Badass Agile

I like universal, timeless wisdom. One of the things I’ve come to learn is that often, we must be the opposite of what we want in order to get it. So in order to make Agile bigger and better, we must focus on keeping it simpler.

Being a hero doesn’t mean going crazy with tools and processes – sometimes less is more.

As a learning living leader, one of the first things that you need to sort out is how to be quiet and listen. How to offer yourself as a broker of solutions, not as a dictator, or an originator of solutions. As a leader, you are there to help people find their own best.  If they need support in difficult and anxious times, you are there. If they need help, resources – and they have the courage to ask for them – your job is to answer the call. If they’re banging their heads against the wall, over the same problem over and over, your job is to knock down the walls and find ways to help them break through.

A cross-functional teem doesn’t require that everyone has technical skill. Simply being available to help is the only required trait – but it also requires that people know how to ask for help. Learn more about how in this episode.

Do you want the challenge? When things get tough…do you rise to the occasion, or do you ask to make things easier? Scrum teaches us that we have options in changing conditions – to ask for help, to change the scope or modify MVP. When you think about it, that’s another way of saying that we never, ever make excuses or fail the mission.

Looking for a formula to be successful with Agile? Start with intention. Define the problem. – What does success look like? What experiment might work and what are the three things we can do today to move us closer to success? execute, take action, fail. Repeat. That’s your formula.

With the toll, risk, and sacrifice of a global health crisis, we’re learning new things every day. Wouldn’t it be a shame if we did what we’ve always done – and forgotten them as soon as this is over? What’s the right way to handle our lessons learned? Lessons have to be studied – properly documented, visited often, and put into practice – until you can truly say ‘you’ve got this’. We frequently hear that those “who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it”. Let’s remember in the days of COVID-19 that we are constantly learning about ourselves, each other, and the world around us. Let us not forgot those lessons by committing to learning from them. Likewise, in Scrum, we can’t just collect feedback and surveys, we owe it to our teams and clients to observe, document, and communicate the education we have earned through adversity.

This is our time. Do you feel the call to lead? We want to create an uncommon tribe that not only adapts and assists, but leads the way. Let us not be at the mercy of the changing times, but architects in our emergence from them. Our community needs to know the way. Our clients need to know the way. When times are uncertain, be certainty. Stay tuned to this podcast, along with my twitter (@badass_agile) and instagram (@badassagile) for your invitation to be part of something special.

The kind of certainty people really want can’t be had with more process, more documentation, more planning. It comes from a leader who is in control of their actions.  Who impacts the world, rather than letting it move them. It should come from you.

If you have teams under your care, and you are looking to improve so you can show up for THEM…here are the areas you should integrate into your daily practice and improvement. -Acting With Intention -Awareness and Attention -Selflessness and Service -Outcome Independence (Freedom from Attachments) -Committed Practice and Patience

We all used to want to ‘be the boss’…king of the hill. But leadership has changed radically. It requires something completely different – in fact, it would seem to be a complete contradiction that ‘the boss’ doesn’t actually get to boss anyone around. A leader must lead without imposing their will instead.

Leaders are traditionally considered to be the ones who set and enforce rules, or ‘standards’. Yet, if we are being asked to innovate, and to fail forward fast, are rules the right construct to motivate and guide collective action to a common goal? It could be argued that rules themselves create fertile ground for agile resistance.  Find out more in this episode!

What are your wasteful things?  Remember that productivity is not about jamming more stuff into a limited time window, but rather stripping away the things that distract you and muddy your attention and focus. This week, commit to examining your work.  Monitor how you spend your time.  You might be surprised how much you can reclaim for higher-value things.

What is negativity doing to your team room, and your leadership? Time for a spot check….are you making this problem better, or worse? Do you engage in the negative talk, both in your mind, and in the public domain? Do you spread complaining and excuse making to others? If so, try redirecting your thoughts to solutions. Learn more in this week’s episode!

Sometimes, its good to step away. We tend to forget that other people are dying to lead too. The silence, or deference of others may be due to you…taking up too much leader space. Rotating chairs are all well and good, but its actually more fun to just not show up once in a while, with no warning, as it forces others to step-up with no prep-up. It’s exactly the kind of challenge that people are looking for.

