Did you see what you really just saw? Did you hear what you really just hurt? And did you take the appropriate action or did unconscious bias play a role in your decision? We help you become aware and lead you to take the appropriate actions on this episode of the agile within
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welcome to the party ,
I guess that challenges you from the inside and discover the agile within. And now here's your host, Greg Miller. Welcome to another episode of the agile within as always. I am your host, Greg. So today is a very interesting topic. One that's very close to my heart. As you all know, if you've been listening, I am a scrum master in scrum for 10 years.
So today's topic is called awareness to act, and it's all about if you see something here's something you're a coach or a scrum master on an agile team, work in an agile team, you see something happen. You don't just want to act right away. You want to don't use your bias. You want to understand kind of what's going on. So our guest today is going to , uh , talk to us about that. His name is Mark Wavell. He's a national agile lead with insight digital innovations.
He's a professional scrum trainer and a good friend of mine. I've known him for a quite a while now for about, I think maybe seven or eight years. So welcome Mark to the show. Thanks so much for having me. I love the , uh, of the concept of your podcasts, that it's not just in our work environment, but it's also , uh , in our whole lives. We can, we can use agile all over the place. Love it. Yeah. Yeah. That's right. That's that's right.
Yeah. Um, that's, that's exactly the idea of this is not just a , and I'm getting more and more into that. So , um, and we , with the topic today, we can use that to in our life . So , um, I have seen, I've been to two of your , uh, presentations on this and it's, it's very fascinating this really down my alley. So it's an awareness to act it's called and you have awareness analysis and act. So , um, help us unpack that. Let's , let's start off here.
Um, maybe how'd you get the idea and maybe start taking us through the first step there. Sure.
Yeah, this is , um, this is born of pain as most good ideas are and , uh, and also has been refined and built within community. So the way that it started out was I was , um , coaching a team that was pretty new to scrum and , um, you know, had some good first successes and we were several months in and I just had this gut feeling , um, as a coach, which maybe you've had before too, or you're like, I, I'm not making a lot of progress here. I feel like I'm hitting the wall, you know?
Um, and it's just one of those frustrating moments. And I, I had tried a couple of different techniques. I particularly love facilitation techniques. So I pulled a few of those out to try and help the team have better conversations. And it, it wasn't working ultimately. I mean, finally I kind of look myself in the mirror and I was like, it's not happening, right. We're not really, we're going to we're stalling out.
Um, and at the same time, I was also coaching one of the team members and mentoring him up to be a scrum master. So it became that actually helped me see it. Then I was trying to help him scrum master and the things I was talking to him about. I'm like, wait a minute. We're not getting better at
This . Right, right. So
It kind of smacked me upside the head a little bit. Um, and it put me into deep think mode. And , um, especially as I was trying to help him build up his skills as a scrum master. Cause there's, I learned that there's a lot out there for a scrub masters on if you will like the rules, you know, how to hold us a daily scrum, or is it , you know, there's a lot of things out there about that. And I'm not trying to denigrate that. I'm just saying, that's the easy stuff.
Those are the books on the shelf right in front of your face. And he, he and I, at that one, we're not struggling with those things. The team was not struggling with how to keep a daily scrum within 15 minutes. That's an important thing for scrum teams, but that's that, wasn't it. And so in my deep thinking, what I recognized was I was picking up all these, these tools, these facilitation techniques , um, or how to, how to help people understand the rules and things like that.
And that, that was actually humbling. My influence. It was getting in the way for me. And it struck me it several moments of clarity here. It struck me very clearly. Those three things you just described started to fall into place for me in particular, the first one was the first one to hit me, my awareness of what was, what was going on. I was only seeing what I was looking for. So what I, these like these tools, these techniques, and I was looking for reasons to use them.
And so of course I found reasons to use them, right. What struck me first was in awareness. I realized that I was just seeing what I was looking for. Right. The techniques that I liked to use are the new ones that I was learning. I was, I was looking for opportunities to use those.
And I realized that wasn't necessarily what was actually happening around me and maybe just maybe was getting in my way of helping the team and the manager and the product owner, you know, helping everybody around , um, the way that they actually needed to be helped.
Right. And , and , and w would you say it's kind of , um, you bring in some biases, right? We all bring in biases when we , uh, approach other people based on our, our environment, our background or upbringing, what have you, so what you think you see is based upon that, right?
Yeah. I mean, big time. It's, it's how we're wired. And I , every time I give this talk, I have to be really careful to emphasize that it's not a bad thing for us to have biases and conclusions that we walk into situations with. That's , that's how our brains are made. And it's made that way for a reason. It's just that it's not helpful in every situation.
