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The Art of the Possible

February 10, 2012 by Jason in Daily Scrum Tip | Leave a comment

The gym I workout at had an interesting quote on the whiteboard today:  ”We would accomplish more if we didn’t think of so many things as impossible”  I immediately thought back to my CSM training when my instructor, Mishkin, said something to the effect of “Scrum is the Art of Possible“.  I don’t why that has stuck with me for so long.

This got me thinking about how important the Agile Mindset is to being more successful with Agile.  I pride myself on always asking questions and challenging the status quo, even in environments where that is perceived as “negativity”.  I don’t see it as negativity at all.  I see people who blindly follow process and priorities without questioning the motivation behind them to be far worse.  Now that’s not to say companies can’t be successful implementing some Agile processes, it simply means those rare organizations that really ‘get it’ will enjoy much greater success and enjoyment.   Your mileage may vary, some organizations cannot sustain a fast pace of change for a variety of reasons.  Other organizations will develop a learning culture or commitment to excellence.  This is the important part, there’s no ‘right way’ for all organizations.  Sometimes a strong status quo works best when loss of stability can lead to more problems. Read More

5 Big Takeaways from Lean Startup Machine Toronto

January 31, 2012 by Jason in Conferences | 3 Comments

This past weekend I attended Lean Startup Machine in Toronto. I’ve been using this method for a couple of months where I work and this was a great opportunity to get more experience.   I didn’t really know what I was in for but after reading (most of) Eric Ries Lean Startup book, Running Lean and some other online resources I knew I wanted more of whatever this was.

Thursday night after introductions, speeches by the mentors and some exercise to help people to get to know each other, it was pitch time.  I wasn’t really planning on pitching anything, but about half-way through pitches I decided to anyway.  I’m in no way shape or form a salesguy so I’m sure my pitch was pretty lame but mine made the top 15 based on votes from the crowd.  The idea was came from when I was a consultant, I experienced companies that sucked.  They had one other thing in common.  Good people worked there.  My idea was to help figure out how to get exceptional people into companies that didn’t suck using the theory that myself and Don Gray are pitching for Agile 2012. Read More

3 Reasons You “Should Just” Go to PSL

January 30, 2012 by Jason in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

PSL 2012 is coming up in May this year, I had the pleasure of attending last year and it was a life-changing experience.  Here’s 3 reasons why you ‘should just’ go.

  1. You’ll learn to stop saying “should” and “just”: I worked with a company that had a problem with too many bugs.  When a doozy would pop-up the usual all-hands-on-deck emergency meeting happened.  The output was “we should do X to make Y not happen again”.  Everybody nodded and felt great about this new epiphany!  Shame nothing actually got done.  When you say “we should do X” you remove all sense of responsibility on you and everybody else.  It’s an action-less modal verb.  I “just” thought this point would be valuable.  Did you feel the power of this paragraph dissipate?  ”I just through this point…” means I have no confidence in what I “just” said.  Stop saying “should” and “just”.  PSL will help you figure out how.
  2. You’ll become more self-aware: Self-awareness leads to improvement.  I had many of my patterns reflected back to me during the week and PSL gave me many tools to figure out how to recognize those patterns and more importantly how to work on fixing them.  Other people aren’t the problem, understand how you intake and process information and you’ll be much more self-aware.
  3. You’ll learn how to spot problems: Well duh, it’s called PROBLEM SOLVING LEADERSHIP, what did you expect?  Seriously though, I get criticized for being too negative because I do not, nor will I ever, accept the status quo.  PSL taught me how to do this, diplomatically and brutally.  I usually prefer the brutal truth yet I realize the need for telling the kinder truth sometimes.  If you cannot challenge the status quo and treat every problem as it’s own unique set of circumstances, (which they are, but generally humans use that as an excuse to not dig deeper “oh, it was an anomaly…it won’t happen again”), you’ll struggle with developing a problem solving attitude in your organization and you’ll be doomed to mediocrity.
  4. You’ll Have Fun!!! PSL was a blast!  Intense learning, strong relationships were formed with people I never met before and it was extremely fun!  I do have another problem though.  The title of this post says ’3 Reasons’, yet I have listed 4.  How can I solve this problem?  ;-)

PSL will sell out fast, go sign-up now!

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