Nothing invokes the image of a badass like a special operator. In 2014, this guest changed the course of my life, and set me on a path that sparked my career and personal trajectory, which included launching this show in 2017. Mark Divine is a retired US Navy SEAL and owner of SEALFIT.  He is the author of several bestselling books, including “Unbeatable Mind”, “Way of The SEAL”, and on March 2, 2020, will release his latest title, “Staring Down the Wolf: 7 Leadership Commitments That Forge Elite Teams”.  In this week’s episode, you’ll hear Mark and I talk about: how leaders forge and refine themselves through self-mastery how self-awareness, courage and failure interact why its so important to maximize the lessons gleaned from failure (and why playing it ‘safe’ won’t lead to growth) I really enjoyed this book, and I know you’ll love getting a glimpse into how truly high-performing organizations build elite teams.  Pre-order the book here: https://staringdownthewolf.com/pre-order-2 You can also check out Mark’s work at:https://www.unbeatablemind.comhttps://www.sealfit.com Hope you get tons of value out of it!

As always, start with the willing. Find people who already have an interest in agility, in change. Help people who already ‘get it’ to make tiny increments of change. Build your own dream team by adding value around the organization wherever you can – a minimally invasive, grassroots campaign. Go do some agile ‘stuff’ wherever you stand; bottom up. Create an inspirational culture – and be vigilant about keeping negativity out.

[et_pb_section admin_label=”section”] [et_pb_row admin_label=”row”] [et_pb_column type=”4_4″][et_pb_text admin_label=”Text”] Do you live life with your limiter on?  Is your output artificially capped?  Do you resist “GO!”?  Do you rely on permission? If you knew that it was your failure to leap that inhibits your output, your creativity, would you be willing to change?  And yet most of us not only fail to leap, but also convince themselves that waiting – waiting for perfection, waiting for permission – makes you safer. Examine that belief carefully.  If you flip through our history, those who GO in spite of feeling less than ready, less than authorized…are the ones we remember for changing the game. Don’t inhibit yourself.  Take your limiters off.  It’s scary.  It’s fast, but it’s fun. [/et_pb_text][/et_pb_column] [/et_pb_row] [/et_pb_section]

As I’ve launched the new Badass Agile leadership learning experience, I had something I wanted to ramble about the partisan politics and binary thinking around modern education and certification. Be cautious of absolutes.  There is value in all education (if not necessarily certification), but there is a limit to how much you should attend, read, or memorize about any field of endeavour before we get out there and witness.  Live through some real challenges, develop and test your hypotheses. To overwhelm yourself with knowledge is to cloud and confuse the mind with too many competing products and their promises; shouting at you from every side.  Knowledge must be a stripping away of uncertainty and ignorance, not a warehousing of ‘how-to’s; and ‘just by this’.

This year, let’s keep it simple. As frameworks and tools pile up, it’s helpful to return once again to fundamentals. To clear the space, to question our established rules, and look for our own sources of waste. Let’s take some simple practices from the fundamental badass agile way and make sure we are applying them to our individual and team practice.

A lot of people talk about improving, but very few people are willing to do the work it takes to actually improve. No matter how much they may say they want change, when faced with actual change….some people just aren’t ready. Change is hard.  Even a small commitment is better than waiting until you’re 100% ready…but until your reason is strong enough, you won’t be ready to take the plunge.  And that’s ok.  Focus on those who are ready NOW.

If you are struggling to do anything consistently, you could be biting off too much. The secret is to create ANY consistent habit, and then increase the scope and ambition once it’s habitualized.

What happens if you summon all of your courage and creativity to put something new, authentic and valuable into the world….and nobody comes? Better to wait for those who are naturally magnetized to your voice than it is to change your offering to suit a wider public.

Creativity is fundamental to agility.  Problem solving blockers, interpersonal conflict, adapting and scaling agile, and general innovation demand that we tap into our deepest well of creativity. But how can you tap into this underused and unfairly labelled ‘artsy’ skill?  Three things will help. 1.  Be aware.  Find a way to pay attention, focus, notice.  Be in silence and lock out distractions so you can hear what your creative brain is saying. 2.  Surround yourself with inspiration.  It’s great to borrow passion AND ideas from others.  Adding your own unique splash to it is still a form of creativity. 3.  Win.   Victory creates the confidence, freedom, and positivity that is fertile ground for creative thought.  Find something you are good at and you find fulfilling and do it as often as you can. Don’t forget – creativity is lost if you don’t record it so set up your life to easily capture it when it happens…and don’t forget to groom your catalog every once in a while!

