organization in the future. How would they use that kind of profit stream?[00:32:20] Luke Hohmann: I'm inspired by there's a gentleman that if you haven't had him on your podcast, you really need to get him.His name is Peter Green and he runs a company called Humanizing Work. He's a known in the Scrum community and he used to be one of the leaders at Adobe and Adobe's transition to more agile practices. And I remember that one of the metrics that Peter really tracked was just one thing, defects found in production.And remember I said that there was only, development teams need multiple metrics, but in this case, he was using the one metric that really resonated with his leaders and he showed his leaders how when defects in productions were reduced, customer satisfaction increased when customer satisfaction increased, renewals increased.The cost of customer care went down because there's fewer defects. And fewer upset customers, developer satisfaction went up because instead of fixing bugs, you're building new features. And so what he did was. He took the time to translate something that was just a number of defects found in production into how it expressed itself in a relevant profit oriented way.So my advice to the agile coaches out there is if you believe that you're creating a more effective, more efficient, more effective, doing the right things, more efficient, doing them effective, doing them well. If you think you're creating and contributing to this organization and, for example, I'm an agile coach and my team is quote unquote happier.What does that actually mean? What, we know that stable teams, like we have data on stable teams, that stable teams produce fewer bugs. That's an argument for stable teams. So what is the data that shows that coach is creating an economic impact that is relevant to the organization? And I am said this for decades.I am always concerned that people focus on trying to achieve the happiness of developers. When I think that the happiness of developers is an outcome of other elements, meaning if I'm a developer and I have Dan Pink, if I have reasonable autonomy, I have reasonable mastery, I, I have a purpose, right?Then I'm happy. But focusing on happiness doesn't mean I'm getting autonomy. Giving me autonomy, making sure I'm trained, making sure I have a purpose. Those and I definitely think that the many of the coaches I've seen, um, they don't always understand what the deeper opportunities might be.[00:35:08] Joe Krebs: Yeah. This is some awesome advice here. And I did not have Peter on the podcast and Peter, if you're listening to this, expect a call from me. Thank you, Luke. This was really insightful. And obviously I will share the book information for all the material on the show page of Agile FM, I just want to say thank you for sharing a very different view on things from what I had in the past in terms of guests and just chat a little bit about profit streams and make this really tangible for people of what they need to, establish within the organization to be successful and ready for the future.[00:35:42] Luke Hohmann: Yeah. And Joe, thank you. I'm going to leave just two more things for the listeners. I think they're important right now. We do think the agile community, many of us who've been there a while. And many of the leaders, we think the agile community is in some form of transition or some form of change, which means.It's up to you as a listener to decide what you think that future is and then work towards that future. A few years ago, my colleague Jason Tanner and I, we sat down and we were at an offsite and we said to ourselves, where do we really believe a future or part of the future of Agile has to be? And we decided that a part of the future of Agile has to be a return to the economics. of understanding profit and sustainability, and we acted accordingly, right? We wrote a book. We've got a partner program. We're doing consulting work. We're seeing our consulting business and profit streams is skyrocketing in terms of growth because we're finding that companies are going, wait a minute, You guys are right.You're We've invested in agile. How do we measure the return and how do we make sure that we're creating a profit? So and i'm not arguing that people have to buy into our perspective What I am saying is if you assert that the agile community is changing You can't just sit there and complain about it You have to decide what part of that future you want to create And what part of that future you want to be a part of and from there?You Your life will have purpose. Your life will have direction. And I think that's part of what's happening in the agile community right now. We're seeing this kind of Oh, what are what is our future? And where are we going to be? And how is it going to work as people are trying to decide? And I would invite people to reflect on their own and make a decision on their own about what they think that future is going to be, right?[00:37:40] Joe Krebs: Look, there's something very similar to what my kids are hearing in school every day. Make it a great day or not, the choice is yours. [00:37:47] Luke Hohmann: Oh, I love it. That's a great way to close. Luke, thank you so much.
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  • 152: Lisa Crispin
    Transcript: Agile FM radio for the agile community. [00:00:04] Joe Krebs: In today's episode of Agile FM, I have Lisa Crispin with me. She can be reached at very easy to remember lisacrispin. com. Lisa is an author of a total of five books. There's three I want to highlight here or four actually is Obviously, a lot of people have talked in 2009, when the book Agile Testing came out, a practical guide for testers and Agile teams.Then following that more Agile Testing, right? Then I thought it would be most Agile Testing, but it turned into Agile Testing Condensed in 2019 and just very recently a downloadable book, Holistic Testing, a mini book. Welcome to the podcast, Lisa. [00:00:47] Lisa Crispin: Thank you for inviting me. I'm honored to be part of the podcast.You've had so many amazing people on so many episodes. So it's great. [00:00:54] Joe Krebs: Thank you. And now it's one more with you. So thank you for joining. And we will be talking a little bit about a totally different topic than maybe the last 20 episodes I had maybe way back. I did some testing topics, but I cannot recall maybe the last 20 episodes.So we're not about testing a super important topic. I would not consider myself an expert in that. And I don't know of the audience who has been listening to maybe the last 20 episodes are very familiar with agile testing. Maybe everybody has a feeling about, when they hear the word testing, but there is a huge difference between agile testing.And let's say traditional testing methods. If you just want to summarize like very brief, I know a lot of people are familiar with some of those things, but what it is, if somebody says what is agile testing, why was this different to traditional testing methods? [00:01:47] Lisa Crispin: Yeah. I think that there are a couple of big differences.One is that testing this is just a truth and not necessarily something to do with agile, but testing is really just part of software development. So many people think of it as a phase that happens after you write code, but in modern software development we're testing all the time, all the way around that whole DevOps loop, really.And and so the whole team's getting engaged in it through the whole lifecycle and the focus. Is on bug prevention rather than bug detection. Of course, we want to detect the bugs that make it out to production so we can fix them quickly. But really what we want to do is prevent those bugs from happening in the first place.So there are all these great practices that were popularized by that extreme programming and agile, things like test driven development, continuous integration, test automation all the things that go into, the planning. Workshops and things where we talk about our new features and break them into stories and what's going to be valuable to customers, having those early conversations, getting that shared understanding, things like behavior driven development, where we think about what we're going to code before we code it.That's all really different from, I guess I would say a more traditional software development approach where, Oh, we focus on these requirements. The requirements and a lot of people think about testing is just make sure it met the requirements. But there's so much more to that. We've got all these quality attributes, like security and performance and all the things that we also need to test.So it's a huge area, but it's woven into software development, just like coding, just like design, just like architecture, just like monitoring and observability. It's all part of the process. [00:03:31] Joe Krebs: Yeah. It's like a QA baked in, if you want to see it this way. And then also the automation of all that, right?So automating everything you just said is probably also a concern. Not that's necessarily new to agile, but that's a focus as well now I don't know if I don't have necessarily data points around that but I have worked with a lot of Scrum teams and Agile teams in my career.And it seems, if somebody would say what are the challenges within these teams? And one of them is, you can almost always highlight that, and I say almost purposely because there are good exceptions, is to build an increment of work once per sprint. A lot of teams do not accomplish that, and it's often related to testing activities.Why is that, in your opinion, like when we're seeing these teams struggle to put an increment of work out or a piece of the product or whatever you want to call it if you don't use Scrum necessarily, but to build something that could potentially go out. It's the quality standards of going out. What are the struggles out there for teams, especially on the testing side?I see that as you just said, like it's always happening or often happens at the end, rather than in the front. [00:04:46] Lisa Crispin: Yes. Unfortunately, I see, still see a whole lot of scrum teams and other agile teams doing a mini waterfall where they have testers on the cross functional team. But. The testers are not being involved in the whole process, and the developers aren't taking up practices like tester development, because those things are hard to learn and a lot of places don't enable.The non testers to learn testing skills because they don't put those skills into the skills matrix that those people need to advance their careers. And the places I've worked where we succeeded with this sort of whole team holistic approach, everybody had testing skills in their skills matrix.And we all had to learn from each other and, testers had other skills in their taste, matrix, like database skills and at least the ability to read code and be able to pair or ensemble with somebody. So that's part of it. And I just think. It's people don't focus enough on that, on the early process of the business stakeholder has brought us a new feature.We need to test that idea before we do anything. Is this really giving, what value, what's the purpose of the feature? What value is it going to give to the customer and to the business? And a lot of times we don't ask those questions up front. And the stakeholders don't ask themselves and then they get, you deliver the feature and it's something the customers didn't even want.[00:06:11] Joe Krebs: Lisa, we need to code. We need to get software. Why would we talk about that? Why would we not just code? I'm kidding. [00:06:18] Lisa Crispin: Yeah. Yeah. And that's also required, that's why the whole concept of self organizing team works really well. When you really let the teams be autonomous, because then they can think how best, how can we best accomplish this than they can do?Let's do some risk storing before we try to slice this into stories and let's do good practices to slice that feature into small, consistently sized stories that give us a reliable cadence predictable cadence of the business can plan and. Take those risks that we identified, get concrete examples for the business stakeholders of how this should behave and turn those into tests that guide development.Then we can automate those tests. And now we have regression tests to provide a safety net. So that all fits together. And of course, these days, we also need to put the effort into kind of the right side of the DevOps loop. We're not going to prevent all the bugs. We're not going to know about all the unknown unknowns, no matter how hard we try.And. These cloud architectures are very complex. Our test environments never look like production, so there's always something unexpected that happens. And so we have to really do a good job of the telemetry for our code, gathering all the data, all the events, all the logging data for monitoring. For alerting and also for observability, if something happens that we didn't anticipate, so it wasn't on our dashboard.We didn't have an alert for it. We need to be able to quickly diagnose that problem and know what to do. And if we didn't have. Enough telemetry for diagnosing that problem without having to, Oh, we've got to go back and add more logging and redeploy to production so we could figure it out. Oh, how many times has my team done that?That's all part of it. And then learning from production using those. And we've got fantastic analytics tools these days. Learning from those and what are the customers do? What was most valuable to them? What did they do when they, especially I mostly have worked on web applications.What did they do again? We released this new feature in the UI. How did they use it? And it's, we can learn, we know that stuff now. So that feeds back into what changes should we make next? [00:08:29] Joe Krebs: All right. So it's, it comes full circle, right? What's interesting is there's this company, it's all over the news.It's Boeing, right? We're recording this in 2024 quality related issues. Now, that is an extreme example, obviously, but. We do have these kind of aha and wake up moments in software development too, right? So that we're shipping products and I remember times where testing, I purposely call it testing and not QA, testing personnel was outsourced.That was like many years ago. We actually felt oh, this activity can be outsourced somewhere else. And you just made a point of if we have self organizing teams, And we're starting with it and we're feeding in at the end of a loop back into the development efforts, how important that is and how we treated these activities in the past and how, what we thought of it is, it's shocking now looking back in 24, isn't it?