Badass Agile

If you actually want to get more predictable results in projects/product development, you have to work towards ‘Done’. Find out why words like ‘workING’, ‘meetING’, ‘plannING’ and other ING words mask true progress and blockers, and what you can do to change how we talk about progress.

-People often ask “what’s the best way?”. -There is no best way. Your job as a leader is to help teams find their own way. -Creating doctrine is useless -Create habits instead. -Figure out the habits that work for you and your team.-This is true of everything… Definition of done, definition of ready, story content and structure, how to incorporate testing or user interface sprints, etc.

Love the fight. I don’t think it’s true that all life is suffering, like to believe that almost the struggle. And if that’s the case, the sooner you get used to combat, get used to constantly having to deal with new and difficult challenges, the happier you’ll be. If you let the challenges overwhelm you, you start to see them as unfair. The moment you do that, you surrender.

We hear the words Business Agility a lot now – to agilists it probably makes perfect sense but there seems to be a need for better understanding and education. I want to give you some information you can share with your teams and decision makers, and some real-world examples of how and when to apply Agile to Business. Remember that the Principles of Agility Apply equally to non-technical environments Almost any business domain – finance, legal, people, marketing, strategy, support/service – will be able to benefit from focused work, inspecting and adapting, delivering early and often and face-to-face communications. Increasingly, businesses are adapting Agile thinking and practice to non-software, non-technical problems, so avoiding the issue won’t be an option if you want to stay competitive. An Agile leader needs to know how to explain and adapt these principles to traditional business areas.

You will always have haters. Never seek approval. Never hate back. Most hatred comes from deep-seated fear. It’s okay to show compassion and empathy and make bridges. Your skill and power as a leader comes from your ability to stay true to your vision, and never mind what other people think. This skill takes practice, and the truth of this wisdom only becomes apparent with experience and a time. So revisit this episode often

It’s important that leaders, especially in this tribe, get their voice out there. The practice doesn’t grow unless people are contributing opinions through blogs, articles, videos or podcasts. Speaking from experience, there are lots of excuses about why you can’t or shouldn’t start a podcast, but no good reasons. Overcome your beliefs – that there isn’t enough time, you don’t have any good content, and you don’t have the right equipment – so you can get started today.

This episode revisits the concept of ‘Badass Agile’, and distills the badass keys further into a tidy bit of text that, if only some of the words rhymed, we could turn into a hymn… Don’t spend your time learning frameworks, pondering the complexities of agility…..be like Dirty Harry. Be Badass Get Visionary Get Focused Get Flexible (Get Humble) Get Gritty

Does your team really shoot for the moon? Getting ‘scrummy’ isn’t enough. Teams need to find ways to set stretch goals to find out what they’re capable of Try some impossible goals every once in a while Also make a practice of incremental improvements Set competitive goals between teams Set goals OUTSIDE the team

Does Creativity Matter in your Agile Leadership Journey. You bet it does. It is your key to shaping the future for your clients and the agile community. Ill go so far as to say its a secret weapon. Find out Why Think Two Major Areas of Your Agile Leadership – the ‘content’ (ideas, stories) that you create, and the innovation you inspire. Both require reliable creative habits Try the habits and techniques described in this episode to get consistent, frequent, reliable and high-quality creative output

Whether you identify with Agile, Lean or any philosophy of effective workplace design, we still need leaders. We need the qualities that only people of true impact can bring. But there are some prevailing attitudes that might actually hold you and your company back.

Objections are caused by (a very natural) fear of change. Here are the two most common objections: We can’t forego documentation We can’t release to production whenever we want and therefore, Agile just isn’t made for us.

You Don’t Have to be A Chef To Open a Restaurant. Do you have to be a Scrum Master – or an Agile Practitioner – to be in the business of Agility? Don’t be limited by what roles and descriptions the industry has on offer Our industry needs to flex and change – YOU make that happen Look to roles that help spread and normalize Agile in areas that fit Design your Agile life, and start living it

Are you publishing? If not, why not? If you want to have a long-lasting career in Agile- or anything for that matter, you have to stand out. You have to have not only a calling card, but a body of work the demonstrates depth and commitment and wisdom – things of VALUE that you can bring to your client We all say “Agile lets us focus on customer value” – but what massive value do YOU bring to your clients, your teams and your end users?

