Seriously?
“We cannot be more Agile!
Within the last year, we all got at least one Agile certification -they were extremely cheap because of the pandemic.
We also bought an expensive, fancy, hyper-sophisticated software package to track story points, record user stories, and create sprint burndown charts.
In the past, we could not find a way to compare performance among teams. Now, through that software package, we can see and control everything about the teams.
Now, teams will not have more excuses to be behind. That is a great cultural shift!”
“In all of my jobs I have seen how bad workplace culture negatively affect employees.
It impacts morale, and gets in the way of people feeling good about their work, doing their jobs with efficiency and quality, and feeling valued.
It made me wish, and most of my coworkers, to work for a modern, cool, forward-thinking organization. The situations and environment made me give 60 or 70 percent of what I could give as a professional.
And when things were dysfunctional, it had a radiating impact, wherein the people using the product you are building are also affected.
I brought the topic once to the Human Resources department –it got me in trouble! They told me, very aloud, that the company’s culture was the direct reflection of the Organization’s Values chart published in the corporate website, and not seeing it that way was an indication of being against the company.
I wonder, if everybody knows that culture is so important for people, why so many (too many) managers and HR staff act as jerks?”
On Daily Standup Meetings
It is my observation from watching small groups of people working together that it is almost universally common that some people will take charge and direct the common effort and others will get quiet, abdicating any such role.
It is also my observation that, even in a small team working together daily, people notice different things, interpret the things they notice differently, and assign different significance to those interpretations. People often think that because they are immersed in a common experience that there is no need to talk about it.
This appears to not be so.
Groups of technically oriented people often want to optimize the work process to those activities needed for the technically oriented output, and overlook those that are focused on the needs of humans and groups of humans working together.
Yes, you can have a Daily Standup Meeting and not get any value from it.
You can also not have a Daily Standup Meeting and avoid providing a convenient mechanism for taking advantage of the differences in observation, interpretation, and significance made by the entire team.
However:
- If you are (or have got) a really good team facilitator, you (they) will likely notice this and help bring it out.
- If you (they) are really excellent, you (they) will convince the team to work in a fashion where it can more easily come out without you (them) acting as a middleman to make it happen.”
George Dinwiddie
Thoughts published on George’s blog
“Why, when one mentions Agile, people continue talking about Scrum?
When, how and why did Agile became synonymous with two-week sprints, a Scrum Master and story points?”
Build on Strengths
First of all, this pattern requires seeing other people’s strengths —actively and consciously look for those strengths.
Everyone has strengths. If a person has five bad qualities and only a good one, focus on recognizing it and building on it.
That conscious practice will make you a more agreeable person and even a happier one.
If you truly cannot see any strengths in someone, it means that you likely have one or more of these major problems:
- Your relationship with that person is poisoned to the point of no return.
- Your own powers of perception are disabled due to trauma or brain injury.
- Your own powers of perception are disabled due to prejudice or bias.
If any of them are your case, look for help: therapy, counseling or coaching.
“Businesses without formal structure: Toffler popularized the phrase ‘adhocracy,’ a reference to a company that operates without a formal hierarchy.
An adhocracy as defined by Toffler is flexible and often horizontally structured. It allows for creativity and adaptability, since employees are not pigeonholed into certain roles.
Many startups today are adhocracies–offering roles that change based on needs and titles that wouldn’t fit anywhere on a traditional corporate ladder.—“
Alvin Toffler @ Future Shock | July 1970
- One push-up is better than no working out.
- Five minutes of Racquetball practice a day is better than none at all.
- Ten minutes of reading a good book is better than never picking up one.
- It is simply better to do less than you hopped than do nothing at all.
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