[00:09:23] Lisa Crispin: Yeah, it's just, it just became so much part of our lives to run into that. And the inevitable happened, it generally didn't work very well. I've actually known somebody who led an outsourcing test team in India and was working with companies in the UK and Europe.They actually were able to take an agile approach and keep the testers involved through the whole loop. They had to work really hard to do that. And there were a lot of good practices they embraced to make that work. But you have to be very conscious. And and both sides have to be willing to do that extra work.[00:09:56] Joe Krebs: You just mentioned that there were some really cool analytics tools. I don't know if you want to share any of those because you seem very excited about this, [00:10:05] Lisa Crispin: the most, the one that I found the most useful and I, a couple of different places I worked at used it.It's called full story. And it actually. It captures all the events that are happening in the user interface and plays it back for you as a screencast. Now, it does block anything they type in. It keeps it anonymized. But you can see the cursor. And I can remember one time a team I was on, it's we put a whole new page in our UI, a new feature.We thought people would really love it. And we worked really hard on it and we, we tried to do a minimum viable version of it, but we still put some effort in it and we put it out there. And then we looked at the analytics and full story and we could see that people got to the page. Their cursor moved around and then they navigated off the page.So either it wasn't clear what that page was for, or they just couldn't figure it out. So that was really valuable. I was like, okay, can we come up with a new design for this page? If we think that's what the problem is, or should we just, okay, that was a good. Good learning opportunity. But as a tester, especially there, because we can't reproduce problems, we know there's a problem in production, can't reproduce it.But if we go and watch a session where somebody had the problem, and there are other things, mixed panel, won't play it back for you, but you can see every step that the person did. And even observability tools Honeycomb and LightStep can show you like the whole, they can trace the whole path of what did the user do.And that really helps us not only understand the production problem, but, Oh, there's a whole scenario. We didn't even think about testing that. And so there's so much we can learn because we're so bound by our cognitive bias, our unconscious biases that we know how we wanted it to work.[00:11:54] Joe Krebs: Yeah. [00:11:55] Lisa Crispin: And it's really hard to think outside the box and get away from your biases and really approach it like a customer who never saw it before would do. [00:12:03] Joe Krebs: Yeah. It's this is the typical thing, right? If a software engineer demonstrates their own software they produce and was like eight books on my machine, I'm sure you have heard that.And it's it's obvious that you would do this, right? And it's just not necessarily obvious for somebody else. But if you're like sitting in front of a screen developing something for a long time, it just becomes natural that you would be working like this. I myself have engineered software and and fell into that trap, right?It's oh my God, eye opening event. If somebody else looks at you or. Yeah, [00:12:33] Lisa Crispin: Even when you sometimes have different people, like I can remember an occasion that Timo was on with a, again, a web application and I was just changed in the UI, just adding something in the UI and I tested it. My, my manager tested it.One of the product owner tested it. And we all thought it looked great and it did look great. We didn't notice the other thing we had broken on the screen until we put it in the production and customers were like, Hey, I really do think things like pair programming, pair testing, ensemble, working in ensembles for both programming and testing, doing all the work together.Getting those diversity points does help hugely with that. My theory is we all have different unconscious biases. So maybe if we're all together, somebody will notice a problem. I don't have any science to back that up, but But that's why those kind of practices are especially important. [00:13:28] Joe Krebs: Yeah. [00:13:28] Lisa Crispin: To catch as many things as we can.[00:13:30] Joe Krebs: Yeah. So we both didn't have any kind of science to back this up, but let's talk a little bit about science. Okay. Because metrics, data points, evidence. What are some of the KPIs if somebody listens to this and says Oh, that sounds interesting. And we definitely have shortcomings on testing activities within Agile teams.Obviously there's the traditional way of testing. They're using very different data points. I have used some in the past, and I just want to verify those with you too. It's that's even useful and still up to date. What would be some good KPIs when somebody approaches you and says that's got to have that on your dashboard?[00:14:08] Lisa Crispin: I think you, I actually think one of my favorite metrics to use is cycle time, although that encompasses so many things, but just watching trends and cycle time. And if you're, if you've got, for example, if you've got good test coverage with your automated regression tests, you're going to be able to make changes really quickly and confidently.And if you have, a good deployment pipeline, you're going to Again, there's a lot of testing that goes into making sure your infrastructure is good and your pipeline is performing as it should, because it's all code to that reflects a whole lot of things. It's hard to isolate one thing in your cycle time but what counts is, how consistent are we at being able to frequently deliver small changes?So I think that's an important one. And in terms of. Did we catch all the problems? I think it gets really dangerous to do things like, Oh, let's count how many bugs got in production because all measures can be gained, but that's a really easy one to gain. But things like how many times did we have to roll back or revert a change in product in production?Because there was something we didn't catch and hopefully we detected that ourselves with an alert or with monitoring before the customers saw it. And now that we have so many release strategies where we can do, Canary releases or blue green deploy so that we can do testing and production safely.But still how many times did we have to roll back? How many times did we get to that point and realize we didn't catch everything? That can be a good, that can be a good thing to track. And depending on what caused it. If we had to, if we had a production failure because, somebody pulled the plug of the server out of the wall.That's not, that's just something that happened, but if it is something that the team's process failed in some way, we want to know about that. We want to improve it. And, just how frequently can we deploy I think, the thing with continuous delivery, so many teams are practicing that are trying to practice that you're not going to succeed at that if you're.If you're not preventing defects , and if you don't have good test automation, good automation the whole way through. [00:16:08] Joe Krebs: Yeah. [00:16:08] Lisa Crispin: And I think, deployment frequency, that's another one of the Dora key metrics. Yeah. That's a real that we know that correlates with high performing teams.And of course we shouldn't ignore, how do people feel are people burned out or do they feel happy about their jobs? That's a little harder metric to get. I was on a team, my last full time job, we really focused on cycle time as a metric and we didn't really have that many problems in production.So we didn't really bother to track how many times we had to revert because we were doing a good job, but. But but, how frequently were we going? What was our cycle time? But also we did a little developer joy survey. So once a week, we sent out a little 5 question survey based on Amy Edmondson's work.And now I would base it on I would also use Nicole Forsgren's space survey. Model, but that was just a little before that came out, but just asking just a few questions and multiple, from one to five, how did you feel about this? And it was really interesting because over time, if cycle time was longer, developer joy was down.So there's something happening here that people are not happy. And. Something's going wrong. That's affecting our cycle time. And then the reverse is true. When our cycle time was shorter, joy went up. So I think it's I think it's important and, you don't have to get real fancy with your measurements, just start just, I think you should first focus on what are we trying to improve and then find a metric to guide, to measure that.[00:17:41] Joe Krebs: I'm glad you said or mentioned code coverage. That's one of one of those I mentioned earlier. I've been working with it quite a bit and cycle time. Um, very powerful stuff. Now, with you, such, somebody who has written published about agile testing extensively we are in 2024. There was the years ahead.There are agile conferences. There is a lot going on. What are the trends you currently see in the testing world? What is what's happening right now? What do you think is influencing maybe tomorrow? The days coming, I know you have holistic testing yourself. So maybe that is one but I just want to see, what do you see happening in the agile testing? [00:18:24] Lisa Crispin: Oh, just all of software development, definitely evolving. I think one of the things is that we're starting to be more realistic and realize that executives don't care about testing. They care about how well does their product sell?How much money is the company making? We know that. Product quality and process product quality obviously affects that. And that's from a customer point of view. It's the customer who defines quality. And, back in the nineties, we testers thought we were defining quality. So that's a thing, a change that's occurred over time and really thinking about that and also knowing that our process quality has a huge impact on product quality and what are our, are the, What are practices?What are the most important practices we can be doing? Janet Gregory and who is my coauthor on four of those books and Selena Delesie they've been consultants for years and helped so many huge, even big companies through an agile transformation. And they've distilled their magic into their, what they call a quality practices assessment model.And they identified 10 quality practices that they feel are the most important and things like feedback loops. Things like communication, right? And the model helps you ask questions and see where is the team in these different different aspects of practices that would make them have a quality process, which would help them have a quality product.And it gives teams a kind of a roadmap. It's here's where we are now. What do we need to improve? Oh, we really need to get the continuous delivery and these things are on our way, things like that. So I think that's one realization that it ties back to the idea that testing is just part of software development and we've had for years.So like, how can I make the, president of this company understand that we testers are so important. We're not, but it's important that the team build that quality. [00:20:29] Joe Krebs: But you could also argue that maybe a CEO of a company or the leadership team would say, we also don't care if this is being expressed in one line of code or two lines of code.So it's not necessarily to testing. I think they're just saying we have, here's our product. But I think what has changed is that your competition is just one mouse click away. Yeah. Quality is a determining factor. Now, let's take this hypothetical CEO out there right now listening to our conversation and saying I do want to start to embrace agile testing and agile in general, but more of those things you just mentioned, what would be a good starting point for them?Obviously there's a lot of information right now keywords and buzzwords we just shared today. What would be a good starting point for them to start that journey, because that is obviously not something that's coming overnight. [00:21:20] Lisa Crispin: I think one of the most important things that leadership can do is to make, to enable the whole team to learn testing skills that will help them build quality.And that means making it part of their job description, making it part of their skills matrix for career advancement, because that gives them time. If developers are paid to write lines of code, that's what they're going to do. But if they're, it's okay, you're an autonomous team.You decide what practice you think will work for you. We're going to support you. It's going to, it's going to slow things down at first. Okay, like I was on a team in 2003 that was given this mission. Okay. Do what you think you need to do first. We decided what level of quality we wanted, of course.We wanted to write code that we would take home and show our moms and put it on our refrigerators, and and we all commit to that level of quality. How can we achieve that? We're seeing that test driven development has worked really well for a lot of teams. So let's do test driven development, which is really.Not that easy to learn, but when you have a leadership that lets you have that time to learn and support you, it pays off in the long run because eventually you're a lot more confident. You've got all these regression tests. You can go faster and things like continuous integration, refactoring, all these practices that we know are good.And we were empowered to adopt those. It was all part of all of our job descriptions. And that's, so we became a high performing team, not overnight. Yeah, within a few years and a part of our, part of what we did was spend a lot of time learning the business domain. It's a very complicated business domain.And so when the stakeholders came and said we want this feature and we asked them what, why do they want it? What was it supposed to do? What was the value? We could usually cut out half of what they thought they wanted. We can say, okay, if we did all of this, we think it's going to be this much effort, but we could do 80 percent of it for half the cost.How's that? Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Nobody ever turned us down on that one. So that's another way where you go fast, we eliminate things that customers don't want or need. And so yeah, it's the unicorn magic of a self true self organizing team. [00:23:30] Joe Krebs: Yeah. But I do think what you said is, , this one thing that just stood out to me It is an investment, it is an investment into the future.It's a really good feeling to have later on the capability of releasing software whenever you want. If that is not becoming a massive burden and the whole company needs to come together for all nighters to get a piece of software out of the door. Now you're not only an author here you're also a practitioner.You also work with teams and I just want to come back to that business case of agile testing. One more time. Do you have an example from a client recent or further back where you would say that stands out or that's an easy one? You remember where agile testing made a huge difference for an organization.I'm sure there are tons you have where you would say there was a significant impact for them based on introducing agile testing practices. [00:24:29] Lisa Crispin: I certainly, especially early on in the extreme programming and Agile adoption there was a few occasions where I joined a team that never had testers.They were doing the extreme programming practices and you may recall that the original extreme programming publications did not mention testers. They were all about testing and quality, but they didn't mention testers. And. So these teams were doing test driven development, continuous integration. They were writing really good code and then they were doing, they were doing their two week sprints and maybe, maybe it took them three sprints to develop what the customer wanted and then they give it to the customer and the customer is but that's not what I wanted.So they like, maybe we need a tester. So then they hired me. And I was like, oh okay, let's let's have some of the, some, okay, we're gonna do a new, some new features. Let's have some brainstorming sessions. How are we gonna, what is this new feature for? How are we gonna implement it?What are the risks? And start doing risk assessments. And how are we gonna mitigate those risks? Are we gonna do it through testing? Are we gonna do it through monitoring? And just asking those what if questions? What's the worst thing that could happen? That's my favorite question when we release this.And could we deploy this feature to production and have it not solve the customer problem? And just add, anyone could ask those questions. It doesn't have to be a tester, but I find the teams that don't have professional testers, specialists, they, nobody else thinks of those questions. They could. But they just, testing is a big area.It is a big set of skills. And anybody on that team, I know lots of developers who have those skills, but not every team has a developer like that, other specialists, like business analysts could also help, but there were even fewer business analysts back in the day than there were testers.And as soon, so as soon as the tester, and when I, one team I joined early on, okay, they're like, okay, Lisa you can be our tester. But you can't come to the planning meetings and you can't come to the standups. That's a little weird. I did as best I could without being involved in any of the planning.And so that's the end of the two weeks. They weren't finished. Nothing was really working. And I said, Oh, Hey, can we try it my way? Let me be involved in those early planning discussions. Let me be part of the standup and Oh, amazing. Next time we met our target. And and I was I couldn't support all the, there were 30 developers and one tester, but we agreed that one other person or two other people would wear the testing hat along with me every sprint or at least on a daily basis.And so they all started to get those testing skills. Yeah, they just test, like I say, testing is a big area and you don't know what you don't know. I see teams even today. That they don't have any testers because years ago they were told they didn't need them if they did these extreme programming practices and they're doing testers involvement, they're doing continuous integration.They're maybe even doing a little exploratory testing. They're doing pair programming, even some ensemble or mob programming. They're doing great stuff, but they're missing out all that stuff at the beginning to get the shared understanding with the stakeholders of what to build. [00:27:43] Joe Krebs: All those lines of code that were needed. Wouldn't need to be tested. [00:27:48] Lisa Crispin: And so they release the feature and bugs come in. And they're really, they're missing features. It's not what the customer needed. Too many gaps. . And of course, I want to say those aren't really bugs. But they're bad. Yeah. And if you'd had a risk storming session, if you had planning sessions where you got.Example mapping sessions, for example, where you got the business rules for the story, concrete examples for his business role, and then you turn those into tests to guide your development with behavior driven development. This would have solved your problem, but they didn't know to do that. Anybody could have learned those things, but we can't all know everything.[00:28:25] Joe Krebs: Yeah. We're almost out of time.But there's one question I wanted to ask you and it might be a short answer. I hope you condense it a little bit. But when somebody gets on your LinkedIn page Lisa Crispin there is you in a picture plus a donkey. And you have donkeys yourself.And how does this relate to, does it relate to your work? What do you find inspirational about donkeys? And what, why is, why did you even make your LinkedIn profile? It has to be, it has to be a story around it.[00:28:55] Lisa Crispin: It's interesting. A few years ago at European testing conference, we had an open space and somebody said, Oh, let's have an open space session on Lisa's donkeys.And then we got to talking about this and I actually have learned a lot. About Agile for my donkeys. And I think the biggest thing is trust. So donkeys are work on trust. So with horses, I've ridden horses all my life and had horses all my life as well. You can bribe or bully a horse into doing something, they're just, they're different.If you reward them enough, okay they'll go along with you. If you kick them hard enough, maybe they'll go. Donkeys are not that way. They're looking out for number one. They're looking out for their own safety. And if they think you might be getting them into a situation that's bad for them, they just flat won't do it.So that's how they get the reputation of being stubborn. You could beat a bloody, you could offer them any bribe you want. They're not doing it. And so I learned I had to earn my donkey's trust. That's so true of teams. We all have to trust each other. And when we don't trust each other. We can't make progress and the teams I've been on that have been high performing teams We had that trust so we could have discussions where we had different opinions We could express our opinions without anyone taking it personally Because we knew that we were all in it together and it was okay Anybody could feel safe To ask a question, anybody can feel safe to fail, but you have that trust that there's nothing bad is going to happen.And so I could bring my donkey right in that door in the house. I've taken them in schools. I've taken them to senior centers because they trust me. And if I did anything, if they came to harm while in my care, if I, let's say I was driving the cart and the collar rubbed a big sore on them, that would destroy the trust.And it would be really hard to build it back. And so we always need to be conscious of how we're treating each other in our software teams. [00:30:55] Joe Krebs: Yeah, wonderful. I did hear about the rumor of being stubborn. But I also always knew that donkeys are hardworking animals. [00:31:02] Lisa Crispin: They love to work hard.Yeah. [00:31:05] Joe Krebs: Awesome. Lisa, what a great ending. I'm glad we had time to even touch on that. That was a great insight. Thank you so much for all your insights around testing, but also at the end about donkeys. Thank you so much, Lisa. [00:31:17] Lisa Crispin: Oh, it's my pleasure.
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  • 151: Maureen McCarthy and Zelle Nelson
    Transcript: Agile F M radio for the agile community. [00:00:04] Joe Krebs: Thank you for tuning into another episode here of Agile FM. Today I have two guests with me. We are a trio today that is Maureen McCarthy and Zelle Nelson are with me. They both are we're going to go really deep on this the creators of the method that's called the Blueprint of We and they can be reached at collaborativeawareness. com. Welcome to the podcast, Maureen and Zelle. [00:00:28] Maureen McCarthy: I am so thrilled for this conversation, Joe, because. The weaving between Agile and the work we do in the world is brilliant. And I love having the conversation about how that goes on. So [00:00:39] Zelle Nelson: really happy to be here. [00:00:40] Maureen McCarthy: Yeah. Thanks. [00:00:41] Joe Krebs: Awesome. Yeah, we will be talking a little bit about that blueprint of we, but before we do that just to set the stage a little bit with everyone, why the blueprint of we exist, why your work exists.There is a very sad history to this, and that is that Maureen, you found out that you have a rare genetic lung disease, and you are. Operating on 10% lung capacity. Is that correct? [00:01:11] Maureen McCarthy: That is true. I've been on oxygen for 20 years, but nobody lives as long as I have. So it's a, it's very rare. Most people are dead.Within 10 years I've had it 35 . [00:01:21] Maureen McCarthy: So I've had since I was very young. But it's not a sad story. It's actually a very creative story. It's not, I don't, there's lots of crazy stuff that goes on with it, but I don't feel sad about it. We've done so many, we've made the stress of what.A health challenge can be into a creative process of How do you thrive even when stuff is going on that's nuts. [00:01:43] Joe Krebs: Yeah the reason why we connect a little bit the blueprint of we the work you guys are doing and facilitation collaboration is directly tied to this to the lung disease. Can you guys elaborate a little bit on.How this all started for you guys and how you are, obviously your behavior changed as a result of that diagnosis [00:02:08] Maureen McCarthy: we actually met the year my doctors told me that I would die. So it was my 10 year mark of when most people are dead and meeting somebody. We both had our own individual businesses at that point, but meeting somebody the year you're supposed to die, you don't measure anything up against forever.You have to look at what's here right now and decide what you want to do with it. And we realized like the normal path when you meet someone is, do you want to date and get engaged and get married and have a white picket fence? Like you actually have those things that just project in your mind, because that's expected, to at least ask those questions. [00:02:44] Zelle Nelson: There was nothing for us to pull off the shelf to say, this is how you do it. [00:02:48] Maureen McCarthy: Yeah. [00:02:49] Zelle Nelson: So we had to design it for ourselves [00:02:51] Maureen McCarthy: and we created this. Document this relationship design document. We realize we've got to design something that's so specific to us and there's things that we want to No one understand about ourselves, about each other, but most specifically about who we are together.If this isn't what doing what you normally do when you become a couple, what the heck is it? So that design process we wrote down, we're like, let's do a design process, a design document, let's make it iterative and changeable and. Upgraded over time to, to show us who we are when we learn more about ourselves, about another, when we go through the chaos of in and out of the hospital and losing more lung capacity and massive levels of pain and just crazy things.You've got to be agile. You literally have to be agile. And without the design document, I think we could have gotten lost. In a path that can be very chaotic, especially because lots of people around us got worried. It made me understand the difference between worry and care. Like when people worry for me, all my pain gets worse.It's harder to breathe when people care about me. It's two different ways we're using our neurocircuitry, right? And care is a way to support other people. Worry is a way to add more stress and fear and the weightiness of all that. And when you've got 10 percent lung capacity. You feel weightiness unlike other people.Yeah, this is, I'm like a little like a little experiment of my own body of what it means to be like collaborative and connected, because everything that's going on in my body, we use as a way to be part of the design. Like this, there's chaos going on in here. How does that mirror the chaos of the world and how do we design healthy relationships and healthy interactions based on, what could be considered chaos?