And the example I like to give is like, what , Hey , uh, when, you know, I've never had this happen, thankfully, but if a bear was charging at me, it wouldn't be the time for me to become highly aware and set aside all of my preconceived notions of what might be happening to , to consider the possibility that I do. Right. That's the moment where I, my brain wiring is exactly made for. Right. It's perfect.
It's um, I won't even recognize the thought process that took place before I'm already, you know, hopefully several yards in a direction opposite of that charging bear . That's a good thing. And I use that extreme example. It's still true in many of the situations that we're in. And as, as Agileists, especially when we're coaching a team, we have a lot of experience. And so we see those situations and we, and our brains, without us even realizing it, just click and go.
I've seen this before, right. I understand what's going on. And I know how I can help now that can be helpful and it can be harmful. And that's part of the maturity in my mind of an agilest is to be able to filter those and say, maybe this is a moment for me to take a step back. That was like, when I was having limited influence , um, I was probably not effective in while I wasn't effective in that mode. And there's other times where it's no, I need to act now more analysis.
This isn't the moment for it. So yes, there's definitely a biases. They're not necessarily all bad. They're just not serving the purposes all the time that we really driving toward.
So you were taking the problem you were having, you were taking what you saw or heard insane . I think what I heard you say is, Hey, let's I have this new technique. Let's use that. It's kind of like square, peg round hole. Right. I want to use this because this is what I want to do right now on the side of the situation dictates that you're just saying, Hey, maybe this will work, right?
Yes. And I'll give you an example. Names changed to protect the innocent, but this team that I was working with here , um, we had a challenge. We were stalling out on some things. So I pulled the team and the manager together. So the whole scrum team and the manager together, and we had a good session talking about, you know, using some techniques that I love from liberating structures and a few other things.
And we identified some of the challenges that were taking place that were getting in the way. And we had some specific, we came up with some specific action items that could be taken. Um, some of them were outside of the team's control. So we did all that circles and soup. Great. And then we plotted it out on a chart of the things on one access that were most helpful, you know, most important, most impactful to the team's ability to deliver.
And on the other access to things that you know, would be easiest to do. So you'd have a quadrant that was easy and high-impact et cetera, et cetera, all good conversation to have the problem. Wasn't the people in the room though, that wasn't why the team wasn't moving forward. Right? Those weren't bad conversations to have. That was far from the most important thing that that team and the product and the organization needed at that moment.
The problem was more with the manager and the manager's manager. And I wasn't seeing it and I wasn't dealing with it because I love those techniques. So that's where I went like a moth to a flame.
You're focused on your technique. You're consumed with that rather than, so you saw what was going on. You did see it, it just didn't register.
Again, there were things happening there that we needed to talk about as a team, but I wasn't seeing how the team was impacted and , uh , constrained really by their environment. I wasn't, I wasn't really aware of that because I don't have a facilitation technique for
Exact stuff doesn't exist. Right. So that leads us into this. So you came up with this you're , uh , you're calling it your , uh , what do you call it? Your community or your awareness canvas.
Yeah. So, well, initially this was born as what I called the observation canvas. And then I realized , um, over the past three ish years here, that , uh , again, in community, that observation was kind of a misleading word. Right. It sounds fairly clinical. And it sounds like , uh , all I need to do is grab a clipboard and start writing some things down. And there's certainly an aspect to that, but it's broader than that. And that's why , um,
We here , right? Yeah. I can imagine. Yeah. Someone standing in the background with a clipboard taking notes as they go , you continue? Yeah. Go ahead. And a little creepy actually, too . Yeah . So
Awareness word. Uh , definitely. Cause there's more to it than that. Definitely. And then connected it. W w what I also recognized in refining, this was that we connected it . It just was a , an observation at first, but when we start with awareness, as we'll see, as we're going through this topic here, we need to connect it all the way up to action. And that's why it's called awareness to act now, because the point of the awareness or the observation is to be able to take effective actions.
Right. It's not just for the sake of awareness now we're doing it for a reason. So it builds, you know , each of these things builds on each other. And so we have to start with the foundation of awareness in order to analyze well and get to the spot where we're, we're taking effective actions. So, right. So
How do , how do we become aware, first of all? Yeah.
The first thing is just to realize what we were talking about a minute ago. I just want to emphasize it again and then kind of give some implications of it. We walk into every situation that we're going into with assumptions and conclusions, or as you said, appropriately biases or biases. I don't know how to pluralize that.
