An Encounter to Remember

Alain de Botton and I first met when I was 19 years old, between the covers of his first book, Essays in Love. Back in those days, we were both preoccupied with love. Between us, we would desperately try to define it, conjure it and acquire it. We would spend most of our time thinking about love, the only difference being he would write about it and I would read about it.

Ageing Curiosity

As time passed, we both grew up but we never grew apart. It seems that our mutual interests merely evolved with time. We continued to analyse the nuts and bolts of the body, mind and spirit of life, ranging from how Proust can change one’s life to the art of travel. As he continued to write, I would continue to read, nibbling on madeleines and sipping tea while dreaming of far off places.

Friends Re-united

Eventually our writer-reader relationship got buried by the sands of time until last Sunday. Imagine my surprise when we met up again, this time on ted.com, both in search of the missing pieces in secular life.

In search of Morality, Guidance and Consolation

I’m of course talking about what Alain refers to as Atheism 2.0, a flavour of atheism that takes the bits and pieces of religion (such as singing Christmas carols and visiting churches) that we enjoy to make our existence more complete, from daring to ask questions about life’s bigger mysteries (life’s purpose, death and disappointment) to creating connections (building communities and developing an attitude of service towards others).

I urge you to listen Alain’s Ted talk here. It really made me think.

Making Vital Things Matter More

As you stand by the water cooler today, looking out the window, ask yourself these three vital questions: Why am I here? How can I make things better? How can I make what we do together matter more?

And if you’re feeling courageous or simply playful, try asking these questions out loud and see where the conversation takes you, for it is in the search for answers that we find responses through our questionings.

And who knows? You may discover a pot of goodies at the end of the rainbow or tumble down a rabbit hole and have a tea party!

Sticks and Stones

Some days I feel old. I think about all the hip things the youngsters are getting into these days. Wonder if I should buy myself an iPhone and get into the whole apps-on-phone rave, replace my beloved paperbacks with Kindle versions, accept invitations from strangers on LinkedIn requesting to connect as “friends”.

That’s when I decide to take an alternative route to work. As I go past a familiar row of shops, ABBA strikes up and the music jolts me out of my reverie. Because I’m taken by surprise, I pay attention to the lyrics for the first time. “You can dance, you can jive, having the time of your life“. Sounds like wise words to me. (Go on, you know you want to play it loud and play it proud!)

The cheery tune transports me back to my first visit to Sweden a couple of weeks ago for Oredev when I rediscovered an old friend, full of colour, sound and good humour. I’m referring to ABBA of course. And all this reminds me of a niggling notion I’ve been carrying in my head for sometime and it is this: the feeling of Agile.

The Feeling of Agile

Agile to me is a catalyst for personal and organisational change, so if you practice Agile on a daily basis, then you’re bound to feel silly or foolish at least once a day. Just as 5 – 10 minutes of play a day can keep the doctor and priest away, feeling silly is a sure sign you’re out of your comfort zone. And being out of your comfort zone demands courage. It can also lead to learning and personal growth.

The meaning of silly depends on you. Why stand up in front of an entire open plan office for a 15-minute standup meeting? Why try to improve when no one else seems to care? Why invite a new team member you barely know out for lunch?

Silly Me

I reflect on yesterday and scan for signs of silly, like a first aider fingering a wrist for a pulse. Much to my relief, I remember brainstorming ice breakers for a team building session with a fellow playmaker, among other silly episodes.

“What do you recommend?” she asks. To which I reply, “What’s the goal of the session? And the success criteria?” Once these are clear, the real fun begins. “There’s “Mad, Sad, Glad” which helps ground the team by looking back at how far they’ve come and where they are now,” I say, trying to come up with a range of options.

“Then there’s “The Profile Card Exercise” (which always contains surprises like “I love the Queen and I hate mushrooms”). And my all time favourite “The Superhero” – if you were a superhero who would you be? What kind of super power would you have?” This final suggestion gets an involuntary chuckle from my colleagues who overhear the conversation.

It’s true what they say, “you’re only as old you feel”. And I’d emphasise “as young as you want to be”. Silly is the pink flamingo in your drink. Or the cricket in your pocket. Do you dare to feel silly?

A glimpse of my personal play history

When I look back at my working life to date, there’s a moment that stands out from all the rest.

It’s 2002. I’d been working for several years and had come to terms with what most people would describe as your typical “working life”. I worked hard and always tried to do my best. Sometimes that was good enough, at other times, it wasn’t. Then one day, as I sit in my dentist’s waiting room, I pick up a glossy magazine because my appointment was running late. An article about work catches my eye.

Against a backdrop of glamorous smiles and beautifully coiffed heads, a journalist told me that “We spend more than 75% of our waking hours doing work and work-related activities.” As though that were not sufficiently terrifying, she went on to say, “The average working person will spend more time in their entire lifetime with their colleagues than their loved ones.”