In this episode, we discuss the importance of getting after it – not so much because earlier is better, but because is an example of a habit in the ‘doing what other’s won’t so you can have what others can’t’ category.

Transformation is a bit of a terrifying word. And yet, it seems to be a popular topic in enterprise agility circles these days. So what’s the problem and how can we approach it properly? Don’t seek total transformation. Create capability and spread it. It will transform as it grows As always, start with a vision – your why Don’t build against a scaling template just yet Create a culture of ‘elite’. Build something special that you have to work to belong to Balance your team Set targets and measure against them Train and Coach continuously Leave your legacy

There are two kinds of Ice breakers – here are some examples of each from the episode: Ice breakers with purpose – questions that force people to think about their personal vision Who Inspires You, And Why? What would you do if you won the lottery? What would you do if you had 1 year to live? Or 1 week? What would you like more of/less of in your life? What do you lose sleep over? For whom are you most grateful? For what are you most grateful? If you could change any thing in the world, what would you change? What is worth fighting for, and when did you last fight for it? What is in your way, or what would it take for you to take action toward your goals? Ice breakers that just break the ice What book or movie changed your life? Why? What is your most prized possession? What’s your best purchase for 100$ or less Who do you wish you had met? What conversational subject makes you lose track of all time? Who inspires you and why?-What’s the hardest you’ve laughed that you can remember? Why?

As you are spreading agile within your organization or to clients, you’re going to be doing a lot of marketing and demonstrating. Something you’ll need to get good at doing quickly and without a script – or even much background – is converting a client vision into a backlog. Being able to go swiftly from idea to vision to prioritized backlog and scratch plan is an innovation enabler Make sure your vision describes value – the what and why – and then simplify it by breaking down into features You can do this for business and technology/product development initiatives

Efficiency is not about Doing More Things. You can work less, but direct your best energies toward IMPORTANT things – the highest priority things – and make a greater impact. You have to make sure your actions are backed by Intention – knowing what you intend to achieve with each action (how do you know if it’s complete? If its done right?) and knowing how each action rolls up to your greater vision/objective. Too often we fail to make time for this and just let the currents of our daily work take us to this meeting or that….whatever others determine we should be involved in. We basically let others decide the course of our day. Not anymore.

In addition to our weekly release, we’re adding a short, unscripted contemplation of whatever is happening this week in Agile – whether its current events, musings on the industry, things I’m experiencing with clients – whatever grabs me. I plan to release these on Wednesdays and Fridays as time permits SO MAKE SURE you’ve subscribed to the Badass Agile podcast in your favourite player. For our first episode, I go a little deeper on Magic Bullets – why keeping things simple is important and why you have to remember that Agile is but a tool in the toolbox.

This is an open letter to all Agile implementers and leaders. Are you trying to fit a square peg into a round hole? I love the Apollo 13 moment, but if you’re not in outer space and your crew isn’t about to die, you have to think more prudently about making square pegs fit into round holes We say Agile is no Magic Bullet, and then proceed to treat it like one Agile is a tool in a toolkit. Your job is to know where and when to properly apply it. Only when applied properly will you have success that you can build on and spread/grow

We are accustomed to prioritizing backlogs – product and sprint – but we may not be as accustomed to prioritizing our day. This technique is often overlooked by teams, and yet how often do we find the day has gotten away from us because we made a choice to work on something that may not have been the highest-value target? The solution is easy and cheap – a pad of index-card sized sticky notes and a sharpie pen In no particular order, write down all your ‘todos’ for the day. It’s ok to include non-project or personal items. Leave at least 1/4 of the card free for new items as the day progresses. Find ONE top priority item and give it 5 dots. Give everything else a 4 or a 3. For things that are unclear, give it 1 dot. Tackle the ONE and ONLY ONE 5-star first. Only after its done can you move to the next-highest item. Find a 4, and make it a 5. You can change priorities any time – just add more dots to move it up higher. This method is incredibly intuitive, forces you to stay focused and finish work, is simple and portable.

How do you ‘perform’? When you have to deliver a performance – whether its a speech in front of an executive, your team or a large crowd, how do you show up? Performance Rituals might be the answer. The right rituals can radically change your effectiveness in meetings, negotiations, presentations or tough conversations Don’t count on your event magically ‘going well’. You have to be prepared….so take care to make scripts, save them, refine them and make them accessible so its easy to use them I’ve included my own for you to use/copy.

