If you have teams under your care, and you are looking to improve so you can show up for THEM…here are the areas you should integrate into your daily practice and improvement. -Acting With Intention -Awareness and Attention -Selflessness and Service -Outcome Independence (Freedom from Attachments) -Committed Practice and Patience
We all used to want to ‘be the boss’…king of the hill. But leadership has changed radically. It requires something completely different – in fact, it would seem to be a complete contradiction that ‘the boss’ doesn’t actually get to boss anyone around. A leader must lead without imposing their will instead.
Leaders are traditionally considered to be the ones who set and enforce rules, or ‘standards’. Yet, if we are being asked to innovate, and to fail forward fast, are rules the right construct to motivate and guide collective action to a common goal? It could be argued that rules themselves create fertile ground for agile resistance. Find out more in this episode!
What are your wasteful things? Remember that productivity is not about jamming more stuff into a limited time window, but rather stripping away the things that distract you and muddy your attention and focus. This week, commit to examining your work. Monitor how you spend your time. You might be surprised how much you can reclaim for higher-value things.
What is negativity doing to your team room, and your leadership? Time for a spot check….are you making this problem better, or worse? Do you engage in the negative talk, both in your mind, and in the public domain? Do you spread complaining and excuse making to others? If so, try redirecting your thoughts to solutions. Learn more in this week’s episode!
Sometimes, its good to step away. We tend to forget that other people are dying to lead too. The silence, or deference of others may be due to you…taking up too much leader space. Rotating chairs are all well and good, but its actually more fun to just not show up once in a while, with no warning, as it forces others to step-up with no prep-up. It’s exactly the kind of challenge that people are looking for.
Nothing invokes the image of a badass like a special operator. In 2014, this guest changed the course of my life, and set me on a path that sparked my career and personal trajectory, which included launching this show in 2017. Mark Divine is a retired US Navy SEAL and owner of SEALFIT. He is the author of several bestselling books, including “Unbeatable Mind”, “Way of The SEAL”, and on March 2, 2020, will release his latest title, “Staring Down the Wolf: 7 Leadership Commitments That Forge Elite...
As always, start with the willing. Find people who already have an interest in agility, in change. Help people who already ‘get it’ to make tiny increments of change. Build your own dream team by adding value around the organization wherever you can – a minimally invasive, grassroots campaign. Go do some agile ‘stuff’ wherever you stand; bottom up. Create an inspirational culture – and be vigilant about keeping negativity out.
[et_pb_section admin_label=”section”] [et_pb_row admin_label=”row”] [et_pb_column type=”4_4″][et_pb_text admin_label=”Text”] Do you live life with your limiter on? Is your output artificially capped? Do you resist “GO!”? Do you rely on permission? If you knew that it was your failure to leap that inhibits your output, your creativity, would you be willing to change? And yet most of us not only fail to leap, but also convince themselves that waiting – waiting for perfection, waiting for permissio...
As I’ve launched the new Badass Agile leadership learning experience, I had something I wanted to ramble about the partisan politics and binary thinking around modern education and certification. Be cautious of absolutes. There is value in all education (if not necessarily certification), but there is a limit to how much you should attend, read, or memorize about any field of endeavour before we get out there and witness. Live through some real challenges, develop and test your hypotheses. To ov...
This year, let’s keep it simple. As frameworks and tools pile up, it’s helpful to return once again to fundamentals. To clear the space, to question our established rules, and look for our own sources of waste. Let’s take some simple practices from the fundamental badass agile way and make sure we are applying them to our individual and team practice.
A lot of people talk about improving, but very few people are willing to do the work it takes to actually improve. No matter how much they may say they want change, when faced with actual change….some people just aren’t ready. Change is hard. Even a small commitment is better than waiting until you’re 100% ready…but until your reason is strong enough, you won’t be ready to take the plunge. And that’s ok. Focus on those who are ready NOW.
If you are struggling to do anything consistently, you could be biting off too much. The secret is to create ANY consistent habit, and then increase the scope and ambition once it’s habitualized.
What happens if you summon all of your courage and creativity to put something new, authentic and valuable into the world….and nobody comes? Better to wait for those who are naturally magnetized to your voice than it is to change your offering to suit a wider public.
Creativity is fundamental to agility. Problem solving blockers, interpersonal conflict, adapting and scaling agile, and general innovation demand that we tap into our deepest well of creativity. But how can you tap into this underused and unfairly labelled ‘artsy’ skill? Three things will help. 1. Be aware. Find a way to pay attention, focus, notice. Be in silence and lock out distractions so you can hear what your creative brain is saying. 2. Surround yourself with inspiration. It’s great to bo...