Quick as a flash, a quiet resolve forms in my mind. Life’s too short to spend it on doing what you don’t enjoy with people who’s company you don’t care for.

Ever since then, that’s been one of my guiding principles on how I choose to do my work. It was difficult at first but I found that with practice I could create opportunities for myself and others to do more meaningful work that I’ve come to describe as “Playmaking“.

Where next?

If you want to find out more about Transformative Play and get ideas on how to satisfy your recommended daily amount of play at work, join me at Oredev on 9 November in Sweden where I’ll be presenting on “The Power of Play – Making Good Teams Great“.

In addition to the latest research behind the power of play, there’ll be lots of storytelling including:

• The Sorry Story of the Sea Squirt
• The Hunger Games – How play can help hunger at bay
• What happens when a very hungry polar bear meets a husky?

I hope to see you there!

What does Agile mean to me?

Agile is a means not an end. It’s a means to improve the way we work to the benefit of individuals, teams, organisations and society itself.

Agile paves the way for a great adventure of personal and professional renewal, helping us improve our existing skills and develop new ones.

Agile takes us out of our comfort zones and teaches us how to adapt to change. It enlarges our comfort zones only to take us out of it again. It’s beyond survival. It’s about self-actualisation.

Agile is about being a “forever apprentice“, someone who begins as a student and becomes a teacher while remaining a student. A forever apprentice applies the principle “the best teachers make the best students and the best students make the best teachers”.

Applying Agile

I’ve been applying Agile to what I do for some years now, from delivering projects at work to projects at home. I pack in all the practice I can get. The way I use Agile is constantly changing through improvement experiments. Always learning. Always improving.

Applying Agile and being agile has helped make work fun and engaging. Again. Do you remember the very first day of your very first job? That’s the enthusiasm and energy I strive to re-create every day. For myself and for others. Some days, I give myself a day off.

Every day’s a new day when you’re trying to be better than you were yesterday. I’m improving, one baby step at a time. Sometimes the steps are so tiny that they’re invisible to the naked eye, but I can feel it, like a new shoot about to break through the ground after rain.

I don’t like to admit it, but I know when I’m getting complacent. A little voice in my head tells me, “You’ve been there, done that, seen it all, what’s the big deal?” That’s when I sense trouble. How can I know it all and still be constantly improving? Unless I’ve stopped, of course.

Evolving Agile

When people find out that I’m an Agile Coach (one of my many roles) they tell me, “Of course you want to make everyone do Agile, you’re an Agile Coach and that’s your purpose”. To which I reply, “If we do Agile right, Agile will evolve itself out of existence and something new will appear to take its place.”

As for my purpose, it’s to create opportunities and options to help us make the most of our potential, leveraging what we’ve got and increasing it day by day. I do it for me and for us. Agile is but one tool out of many that makes this possible. It helps to get the conversation started.

What does Agile mean to you?

What our experience tells us but we ignore

What do smart people all have in common? We’re driven, focussed and hardworking. Once we have a goal, we go for it, powering through and tugging hard until we gasp, regardless of the obstacles.

“The difference between winners and losers are that winners keep trying,” we mutter to ourselves quietly in the toughest moments. And so we keep striving and straining, cursing the rope that’s holding us back.

Look around you

Now imagine you’re in a meeting. Take a look around you. What do you see? What do you hear? What do you feel? When people come together, it’s usually to formulate a plan to reach a goal. And it’s usually something we’ve in common.

The problem is, we often become blindsided by our “own” goal. We fail to listen with an open mind. We fail to set aside our own viewpoint for long enough to see what’s as plain as the light of day. Not to mention the bale of hay behind us. And all the other bales of hay around us.

By failing to see the bigger picture, we all risk going hungry in spite of being surrounded by a wealth of resources.

See the bigger picture

To make hay while the sun shines, step into each other’s shoes. Then take a step step back together to see the big picture. This way, we can make hay together, come rain or shine.

Back in February, I attended my first TedX event, TedX Granta in Cambridge, UK, a city well-known for its academia, research and creativity. Among the many live and recorded talks, the one that moved me most was Sarah Outen’s story of being the first woman to ever row across the Indian Ocean.

How Sarah let go and went rowing

The start of Sarah’s journey began with the sudden death of her father during her time at Cambridge university. In order to come to terms with her grief, she set herself the daunting challenge of becoming an “ocean rowing racer” in order to raise money for charity in her father’s memory. At that time, not only had Sarah never done ocean rowing, she’d not even done all that much regular rowing. But she’d set her mind to it and nothing was going to change that.