A Leader Has to Be Constantly Growing And Moving You need to have a backlog of items for your professional and leader development The areas I recommend are Education and Learning, Community, Professional Contribution, Mindset and Habit Upgrades, and Team Problem Solving You’re the product owner – keep the backlog current and prioritized, and execute every day.

Sooner or later, most leaders need to address emotional control. But how do you control emotions when they are automatic and sub-conscious reactions? Being mercurial, moody, or unpredictable is great for keeping people terrified, but not for building trust, loyalty and performance As a leader, or as anyone looking to build/improve success, you have to know what triggers emotional behaviour and what it costs you The secret is to build a shark tank – a slight delay or barrier between events and your reactions to them

It’s not uncommon to find people feeling very disconnected from their work. Sometimes an individual’s passion and purpose is connected to their work in the team room, and sometimes, it’s not. Sometimes they may not know what their passion and purpose is….we’ve talked about methods for finding and connecting purpose in previous episodes, but is there a quicker, simpler way? Ask your team to Think and Act Like an Owner If this were a startup, and you were funding the initiative, you would be less inclined to do wasteful things. To hesitate, to over-plan. The mindsets and behaviours that Agile demands are the very same ones that startup-style ownership demands. An Owner makes decisions quickly, abhors waste, and acts always in the interest of delighting the customer and igniting their teams….because ultimately these are the most important people an owner has to focus on Encourage your teams often to break free from bad patterns, habits and attitudes by encouraging them to think and act like a true owner would

In North America, our lives are increasingly defined by the amount of stress we can shoulder. The ability to ‘push a little harder’ each year is considered a mark of dedication and achievement – but should it really be that way? Is success really about maximum effort? Tension and anxiety are not only pervasive in our society, they are also lethal. You can see the impacts of stress everywhere on people’s health and happiness In nature, too much or too little of anything throws the system out of balance, and restoring that balance is costly to the health of the system We must learn how much physical, mental and emotional effort is enough, and we must be constantly aware that too much effort is not only wasteful, but dangerous. The most important skill you can teach your teams as a coach is balance – in every aspect of what we do

Agility is surrounded with the expectation that things will happen quickly – teams will ramp up fast, agility will spread quickly and easily, and projects will immediately start delivering value faster. What’s the right mindset to have about speed in Agile practice? As the saying goes, you have so slow down before you can speed up. If you slow down and execute with precision and quality, you will be – and appear – faster than if you hurry through things and create more mistakes Teams need to learn to practice fundamentals to perfection and THEN speed up This mindset also helps ease the panic and overwhelm of getting started, which trips up a lot of new teams, because the prevailing attitude is one of Doing What We Can and Improving As We Learn.

How do legendary performers become legendary? What separates them from the rest of the vastly talented, inspired and hard working people in the world? I believe it’s the habit of constantly moving the goal post forward. You can never rest on what you’ve just done, and you definitely cannot take shortcuts or look for ‘easy’ You have to make a habit of asking the question – how could we get 1-2 percent better next time? You do this at the team and the individual level

Is this the end for the Agile Coach? Have we reached the summit of our useful lives? If Coaching is dead, it is incumbent on all Agile leaders then to find the next thing, the next level of improvement and performance The notion that ‘everyone gets it now, we’re just fine, thanks’ is the same thing as telling a major league baseball team that we’ve seen enough batting practice, and that we don’t need advice on how to improve anymore The coaches job is to continually excel, experiment, and stay on top of new developments and help implement and test them among teams to arrive at a standard that works for a given organization It is also a coaches job to know their customer, their teams, and the unique profiles, learning and communication styles of its members. An ‘Agile’ Agile Coach knows how to navigate conversations across levels of seniority and personality.

What are the most common questions that I get from listeners and clients? In this episode, I address the 10 questions I get most commonly from listeners and clients, including what to do about estimation across multiple teams, how to break through resistant mindsets within the team and the leadership, and how to get more badass in general.

The nature of Scrum is a cycle. Every two weeks feels like a brand new mission. Sometimes, its easy to lose sight of the overall vision and lose our sense of passion and shared purpose. A Sprint Theme, or Vision, can help with that. Use the sprint theme not as a list of work or stories to complete in the next two weeks, but as a commitment to changing the world – what is the most important thing we can achieve in this upcoming increment? It can be stories or features but it also can be improvements, clearing impediments or winning support Make sure the team builds it together – unlike organizational and product visions, a sprint vision is owned by the team, for the team.