If the sole motivation is efficiency, and the means create unhappy people or lower quality…it still won’t be faster, even if it’s faster. You’ll lose people, you’ll lose fans, you’ll lose time – fixing broken product and broken teams.
You’ve been doing daily lessons learned or silver linings in your journal, right? If you have, I’ll show you the next step in the brainstorming process – a periodic grooming of you best ideas for personal and team improvement. I’ll go through a small sample of notes from my journal that, without a grooming/mining habit, I probably would have completely forgotten about.
It’s a new year…but don’t make resolutions. When was the last time that worked anyway? Instead, use the occasion to reflect on your existing vision and service statements (you DO have one of those, right?) and tweak it to reflect your path for the upcoming year. Don’t expect massive change, but rather, an update to keep you pointed in directions that build on the previous year’s successes, and move you toward the things that you are passionate about and can demonstrative unmatched value in. If y...
Commitments with a resounding and well-communicated ‘why’ have the best chance of getting done well. That ‘why’ should not be limited to the ‘…so I can’ element of a story headline. A business value statement allows you to more clearly articulate why the business should invest in this story, feature or outcome NEXT. It also allows various stakeholders (business and technical) to describe rationale for prioritizing this item that may not be obvious to the product owner – technical dependencies, r...
At the core of Scrum is the assumption that teams need lightweight mechanisms to assist people in sizing, making, tracking and keeping commitments. From the user story, which communicates why we’re building something, story splitting and short delivery cycles to keep promises small and victories visible; to the sprint plan, which details who will do what and when, through the daily standup, whose structure provides a safe means to communicate wins and challenges – all are designed to simplify an...
What it means when you get too many rapid-fire questions when training a new team – especially if those questions appear to question Agile or seem unduly negative or fearful.
If you lead agile teams, your attitudes and beliefs about work, delivery and teams matter. In this episode, we talk about 4 such mindsets: Opposition is Good You Can’t Control Chaos The Sooner You React The Better I want the challenge! The key to becoming more effective is to put these into practice. Challenge yourself to reflect on and then live at least one of these values this week. As they become habitual, take on more! I’d also like to announce that I’m looking to expand Badass Agile with m...
Self-limiting beliefs, or ‘the stories you tell yourself’ can derail your progress and effectiveness as a teacher, coach and influencer. The trick is…they’re hard to recognize and repair. They have a tendency to play in the background. Spawned from early or subconscious roots, they live in our blind spots where we can’t see them easily. In this episode I discuss why they matter, and how to locate them, bring them to the fore, and begin to dismantle them – which frees you to manifest your vision ...
This week, I answer an email from a reader who is launching his second career, hoping to break into the world of Agile, Scrum, and training. In the answer, I discuss the things you can do to stand out from the crowd when you have little or no experience or training/certification to help support your suitability for a job or opportunity. Remember, you can reach out at contact@badassagile.com if you have any questions about career path, coaching, or general agile and leadership practice....
Team is everything. It doesn’t matter how much technique you’ve got, its all about the way people come together, stretch, reach, dream, and do the impossible. If you’re not part of a high-performing team, you’ve got to SEE it before you can understand it and repeat it. Reach out to contact@badassagile.com if you want to learn more.
Is it better to be knowledgeable, or effective? As recent trends point to a decrease in elite-level post-graduate enrollment; its worth asking if all of this schooling is creating value in such a volatile and fluid business landscape.
In this episode, I discuss a few tips that will help you improve the ‘intangibles’ – the non-technical, non-academic qualities that make for great inspiration and great leadership. Among these – be confident, become a storyteller, and be willing to experiment.
A late night reflection on standing out from the crowd by increasing authenticity and originality…to distinguish oneself from the sameness that permeates our culture so we can serve our agile teams, clients and community and advance the craft.
What’s the one thing you need to get good at in order to stand out above competition? You need to MOVE…and, you might want to think about getting a swim buddy. Moving means you need to act. Consistently and courageously. While this sounds intuitive, the most common issue I encounter with teams is a hesitation to move in an uncertain direction. This is not a team problem, a corporate problem or an agile problem….this is pervasive across our culture. If you want different results, you have to act....
We often describe Delivery as a non-event in the ideal; why not agility itself? Must it really be such a huge enterprise undertaking – especially as we hope to infuse agility into our everyday work and culture? What would happen if we simply moved into our first experiment as the best way of conquering the unknown?