[00:04:40] Joe Krebs: Yeah, so this blueprint you guys, we're going to go a little bit deeper here. It's really something you build, it's a process. It's a relationship design process used to build resilient, collaborative relationships in startups, communities, and organizations worldwide.And I think what's, so I just read that out. That's, I saw that, but what's important about that is that you'll have a very personal story. This process is something that was created between you guys to find out how you guys going to transition. And now you're taking this process and bringing it back to the world.So there's these things live every day to the fullest, and make the best out of every day. You are making the best out of every day. Is that part of your blueprint? Can you give like listeners to Agile FM? So what's the difference between you as a couple, right? Different to or not necessarily different, but maybe similar to how teams should be operating or when they're working in pairs, let's say.[00:05:44] Maureen McCarthy: This was an interesting evolution of the document. So the blueprint of, we began because of this design conversation, we thought it was just going to be for us. Then we did it with their kids. Their first blueprint they wrote was when they were four and six years old. We did one as a family. Then we started realizing, so we both had our separate consulting businesses.And we woke up one day and said, traditional legal contracts felt like they didn't have the spirit of what we were designing in our life. And so we made what we thought was the scariest choice imaginable. We said, you know what, we're going to stop using traditional legal contracts. And only use the blueprint in our contracting process because it takes both everything you're agreeing to and who the people are and how you're going to do it together into consideration.And so we made a list of colleagues, we could send any of our clients. Our clients are, governments and universities and international corporations like they're, they live and die by their contracts, right? And we were really nervous to say, yes, thank you for wanting us to do your contract and we're going to do a blueprint instead, if that doesn't work for you, here's a list of colleagues that you can contact and we thought we'd lose most of our clients and we never lost one in all these years.And so it moved into the situation there where now companies, people we were, doing work with started to understand that because we did a blueprint with them. That's how we created a contract. And then they turned around and said, can you come in and teach us to our organization? Can you bring this whole concept for the groups and people and teams and things that are working together?So it was really the organizations telling us. Oh my god, we're missing this piece of how we work together. [00:07:22] Joe Krebs: Yeah. [00:07:22] Maureen McCarthy: And then it just spread. We were asked to speak at an international peace conference in Russia. And that you had to either speak English, Russian, or bring an interpreter. I think there were 39 countries represented.And suddenly it spread like wildfire. So it took on a life of its own. [00:07:38] Zelle Nelson: Yes, it's really about having clarity in each individual having getting as much clarity as they can, and then having a conversation where you can ask questions and get curious and actually. Have a artifact that holds what is our conversation and how are we going to be together in any relationship?There's at least three entities. There's you, there's me, and there's this third entity of we, and we need to give energy and understanding to how these all will work together and how we're going to come together to Do what we want to do. [00:08:14] Maureen McCarthy: We have this term we call the WECO system. It's the ecosystem of the we, and the notion is that in any work situation you're in, there's an entire ecosystem of all the different pieces and who's working on what and what our roles and responsibilities and who's the customer.All of that, but it often doesn't take the relationship of the people and who we are together into consideration. So when you get a team to start looking at okay, you've got even like the working agreements that happen in agile, right? Those are agreements on all the different pieces of the ecosystem, but the people are not built around that because.I know agile is all about people first, right? So if you think about that, we need to have those as part of our agreements. Who are you? How do you work best? What do you look like when you're stressed out? What can I do for you to help you get you out of it? You tell me what your stress looks like.You tell me what the best inflow day you've ever had looks like. And then we can exchange some information. You could know that about me. And then when Zelle talks about the artifact. I can be self aware myself, you can be self aware yourself but together there is no artifact. I hold me inside of me and my brain.There isn't anything for this we, for who we are together. So we coined the term collaborative awareness because that is like the design and understanding of who we are together. And you can build that. The blueprint becomes a document, an artifact, a process that you're actually, but it's like open space.It's simple, it's elegant. It doesn't have a lot of. There's not a lot that you have to do to really make it sing like we'll, we can do an open space. We use open space, world cafe, different large group dialogue tools to actually have people do their blueprint in a really short amount of time, like fast paced process.So it's not some but you, it's iterative. So you're constantly upgrading it as you grow is all the different elements change. Because you need to be adaptable. [00:10:11] Joe Krebs: Yeah. Do you have an example for that? Like for the iteration piece of your process of where you do like certain loops and refinements of some sort?Because we assume it's not static, right? [00:10:23] Maureen McCarthy: It's oh my God. No, the document that Zelle and I first did years ago, we've been together 25 years now. So that document was actually. Looks nothing like our document today. It has changed drastically over time because we've changed. The reasons why we're in have changed.What matters to us has changed. And so that keeping track of that means it's a little more mindful of why are you here? Why do you want to be part of this? Keep that lit up. I want to know how you've been evolving because of all the stuff that's gone on in your life. So part of it is a group will come together.They first write something called the blueprint of me. Each individual is a set of questions in the five components that make up the blueprint of we and me. And those five components are first is the story of me. This is in the blueprint of me version where you're writing about yourself. So what is the story of me?What got me here to this work, this team, what I'm about in the world. The second is called interaction styles and stress messages. So this is where I share Hey, this is what I look like when I'm having an inflow day. This is what can help me stay in that space. This is what's important to me.Sometimes it seems like here's how I want to be contacted. Don't call me before this time of day, or make sure that we write it all in an email as well as talking about it, because I need documentation. Whatever those things that make me do my job best to make me feel like my whole self can be here. I want you to know those because otherwise we end up going into these modes where I think everybody's a little bit like me, so of course, you're only just going to want it like I want it.[00:11:55] Joe Krebs: Yeah. [00:11:55] Maureen McCarthy: And we all know that's not actually true and our brains are operating. So we call this the filing system of the mind. If you think about how we engage the world, we basically take in all the bits of data and information that goes on around us. And it's like filling a metaphorical filing system in our mind.Everything someone said as we were a child, what our co worker said yesterday, a book, a movie, whatever it is. We file things away. Okay. And that's why our brain is basically a meaning making machine. [00:12:27] Zelle Nelson: All these files filter what we see, what we perceive, what we interpret as what other people do. So in the blueprint, why not exchange and give you my files of me?You don't have to make assumptions about who I am, how I show up. What makes you, [00:12:42] Maureen McCarthy: you're using your filing system in order to make sense of him.Don't do that because you might be mistaken. Let him give you the files of who he is. [00:12:51] Zelle Nelson: So again, we start with a blueprint of me where each person shares their files of me.This is who I am. So I show up the third component is custom design, where we look at. What are our values? What are the principles that we want to design from? And what are, we start with some, maybe some opening design questions of this is what I think we're doing. And this is, my suggestions, [00:13:16] Maureen McCarthy: but it can also be roles and responsibilities [00:13:19] Zelle Nelson: it evolves.[00:13:19] Maureen McCarthy: You add that over time, but this is the section where you're saying, this is what matters to us. So it's, what are the what are your values, but what do you want to feel? Every time we're working together. What kind of energy do you want to bring into this? Because that's a great lens to say, Hey, we're at the end of this meeting.Did that feel energizing? That's one of your words. We can check in right then and say, Yeah, it did or no, it didn't. Okay. How do we iterate the design? So we have more of that energy next time. But it also includes what traditional legal contracts can include. So anything, in fact, there are lawyers, mediators, judges that are huge fans of the blueprint around the world.There's a couple of law schools that are teaching it. You can use the blueprint process as a traditional contracting process, and it will hold up in a court of law, the same as any other contract. But it has the people involved, which I think if a judge had to see it, it would feel quite different.[00:14:16] Joe Krebs: This is very interesting because you just mingled a few things together in your design process, but also in the team agreements and the me and the we, right? It would be a much easier and easier to understand world if everybody would be thinking exactly like me. Wouldn't it? I wish. You wish, right?But it would be easier, right? So we do need tools like this, but just to give listeners a, an example what I came across, which is fascinating is that the two of you guys don't really have a working agreement. I don't want to call it a working agreement. That sounds too business-y for this. But I learned that Zelle is actually asking you every single day if he if you still want to marry him. [00:14:53] Zelle Nelson: Yes, [00:14:53] Joe Krebs: that is a daily [00:14:55] Maureen McCarthy: literally for 25 years. I'm not kidding you every single day or [00:14:58] Zelle Nelson: she will ask me. [00:14:59] Maureen McCarthy: Yeah, 1 of us just said [00:15:01] Zelle Nelson: it doesn't need to be 1 or the other, but 1 of us will ask the other. [00:15:05] Maureen McCarthy: He asked me this morning. I said, yes, but I am that in. Every day, because we chose to be together for a day.And then we choose again every day. That is, there is something really different about that because I have to ask myself every day, why am I in this? Why is this where I want to be? It could be, it could have been a crazy day. We could have gotten in a big fight. But I still have to sit back and go, do I want to be here?And you do, because every day you're building up the trust, the respect. We define what trust and respect looks like. I know what that looks like for him. He knows what it looks like for me. And so the in, Now, granted, tomorrow, one of us could say no, but shockingly, we have a healthy, insanely live, like a live relationship.And I could never have predicted that, especially with the chaos that living in this body is. [00:15:59] Zelle Nelson: And then there was so much we didn't know at the beginning, and that's what made it so iterative. And such a learning process, not only learning about what the other person needs, but learning about what I need.Like I would come up and, show up in a certain way. And, she'd be like why are you doing that like that? And I might say, I don't know. [00:16:18] Maureen McCarthy: But it's not, you move from judgment to curiosity. [00:16:21] Zelle Nelson: Yes. [00:16:22] Maureen McCarthy: It's not a judgmental question. It's just it's just I'm so curious. Like you've told me about all these different things and Hey, I noticed this.Tell me more about what that is. Like we're endlessly curious. Because our minds are open. We're not, we're, we don't live in a judgmental space anymore like we did when we first met. I couldn't have predicted that either. It's fascinating. [00:16:42] Joe Krebs: Yeah. That's, it's very interesting, right? Because if somebody listens to this and again, like living day by day that was just a reminder when I heard that you guys are asking each other every single day that really emphasizes how you live in the moment.And I think. If you're taking this to the to teamwork, also interesting. I learned something about the you tell me if it's the blueprint or just collaboration in general is that you're really promoting a switch within your brain from defensive stances to proactive connectivity.What do I have to picture when I study defensive stance, proactive connectivity? How does that shift look like with your method? It sounds great and totally defensive. What would be the ideal scenario? [00:17:30] Maureen McCarthy: So what's interesting when you think about the filing system of the mind and how you take in all this data, we have two basic. Neural networks that happen in our brain that are, and they're the two ways that our brain is evolved to keep us alive. [00:17:43] Zelle Nelson: That's why we thrive as a species.