Work Different

I had promised Carsten to attend his presentation, so I only attended half of Esther Derby’s.  I am so happy I saw her speak.  She’s incredible.  These were my rough notes, but I’ve gone in and edited to give my own reactions.

60 percent info in the start – build foundation, real team, goal, information.

Enabling conditions: info, expertise, material support, connection to org

Adapted from Thomas and Kilman, she showed a grid for to use as tools for analyzing how we respond to conflict.  These words below were dimensions on a grid and you would place yourself on one of the squares.

Proactive
Collaborate
Compete. Compromise. Accommodate
Avoid
Reactive
……..

Next Esther took a look at sources of conflict.  She had a great diagram that had:

Structure (as the top layer)

Task (a column header)
Missing or misunderstood communication
Hardened positions

Interpersonal (a second column header)
Values
Preferences
Past history

When negotiating conflict, just getting clear can solve a lot of issues.

………

Another source of conflict is lack of transparency.  Withholding from the team members.

[This I view as a major teaching for traditional advertising, which tends to follow the Broadcast paradigm through and through.  We think up information and Broadcast it at you.  It is not so much a conversation.]

………

(ran over to hear Tom Poppendieck and Carsten Jakobsen Lean team fixes)

Main recommendation in this talk was to use A3 Demming approach, as recommended too by Jeff Sutherland. I’ve also tried this with my teams and have found very effective.  For more info on A3, see here.

-spoke about root cause analysis
-A3 problem solving with teams facing the same problem

“simplify critical decision making”

Only way to get improvements is to ask people to solve their own, not other’s problems.  Judoka

Ready velocity > done velocity

[Went to “Agile Game Incubator” session workshop as I felt extremely tired (running a little fever).  This was a useful session that taught us how to create games to teach teams in a very engaging way.   The first step we went through was to identify a large issue, break it down into its parts, pick the three most important parts, then design a game to help teams understand how to work together better.  My team designed a game that challenged people to create a balloon person (balloon head, features drawn on, pipe cleaner body) within a few moments.  Another team, lead by a guy from UK, designed a quick game involving putting out numbers of fingers.  Another team designed a tower.  The interesting thing was in how the teams worked together to create the games.  So there was a completely meta level for the exercise.  I’d suggest to Michael and Don to actually surface this as part of the exercise, to stop people and have them report in about *how they worked together to create the game.*  I may do this myself in the future.]

First identify the problem then break down into contributing factors.

Aspects chart: who, when, timing, type of game ( physical, emotional, impressional)

Invention: inspiration / kiss / courage

Debrief ; questions and learning points

Allocate twice as long as game.