One of the badass leadership principles is Ask for Forgiveness, not for Permission. That scares a lot of people. So how do you really integrate that into your badass life and practice? You never want to be reckless or insubordinate, but you definitely want to encourage your teams to own solutions and decisions I believe it is as reckless to hold up product with desire for certainty – sign offs, consensus, approvals Just make sure you have general vision and direction from leadership/product ownership You’ll need to be courageous at first, but it becomes second nature You will have to be prepared to protect your team and back up their decisions.

To fully live Agile values of frequent value delivery, self-organizing teams, continuous improvement, face-to-face communication – WHILE maintaining high standards for design and quality requires something most people don’t have enough of, and it’s one of my favourite topics. Discipline. Everything you learn about Agile, Scrum, and any other framework is designed to do one thing – create and harness disciplined action. To do effective things repeatedly until they become habits, and then to build on those by incorporating more. The fastest way to ensure that you deliver value all day every day is to learn the art of discipline, what it means, how to get more of it, and how to ensure you are always getting stronger and better – with or without your Agile practice and frameworks.

Building a Tribe Requires that You Set a High Bar for Quality. Excellence. Vision. Dedication. Ethos. To do any less is to guarantee the dilution of the tribe’s effectiveness. But how do you find people like that? Start with the Willing. Bring in the people who show the most passion. Passion will allow them to work harder and stay the course during tough times Passion will make it easier for you to trust them Passion decouples performance from external motivators Passion makes for better creativity It’s easy to find passionate people, but the hard part is getting yourself and others to abandon attachment to education, experience, certification, references and other traditional measures of ‘quality’

Leadership has to change in lockstep with changes in society, culture, and values We can’t lead the same way as we did 100 years ago…or even 20 years ago. The core traits of a leader in this age is not to manage and inspect work, but to inspire, set vision, care for and protect people, and to build trust with and within teams

So Your Agile Practice is Broken. Your Centre of Excellence Isn’t Excellent. Your teams are not moving with agility, and your product is not faster, nor cheaper, nor better. This isn’t what we were promised. What Happened? Until you trust people and let them do excellent work that inspires them, the rest of Agile/Scrum won’t bring you any benefit at all. Empowered teams = trusting your people Trusting People means letting them find their passion, letting them set their own targets and measures, letting them create solutions, making them free to fail and motivating people by making them excellent

How do you take the elegance and simplicity of Agile and apply to complex, large scale organizations? Part of the answer is determining if we ‘should’ scale agile – or at least if we should try to make it fit every problem Certain problems don’t lend themselves to iterative or continuous delivery because there’s no sensible way to deliver value partially, or early Sometimes the problem is with organizational culture – agile doesn’t work if we’re impatient, focused on speed of savings, or mistrustful Stay tuned as I work with large scale organizations and share my experiences about what works (and what doesn’t) and why.

If you are starting with an in-flight team, and trying to get them more agile, the easiest place to start is the stand up. It’s the smallest, the most frequent, AND the most important ceremony for moving work forward. Start there, and then build the other practices by gradually introducing backlogs, sprints, planning, and maintenance. You can fold in retrospectives and sprint reviews, Start by aggressively cutting waste – getting an hour down to 15 minutes or less by the end of the week – To do that, you need to know how to own the room. Get in to the meeting room and go first – lead – when running your next meeting, suggest that you set deliverable objectives for the hour Use Working Sessions to set objectives for the sprint, or month, and the week Let teams set objectives democratically; realize you may not get past the first one. Work can be done independently or in the team room at first; but each ‘standup’ must show delivery progress against the week objective At the end of each week, check your progress against the sprint/period goal and then plan for the following week Teach teams to stay focused in the session Use stand ups to keep them focused between sessions Encourage people to find a way, or make a way Don’t wait for permission, and encourage your teams to do the same

There’s only one reason you should listen to this podcast. If you want to learn Agile technique or get opinions on the latest developments…there are so many shows and resources that do that extremely well. But if you’re interested in how the study of Agile mindset can create massive returns not just for the companies you work for, but for the people who live and work in them, how you can bring fulfilment and return autonomy to its rightful place – the hearts and minds of the people you meet and work with every day, then there’s only one place for you. That’s right here on the Badass Agile Podcast. I’m not particularly devoted to Agile itself…knowing that it will probably be replaced at some point I’m more successful at helping people find the things that make them awesome – happy, fulfilled, and figuring out how to get them more of that. When I do, they become better at whetever their job may be, and subsequently add way more value to their company and clients The point is….care about people. It’s simple, it’s sappy, but it works.