[00:17:44] Maureen McCarthy: Yeah. So we're either protecting or we're connecting and it's a whole set of neural circuitry that can look different in different people's minds. It's not just one certain path, right? So you take things in someone in front of me saying this, doing this, showing up like this. And I'm either using my, I'm really, it's more of a continuum of safety brain to connect to brain neural circuitry.I can either take in what you're doing and feel that protection, the stress, the judgment, all those things that happen when we feel like we're at risk. And we have a world that has been built in problem solution thinking of scanning our landscape constantly for problems, and we get a dopamine hit with a solution.But what we found over the years is with people. Problem solution thinking is not robust enough to hold us in fast paced environments. So we started thinking about the fact that if I've got these two levels of neural circuitry, I can wake up and doom scroll the news and add more files to the safety brain version of my system.Or I can do something to actually add more files to our connected brain neural circuitry. And it means that when I stand in front of the person who's saying this and doing this, I can make meaning in two different ways. I need my safety brain. I want it on when it is necessary, but we've made it our main mode of operation.We are so enthralled with protection, and victim mentality too, of like being afraid of whatever somebody else is doing, that we literally cut off. Here's one of the things that's so interesting. When it's very, it's more recent neuroscience research in social neural neuroscience that says when we're focused on a problem, our brain literally becomes tunnel vision.Because initially it was like, if the bear is coming at me, I need to tunnel down. I can't be creative. I can't be empathic. I can't be connected. I have to zero down. But what happens when we're in that space. Is we have to beat out, weed out every single thing that doesn't say, I know you, I know what you're going to do, you look like me, you act like me, you're going to talk like me, I can't see those things anymore.So then the person I'm working with, who works very differently than me, if I'm using my safety brain neurocircuitry, I can't let them in. They're not exactly like me. So that now I begin to create other and push people away. That's the protection part of it. If on the other hand, I'm moving from judgment to curiosity.I want to know and understand what somebody's about. I'm doing a blueprint with them. So they give me a chance to get their own files from them. Now I have the space to be able to show up. And, be in good feedback loops and listen to other people's ideas and feel engaged by the fact that someone doesn't think like me because I'm going to learn something more about how we're going to do this project.[00:20:28] Zelle Nelson: You're going to bring something else that I don't have. [00:20:30] Maureen McCarthy: Yeah. [00:20:31] Zelle Nelson: That I want to invite. And I think there's a really kind of simple explanation or example might be. Take the behavior of someone closing their door in the middle of the day. To their office. That can be interpreted in a lot of different ways.If I had a boss who anytime they closed their door, it meant they were talking about secret things and someone was gonna get fired. I would be really freaked out if someone closed the door in their office. But if I, [00:20:57] Maureen McCarthy: not even the boss, just anyone else, anyone, my neural circuitry might say, that means there's a problem.[00:21:02] Zelle Nelson: Yes, in if I were in, in the connected brain space. Someone closes their door. I might get curious about what's happening or why they might be closing their door. Maybe they need to focus. Maybe there's something going on with them that, they need a little privacy or maybe we've had a conversation in our blueprint.Earlier that said, here's the times when I closed my door, I have a project. I really need to get finished. I need to focus. If you need to talk to me feel free to knock on the door. There's you talk to, you start to have conversations about how do we set up? What do these things mean? I don't have to be upset about them.I can actually be. Excited or curious about them and that engages my connected brain. When I get curious about who you are and how you show up and you do the same with me, it grows our trust. It grows our connection as grows our adaptability as well. And I can, if you have a closed door policy and that's really hard for me, we can have a conversation about, Hey, how are we going to make this work?I need to have access to you and be able to talk with you and [00:22:05] Maureen McCarthy: you start building bridges because there are differences. There will be more and more differences. Yeah. Because things are changing so fast. Yeah. So how do you, in calm moments, build the bridge instead of getting in stressful situations about it?[00:22:17] Joe Krebs: It's also interesting when you say that with the door, I also saw the opposite, right? There were environments where there was no door. Yes. And then people felt, this obviously, like here and there, a situation where people felt uncomfortable because, They had to talk to a doctor or something like that, personal phone call and a very important one.And they couldn't find privacy. Yeah. And it just felt like, where can I take this call? So they were not really focused on something. So it could, it could go either way, right? Where's this person trying to find a phone call, right? And it's not always that easy. [00:22:51] Maureen McCarthy: Yeah. [00:22:51] Joe Krebs: You just mentioned problems a little bit our companies are there.Yeah. They're thriving on problems. We often look at problems. But in scrum, for example, when I work with agile teams, myself, I always remind people that people are not problems. The relationships could be a problem. How does your blueprint address something like this? That it's really like problem management and how you work with organizations that are Like, hyper focused on fixing problems and like seeing everything as a problem whereas the human side or people are not necessarily the problem.[00:23:27] Maureen McCarthy: Yeah. It's, you are so spot on when it's helping people recognize that people aren't the problem, but actually even the relationship itself is not a problem. It's an opportunity to redesign. We call it stress as a messenger. So instead of stress being a warning sign, if you think about it as a message, it's like a text on your phone that just dings and you're like, Oh, this is.Pinging me because this matters to me. I care about meeting deadlines on time and this person's not handing me something they need to hand me. So that feels Oh, there's a problem in our relationship. But it just means that the way the relationship is being created needs a little more mindful design.But when you start talking about there's something up with the design, let's upgrade our design is a very different conversation. Then there's a problem here. Why are you doing this? [00:24:22] Zelle Nelson: Oh, Zelle, you're a problem. How much energy do I have to comment? Be better to be curious. It moves me into my safety brain.[00:24:29] Maureen McCarthy: Yes. [00:24:30] Zelle Nelson: I want to be in a design conversation where we find clarity around what's important. And that stress message, that ping, that ding on my phone is saying, Hey, something's important. Something could be more fluid here. [00:24:42] Maureen McCarthy: How do we design for that? [00:24:43] Zelle Nelson: Let's get curious. Let's find out what that is. And let's design something that works.[00:24:48] Maureen McCarthy: And we've been using these tools with groups around the world. We have facilitators around the world and it's the same everywhere. Humans show up and need those design conversations because we're not taught that in a problem solution world. When you're focusing on the problem, nobody's actually taught how to design.In fact, even, so there's a whole set of what we call our clear mind tools. Where both individually and collectively you upgrade your brains to be running more connected brain neural circuitry than safety brain. And in that space you begin to realize that this is not a this is not a world of problems and it's actually easy to start upgrading the filing system of your mind.One of the great sort of visuals I created a while back. Was what we call pick up the sled and it's the notion that if you're standing at the top of a snowy hill with a sled in your hands, if you sled down the left side of the hill, just a couple of times, you creates a rut in the snow. You don't need to steer anymore.It just goes down. That's an analogy for how neural circuitry is made in the brain. Okay. But what you need to do, so if the left side of the hill is my stressful thinking around that person I'm working with, the only thing I can do to change that, because that's stress on me, they do what they do. And I get to pick whether I'm stressed or not, but what I want to have is a path down the right side of the hill as another option more curious, relaxed open perspective on the same person, same topic, and then I want to create just like I could create a positive perspective on the right side of the hill, go down a couple of times and that can become a rut as well.But what we do is we fill the filing system with things that are down the left side of the hill, right? So what you first need to do is actually pick up the sled in an awareness phase. I can't drag the sled from one side of the hill to the other. It's too hard. But I can't stop for a moment and say, let me pick up that sled.I just going to notice for a while. Oh, there's me thinking that way again, there's me feeling all that stress about what he did. I want to notice first. I don't want to change it. I don't want to say it's bad and wrong. It's just what's happening. Okay. And what happens when you begin this awareness that you're doing these things, our brain, like the rut in the snow.We don't wake up and choose to be stressed out. It's like it comes and grabs us and drags us down the hill. So when I pick up the sled or even just notice I'm stressed and go, Oh my God, I want to pick up the sled. I can't tell you the number of times I've said those words. Now I begin to move that storm of the stress two miles away.I can start to see it and how I can handle something when I'm in the eye of the storm and how I handle something when it's two miles off the coast is different. And then once you do an awareness phase for a bit, could be a week, a month, however long it takes, you'll know when you feel like you've moved that storm and then you can start making a new path down the right side of the hill that feels more life giving and positive because what ultimately we're doing with our work is helping to give people options.I don't ever want to not think negative things or not be stressed or whatever. There's nothing out there that we're against or demonizing or anything. They're all just opportunities for design. So how can I have as many options as possible? When that person shows up doing that thing, I want more options and how to react.[00:28:03] Zelle Nelson: Again, it allows us to be more agile and adaptable to any situation when I have a broader scope of ways I can engage. [00:28:11] Maureen McCarthy: And then everything outside of you can be fluctuating all the time and be chaotic. But when you can keep doing that, then you can feel more of the calm consistently. Or you can get out of it faster.We still get stressed out. We'll still have an argument. We get out of it so fast. I'd be dead if I didn't get out of it fast. [00:28:29] Joe Krebs: I just wanted to say that for you, it's a very important, personally, a very important decision on what side you're going, [00:28:35] Maureen McCarthy: exactly. It is literally a life giving. [00:28:39] Zelle Nelson: I've learned the nuances as well in my own self, because I got had Maureen as an example of, wow, this is stress. I can't run that. , [00:28:48] Maureen McCarthy: like the princess and the pea. I feel stress earlier than other people, but it happens to everybody. [00:28:54] Joe Krebs: But I think we can agree to that. It's you have an immediate, obviously, essential reaction to that. But it doesn't mean that it's not helpful for everybody else. Now if people want to get in touch with you, Maureen and Zell e both of you guys are working on a book. You guys are speaking, you guys are facilitating, you guys are obviously working in the blueprint of we, and I just learned the me and we in this podcast.I just want to thank you guys for carving out some time, especially, and I do want to say this for somebody who's Who you guys designed something for a day by day experience that you shared for 30 minutes of your day today with the Agile FM listeners. I'm extremely thankful for that. And you made them part of your day and vice versa.And just want to guys for stopping by and sharing a story here on Agile FM. [00:29:49] Zelle Nelson: Oh, you're so welcome. Thanks so much. Great to be here. And you can find us at collaborativeawareness. com. [00:29:55] Joe Krebs: That's correct. Thank you guys.