Exactly. Yeah. A bunch of bias groups. Okay.
Um, we walk into every situation with those things. It's, it's how we're wired. That's going to happen. Now, if the challenge for us is we're not aware typically of those things, we don't even know what we're walking in with. So there's an element of self-awareness here that we at least have to be willing to get curious about, or else we're not going to be able to do this. If I'm willing to say I'll walk into every situation with assumptions and conclusions.
What I will also recognize is that if I'm not careful, I'm going to look for evidence to support those things, because that's how I've made sense of the world. So this team is this way,
Because I see yes, right? Yeah.
Then I'm going to go find evidence to support it. And I've said this for years, and it's just proven itself over and over again for me anyway, that I, if I look for evidence to support a conclusion, I'm always going to find it now that's maybe a slight overstatement, but it's pretty darn close.
I would agree with that. Yeah . Uh , so
If I walk in with those assumptions and conclusions, I will be able to support them with evidence that I see in front of me. Yep . That's our danger point. That's our danger point. Because if it's blinding us to other things, because we're only looking for evidence to support our summary and conclusions, then we're not seeing what's actually happening. If I'm holding onto those assumptions and conclusions. So tightly, because that's how I've made sense of the world. It must be true.
Then I'm not going to see some of the things that are actually happening. And it's easier for test to see this than other people.
Yeah. There's no question.
And that's an every, you know, it doesn't matter what side of the, of political spectrum you're on. You're going to see it on the other side. It doesn't matter what you think about COVID, you're going to see it on the other side. It's really easy to see in other people, guess what it's happening to you too, is as all I'll say, and that doesn't make us right or wrong, it's just, that's how we're made. Right. So if I'm willing to consider that, that's how I made. That's how my brain is wired.
Can I get curious about it would be my first invitation am I willing to say, maybe there's more going on here than what I'm seeing and to do that. Um, we're going to need to get into observation mode. This is where observation fits. Well, if we're putting it in that context, what I would invite us to do as far as practice activity , uh , practical things would be to just observe actions that are taking place. This is really, it sounds simple.
It is exhaustingly hard to do this, but it forces us to set aside our assumptions and conclusions. Observation
Is about seeing
What's actually going on from an activity perspective. So it's things like, what does someone say? What volume are they using? What tone of voice are they're using? If you can see them, what's their body language. Maybe what's not said, what expression do they have or lack of expression. If you're in a room together, what's the spacing of people. Um, the , those are things we can actually observe. So if we can get ourselves back there, it's peeling back. These assumptions, conclusions painfully.
Yes. Would you say that? Just thinking out loud here, just kind of a sorta touches on , uh , EQ or emotional intelligence. Right. And you kind of have to have, like you said, reading the room, body language. I know I do a lot of that as a scrum master. I, I, and I might, I think I'm very sensitive, but , uh, as, as I've gone through this, I kind of realizing that I do have some biases too .
Maybe some cause you're, you're looking at, Oh, this person has , uh , has her arms folded and she's looking at her phone, she's bored . Right? You think that, but , uh, I think it was an example you gave , uh , in your last one was that , uh, no, she's not bored . Uh , her mom died last night or something like that. Oh, wow. Now she's not bored at all. She's upset. Right.
And we, each what's interesting is I run that exercise. You're just describing and every , uh, every talk I give, I actually , um, it's a example I use from another one of our , uh, excellent. Agileists that insight. Um, it's his story and he's done the same thing more times than I have. What's so interesting if you do that in a group of people, and you say, imagine somebody was, didn't speak at all during an event or was just looking at their phone or, you know, give some scenario like that.
You just say, what's the first thing that pops to your mind is the reason for it you'll find a diversity of assumptions. You would think it would be more narrow than that, but it is very wide and it's , it's rooted in what's going on inside us. Right. I, I , uh, I assume when someone doesn't speak during our meeting, that they're mad. There's several reasons for that, but that's, that's what I walk in with. That's how , uh , my brain's been patterned. There were a lot of experiences. Yeah .
I've seen it before. Yeah . I've seen it before. It might've been me.
Other people are like, maybe they're hungry. Maybe they're distracted. Some people see a bunch of different things, right. As their default assumption. And to your point here, the reason you're bringing it up, which is great is that we actually don't know. We're, we're assuming we're trying to make a causal link with the behavior.
What we can observe is that this person didn't speak this whole time and that maybe she looked at her phone , uh, you know, five times or for over half the meeting or something, very data oriented like that factual oriented. And if we can get ourselves to the spot that we have just pulled back and just looked at those things that are factual, the things a video camera would record an audio recording like this would capture.
