Troubleshooting Agile

Is there a place for Stack Ranking? Squirrel and Jeffrey concur that Stack Racking can be problematic, but Jeffrey has some ideas about where this sub-par practice comes from, which underline the importance of difficult conversations about performance no matter how you create them (even with a stack rank)

Links:

- Vitality Curve (Stack Ranking):https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitality_curve

- Poppendiecks on compensation: http://www.poppendieck.com/pdfs/Compensation.pdf

- Chesterton’s Fence: https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Chesterton%27s_Fence

Our book, Agile Conversations, is out now! Go to agileconversations.com to order your copy.

Plus, get access to a free mini training video about the technique of Coherence Building when you join our mailing list.

We'd love to hear any thoughts, ideas, or feedback you have about the show.

Email us at [email protected]

Could Chat GPT improve our conversations? While pondering a difficult conversation with an unhappy client, Squirrel took to Chat GPT to see if he could recreate the dialogue.

Listen to this week’s episode to discover his findings, and learn about how you could use prompt engineering and role playing with chatbot to get better results from your conversations.

Links:

- ChatGPT @ OpenAI: https://chat.openai.com/chat

- Agile Conversations Dojo: https://www.meetup.com/agile-conversations-dojo/

- Conversational Dojo kit: https://itrevolution.com/product/conversational-dojo-kit/

Our book, Agile Conversations, is out now! Go to agileconversations.com to order your copy.

Plus, get access to a free mini training video about the technique of Coherence Building when you join our mailing list.

We'd love to hear any thoughts, ideas, or feedback you have about the show.

Email us at [email protected]

This week, Jeffrey is joined by guest Elisabeth Hendrickson, who shares her powerful dream that inspired a new theory of office politics. Elisabeth and Jeffrey discuss the behaviors that lead to toxicity, and how to utilise the core value of consent to evoke positive change. Recorded live at CITCON.

Links:

- Elisabeth’s company, Curious Duck: https://curiousduck.io

- Elisabeth’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/testobsessed/

- CITCON: https://citconf.com

Our book, Agile Conversations, is out now! See agileconversations.com where you can order your copy and get a free video when you join our mailing list!

We'd love to hear any thoughts, ideas, or feedback you have about the show.

Email us at [email protected]

In this week’s episode, Squirrel and Jeffrey discuss how you can use emotional outcomes in your conversations to build trust and evoke more positive responses from your customers, rather than relying solely on intellectual ones.

Listen to see how you can incorporate lessons from “Emotional Rugby” in your sales and customer relations, as well as across your workplace practices.

Links:

- “Many of us have faced buyers who seem to agree with everything we say…but never sign the contract. We have played intellectual chess with them but not emotional rugby.” – Alan Weiss and Nancy McKay, The Modern Trusted Advisor

- Simon Sinek Start With Why: https://simonsinek.com/books/start-with-why/

Our book, Agile Conversations, is out now! See https://agileconversations.com where you can order your copy and get a free video when you join our mailing list!

We'd love to hear any thoughts, ideas, or feedback you have about the show.

Email us at [email protected]

After last week's episode on starting before you're ready, Squirrel and Jeffrey discuss some ways you can encourage this behaviour—while still providing a safety net for participants and the wider organisation.

SHOW LINKS:

- Toyota Kata: https://agileconversations.com/blog/we're-the-aliens-three-ways-to-seek-safety/

- How to be helpfully demanding: https://agileconversations.com/blog/how-to-be-helpfully-demanding/

---

Our book, Agile Conversations, is out now! See https://agileconversations.com where you can order your copy and get a free video when you join our mailing list!

We'd love to hear any thoughts, ideas, or feedback you have about the show.

Email us at [email protected]

Squirrel and Jeffrey note examples of teams who never get started because they're aiming to do a project "right", and contrast with those who get started without being ready.

SHOW LINKS:

- https://twitter.com/douglassquirrel/status/1593243886180216832

---

Our book, Agile Conversations, is out now! See https://agileconversations.com where you can order your copy and get a free video when you join our mailing list!

We'd love to hear any thoughts, ideas, or feedback you have about the show.

Email us at [email protected]

Squirrel and Jeffrey discuss two examples where engineers are trying to get accurate answers, when getting a (slightly) wrong result would actually be better for speed or learning.

---

Our book, Agile Conversations, is out now! See https://agileconversations.com where you can order your copy and get a free video when you join our mailing list!

We'd love to hear any thoughts, ideas, or feedback you have about the show.

Email us at [email protected]

Squirrel and Jeffrey continue discussing why you and your team might need a coach—for techniques and skills that they are already good at. This week they concentrate on practical steps for finding internal and external sources of instruction and inspiration.

SHOW LINKS:

- Pair Programming: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pair_programming

- Mob Programming: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mob_programming

---

Our book, Agile Conversations, is out now! See https://agileconversations.com where you can order your copy and get a free video when you join our mailing list!

We'd love to hear any thoughts, ideas, or feedback you have about the show.

Email us at [email protected]

An article by Atul Gawande on coaching for surgeons inspires Squirrel and Jeffrey to reflect on why you and your team might need a coach—for techniques and skills that they are already good at.

SHOW LINKS:

- Personal Best: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/10/03/personal-best

- Mundanity of Excellence: https://fermatslibrary.com/s/the-mundanity-of-excellence-an-ethnographic-report-on-stratification-and-olympic-swimmers

- Our podcast episode on Principle 12 of the Agile Manifesto: https://soundcloud.com/troubleshootingagile/finding-the-motivation-to-learn-stay-agile

---

Our book, Agile Conversations, is out now! See https://agileconversations.com where you can order your copy and get a free video when you join our mailing list!

We'd love to hear any thoughts, ideas, or feedback you have about the show.

Email us at [email protected]

This week on Troubleshooting Agile, we revisit another one of our “Greatest Hits”

In this episode, we look at how the Ladder can help you discover your own reasoning as well, to discover ways to promote mutual learning with your own behaviour.

SHOW LINKS:

- Top Business Podcasts for CEOs, from Fiona Anderson: https://www.rocktime.co.uk/insights/listen-and-learn-the-art-of-podcasting-for-ceos/

- The Ladder of Inference (annotated by Jeffrey): https://agileconversations.com/docs/TheLadderOfInference.pdf

- The London Organisational Meetup: www.meetup.com/London-Action-Science-Meetup/

- Thinking Fast and Slow, Kahneman: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking,_Fast_and_Slow

---

Our book, Agile Conversations, is out now! See agileconversations.com where you can order your copy and get a free video when you join our mailing list!

We'd love to hear any thoughts, ideas, or feedback you have about the show.

Email us at [email protected]