If the sole motivation is efficiency, and the means create unhappy people or lower quality…it still won’t be faster, even if it’s faster. You’ll lose people, you’ll lose fans, you’ll lose time – fixing broken product and broken teams.

You’ve been doing daily lessons learned or silver linings in your journal, right? If you have, I’ll show you the next step in the brainstorming process – a periodic grooming of you best ideas for personal and team improvement.  I’ll go through a small sample of notes from my journal that, without a grooming/mining habit, I probably would have completely forgotten about.

It’s a new year…but don’t make resolutions.  When was the last time that worked anyway? Instead, use the occasion to reflect on your existing vision and service statements (you DO have one of those, right?) and tweak it to reflect your path for the upcoming year.  Don’t expect massive change, but rather, an update to keep you pointed in directions that build on the previous year’s successes, and move you toward the things that you are passionate about and can demonstrative unmatched value in. If you want to stay accountable, share your updated vision at [email protected]…or post it in our new Facebook group! https://www.facebook.com/groups/badasslistenerlounge/ Happy New Year!

Commitments with a resounding and well-communicated ‘why’ have the best chance of getting done well. That ‘why’ should not be limited to the ‘…so I can’ element of a story headline. A business value statement allows you to more clearly articulate why the business should invest in this story, feature or outcome NEXT. It also allows various stakeholders (business and technical) to describe rationale for prioritizing this item that may not be obvious to the product owner – technical dependencies, regulatory or compliance demands, etc.

At the core of Scrum is the assumption that teams need lightweight mechanisms to assist people in sizing, making, tracking and keeping commitments.  From the user story, which communicates why we’re building something, story splitting and short delivery cycles to keep promises small and victories visible; to the sprint plan, which details who will do what and when, through the daily standup, whose structure provides a safe means to communicate wins and challenges – all are designed to simplify and habitualize what humans in small teams seem to struggle with most….accountability. in this episode, we’ll discuss how right-sizing commitments based on the team’s current level of excellence, along with accountability partnerships, can help make these practices even better.

What it means when you get too many rapid-fire questions when training a new team – especially if those questions appear to question Agile or seem unduly negative or fearful.

If you lead agile teams, your attitudes and beliefs about work, delivery and teams matter.  In this episode, we talk about 4 such mindsets: Opposition is Good You Can’t Control Chaos The Sooner You React The Better I want the challenge! The key to becoming more effective is to put these into practice.  Challenge yourself to reflect on and then live at least one of these values this week.  As they become habitual, take on more! I’d also like to announce that I’m looking to expand Badass Agile with more chapters in 2020.  If you think you might be interested in joining or leading a chapter in the following markets: -New York NY -Boston, MA -Washington DC -San Francisco CA -Dallas/Fort Worth TX Please reach out to me at [email protected] and I’ll send you more information.

Self-limiting beliefs, or ‘the stories you tell yourself’ can derail your progress and effectiveness as a teacher, coach and influencer. The trick is…they’re hard to recognize and repair.  They have a tendency to play in the background.  Spawned from early or subconscious roots, they live in our blind spots where we can’t see them easily. In this episode I discuss why they matter, and how to locate them, bring them to the fore, and begin to dismantle them – which frees you to manifest your vision and outcomes.

This week, I answer an email from a reader who is launching his second career, hoping to break into the world of Agile, Scrum, and training. In the answer, I discuss the things you can do to stand out from the crowd when you have little or no experience or training/certification to help support your suitability for a job or opportunity. Remember, you can reach out at [email protected] if you have any questions about career path, coaching, or general agile and leadership practice.

Team is everything.  It doesn’t matter how much technique you’ve got, its all about the way people come together, stretch, reach, dream, and do the impossible. If you’re not part of a high-performing team, you’ve got to SEE it before you can understand it and repeat it.  Reach out to [email protected] if you want to learn more.