While some people might have considered her sudden decision to take up ocean rowing racing as “spiteful” or “whimsical”,  Sarah needed to let go of her family and herself. Sarah described this point in her life as a need to “survive” in order to deal with her grief. What better place to be alone than in a sailing boat in the middle of a big blue ocean with nothing but radio assistance?

The route less travelled

Sarah shared many anecdotes about her first trip from Perth to Mauritius which became a circuitous “warmup lap“. Instead of rowing in a straight-line, it was much more of a squiggle fraught with tenterhook moments like when she literally found herself unclipping her lifeline but for a moment to upright her overturned boat in a storm in order to survive.

“You can do whatever you want”

Sarah attributes her success in ocean rowing racing to 3 things: having a dream, a vision and belief. She learnt to “let go of naysayers” and focused on turning “bad nerves” into “good nerves” and making them work for her.

Sarah’s 7 tips for achieving your dreams

1. Focus on your goal. Steel your mind and spirit with the mantra of “Just keep rowing”. The tough get moving to keep going.
2. Persevere. Try, try and try again. Keep going. The key difference between winners and losers is that winners keep trying.
3. Teamwork is dreamwork. Big dreams require teamwork. To reach your full potential, you need great teamwork.
4. Don’t run from fear. Things that make you afraid are often learning opportunities in disguise. Sometimes, the greater the fear, the higher the return on investment.
5. Re-define “safe” in your head. Your comfort zone  is eroding a bit every day. Continuously challenge yourself in order to be at your best.
6. Stop worrying. Concentrate on the things that you can change. Let go of things you can’t. In Sarah’s words, learn to “look at things with equanimity”.
7. Take calculated risks. Be bold and smart to give yourself the best chances for success. In the words of André Gide, “Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore.”

When was the last time you unclipped your lifeline and dared to lose sight of the shore?

“A Dip in the Ocean”

You can read more about Sarah’s memoir of her ocean rowing races in her new book “A Dip in the Ocean“. If her writing is half as compelling as her storytelling, the book is sure to to help free your mind from the shore to which its currently tethered.

One of the life-changing moments for me back in 2010 was hearing Sally Gunnell speak at a great networking event organised by Women in Technology, hosted by BP.

The subject of Sally’s talk was ‘Rising to the Challenge – How to achieve a gold medal career‘. Sally shared numerous heartfelt stories from her 12-year long career in athletics and, most importantly, shared her insights on success.

Who’s Sally?

Sally is a former Olympic British Champion in the 400m hurdles. She’s the only woman to have held the European, World, Commonwealth and Olympic 400 metre hurdles titles at the same time. (Read more about Sally on wikipedia.)

Sally Says

Think big. Have dream goals. Define your goals. Know what you want in life. Have a role model. Work out what you’re bad at. Focus on what you’re good at. Remember that your comfort zone gets smaller every day.

Understand yourself. Learn how to deal with setbacks. Work hard. Make sacrifices. Believe in yourself. Develop a positive mental attitude. Don’t let people who put you down influence your whole life.

Put yourself under pressure. Live your dream.

Key Ingredients for Success

Nutrition. Your body isn’t so much a temple as the engine that enables you to realise your dreams. Watch what others eat and work out what works best for your mind and body.

Proper preparation. Build training into your schedule. Train lots.

Be professional. Take what you do seriously. Make everything count.

Respect your coach. Listen with an open-mind. Give things a go.

Don’t worry about things outside of your control. Believe in yourself.

Take regular physical exercise. At least 3 – 4 times a week. It’s the quickest way to feel good about yourself.

Plan for you. Define your goals. Take small steps to get you going and get you that gold medal.

The Difference Between a Champion and a Loser

Winners define what success means for themselves. You decide what constitutes a gold medal for you.

Winners know how to shut up that obnoxious voice in one’s head that says, ‘You’re rubbish. You won’t make it, so why bother?’

Winners know what they’ve got to do. They do the best they can. Once they achieve one goal, they set themselves another.

Being a champion is about sustaining excellence. Being a champion is about ever greater expectations of oneself.

Over to You

All this may sound simple, but it’s anything but easy. What are your goals for 2011 and beyond? And what’s your plan?

Make this year a great one. Because we’re worth it.

Halloween, also known as Hallows’ Eve or All Saints Eve, originates from the Celtic festival of Samhain (pronouned ’sow-an’ or ’sow-in’) meaning ’summer’s end’. The ancient Celts believed that the border between this world and that of the other became ‘thin’ on Samhain, thus allowing spirits (both good and evil) to cross over. It was believed that harmful spirits could be warded off by disguising ourselves as one of those spirits by dressing up in costumes and wearing masks.

What would you do if you weren’t afraid?

Join us in the latest Agile Fairytale being told this Tuesday of ‘Pinochhio – On Becoming a Lean Leader’ at Agile 2010.