Um, or as I, as I like to say, this is a bit punchy and fun, but the things you could prove in a court of law,
Can I bring that up? I'm glad that that was perfect. When you said that. Yeah. I love that.
If you could imagine, you're trying to prove something and you're saying this person , uh, was this way and the opposing attorney, the person defending the attorney, defending that person, would they object and say conjecture, right . Then that's an assumption or conclusion of yours. It may or may not be valid. And if you're willing to be curious, then set it aside for the moment and we'll get back to it later. All right. Just observe this person said these words kind of stuff.
Yeah. So, so yes, I was just thinking. Yeah. So in, in this, I'm sure for people listening, they've all either been on scrum teams or maybe not scrum teams, just in an environment where they've seen stuff like this and they make a in your life. You know, someone gets mad in line at Starbucks in front of you and you think it's X, Y, and Z, and it's not. Um, so we you're saying we see it, we file it away. We don't do anything yet. We just file it away. And so I saw this, I heard this
Right now. Ideally, if you're working with a team, what I'd recommend as you write it down or type it up, if you're, if you're more on the keyboard, then your hand cramps up , but capture it somehow so that it's visible and that engages a different part of your brain. And it also enables you perhaps more importantly to inspect it later. Okay. And , um, if you keep it all inside of your head, then you're going to find that here still yourself.
Now, also something else important to say about this, all the practices and techniques that we're going to talk about here are things that I would recommend that you do to start the shift.
That doesn't mean, like, for example, the practice here that we're going to talk about in the, in the canvas, the tool that , uh, that I'll point you to , um, for awareness is that you observe an interaction and just write down those observations, those awareness things, the factual stuff that you could prove in a court of law, just write that down on the canvas or type it up or something.
And I get a lot of questions sometimes like, wait, wait, are you saying that an every, you know, I'm a scrum master, are you saying that an every team event that I'm just sitting in the corner of the room writing on the canvas, right ? So that would be a little strange. I'm suggesting that this is a different way of thinking and approaching. This is a different mindset, different set of muscles, almost to start building them.
You're going to have to do some reps in this way, which is to start slow and separate the activities so that you understand or retrain your brain to have a secondary path you can choose to take. So, yes, at first observe, you know, a couple of team events, just start there and just observe. And that's it just do that because that's a different muscle. You'll find it's really hard to peel back those assumptions and conclusions , and you need the training after you get really good at it.
There, there's probably going to be a number of times where you're able to do that, set it in your brain very quickly. Maybe not even have to write it down in many cases and be able to process through awareness analysis act. But to start off with, yes, slow yourself down, please go ahead and write it down. So that would be my, my step that I would recommend you take first , um, in awareness that will open your eyes.
Yes, definitely. So we have this , uh, we're aware of it. So as we just observe, when do we get into analysis? When do we start on that phase? Or do we stay in awareness for , for a little bit longer? Yeah.
I mean, just from a practice perspective, I would say, just start there. Okay. Start there. Um, there's a few other things that you can do as well that can really help you in this , um, is to get somebody else to observe the same situation that you're observing separate from you, right. Writing things down separately, and then compare notes afterwards . It's another great way for you to say, Oh my gosh, she saw that I totally missed that.
Or , or now that I, you know, know that I seen what you wrote down, I realized I had a bias in what I had just observed here, what , the way that I wrote that down. And so that can really help you refine even more. And that's actually how we were training scrum masters at that client that I was talking about after we got this up and running, as we sent them out in pairs to do that ,
All that number . You said , remember it ? Yeah. I remember you said that you said they came back. They were exhausted. Yes.
Yes. You're like, I've never seen so much coffee in my life. Exhausted,
Just observing. How can that be exhausting, but you're cause you're , you're meant you're using all this mental focus, right?
Exactly. It's not physical activity or not listening to react. That's another type of thing that we might hear company are listening. You're watching in order to observe in order to become aware of what's going on. It's also worth pointing out. Just if I, if I can for a minute here , some specific biases so that you can recognize when you've done these, because we all do, we all do.
Um, the first one is what I like to call the inside view very common is that we assume things that are happening inside someone else that you can't actually observe. And these are thoughts and emotions.
Right.
You know , I don't actually know that that Greg is angry. I don't know that I, there are things again, we're wired this way. There are things that I might see or hear that my brain is wired to connect with anger in the case . If we're trying to really become aware, it's worth stripping that away for the time being, and in analysis, we'll get back to pulling those back in. But right now I want to strip those away. What is it?