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  • 150: Maggie Jackson
    Book “Uncertain - The Wisdom and Wonder of Being Unsure”: Transcript: Agile FM radio for the agile community. [00:00:05] Joe Krebs: Thank you for tuning into another episode of Agile FM. Today I have Maggie Jackson with me. She wrote a book called Uncertain the Wisdom and Wonder of Being Unsure. She also has published a book Distracted you might be very familiar with because it has been published a few years ago. Maggie is an award winning author, journalist.She writes about social events. In particular about technology. She's a contributor to the Boston Globe. She wrote for the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and she has been featured on media around the world, including MSNBC, Wire. com, and the Sunday Times. And now she is on Agile FM. So thank you so much for being here and sharing some thoughts on the latest release, Uncertain, with the Agile FM listeners.[00:00:54] Maggie Jackson: My pleasure. Great to be with you. [00:00:56] Joe Krebs: Yeah, that's awesome. You have some really good endorsements and praise here from people like Daniel Pink, Gretchen Rubin and Sherry Turkle on your book. This is it's really amazing. You you have written this book. This was recently released in 2024. So this is a new publication.What drove you to writing this book? Uncertain. What was your motivation of approaching this project, this book? [00:01:24] Maggie Jackson: Yes, sure. Especially because uncertainty seems so foggy and monolithic and negative. And I, after I wrote the book Distracted, which is about, the gains and costs that we have in a split focus world wanting to write a book about thinking, so if you have a moment somewhere, focus, or you have the skill to focus, what do you do with it?And of course, thinking well is our challenge as we move forward in this world, in this day and age. And so the first chapter of the new book was about uncertainty, and it became in a classic way, the whole book, because first of all, because I discovered, veins of or explosions of new research in so many different fields from medicine to business to psychology, a lot of new research about uncertainty.And it hadn't been a very well studied topic, believe it or not before. And by that, Epistemic or psychological uncertainty, which is the human response to the unknown. So I'm really writing about our human response to the unknown and the basically the idea that when you meet something new and unexpected, Your response is to understand that you've reached the limits of your knowledge that you don't know that it could be this way.It could be that way. So that's how I fell into writing the book and I discovered as well that uncertainty is highly misunderstood. It's maligned and yet it's far. It's not weakness. It's not inertia. It's not the negative that we all assume it to be today in this efficiency oriented society.[00:03:03] Joe Krebs: Yeah that's true. We probably have some listeners here at Agile FM that are maybe in the corporate world and they are building products and or executing projects of some sort. And and we see the desire of being certain. We see the desire of running and having a plan, even if the plan is very short and maybe only a few weeks long.Uncertainty is always present, isn't it? [00:03:29] Maggie Jackson: Exactly. And again there are these two kinds of uncertainty. There will always be unpredictability there. Life will always take twists and turns. And we might have the data and the models and the plan. And yet, there's so much we can't know.Despite this incredible probabilistic weather models that we have, you don't know if the snowstorm will dump one or two inches on your backyard next week. So there's so much we can't know. We don't know, but what we can do is control our response to the unknown. We can get skillful at understanding how to manage not knowing or what we don't know and what we want, what we're not sure about.And that's where the, that's where the news is fantastic. There's so much now that relates to how uncertainty basically is very highly connected to. Cognitive skills like curiosity and agility and resilience, which are exactly the kind of cognitive skills we need now on. So I think you're right.And another point I'd make is that we always will need resolution. We always know we'll need an answer. And of course, we want a plan and a kind of security. And yet. By, over predicting or clinging to a plan when it's out of date. That's where we lose the agility. So what I'm talking about is opening up the space between question and answer.Uncertainty is really that middle ground. It's basically. The brain's way of telling itself that there's something to be learned here when you're meeting something new, you have a kind of stress response, which is really, that's where the unease and the discomfort of uncertainty comes from. It's a stress response.But now we're beginning to find out scientifically that unease is actually highly beneficial because, as I mentioned, the brain is, more receptive to new data when you're unsure. Your working memory actually improves when you're don't know when you meet something new and your focus expands.Scientists call this curious eyes. So this is the human response to the unknown. That's really the good stress and wakefulness of uncertainty. And in fact, one study, which I really found very illuminating. is a longitudinal study of executives in Europe. This was around 2009, when the European Union was doubling in size, basically, the markets were expanding, it was the opposite of Brexit, basically, but very controversial.And executives were, really had many different reactions to this proposed change. Two business school professors interviewed 100 CEOs in Europe at the time, and quite a number of them were quite sure of what was going to happen, they airtight kind of predictions. It'll be good for my company.Many said. Oh, it'll be terrible for my company, this new market explosion. But then actually the business school professors were surprised that there was a third group in the mix. They were actually surprised that there were ambivalent CEOs. And a year later, after the expansion, it occurred. Low and behold, it was the ambivalent CEOs who had actually were more resourceful, inventive, and inclusive.They listened to multiple perspectives, and they actually went out and did innovative things, whereas the sure CEOs tended to do, stick to the status quo and basically almost do nothing at all. And that tells you so much about what unsureness does. It opens up the space of possibilities. Very important.[00:07:19] Joe Krebs: Very important. You just mentioned in these stress moments, right? Positive kind of things are happening. How did you, did your research, did you find anything interesting about. Creativity, innovation in the, in those moments of stress, I would be curious because there's focus, right?And, but maybe there's also innovation coming out of those moments of Uncertainty. [00:07:42] Maggie Jackson: Yes. I think that the the uncertainty mindset the good stress of uncertainty first of all helps us attune to our environment. So many studies about learning in dynamic environments find that the people who have this positive.response and positive attitude toward the unknown are the ones that are more accurate, better performers. So it's really helping you pick up on what's going on. If you walk into a meeting thinking, ah, more of the same, blah, blah, blah, then you're not, you, it makes sense. You're not going to be picking up on the mood in the room or in seeing the facial expression.So I think this good stress of uncertainty, Does help us be attuned to what's to the change. And that's the starting point. But as I mentioned, the CEOs in this in the European market expansion, we're highly resourceful. So how does this agility or this uncertainty, this good stress of uncertainty help us be creative?There are many different ways in which first of all, in order to be creative, We have to set step away from the known. So very often the human loves the familiar and the routine. And we actually operate in life using something called predictive processing, which is using your mental models and the heuristics that you've built up based on your experience in the past to expect and assume, the doctor hears chest pains and then thinks heart attacks or, a certain kind of client will evoke an assumption or expectation when they walk into the meeting about what their demands are going to be. We expect so much, but we operate so much into the routine That it's really important that we break from this routine in order to be creative.That's what innovation is. It's working at the edge. And so that's also what uncertainty helps you do. It makes, it helps you. Studies of divergent thinkers are highly creative with idea generation. Show that they have a kind of cognitive flexibility that they're more able to remain, make unusual connections in their life.These are the type of people who are, again, more able to operate within the space of uncertainty. And in fact, divergent thinking is actually highly related. It's based on the same brain networks as daydreaming which is a form of, daydreams. What if questionings that they actually remove us from the here and now and they allow us to operate in what one scientist called transcendent thinking mode.That's basically just asking what if questions and daydreams are actually 50 percent of daydreams are future oriented. So I'd say one of the ways in which we can Manage uncertainty. Is to step back from that need to be productive in a very narrow way and allow ourselves time to muse just for a minute or two.I interviewed one phenomenal genius scientist who's He's extremely innovative. A MacArthur winner. He's, he's been done. He's, he just, his laboratory just found the first new antibiotic in 35 years. He's, and he spends at least an hour a day daydreaming and it a coherent thought experiment.But this is not what we. usually consider successful behavior. [00:11:14] Joe Krebs: Yeah. In the Agile Kata series which I had in the first 10 weeks of 2024 year on Agile FM, we explored the pattern of discovering or dealing with uncertainty as a pattern. So this has been interesting for everybody.Listening to this here right now to say okay, first and foremost, it's a positive thing. It's a thing we have to deal with. It's uncertainty. Now you're adding even daydreaming as a positive thing to the mix. If somebody in a corporate world listens to this right now, it's we'll book very different.We work very efficient. And now we're saying like these kind of evidences we see out there of working in different ways could be very productive and creative. And innovative. What's your recommendation on around cultural change? That obviously goes along with this trust, for example, like between employees and the organization to work with an uncertainty mindset.[00:12:11] Maggie Jackson: Yes, it's really important. And I think, as you mentioned, we live in a society that, whether or not it's in schools, but also particularly in the workplace, operates from an outcome orientation. We don't really pay much attention to process and uncertainty is process. It literally is, as I mentioned, the space between question and answer.We think of efficiency and it being the, being a one. We think of ourselves as being successful if we're operating at one tempo, speedy. And we think, and also we our ways of knowing, our very definition of what it means to know is being changed by technology, which is constantly offering us a steady diet of neat, pat, instant answers.That's not how the world works. The mind works. That's not how the flourishing human works. So what can we do to push back on that? I think one of the things that leaders can do in the Agile Kata world is to change their vocabulary in and around words like maybe for instance, expressing, we can actually express.Express and operate in uncertainty without appearing weak if we're willing to accept its benefits. So words like maybe and sometimes are called hedge words. Now they're often assumed to be signs of weakness, but actually linguistics shows that they do two things. If you say, maybe you're actually signaling that you're receiving.And then secondly, you're also signaling that there's something more to know, which is very important because most group discussions literally focus on what everyone already knows, And what gets left off the table is something called a hidden profile of individual diverse information. And that's how groups progress.That's how groups are literally more creative. And so studies out of Harvard show that the use of these words may be sometimes, instead of you're wrong or therefore, which closed down the discussion. These hedge words are actually seen by others during difficult conversations as making a person look more professional and is if they're a better teammate.That flies in the face of our assumptions. We think of certainty as being successful when the science shows that it, that's not right. And I don't mean that we can never be sure. We, I don't mean that we're not striving for answers. That we need to. Inject more uncertainty into our lives in, and we will as an investment in getting the better answer, not just the first answer.[00:14:46] Joe Krebs: It could be a second valid answer, right? It could be one, but it could be a second or a third. And so that could lead us to that. Now, I do want to ask you a question. This is really fascinating stuff here. Did you, while writing this book and doing your research everybody's talking about uncertain times and everything.Did you find anything that we are actually living in times that are more uncertain? Then let's say a hundred years ago. Or is this just a perception of the, in the media we're receiving or anything like that? I'm just trying to find out, I'll be actually living in more uncertain times. [00:15:25] Maggie Jackson: I think I'd offer a qualified yes.It's very difficult to compare across vast time periods. 100 years ago was the advent of the industrial age. And I studied that quite a bit for distracted and I'd say it's really hard to make these cross epic comparison. But what I will say is that many studies show in various fields. That yes, unpredictability is rising.For instance, work hours on average for more people are more volatile. With a 24 7 economy, more people are having, just in time scheduling, which throws their household and their work and etc., leads to stress and frustration. Weather patterns are obviously, due to climate change, becoming more volatile and more erratic.And so that adds more uncertainty into our days. Geopolitics are, happen to be in a time right now when, with between war and the rise of authoritarian regimes, et cetera. You can see this as not, I think part is, this is not just a perception, there is a reality that the unknowns are rising.And part of this culturally, I will say is because I think that. Humans are become better at not hiding behind as much as our we expect certainty there. There's a lot of evidence now that old certainties are rumbling. It used to be that the constellations were seen as set in stone. Even just 10 years, the brain was seen as set in stone by adulthood.And now we know neurogenesis occurs throughout. From cradle to grave. And so now we're faced with the unveiling or the revealing of the fact that we don't know. And that's why I call this a crossroads in human history. I think we're actually at the cusp or the tipping point where the human approach to not knowing Is changing and I think we have to seize this opportunity to understand first to understand and then to actually live lives in which we're more honest about our uncertainty and we gain skill in being right.