Is it better to be knowledgeable, or effective? As recent trends point to a decrease in elite-level post-graduate enrollment; its worth asking if all of this schooling is creating value in such a volatile and fluid business landscape.

In this episode, I discuss a few tips that will help you improve the ‘intangibles’ – the non-technical, non-academic qualities that make for great inspiration and great leadership. Among these – be confident, become a storyteller, and be willing to experiment.

A late night reflection on standing out from the crowd by increasing authenticity and originality…to distinguish oneself from the sameness that permeates our culture so we can serve our agile teams, clients and community and advance the craft.

What’s the one thing you need to get good at in order to stand out above competition?   You need to MOVE…and, you might want to think about getting a swim buddy. Moving means you need to act.  Consistently and courageously. While this sounds intuitive, the most common issue I encounter with teams is a hesitation to move in an uncertain direction.  This is not a team problem, a corporate problem or an agile problem….this is pervasive across our culture.   If you want different results, you have to act. One of the best ways to ratchet up your ability to act is to recruit a swim buddy – someone who not only keeps you accountable, but won’t let you fail It is also a force multiplier to learn how to be an accountability partner to others – see what you learn by allowing others to put their success in your hands

We often describe Delivery as a non-event in the ideal; why not agility itself? Must it really be such a huge enterprise undertaking – especially as we hope to infuse agility into our everyday work and culture? What would happen if we simply moved into our first experiment as the best way of conquering the unknown?

I don’t do a lot of interview shows.  When I do, I want to bring on my friends – People I know personally who are making a real difference. Mike Caron is a fellow Unbeatable Mind student and member, and owner of Get Burly, a US-based team experience company that is about so much more than physical toughness.   He really gets agility; embracing failure and team life…. and he’s making it happen with America’s youth in a very real way. I love when he talks about being “impeccable with your word”.   Potent stuff.  Don’t miss this one!!

Should we hand out trophies to everyone…even when we lose? Or are we better to signal the loss and focus on the learning opportunity? Who do we really help or hurt by calling a loss a victory?

This week, we give pause to think about all of the complexity in the agile space; the overload of books, articles, opinions, and techniques, and how a return to simple fundamentals allows you to see your way clearly in any scenario…without having to fumble through your toolkit or recall rehearsed routines.

Be courageous this week.  Ask for the opportunity.  Speak your truth.  Do the unexpected, the new, the unusual.  When you do, you define your own reality.  You create your own luck.

Ramping up a new team is a difficult time.  Confused and afraid, the early days and weeks are full of hesitation, anxiety, and expectations.  In this state teams can’t perform.  Let’s see how a team naturally evolves when you’re starting from zero.

Do you want your resume to stand out from the stack?  Don’t worry so much about how ‘little’ experience you have.  It’s not about the number of years. Document every experiment that you run, along with the outcome. Shine a light on the ones that worked well – those that created a positive result, and added value; but don’t be afraid to mention the failures too. What you want to demonstrate is that you are constantly leading from where you stand; taking action, rather than staying mired in analysis, and endeavoring rather than accepting the status quo.

If you’ve been a follower for any length of time, you know how much importance I put on being visionary and understanding your purpose. I believe it is at the heart of great leadership – excellent leaders do this well; struggling leaders don’t seem to get the hang of it. But listener James asks “how do you go about finding it”? The answer itself is in the badass way – get focused, get gritty, get humble…and don’t forget to inspect and adapt relentlessly. Listen in to find out more.

Start with the approach that you co-create agility WITH your teams.  Its not something you force or install.   Be the living example of embracing and chasing failure as the best way to improve.  Always treat adoption and ’shifting’ as a never-ending journey….but your coaching engagement itself must have an expiry date so you can focus on creating learners and leaders from within.  Help people get closer to what THEY want before asking them to hit homeruns for the team or the organization.   Maintain a positive mental attitude – especially in the worst of times – because your presence is always contagious.

How Do You Set the Bar High in the culture of hugs and trophies for everyone? Start With Yourself Create Team Creeds Focus on setting progressive and selective goals that move the dial ever forward

The main problem with “Better, Faster, Cheaper” is that everyone can sense ‘cheap’.   When you’re trying to cut corners, you aren’t fooling anyone.  That includes your people, projects and products.