Um, for example, that, that I'm seeing that might make me think that Greg's angry. So Greg, if, if I was just , if you were to tell me , um, gosh, you know , uh , Monash was super angry. We , if we were strip that back, what kinds of things do you think you would have seen or heard that would have led you to the spot to make that assumption?
That conclusion Monesha is angry. Could've been , um, facial expression, furrowed, brow, maybe arms, folded body. I would look at bilanguage from , yeah , what I do. I would look at body language. Um, maybe, maybe he snapped at somebody in stand up. Maybe someone asked a question and he, the tone of voice that he used possibly could have been told me that , uh , he was sharp, short with the person and just said, this is what I'm working on, done.
And went back to , uh , looking down at the floor. Maybe things like quiet. I know like when I get angry, sometimes I , I tend to get quiet. So my bias, there you go. Again. I just, I just re I just realized that my, when I get, when I get angry, I get quiet. So if I see somebody else getting quiet, I say , Oh, he's angry. Cause that's the way I get there is there's a bias. You just brought that out. Yeah, that's fine .
Whereas other people are more like lions and they will they'll bear their claws and go at it. Right, right. That might be their anger or not. I don't know. It's different for each person. Yeah. Um, somebody that , uh, that I know, well, when they are angry, their answers will be terse . Not the volumes, not even high there . They just will give you the shortest possible answer. They can and expect that you understand that means they're really angry at that moment
In time. So what
I would be saying in awareness right now is to write down those things. You, you actually, right. And again, imagine this opposing attorney was saying, objection, you don't know that Monash was angry. Right. You're like, okay, fair enough. Um, no , was w you know, I saw a furrowed brow. Um, his voice got louder than it was before. Um , maybe he pounded his fist on the table. I mean, the things that you just went through, those are the things you can actually observe. Write that stuff down.
It's, it's, I'm not going to lie. It feels a little weird to do it. It feels like a mature wasteful to do. It really does. I've been through this many times with many , uh, Agileists. It feels wasteful at first, but you're stripping away those , um, biases that you're walking in with basically. So that's the inside view. You don't know what's going on inside somebody the next, most popular one connecting. Cause like, I know why something's happened and you'll know you've got that going on.
For sure. If you write down the word, because in your observation, you know, maybe let's go back to our friend punish here. Maybe even Nash. We write down Monash raised his voice. So cleaner observation there , right. Monash raised his voice because Sharon shook her head. And the , the challenge here is that I, again, don't actually know that. That's why I'm an issue . Raised his voice. I probably have a lot of evidence to support it maybe, but I don't actually know it for sure.
It could have been timing. Right. It could have been. I know, I think you've talked about before, but he's thinking of something else. And maybe he's looking at his phone and he got the texts . He shakes his head right. At the same time that she said something and I saw that, Oh, he's mad at his mad at Sharon.
Yes, yes, exactly. Now, if he says, wow, Sharon, I'm really mad at you .
That's an observation that you could S you could use that in a court of law. Right. He said, I'm mad at you.
Right. Exactly. What we can observe is the timing is exactly what you just said. You know, Sharon said X , Y , Z , right after that, I saw Minesh shake his head. And what you've just done in doing that as you've just kind of opened your hand from your assumption that has some foundation, but you want to remain curious about at this moment in time.
And that's really what we're trying to do as we're trying to remain curious, instead of confident that we know for sure what's happening so that we can see more of it. So that's the connecting cause bias. The third one is evaluation and that's when we place a label, we judge, you know, something was good, something was bad, something was too much or too little. So if you see that, that means that you are you're, you are bringing in your judgment of that particular situation or action in there.
And you just want to observe what's real about it. Again, imagine the opposing attorney, you can't call that bad. Right. Right, right, right. That's your judgment of it. Fair. Um , and the last one, that's probably the easiest to see. Um , when you read things back over, in my opinion is exaggeration. If you're over or understating things like always never or hardly.
Now we sometimes do that as a , uh , w w tend to do that anyway, as a shorthand , it's like, I don't want to count how many times , um, the problem is you're not observing always, and you're not observing never, which is a different always , um, you're observing this moment in time. So just write down what you're seeing right now. So those are some ways that you can get from , uh , what we might call polluted observations. Polluted awareness to a clean observation is to clean those things away.
It's funny when you said you brought up always a never had , I just thought of , uh , my wife at home. When I, whenever I, like, I used the word always, you always do this, but in my head, I know I'm definitely exaggerated in my head. It's like, Oh , maybe twice. I realistically, I know it's been twice, but I say always, cause I want to exaggerate it , make it sound worse than it is. So she either stops or does what I'm telling her that she always does or doesn't do.