[00:17:45] Joe Krebs: You hit on some topics here in terms of changes and that your study found that we are. Living in, in times that are more uncertain, we are recording this here in March, 2024. And there was one topic that is all over the business world and that is currently AI.And there's probably a lot of uncertainty about this topic right now. What kind of I, just while you were talking, I was like there was the uncertainty about what is going to happen about AI, right? We don't know, right? I think we can say that, but then also saying, I don't know, which is, I think is a positive thing, right?Based on your explanation. Isn't it also the danger that AI did that answer might even be less acceptable because we should know now, right? Because there is AI, we can ask AI. And I do say that obviously in a more provocative way here. What's your, do you have any advice for people that are possibly thinking that the uncertain times ahead of them because of AI, how to deal with a situation like that based on your research a profession that might, everybody might be talking about, AI is going to replace that or reduce that or have an impact on them, makes them, makes people a learner again Give any advice.[00:19:07] Maggie Jackson: Yeah, I think that it's a really important front and center. It's it. This AI has gone from a back burner issue, a kind of specialist niche issue to something that's in every workplace. And it's in our lives, whether or not we're. Getting a a mammogram as a woman, or we're driving down the road in a semi autonomous car that isn't even self driving yet.We, AI is infused, woven into our days, and we should wake up to its implications. I think there are two levels to your question. One is the individual response to technology that's becoming more infused with data. With AI and it's really important, I believe, to become better thinkers in a world in which we will be working more alongside and maybe under the thumb of or, AI.So AI generated responses will be very tempting to accept, but we have to remain extraordinarily vigilant. And when we can way we can do so is through allowing ourselves to be better thinkers. Uncertainty strengthens thinking, whether it's the surgeon deliberating the operium. Operating room, or the creative product designer who wants to use a little and then gain access to a world of not knowing in so many ways.Uncertainty strengthens our thinking, and that's couldn't be more crucial today. So that's our individual response. And I would say as well that. Putting down, putting away, gaining distance, gaining perspectives on our devices is also important to this goal of being humans because one of the most on an, again, as an, on a personal individual basis, we as humans have fallen into the trap of continuing to use outdated language revolving around The brain, the mind, no neuroscientist would agree with the language that the public uses about uploading, downloading memories or programming ourselves.The brain is not a deficient computer and that's really important to teach our children and to keep in mind. Actually, the mind is everything. It's an organic, networked, constantly evolving and highly, a process in itself. And that's why AI is actually trying to emulate this work. We do ourselves a huge disservice by thinking of the mind as the machine, but then on the actual, to finally answer your point about AI in our society.I did a deep dive into uncertainty in AI, and I'm really heartened by a new movement by some of AI's top top leaders. The world class leaders in AI are actually working feverishly to inject uncertainty in robots and models. Now, what does that mean in a nutshell? Basically, all of AI has been created since the 1950s with one.definition of intelligence, that in an intelligent being achieves its goals, no matter the cost. That's a very rational view of intelligence. What we have now, to put it really briefly, our AI it models and robots that achieve a goal with less and less human input now by allowing using the same sort of probabilistic reasoning to have AI that can be unsure in its aims, not just unsure about what to do if a human's in its path or unsure as in how does it deal with the noise and its data?That's how AI operates in the world. But now to have it unsure in its aims. So the robot, AI housekeeper will, instead of just being programmed or designed to fetch you a coffee based on the cheapest way or the fastest way or whoever that, whatever the designer originated that it w it's now teachable.It's stoppable. I beta tested a AI robot arm that could be used for people with handicaps or in manufacturing. This robot arm. Would actually really, inflate these armbands as it was drawing a line, a welding sort of thing across a table. It would ask me where I wanted the line to be, how close, etc.It was working with me in a way that traditional classic AI. Cannot do. And the second most important thing about uncertain AI, I call it the rise of the I don't know robot is that it's more transparent. So when people are working with medical models to find the new protein to deal with the new antigen or antibody, they can actually see AI that will take multiple paths toward a solution.Rather than one path as in the classic rationalist view, and they also can the robots behavior is more transparent. So it's actually more intelligent to users, studies show. So I find this incredibly heartening and, when and if this comes to a store near you we should be. We should be, as humans, really interested in the idea that, it's very ironic, uncertainty in AI can actually allow us controllability, to be control, to control the robot, to work with the robot through AI.And the last point I'll make about that is that a rise of uncertainty as a way of re imagining AI It proves to me how just as I mentioned at the beginning uncertainty is being seen as a strength of mind in medicine. It's now being now there are efforts to have doctors trained in tolerating uncertainty, admitting it, expressing it in order to avoid burnout and over testing in education.Uncertainty is being seen as a really important skill to equip children and young adults so that they are more resilient. There are actually interventions going on with this. It, in the business world, uncertain people are waking up to uncertainty. The ambivalent CEO that I mentioned, and now in AI, this is a yet another way in which we are finally understanding that an island of unbending knowledge is a very. weak place to be when it comes to an unpredictable world, if you and I, [00:25:51] Joe Krebs: There's a lot to digest. Maggie there is so much, there's so much wealth of information. And I feel like listeners will get an idea of what kind of wealth of information is in the book, Uncertain that is available now.To the end of our conversation sorry, I put you here on the spot in terms of self reflection on your book. Was there anything you approached while writing the book where you learned something about uncertainty, the book writing itself, yourself? as the author. Is there anything, maybe you have a story where you was like, I use, you learn something in the writing process.I don't know. I haven't asked you how long was the writing process or overall, when did you start? And when did it?[00:26:33] Maggie Jackson: Oh, it took a number of years. I was a little, it was a little bit of an off and on process, but it took a number of years as you can see from the many footnotes and the adventures I had in I was out in the field.It wasn't just, book research in the operating rooms, in the AI labs, in the homeless shelters, activist campaigns. I really had a lot of adventures and there were also a lot of surprises. I learned so much about other ways of knowledge and how expecting the world to be predictable, which is a little bit how, people operate, we really do sometimes live our lives as if we hope, pray, think, assume that life will be predictable. And the more you can dismantle that assumption. The more you're actually liberated because you are again, agile, you are able to be open to life's changes. So I find that uncertainty, the more I let it in, the more I operate that way, the more I'm not indecisive of the point of inaction, but I am harnessing uncertainty to go forward in a better way.The more I can do that, the more I feel stronger and more able. And in fact, studies show that to be the case, that when we can dismantle the fear, it's the fear of the unknown that holds us back, not the unknown itself. So I find that this has helped me not only in relationships with other people.It's helped me in my writing where the frustration of a long process of figuring something out is not to me now a weakness or a deficiency. But actually a strength and just part of a natural part of the process of going deep and understanding the change. So I feel as though I'm having more fun in life.[00:28:26] Joe Krebs: Yeah. And there are some people and you can see those are the fun people, right? It's who are naturally navigating that way through life and versus the alternative. Yeah. Maggie, I want to thank you so much for coming on Agile FM. I have the book link. I have references how people can get in touch with your work with your books in touch with you on the show page on agile. fm. I want to thank you for spending some time here with the Agile FM listeners and good luck to you with the book launch and everything that is associated with all of those things in the coming months. [00:29:02] Maggie Jackson: Oh, thank you so much. It was a pleasure. Great conversation.
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  • 149: Coco Decrouppe
    You can grab Coco’s book: The Full Potential Relationship - The Soccer Field Method®Transcript: Agile F M Radio for the Agile Community. [00:00:07] Joe Krebs: Thank you for tuning in to another episode of Agile FM. Today, I'm here with Coco Decrouppé, um, and she is an author, a team trainer, a top 15 leadership coach. She's a blogger, she is, and this is what we want to talk about here today, the creator of the Soccer Field Method, where she also wrote a book about.The book is full title is The Full Potential Relationship and the Soccer Field Method. Welcome to the podcast. [00:00:36] Coco Decrouppé: Thank you, Joe. I'm very excited to be here. I'm looking forward to the conversation and I'm honored that you asked me. [00:00:43] Joe Krebs: Wonderful. And this book which we, I just mentioned the full potential relationship, the soccer field method.I was immediately drawn to it as I'm a huge soccer fan myself, but soccer is not, or knowledge about soccer is really not important when reading or approaching the book or the method itself. And I think that's a correct statement, right? [00:01:03] Coco Decrouppé: Absolutely. Absolutely. It's not needed. [00:01:06] Joe Krebs: Awesome.Yeah. So the book actually is a grouped into three areas and I want to touch on those if possible with you. Today, the first one is the relationship with yourself because it is about the full potential relationship, the book. The second one is the relationship with another. And the third one is the relationship with the team.And that relates to listeners on the Agile FM podcast. Now I do have to say your background is not in Agile, but I believe there is. A lot of things the agile community can take away from from your writing. If that's okay with you, I would just start diving into the first part. [00:01:43] Coco Decrouppé: Yes, please. .[00:01:44] Joe Krebs: , the first thing I noticed when I read the book was like the biggest chunk, just in terms of material of your book is actually in the first part about yourself, like just in terms of pages really focusing on. On the first one. So we often work in agile teams. But when we're looking at individuals within the team, how could this the soccer field method in particular be relevant for an individual team member, for example, like a software engineer or a leader or a coach that you do.You do coach to coaches, right? And in this case, it would be an agile coach. How would this technique and what's so special about your soccer field method? In looking at a soccer field itself how is this important for an individual on a team? How could this be helpful? [00:02:32] Coco Decrouppé: Yeah, very good question.Very important question I feel. So the soccer field really is an analogy for a relationship, and we all have relationships. in private and business life. So it doesn't matter what your role is. It's not important what you're in, what industry you're in. We all have relationships. And we really need only two lines of the field.It's the middle line that separates us and the outer line that connects us again. And one challenge for leaders is the question, when do I need to be with my team? And when do I, when is it okay to set boundaries for myself? And that is a solution. approach to deal with this question on a daily basis in difficult situations.And the first step is the self leadership. So we have the two lines, the middle line, the outer line, and we have the two spaces. You have your side of the field. I have my side of the field. And this is where we can show up a hundred percent authentically with our skills, with everything we are. And our world is fast.There are lots of expectations, no matter what your role is. And we tend to think a lot outside of us. instead of thinking for ourselves, what can I actually control? And this is what the self leadership stands for. How do I step back, calm myself down and reflect on what is actually needed? What are my responsibilities actually?What are my values? What are my thoughts? What are my emotions? Even this goes deep here. So a lot about emotional intelligence, but it's a lot about stepping back. And we need this in every role, especially when we talk about transformation, change, all these things that cause Lots of confusion and stress for people.[00:04:34] Joe Krebs: This is also like related to how I show up in the morning for work. What I take away from work, like very, like, selfishly speaking, right? It sounds like it's all about me at this point, right? So this is the part of your method is all about me. Is that a fair statement? [00:04:51] Coco Decrouppé: Yes. It has a lot to do with the mindset and how you show up because every team Or every team member leads the team with their mindset.So it's very important to be aware of how we show up and this is also the power that we have. I don't like calling it selfish. Like, yeah, it's a very important word actually and how we phrase that. I call it more self determined. to really pay attention that we do need oxygen. First, we need to step back, we need to calm ourselves down and pay attention to our needs.First, before we then go and help other people and strengthen the team and support each other.