Badass Agile

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 wha...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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 do...

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...

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...

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 h...

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 ea...

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 pe...

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 wi...

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...

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 f...

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...

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 m...

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...

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 so...

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...

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...

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 promis...

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...

* 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...