I'm exaggerating from my point. I think we all do that.
Yeah. This is in my view. That's connected right back to that. You're walking in with your assumption and your conclusion. You're trying to make your point. And so your evidence looks like your point, right? You're aware of things that look like your point. And that's what we're trying to just set aside for the time being in the awareness phase of this. So we can move on to analysis if you're ready to. Yeah .
I would just want to say that we've got this very simple set of canvas as there's a canvas for awareness. That is almost not a canvas. It's so simple. We do have a canvas for analysis and action. It's all in one PDF document. If you want to get that, you can just go to awareness, to act.com and , uh, and get that. It's , it's super simple.
You're getting the ID on here, but if you want something to write in some, to remind you or prompt you for these things, that would be a great place to create.
Awesome. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah . Everyone go there and download that. That'll help you get through this. Yeah, absolutely.
Cool. So if we've, if we've done a good job of awareness, we have a bunch of things that we've observed that we don't know what we think about about them. That's the idea anyway. But , um, what I have seen in myself and the people that I've worked with is that those Unal assumptions and conclusions are still hanging out there. Like I actually actually still have those. I'm just able to kind of set them aside, or it almost feels like I'm able to ask them to hold their breath.
Probably a good way to
Put it. You still have on this , right . They're only
Going to stay there for so long. You know, I want to pull them back in and I recognized that. And so what I was realizing is I needed to pull them back in because they weren't just going to go away on me. However, I wanted to pull them back in, in a way that helped this curious stance that I had instead of just negated all of that hard work I did in awareness. Right.
Um, so that, I wasn't, again, just looking at everything I wrote down in awareness and finding evidence to support my conclusion and the way that this works , um, is with the way we word it. It seems like a trick because it is, but it's a very effective one. Okay . And the way to do this is after you've done some awareness, again, this is the training program.
Anyway, if you will, to build up our core muscle for this, after you've done your awareness, you've written that down and you've taken a look at it. You tried to clean up your observations, maybe done that with another person, whatever. Then in analysis, then we can express openly with , uh , I like to say like with an open hand, what we were assuming about it, what was going on, and it's probably still better than what we would've done before.
Cause now we we've taken the time to observe more broadly. So we have better input, but we still want to express those openly and the magic word here. It's a wonder. So instead of saying like Monash raised his voice and Monash pounded his fist on the table , um, therefore Minesh was, was angry. Yeah. You can definitely make that conclusion. And that is certainly one possible maybe even probable explanation or conclusion that we could draw there. But if we use the word wonder it leaves it.
So that we're still in a curious spot. So we could say this and this happened. I wonder if Monash was angry. Yeah. It's amazing what that does at least for me and the people I've worked with, because that lets me be valid as a possible option. My , my thought process is valid, right? I'm not saying that idea idiot. No, no. It's , it's a possible explanation and I'm going to put it down as my first possible reason to hear , but I'm going to do it with wonder so that I don't stop.
So that I'm still curious, right. Because that's the next step is to say what other alternative possibilities are there. I wonder if Monash fill in the blank, what are , what do you think some other possibilities are if he raised his voice and pounded his fist on the table,
He raised his voice. So definitely angry. I would definitely say that. I wonder if, well, the only word that comes to my mind at the moment, it would be close to anger, but frustrated, which maybe isn't really angry, but frustrated with something maybe. Yeah. Not necessarily someone maybe , um , maybe he back to my exempt , maybe he was on his phone and uh , he just happened to see that the same time.
Maybe he didn't realize, you know, if you lose track of where you are and you're just frustrated with something he read on the phone, nothing to do with in the room. Maybe that's a , we're bringing in the, I hear the court again. Right. We have a doubt. We brought down in, we brought down into the room, right. And a reasonable doubt.
Yep . It could be something entirely from outside the situation that is just triggering him, that he's just dealing with. Right . And it's showing up in this conversation, it could be something completely different. He could be very passionate about this particular topic. It's not anger. It's passionate for him. That could be another option there. I've also seen people get very defensive. You could call that anger maybe.
Um , but you know, maybe they got , uh, challenged on something or , or even more. So this is a little more abstract here, but what if, as you said, they were distracted than they were pushed to answer something that they weren't really, they didn't really know what was going on.
Sometimes that defense mechanism could just be to get louder and more , um, you know, provide more expression as a way to say, leave maybe back off, because you're starting to get into a spot that I might have a soft squishy spot. And hopefully, hopefully everybody listening. Hopefully you can get the idea. We can keep going. A lot of possibilities here. If we are open to the idea that it might not be what we assumed it was, then we'll find alternatives to it.