[00:05:35] Joe Krebs: Yeah. So from a methods perspective, let's say I'm a software engineer. Is that you just mentioned like the emotions, right. How I would show up, but also from a self determined in terms of learning, right? So I come to work, possibly want to improve how I want to be as a professional within my team.Right. But what do I want? How do I grow? Does that also fall into my side of the soccer field. [00:06:03] Coco Decrouppé: Absolutely, that we understand what do I need also in working together, what is important to me. Sometimes I need more details from a person. Sometimes I need less details for a person, for example, and we need to communicate our needs in order to work together.And then there is what comes natural to us, right? Some are more technical oriented and others have an easier time in creating and building relationships, building trust. [00:06:34] Joe Krebs: Yeah. [00:06:35] Coco Decrouppé: And whatever comes natural to us, we always have to outbalance the other side. We also have to focus on the other thing.So when the technical side comes easy, we also need to pay attention. How do we actually connect? How do we communicate? So like we stayed in the beginning, we have the midline that separates us and the outer line that connects us. For some people, it's easier to set the boundary and be more intro, they're more introverts possibly.And for others, it's easy to connect. So we need both lines and both skills. In order to really work together. [00:07:10] Joe Krebs: So even within my own field of the soccer field, I still have different segments, right, in terms of learning, how I possibly open up to other people, communication, collaboration what are my skills and capabilities?So we can look also inside the team a little bit of an agile team, but if we're looking a little bit more on the The outside of the team that could be leaders stakeholders, people that are interacting with the team. And I know you do work a lot with leaders and provide leadership workshops with your method.What's, what could, do you have an example for a leader, like in that own segment within your own part of the soccer field and that individual said, like, and what kind of things would a leader be watching out for interacting with others? [00:08:01] Coco Decrouppé: . So this, whoever's looking at the field gets. Their side of the field, so everybody has , the self leadership. Right. That is step one. Step two is the conversational part of it, and it's not important really. Who's on the other side? That could be a client. Could be a customer. Customer, it could be a team member, it could be a family member even.This is a space in the middle that we haven't talked about now, but this is a space in the middle where we communicate. And connect again and have simple methods to help us structure our conversations and get our point across, but also listen to what the other person needs. It's a dialogue.It's a dialogue. Right? [00:08:45] Joe Krebs: Yeah. [00:08:46] Coco Decrouppé: And learning how to do that is, is simple, but it does take a little bit of time and effort to do that. Since this method always starts with the self leadership, I want to first of all, calm myself down and understand what do I actually want from the other side without crossing that boundary, respecting that boundary.And once I have identified on the self leadership, what I actually want and what my expectations are from the other side, it's much easier to communicate. But often I hear leaders who Find themselves in a challenge where they don't know why their team doesn't react. That they themselves are not. clear on what they actually expect on the self leadership level from the other person. Yeah. So we need to be clear first what we want also from the other side and then communicate it in a solution oriented way. [00:09:41] Joe Krebs: Interesting. So there's, so what's, what I think is interesting about this method is a few pieces to it is obviously is it's universally applicable, right, to leaders, as you said.The interaction with clients or even family. This is not limited, obviously, to anything in the agile space, but it also applies very well to the agile space. I found myself while going through the material. You just mentioned that there is. The other side of the field. So far, we have just spoken about the one side of the field, our own, and what goes into that.Let's explore the other side a little bit. What I like about the soccer field method, not only that I am interested in the sport myself, is that I do like metaphors of learning, right? So I feel like the technique, the method you're introducing is very easy for everyone to capture, and I'm pretty sure everybody has seen the soccer field.And how it works. Now, what's interesting in your technique is when you look at a soccer field, there's usually a circle in the center of the field. For you, it's a heart. Why? What does the heart represent? It's wonderful visual there. [00:10:51] Coco Decrouppé: Yeah, [00:10:51] Joe Krebs: do these two sides of the field connect and why is there a heart?[00:10:55] Coco Decrouppé: Yeah, I wanted to make it cheesy. So for the yeah, so it all starts, like you said, with the self leadership, your side of the field and the goal where we have our calm place, so we know how to calm ourselves down. And then we step forward to communicate in the middle of the field where I call it the heart of communication, which is the heart of communication.It stands for a human way of communicating on an eye to eye level, which is a very human need. And we understand, we communicate directly and transparently. It doesn't matter if the other person knows the method or not, we are responsible and at the same time, it's our power that we come in a certain mindset and communicate whatever we think is needed in combination with the listening skills.So this is the glue of the method, the heart of communication and communication itself. It's the glue to relationships and teams and organizations. We need communication to connect. [00:12:04] Joe Krebs: Right. And that is particularly like the one to one kind of communication, right, between two individuals. And something like that I could easily foresee in an agile team being very important, not only as a team level, but one on one in something we often do.It's called pair programming. Why is that so important? Like in pair programming, there would be two individuals. Sharing a keyboard, but sitting next to each other in a space and communicating a lot about what they're seeing in front of them and working collaboratively together. Why is that so important in your method that it gets its own space?Not only the individual, not only the team, but there's this one on one. [00:12:45] Coco Decrouppé: Yeah. I actually think it's both really important right there on an individual level one on one, but also on a team level, there's a lot of impact that we can have when we look at team meetings, and you're in a leadership position.And the one on one is so important because we need to talk about how we can work together. what you need from the other person. We feel like it's logical to me. So it should be logical to the other person. That's not the case. And I feel like I've said it already once, but the other person for some reason did not hear it.So we need to repeat and really sit down, not only what we were, but also how we work together. And it's always easier to start and, play the ball to the other side first and say, okay, what do you need for us? In order for us to work better together, what do you need? And may I share what I feel will be best, what I need from my perspective. So we really share both sides. [00:13:44] Joe Krebs: Right. And that is in software engineering, super important. There's so much ambiguity, so many misunderstandings, somebody explains it in a certain way, and I might still be listening to it. But I might just totally understand it in a very different way than the sender has sent me.The message might come across very different, like the telephone game very typical. Yeah. So why the heart beside cheesy, like it is the heart of communication? [00:14:14] Coco Decrouppé: Yeah, it is the heart because it stands for the human conversation. It's really, I feel like it needs more heart in business. We need to have that heart to heart conversations.There are conversations we need to have as a leader when you need to let somebody go. There are difficult conversations all the time. And we might really like the person and want to keep the person on the team, but we don't see the performance. So we can have a transparent conversation or see, I really value our relationship.And for this position, I need a certain kind of skill set that I don't see right now. So we can be more transparent, a lot more transparent, actually, to build trust, even in these kind of conversations. And it has a lot to do with a respectful frame to really approach each other. No matter what our backgrounds are, our experiences are, our culture is, right, really and [00:15:12] Joe Krebs: even the spoken languages might be different.Right. So absolutely. [00:15:15] Coco Decrouppé: Yeah. [00:15:15] Joe Krebs: So much to consider. Now, taking this to the next level in our conversation just notice that it is already complex. Two people to communicate and, having a shared understanding. Now, if you're taking this to a team level, the complexity increases even more.So that would be the relationship with the team. So we're still having our own side. We're still having the one on one we're still having the heart, but now there's an additional complexity coming in when. When we have a relationship with the team what's in your method that, where you address this kind of complexity when you're working in teams and how does that look like?[00:15:57] Coco Decrouppé: Yeah. So it basically multiplies by the number of. people on the team, right? Because everybody comes with their backpack, emotional backpack. And it's like when you think of a hurricane, some transformation, sometimes transformation or change can feel like very confusing. And we want to help people, or this is what I do too, in teams or individual, with individuals, I help them go to that eye of the hurricane, basically, to be in the calm, while there's a lot happening on the outside.And you can Make big decisions and do a lot, but on the inside, I invite you to feel calm and know how to step back. That's the same thing for the team, like, because it becomes just more intense with more people, whoever looks at the model and method always gets the one side of the field. And with the team, we have like in the image, we have more people on the other side, not one individual, but more people.So it becomes more a 3D like skyscrapers, but that everybody comes with 100 percent field and with their emotions and expectations. And there is crucial to really respect the boundary in the middle, because we tend to either go on the other side and want to do. Work for others because they don't get it done or we allow them to come on our side and we are completely exhausted at the end of the day or end of the week because we let basically everybody in so it's important to. understand that in order to have that balance, it's okay to set the boundary in the middle. It's okay to say no sometimes. That's a difficult one for people. It will help us to not take things too personal. We respect that boundary and we leave whatever they say or do or not to on the other side where they are.And then we come to the conversational part in the middle where we do need to talk about things and about our goal. So the balance again between the self leadership, staying calm on your side, knowing what is yours, what is it not. And the balance to holding the outer line for the team. So reminding them like a soccer coach or any team coach, we, we come together and you remind them, this is our goal, this is our strategy.They are the experts, but still we need to be reminded that we are playing on the same field. So the leader needs to know, and everybody on the team really, how to step back, calm down, but also connect through communication in the middle to strengthen the outer line and the team and the organization.[00:18:50] Joe Krebs: Yeah, this is awesome. So boundary management is important. The lines are there for a reason. In a field, I think like in every sport, right? We we see now there is just one example for everybody listening to this. Why this is not, you don't need necessarily soccer skills to participate in any of your workshops.And here's one there is a situation I just want to take that as an example here with you. It's never really happening in, in the actual game. But there is a chance that somebody might swap shoes or switch shoes, with another and that's just like an interesting metaphor as well. I think we often use walk in my shoes kind of concept.That is where we're actually swapping the shoes I would assume. Can you just give a little detail on what that means just for listeners to see that? This is not fully soccer. This is obviously [00:19:37] Coco Decrouppé: yeah, it is a metaphor and like, it's not about playing against each other. The soccer field method is all about playing with each other and becoming a stronger team.So swapping the shoes is I think that's a tricky one for people because We tend, and it's a beautiful thing too. We tend to think for other people and feel for other people. , some of us Right. Others have a more difficult time. And it's great to understand what is happening on the other side and what a person feels on the other side, but that doesn't necessarily mean that I have to feel the same thing.. So I can be at the calm place in the goal and still create the space for the other person to express how they feel. or what their challenges are. And because I'm not confused with them, I'm not overwhelmed with them, but I'm there holding the space, I'm able to guide them and accompany them through the process of reaching a goal and moving forward. So I think stepping in each other's shoes can be helpful as long as I stay on my side emotionally. It's, I mean, very important to listen what the other person is going through. And that way. [00:20:57] Joe Krebs: Yes, it's an awesome technique. Now, this is audio recording only, so people can't really see that. A lot of smiling faces. There's a lot of cards there is, as you can imagine is lots of tools that are being shared within the classroom. Lots of in person kind of delivery and you're taking this metaphor, obviously into the workshop itself. What is the like the common feedback from people that exit your course?So what is it you often hear, like, just like a quick like maybe what's a common theme, like just in terms of self reflection when they give you an evaluation or if they follow up with you? What do you hear? I know it's positive because I see smiling faces everywhere. [00:21:41] Coco Decrouppé: So yeah, the workshops are very interactive. I believe in a light atmosphere and spirits because we're talking about serious deep complex topics. And yes, of course, there's soccer field is a big part of it. But it's also one card of a 26 cards toolbox for leaders that are created. And it's a fun way and gives us just topics to discuss that are very practical for people.So the methods they use in the workshop is like, are like Lego serious play, very interactive, colorful, playful approaches to talk about this serious topics. And we do start with clarifying what is impactful leadership? What is it not? And I invite everybody to share their experiences. And by doing that, people find themselves. Hearing about other situations that they didn't even think of. And they're very personal stories. So we connect right away and that makes, creates a very trusting mindset and atmosphere right from the beginning. And therefore I believe, because it's a very human approach people come with their personalities and we invite everyone to be authentic, obviously, and the combination with my tools, in the end people leave.Thankfully, very fired and what I hear a lot is that they knew about self leadership, but now they understand why it is so important in order to lead an impactful team. And this is really also my main motivation because I feel that we don't talk enough about the self leadership and in the end we are by slowing down, we are quicker at our goals.[00:23:32] Joe Krebs: Yeah Coco, this is this is awesome. And I want to thank you for spending some time here with the listeners of Agile FM. You do more than soccer field method training courses. Obviously I wanted to connect the technique to the agile community. Also doing a lot of training and coaching.In other areas. I wanted to use the soccer field method as a way to connecting the agile community to maybe a new tool in the toolkit to explore. And yeah, and then for everybody who is interested in your workshops, they can also find us on the show page obviously, but also at cocodecrouppe.com.Everything will be there. So I want to say thank you and good luck with the soccer field method. [00:24:14] Coco Decrouppé: Thank you very much, Joe. Thank you for having me.
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