SPaMCAST 556 features our essay on Socratic Questioning. Questions are a critical tool that every coach, mentor or leader uses to help shape and improve the performance of those they interact with — I don't think this statement should surprise anyone. That said, pushing past the concept of just asking questions, Socratic questioning is a formal and disciplined approach to getting the person answering the questions to synthesize and answer based on knowledge and logic. We also have a visit from Susan Parente. Susan brings her Not A Scrumdamentalist column to the SPaMCAST. In this installment, Professor Parente discusses being agile in name only. Being agile in name only is not an enviable place to be! Re-Read Saturday News The availability heuristic, introduced in Chapter 12, states that we make judgments about an attribute based on how easy or hard it is to retrieve information about the attribute. In Chapter 13, Kahneman dives deeper into how the availability heuristic functions, and provides some hints on how it can be used. Remember, if you do not have a favorite, dog-eared copy of Thinking, Fast and Slow, please buy a copy. Using the links in this blog entry helps support the blog and its alter-ego, The Software Process and Measurement Cast. Buy a copy on Amazon, It's time to get reading! The installments: Week 1: Logistics and Introduction – http://bit.ly/2UL4D6h Week 2: The Characters Of The Story – http://bit.ly/2PwItyX Week 3: Attention and Effort – http://bit.ly/2H45x5A Week 4: The Lazy Controller – http://bit.ly/2LE3MQQ Week 5: The Associative Machine – http://bit.ly/2JQgp8I Week 6: Cognitive Ease – http://bit.ly/2VTuqVu Week 7: Norms, Surprises, and Causes – http://bit.ly/2Molok2 Week 8: A Machine for Jumping to Conclusions - http://bit.ly/2XOjOcx Week 9: How Judgement Happens and Answering An Easier Question - http://bit.ly/2XBPaX3 Week 10: Law of Small Numbers - http://bit.ly/2JcjxtI Week 11: Anchors - http://bit.ly/30iMgUu Week 12: The Science of Availability - http://bit.ly/30tW6TN Week 13: Availability, Emotion, and Risk - http://bit.ly/2GmOkTT Next SPaMCAST SPaMCAST 557 will feature my interview with Jorgen Hesselberg. We talked about his book Unlocking Agility and assessing agility. A thought-provoking and fun interview. Jorgen's irrepressible nature shines through even when tackling tough topics!