If you are not, then don't waste your time with awareness because this is really the whole process really isn't worth it. Um , and that moment, and then as soon as you become curious about that, these, you know, the awareness and these wonder statements really become important.
The thing is, is , is like you said, in the beginning, it's, we're going through, we're going through it. We're going through it here trying to go slowly, go through everything. And like you said, it's , um , it's going to be slow in the beginning. You might be frustrated, angry, whatever, as it, as it goes along , take, write , write notes down here.
It might seem awkward, painful, but after you do it for a while , you'll, it'll become second nature after you won't have to write the notes, you can keep it in your head. Right. And you can keep track of these things. You can do it better and better like anything else.
Yep . That's right. And you, you know, for me, anyway, I find moments , um, where I haven't done a good job of this type of thing in a situation. And it's typically the ones that you're in the most, right. You're most familiar with because I know what's going on here.
Um, that I then in order to kick myself back into it, I will take a step back and go slower and just do some awareness at least for a few minutes and choose to intentionally only be aware and not be in the content as much and not be ready to respond. So there are still moments where I go, okay, that will help me get back into a better posture in this particular situation. So you , once you got the muscle, you can choose how to, how to use that. And when do you use it?
So if we, if we've openly wondered, then we're at a spot where we can think about what's impactful about it. And I don't spend a lot of time on this in my talks, because this is the kind of analysis we're used to doing. So it's kind of, you're gonna , in my experience kind of typically fall a little bit naturally into this, but once you've said, maybe this is what's happening, maybe this is what's happening, or this is what's happening. And you go like, so what, so what if that's the case?
Right. Um, and, and really you can do so what, with those possibilities there. So what, what if Monash did this in this meeting? He did. So what about that? Um, you know, maybe some people were taking it as anger from him. That's interesting. So the impact of that is that people might be less willing to approach Minesh about this topic maybe specifically, or in general. I don't know.
Um, you can come up with those types of potential impacts and consider those and essentially prioritize what's most important for you to address during that interaction. Right? So w what do I want to choose to act on right. The third step, but in order to get there, I'm going to have to consider the, so what of, what I've observed, and then I'm going to need to prioritize so that I choose which particular so what's impact that I'm going to act on. And that's the last part of analysis.
So is there a question , is there , um, so you're saying every time we observed something , um, do we necessarily have to take action on everything or just when we, when we decide, what, what makes us decide through, I guess, through the analysis, do we discover whether we should or should not take action?
Sure. That's a great question. And part of the reason I love this, this set of tools here is that it's very empirical for us, which is agile us . We should be like all about , um, so that we can come back to this spot here in analysis and compare it to previous times, we've done our observations to see if there's a difference to see if there's a shift to see if our actions have had an impact that impact we were trying to have, and we could totally be in the spot.
And as, as professionals look at that and go, all right , I think this, this particular situation here and the things I'm observing the impacts, this one is not something that I need to act further on right now. That's, that's a possible action is to do nothing else on it. Right.
Cause the, the idea. So as I just think through here, my own experience, the idea of taking action, going through this at the end taking action is for a scrum team, particularly is meant to help your team continuously improve. Would that be correct by taking action on something that you saw that you think that if you're a scrum master agile coasts that you think needs to be addressed in order to get better? Is that correct?
In all the dimensions, like the interactions of the people , uh, the , the way that people are showing up to the work that they're doing, the product itself, you're going to impact as well, these systems of the team and around the team in the organization and the processes and the tools that they're using, the leaders around all of those things. Um, yes. All continuous improvement in all those dimensions.
Great. Yeah. Th this reminds me a lot of , um, kind of , like you said, in the beginning awareness without action is, is pointless. And , uh , it just, it actually says that the new scrum guide , uh , that just came out. So I, I was at a team that , um, I took over a new team just real quick , uh, their retrospectives . They didn't, they hated their retrospectives as feedback I got. Okay . I was like, okay. Huh. Wonder why I've never really had someone that hates retro.
I mean, they don't, maybe don't like doing it cause they got to talk to each other and stuff, but they, they, they, they, they didn't see the value is what , what I, when I was told. So , okay. Come to find out that , um, the previous scrum master was doing the retrospectives was capturing or was , they were talking there.
I was in a great conversations and then it ended, they, they missed taking the action items and following through, on voting on action items, carrying it through and actually having something that they could take action on. So I agree with them great point. It was a waste of their time and just spinning their wheels. All I did was come in and create an action item list and start capturing these. And at the end of six months, they loved it. They loved retro, then that's all I did.
