Agility and Life

Camelia Codarcea

Consultant, Trainer, Coach Cofounder AgileHub

I want to bring a new perspective.Agility on two levels:

• micro level (family and our day-to-day lives)• middle level (where our jobs are – companies)

What agility means to me and why I think life is agile.

Agility and Life

1) Târnăveni, Mureş County – Bridge over Târnava Mică

We all have a big desire to experiment and even like the process itself.

When dealing with difficulties, our instinct is to get up and move forward.

We are actually not that affected by the results, we are affected by the reactions we get from others when the results are not those they wanted.

And that feeling kills the desire to experiment.

• Freedom (supervised)• Experiment• Trust• Confidence• Space

Key points:

2) The Burgundy winter coat

Focus on solutions:“Don’t cry over spilled milk” - Dale Carnegie

Take responsibility of your actions. Deal with the consequences.

Agile Manifesto:

“(….) our highest priority is to give value to the customer through early and continuous delivery”.

Who are the customers? What does it mean value in our lives? How do we give value?

In life our customers are ourselves, our families, friends and those we interact with.

What do we want from our relationships?What do we want our customers to become?

The answer to these questions will tell us what VALUE is in our lives.

Joke: Mother to child.

“When you grow up, I would like you to bea manager, to have many ideas, make a lot of money and make good decisions every day. But until then, you have to shut up and do as I say cause I know best! ”

IT DOESN’T WORK THAT WAY. WE HAVE TO GIVE VALUE EVERY DAY.

Do you have a long-term plan regarding your relationships?

• our families• friends• children

Or do we react on the spot, without thinking about consequences ?

In Agile there is a business responsible (PO).

• finding out what value means.

• optimize the ROI (Return Of Investment).

• make decisions every day: what’s important and what not, orders the features, talk to the team, finds out new information.

TOUGH JOB!

All of us are the POs of our own lives.

When we know what value means to our customers (family, friends, ourselves), when we have the vision of the final product, it’s much easier to take short term decisions.

He wanted to raise a child that trusted him and that learned what responsibility means. And knowing that, it was easy for him to make the decision”.

Joel Peterson: expert in Leadership and Negotiations.

His daughter negotiated with him to get a hamster.She is wining the negotiation although he HATES hamsters.

WHY?

How do we decide what’s valuable to us?

• Think • Reflect • Analyze • No blaming • Accept the facts and decide on the actions

“No, that’s enough for me … I don’t want perfection. These are good

enough.”

3) Pair of summer pants.

He was not willing to spend any more energyand time for the benefit of perhaps finding something better.

He had reached the ROI.

He was happy with the decision.

http://strivingtodolifebetter.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/jr1.jpg

The Jar of Life

http://www.visjonaer.com/uploads/content_files/images/BigRocks-sm-greenertrees-net.jpg

The Jar of Life

4) From developer to …

Agile teams need the courage to change thingseven late in the process when finding betterways.

In life most of the time we are afraid to leavethe things we are used to, even though we don’tlike them. They bring the false feeling of safetyand familiarity.

Our nature is to evolve, to learn and the mostnatural thing is to have the courage to make thefirst steps in the direction we want… but thatrequires some experiments first, plus somereflection and self analysis.

Courage

Fixed thinking:

• I’m born with certain abilities which don’t change.• We are successful because we are smart.• If we have difficulties in doing something, that’s because we are NOT smart.• judging.• Constantly we have to show you are good.• We don’t accept feedback, we look for excused and we accuse others

Ways of Thinking – Carol Dweck

Growth thinking (agile thinking):

• I can learn anything.• If I’m good at something that’s because I’ve puteffort into it, I worked towards becoming better.• It’s not important where I am and what I do… I can become better. • I observe, ask questions, investigate, I am curious.

Ways of Thinking – Carol Dweck

We cannot think agile in all areas of our lives, our entire life.

Agile thinking and fixed thinking are only roleswe take at different moments in our lives.

No matter how much we wait to learn before webegin doing something, there will always be morethings to learn. We need to feel comfortablerecognizing that we don’t know it all.

“If someone offers you an amazing opportunity andyou’re not sure you can do it, say yes – and learnhow to do it later”.

Richard Branson – founder of Virgin Group

“If you want to become adept of any activityinvolving change, innovation or creativity, you’lleventually face up the fact that edge discomfort ispart of your life. You’ll need to be OK with that. Youdon’t want to learn to stretch painlessly. You wantto learn to accept the discomfort of an edge as acondition of your work, a sign that you’re doingOK.”

Jurgen Appelo - creative networker.

“What if I told you that those things you like about me are the result of ALL my hobbies, would you still want to end my game playing hobby?”

5) Playing games

We live in a ecosystem, where diversity is to be appreciated as it is.

We are different and that’s the beauty of it.

Each one of us comes with a different view of the things and we can share information.

• Diversity

• Same goal

• Share ideas, gain new perspectives

• Respect and appreciation

Do the same principles work? How do we apply them?

Can we apply?• experiment, supervised freedom• trust, giving space• responsibility• decisiveness (enough)• courage to change • appreciate diversity

What about companies and teams?

John Shook, a LEAN guru, during Lean Conferencehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUpbbK104Zg

Experiment, supervised freedom, trust, giving space

“Every time you tell people what to do, you take the responsibility of that action away from them”

LEAN philosophy

Responsibility

“The conductor doesn't make a sound” , so he realized his job is to ”make others feel powerful, make them feel they can do it; to awaken possibility in others”

Ben Zander - conductor of BostonPhilarmonica

Trust, encouragement

John Shook, a LEAN guru, during Lean Conferencehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUpbbK104Zg

Leadership, Courage

Value:

“If you aren’t making difference in other people’s lives, you shouldn’t be in business. It’s that simple!!!!”

Richard Branson – founder of Virgin Group

“If I were to start my career all over again … I’d still be a math teacher. I really love being around kids and I like math.”

My mom – Retired math teacher

People change, they are capable of transformation so give them:

• room to experiment, to learn• encouragement, so they feel safe to share ideas• support• help them develop as humans, so they find out who they are, what they want

YOU CREATE AN INFINITY OF POSIBILITIES!

When we:

• accept diversity and experiments• believe in ourselves• have our priorities (jar of life) sorted out

Then we have the chance to grow old and say:

• “It was hard, BUT If I were to do this all over again, I’d still do what I did. ”

THANK YOU!

Camelia Codarceawww.cameliacodarcea.rocamelia.codarcea@agilehub.ro