As leaders, it is enough to instruct, motivate or even inspire people to meet a list of yearly targets? Or is there a different kind of leader? Someone who breaks through what was previously considered possible? I frequently talk about elite leadership; the idea that there is a special kind of leader, called to make a remarkable difference in their teams, organizations and communities A life of distinction implies you are constantly looking to break the 4-minute mile; to do the impossible; the things everyone says can’t be done. To change the world forever. Strive to raise the bar, to disrupt the status quo. Being a leader of distinction requires tremendous strength and the ability to weather the constant fight. Adopt agile mindsets and habits, and apply them to your daily life. Similarly, seek to break habits that keep you bound to the status quo. Challenge conventional thinking and routines. Teach your teams to examine their habits too, and to break 1 new bad one and integrate one new good one each month.

The word ‘visionary’ is possibly quite overused. Is vision enough to create an elite leader, and to find success in increasingly difficult agile landscapes? Vision, as applied to leaders, implies that their ability to see a clear version of the future is enough to make them worth following It is the desire to serve, to make the world better, that validates the vision The difference is the motive to give, rather than to get

What is Agile anyway? And what does it mean to ‘make an organization Agile? There’s a lot of confusion around the terms – Agile versus Scrum, Philosophy versus Practices Agile consists of 12 Principles – and we’ve gotten away from most of them. Agile itself doesn’t prescribe any practices ,and we should be careful around anything that does. We need to focus on fundamentals. To make Agile work for our customers, we have to honour first the promise to make software delivery better for teams, clients and products.

We fear right action because of the consequences imposed by those who are truly fearful. There is a courage deficit in society, especially in business. and if you want to stand out like a badass, you need courage. Why is courage important What is courage – action in the face of fear What is the source of the fear – its fear of bodily harm, but that has evolved to more abstract fears like social anxiety, fear of failure etc How do you become more courageous Your reason for doing everything matters more than anything You have to control your breathing. Your breath is a reflection of your internal state, but your breath also reflects your internal state. If you can ship oxygen into the parts of the body that think there’s danger….you will calm yourself down You have to control your mind – You have to know when you’re experiencing fear in order to address it. Stress innoculation – you have to surround yourself with fear so you can get used to being in its presence and managing it.

The best way to get value is to give it – but what does that mean? This week, we’ll look at how to think about value – to the world, to your clients, and to your team. All Transactions Have to Be About Value There are three areas where you have to know and strengthen your value: Your Value to the World – your vision, your service to the world, your community, your industry Your Value to the Organization – your company, your client Your Value to the Team – And the individuals on it Understanding your value has power – it increases your success in job searches/sales, improves your networking, and it makes you more trustworthy and influential in leadership positions

Does Agile Need Leaders? I mean, self-organizing teams and down with hierarchy and all….is there value in leadership, and what should it look like? That’s this week, on the Badass Agile podcast. It’s time to update the podcast, tune the mission, and move into advanced topics Maybe we don’t like the sound of it, but we do need leaders Leaders set vision Leaders set the example Leaders facilitate In the real world, leaders do what needs to be done, They stand up against the unjust, ineffective, self-serving…and we need more of that – in life, and in work

The only way to create a culture of trust, and to fully leverage the power of teams, is to make sure you keep promises you make. Keeping promises is a crucial component of building tight teams. Everyone pledges, few are truly good to their word Use the words ‘promise’ and ‘committments’ in the team room instead of ‘task’ – it tends to carry more weight Use the stand up to track these promises – the three questions then become “what promises did you keep yesterday”, “what promises do you make today”, and “what prevents you from keeping your promises” Think of improvement items in retrospectices as promises – from team member to team member Try using a daily team promise or committment

What can we learn from the sweet science? I learned more from boxing than anywhere else Team sports are great, and obviously applicable, but when it comes to leadership being the best, nothing calls on your character, strength and will like a good old 1-1 Defence, of self-protection, does not win a fight. There are no points for safety. You have to go slow to get fast. Tension and fear ruins absolutely everything Find a good cornerman Look for opportunities. Finding and fixing your gaps, and finding and exploiting HIS gaps are the key to success. Be patient, graceful, and stay in the fight. That way, even when you lose you win.