You’ll embark on an journey where you’ll encounter two types of characters: the Baddies, such as Gideon and Foulfellow, who will try to lead you astray with temptations, and the Goodies, such as Gepetto, the Blue Fairy and Jiminy Cricket, who will help you find your way back to your goal.

You’ll get the chance to put the tools into practice and come up with 3 actions to take away to try out back at work.

The Lean Leadership Tools we’ll share with you are:

• Visual Controls – Use simple visual indicators to support Flow and Pull
• Leader Standard Work – Adhere to work processes as a discipline
• Daily Accountability – Use Visual Controls to improve process focus and drive Continuous Improvement
• Leadership Discipline – Set clear expectations and maintain process focus on a daily basis.

Including those of a Learning Organisation:

• Nemawashi (Decisions based on Consensus) – Make decisions slowly by consensus then implement decisions quickly
• Hansei (Relentless Reflection) and Kaizen (Continuous Improvement) – Do regular analysis to establish a stable process and make incremental improvements.

All of which are guided by:

• Long-term Philosophy – Grow and align the whole organisation toward a common purpose that is greater than a purely financial reward.

Join us to acquire these Lean Leadership tools and give your story a Happy Ending with the help of talking animals.

The session will be held at 13.30 – 15.00 in the Southern Hemisphere IV/V (Lobby Level) of the Dolphin Hotel in Orlando. I’ll be co-presenting this interactive session with Pascal Van Cauwenberghe.  Come early to get a good seat!

Common Cause for Good

When it comes to organisational change, one of the most overlooked factors is the impact individuals have on an organisation. After all, organisational change begins with the individual. Another commonly overlooked fact is that we can only change ourselves. That’s why much of this blog focuses on working with groups, teams and individuals.

Natural Complexity in Team Dynamics

One of the things I enjoy most about organisational change is the element of surprise. Others would describe this as ‘uncertainty’. While others may fear it, I choose to embrace it. I strive to turn every challenge as an opportunity. A chance to learn and improve. From where I’m standing, we’re surrounded by an abundance of opportunities.

A Tale of the Unexpected

I’ve run the XP Game almost 50 times and the most common assumptions among the players is that they assume each team is competing with another. If they ask, I highlight the fact that I’ve never mentioned this as a rule and that, in fact, they are all teams working for the same organisation. This statement is usually followed by a brief silence as individuals process the information. Nontheless, time and time and again, teams choose to continue to compete against one another, usually to the detriment of the organisation as a whole.

One of the reasons people choose to do this is because staying within your comfort zone is far easier than working together with those outside of your team. What’s not immediately obvious is that the longer you stay in your comfort zone, the less likely you’ll encounter new experiences and pick up new skills as well as develop existing ones to better leverage the change that lies ahead. After all, change will happen around you, regardless of whether or not you are ready to change.

One great way to embrace change is to gain new experiences, develop new skills and acquire new ones. This means that when the change finally happens, you’ll be prepared to get the most out of the change. Better still, you’ll be helping to instigate and shape the change.

An Agile First

So imagine my surprise, when the 3 teams with whom I was playing The XP Game last week decided to deliver value together instead of competing against one another. What’s remarkable is that, in spite of the daunting challenge of collaboration (’I'm not sure it’s possible’, ‘It’s going to make things much harder to manage’, ‘I’m afraid we’ll fail’), the 3 teams continued to come up with ideas of how to make things work better. And they did not stop there. This has never happened before in all my experience of running this learning game.

In spite of a few clamorous voices that continued to express fear, doubt and uncertainty, the three teams continued as one. Together, they planned out the work and re-organised themselves to deliver as much as value as they could. Then they put their plan into action.

The outcome? In Round 1, when the 3 teams worked independently, collectively they achieved a combined velocity of 820 story points. In Round 2, when the 3 teams worked together from a centralised backlog their velocity reduced to 720 story points. Based on what I saw so far, I predicted that the 3 teams working together would match their combined velocity in round 1 by round 3 or 4 and quickly exceed it as they became better at collaboration. That is a small short term cost for a significant longer term return on investment. After all, all good things come at a price.

My Takeaway

I still remember, as though it were yesterday, the moment near the beginning of the course, when I distilled the essence of what Agile meant  in two simple words. “Immer besser”. Meaning literally “always better” in German. And that was the one thought that kept everyone together and spurred them on.

Two simple words. Immer besser. To emphasise the importance of continuous learning and improvement, I also drew a contrast between thinking in terms of being “richtig” or “falsch” (”right” or “wrong”) with “immer besser”.  In my experience, the most successful individuals, teams and organisations are those who care more about becoming better than who got things right or wrong.

How are you becoming better than you were yesterday every day?