And simple little, yeah.
Yeah. It became valuable worth their time. Right. Yeah. Wow. That's very, it's sometimes it's the simple things, but if you don't look for them , you're never going to find them. No,
No, not at all, but yeah. Awareness without, without, but , but then you say , but then you also said maybe, maybe you don't take action. Maybe you're aware of something and you wrote your notebook and maybe, maybe there is nothing for you to do. But I think the idea here is that you want to try to take action on some of these things that you're experiencing.
I mean, we're , we're kind of talking at two levels as well in my view, because the , the specific practice of awareness , um, is, as we're talking about it, here is around an interaction that you're observing, right. And an interaction. Uh, maybe it's a daily scrum, maybe it's just a hallway conversation, whatever it is. Um, it's an interaction. And will you take action from every interaction you observe? No. No, that's, it's a really good point.
You're not always going to take action from those things as a practice to get your muscles going, you probably would want to do that. Um, but yeah, in general, not so much, however , um, as, as a leader and I say that very broadly intentionally, so whether that means you're a scrum master, a manager, a product owner, a member of the development , um , sorry of the scrum team as a developer using the new scrum guide terms , um,
Uh, whatever
Your role is , um, where you , where you provide leadership, you as an agilest , I hope you have a backlog of things you're working on, things that, you know, the top three things that you're trying to protect that you think are going really well or the things that you're you're seeing are really impeding or getting in the way that you're trying to address. And so overall, I'm going to say, wow, if, if , um, let's say a scrum master of a scrub master didn't have that wasn't active doing that.
Then I would question them definitely very heavily. Um , right . But if they walk out of an interaction and go, there was stuff in there, we could work on it, not the most critical thing right now for this team or this product or this organization. Okay. That's part of your job to, to provide focus as you're writing, as guests was talking about. Right,
Right. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. Absolutely. So that , that takes us to act, is there anything else we need to be aware of there?
Well, I would just say if you've done your work well in analysis so that you understand what the impacts are, then that makes action a whole lot easier because I was describing at the beginning, how I would find it and, you know, new facilitation technique and then go search out a reason to use it. Um, and that's, that's a really bad way to select our actions. And there's no end of, of books on the bookshelf that are right in front of our eyes for, for techniques to take action .
So I'm really not trying to solve that problem in this tool at all. You got plenty of places to go. And if, if you're like, but I can't think of any, then let me just say management three dot O liberating structures, professional coaching. There's a ton of them out there. I would just, you know, go, go feed yourself with those. Um, but the point is, you've got, you've got a library of things you could do at this point in time.
And the longer you've been doing it, the more of those you have available at your fingertips. Um, the, the key here is to be able to filter those down and the way to do that, I'm pulling out a good business analysis technique here is to understand your requirements first, right ? First express. Again, I recommend doing this, actually write it down or type it up as a way to switch how your brain is looking at it.
And so you can expect inspect it, but write down what's the impact you're trying to have. Like you can do that. Any number of ways of vision, I would envision this would look this way after we're done, or just stated as I really want to see this addressed in this way, I'm fine. Then that's your desired impact. Something that you can observe and you can get all the way down to making a measurable. That would be a great next, next step or a maturity you could do in this.
I will watch these measurements and see these metrics or whatever and see the impact. But the point is just start with your impact and then pick your tool. What's the most effective action you can take.
Yup . Where you , you, you were doing it backwards at the beginning, right? You never had this shiny new tool. Let me try this out. This is going to work , right.
I love making tools.
There's certainly a lot of that out there. I go to a lot of conferences like you do too. And then people are coming up with their, with their new tools and you want to go try it out and they say, try it out at your nets , retrospective, try this out at your next daily standup . And you're okay, great. I'm going to go do that. That's kind of sounds like what you were, what you were doing there.
Our guest today, again has been Mark Wavell, national agile lead insight, digital innovations, professional scrum Chainer scrum trainer@scrum.org. We've been talking about awareness to act. Did you want to get ahold of the observation chemists that Mark mentioned it's awareness to act.com. This has been another episode of the agile within again, don't forget to review us on iTunes or any podcasts that you're listening to this from.
Follow us on Twitter at the agile within email, us greg.Miller@theagilewithin.com. Instagram, the agile within my website is agile. The agile within.com with questions, comments, show suggestions. Send me some suggestions. If I like it, I'll have the topic on the show. Maybe have you on the show too. This has been the agile within where we invite you to be more agile.
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