There’s so much focus on frameworks and subtlety of practice Frameworks – definitions of roles, processes, interactions, flows, inputs and outputs Subtleties – prescriptive techniques and tools Frameworks Don’t fix Fear. They attempt to compensate for it, and fail Frameworks are expensive. So are elite teams. We shouldn’t try to build them across an entire enterprise and Subtlety and Complexity really only feeds the cash register I think we should focus on something more organic. Vision Courage Influence Focus High-Performance Teams Focus on the fundamentals – the Agile Keys. The things that make great work no matter what arena Have a Vision Prioritize Do Focused Work Keep Promises Be Open about where you are Always Improve Great Leadership, and the Will to Execute, come from the Gut Frameworks are more safeguard than meaningful work. If you need safeguards, why not learn and build as you go? In 6 months, would you rather roll out a safety framework, or product that works?

Magic matters. I was having a conversation today and I realized some of the most impactful things that I do with my team have nothing to do with coaching Agile. It’s not teaching them Scrum techniques, which they could easily learn on their own. Of course this is an important part of what I do, but none of that stuff builds better teams. At all. There are parts of my job that come down to voodoo. Things that appear in exactly zero agile texts, and barely in the leadership canon either The truth is we hate this stuff. It scares us to talk about things that aren’t quantifiable The groomed leader would have you believe that a deep knowledge of the art and science of business plus some natural breeding is what makes a great leader Others are more comfortable thinking that great leadership can be learned. Both are a little bit true The one thing I do that grabs more attention than any other is an ability to read people, lock down their core essence, and even predict their next move, sometimes after only one meeting. If you think about it, this is a badass trait. The badass just has your number. He calls you out on your bullshit. He may be inarticulate but he still has you dead to rights. It’s almost like he has a street wisdom that no amount of education or social grace could substitute for. That’s kind of true. Our animal heritage actually gives us all the equipment we need to read people. Being able to observe, distinguish patterns and then observe variations from those patterns and being able to assemble a complete picture from a person’s words, body movements and postures AND microexpressions is how we detect threats Can you learn this? First you have to learn to observe people, which means taking the focus off yourself and putting on the other. Next is knowing where to look and when. I believe in learning skills from the people who are the absoulute best at what they do – they understand their craft and can do it more accurately and faster than anyone else In this field, law enforcement agents and interviewers – also customs agents have the best knowledge. Check out books from some of these guys. Here are some tips. Posture – Open versus closed. Open means upright, expansive, and not protecting the vital organs. Crossed legs, crossed arms, or covered body parts (neck, chest, sides, groin) indicate fear and discomfort. Eye contact Fidgeting and movement Automatic responses – dry mouth, dilated pupils, sweating, over-explaining or repeating Of course you have to get comfortable enough to be an observer yourself but 90% of people don’t really bother to observe consciously. HOWEVER – whether you know it or not, every persons reacts subconsciously to these cues. That’s why its so important for a badass to practice the right ones. Look for baselines. If they’re always like this, they might just be anxious people or nervous in groups. What’s illustrative is how a person’s behaviour changes in different situations. Watch for this very closely in leaders or people you are trying to negotiate or bargain with. It can give you tremendous competitive advantage if you know how to do it right. If you want to build trust, do two simple things. Mirror and Echo.

Failure is initially perceived as a bad word – especially for new agile teams, and especially in ‘vintage’ cultures. Fear of failure is well over half of the cause of the Resistance. Avoiding failure will cost your teams and business – because you will spend all of your precious time and money planning for perfection to avoid it. The secret is to flip your thinking on failure immediately, and this requires the skill of a coach to keep people from panicking, backsliding and even turning against one another. The biggest cultural block when starting agile is that fear of failure Mastery of Failure is a badass trait Most other people will need some practice and exposure to feel ok with failure As they learn, your job is to shield them from negative side effects You can’t stage failure – you have to go through some as a team (because the only way to know about failure in advance is to plan excessively for them) Once experienced, all that is needed is a) a commitment not to repeat it and b) an enthusiasm to look for the next one