To free people from their constraints, so they feel they have a choice
Your time is yours, don’t let anyone steal that from you. This is something you are in full control over and is perfectly in your realm of influence. Watch this and apply immediately.
David Grady: How to save the world (or at least yourself) from bad meetings is one of the best pragmatic Ted talks I’ve ever seen and a classic to show anyone
1%
I keep coming back to Justdiggit. It so much resonates with what I think is a very simple solution for a what seems a complex problem. And the results can be seen from space!
So, again, this month I’m donating to Justdiggit again.
Inspired by Patagonia, I’ve decided to donate 1% of my monthly gross revenue (ex VAT) to charity involving our Planet. Every month I’m going to pick a charity/ngo/whatever that resonates with “making the world just 1% better”. If you can deal with just 1% less (you’ve got 99% left), join me in donating to whatever cause resonates with you.
🙋 Ask this question as in (interim) manager during an intake/interview:
“What answers/solutions to your problems/challenges do you actually already know or have been told by your employees, but you just don’t dare to act upon?”
In most of my assignments I’m hired to help out when problems are bigger than the company can solve themselves. They need an outside look on things or just an interim manager to fix things. In my experience, a lot of the solutions are already known. They just don’t act. Management doesn’t dare to, or they need an outsider to confirm thing and clean things up. I once even opened my analysis of what’s going on with the following single sentence on a slide.
🤨 “What if everything I’m going to tell you, has already been told to you by your employees? Why would you listen now?”
❓What are your experiences with this?
To be honest, not much benefits came to mind in the beginning.
Yesterday, I visited the PT again as the whiplash in my right calf muscle is still not 100% healed. At least, it happened a second time 9 days ago and it still feels slightly sore after 40 minutes of normal walking.
PT advice
So, what are the benefits?
Goal is to still be running ultra’s when I’m 90, so I’m considering this a minor set back…
I’ve been a freelancer for 5 years now. In these years a lot of (new) colleagues asked me how to get started. I always thought it wasn’t that special, but I guess going freelance is still “a thing”.
Here is a practical guide to get started. There is some Dutch specific stuff in here, but most is not country specific and common sense.
🎓 Official part
Go to https://www.kvk.nl/mijnondernemingen/ and follow the steps.
Save the bills as expenses 🙂
Now you’re set! Go! Be a freelancer! Don’t make it harder than it is 🙂
All the other stuff is optional, not officially needed, but I think super helpful, so read on if you want!
🚨 Mandatory from my perspective
Get insured (you need to get help for this from an intermediate, https://www.havegoed.com/ helped my out)
✅ Do this also!
💸 Backup
And last but not least, start saving money! Make sure you have at least 4-6 months of living costs saved up over time as a backup for the times you are out of an assignment or something else happens. Do this before you invest in other stuff!
❓I’m probably forgetting some things I now find natural, so if you have any questions or things you miss, just ask!
My week of running is still not running.
I have a whiplash in my calf and it’s still sore. The first was a couple of weeks ago. I thought I recovered. I did a test run (30 min of 5 min run, 1 min walk) and that was fine. Checked with the Physical Therapist (PT) and everything was good, so I could start running again. Building in 3 weeks towards 1,5 hour run.
Waited to days and did a 35 min (5 min run, 1 min walk) sessions and on the third 5 min, “Tjak”, whiplash was back.
That has been 1,5 weeks ago and it’s still just a bit sore.
Did some biking, but it’s too cold now. Did the mandatory 30 min walking every day. Today it was 50 min but after 40 min felt the calf again.
🤬
Tomorrow session with the PT to see what I need to do.
I heard this saying (a Chinese proverb) a couple of times in the last days. Today again in Buitenhof, a tv talkshow. And I think I read it in “Steal like an artist” from Austin Kleon (highly recommended by the way). As it is December and almost everybody is thinking about new years resolutions, the saying resonates.
🤮 One part of me mentally throws up a bit every time somebody talks about new years resolutions. The reason is that you can start with something new every day. Every day can be a new beginning, a new year, so start now.
⏰ On the other hand, it helps to have some kind of marking moment to try to get the right start. It helps to give a basis, a “special” moment in time to give the starting moment a bit more emphasis. And it helps if others do the same, so you can keep each other accountable.
🎬 The proverb also helps to realise, that yes, a needed change could and maybe should have been done earlier (days, months or even years), but there’s no changing the past.
What you can do is to start NOW.
That is to feel a certain freedom again I’ve lost in the last 2 years.
I need to feel free and I don’t feel it right now. I don’t feel free today because:
Dude, but you are a freelancer, so you should have a backup, right?
I did, but it’s gone. Not because I did something stupid, but because we had to do a couple of things.
We all did the above and we are very happy with it, don’t get me wrong.
So, even when I’m writing this I feel like I’m whining, so rationally I know there’s nothing to complain about, we’re healthy, we have and had a lot of fun and we did and still do a lot if things others can’t.
But my Feeling Brain (thanks Mark Manson) still feels trapped. That means 2 things.
That means landing a new assignment of course.
I think Antifragile is a better term than Agile.
Agile for me is a term related to flexible, able to go with the flow, and “bend” to change and able to move quickly. But do you really want to bend to change? Do you really want to move quickly all the time?
Antifragile is a term introduced to me by Nassim Nicholas Taleb in his book with the same name: Antifragile, things that gain from disorder.
The definition is: “Some things benefit from shocks; they thrive and grow when exposed to volatility, randomness, disorder, and stressors and love adventure, risk, and uncertainty. Yet, in spite of the ubiquity of the phenomenon, there is no word for the exact opposite of fragile. Let us call it antifragile. Antifragility is beyond resilience or robustness. The resilient resists shocks and stays the same; the antifragile gets better”
For me antifragile includes agile, but you need more than just agile. The idea is that you get better with every change or set back you have, you come out stronger. That’s what you want as a company.
You don’t need them on a permanent basis.
First, I’m all for the values and principles in the Manifesto for Agile Software Development. And I believe these same values and most of the principles apply beyond the realm of software development.
Second, I’m all for collaboration within and between teams. If the Scrum Framework is a set of instrumental rules that helps use them. As a means, not as an end in itself though.
Third, I’m all for outside help with these values/principles and collaboration rules if needed.
But
If a team/department or even an entire organisation needs permanent help with this, there’s something wrong within your team/department/organisation that has nothing to do with Agile/Scrum. There might be something wrong with any or all of these things (and the list is not exhaustive):
In any of the above things, leadership needs to step in!
Of course Agile coaches can help to teach and coach on the Agile values and principles and with the chose Agile collaboration framework of choice (except SAFe or LeSS, they are just evil). But it is a temporary thing, not a permanent thing. Here are some examples and a timeframe.
New Team > 3 months max
If you have a bright new team, with people that have never worked together an Agile Coach can help to set up the right rhythm of feedback loops and meetings, helping to crate a safe working environment and the “rituals” the team needs. So no by the book Scrum implementation please. If in 3 months the team hasn’t found their rhythm, something else is wrong. By the way, this is not full time work for 1 Agile Coach, so if you don’t have an Agile Coach that coaches several teams (5-10) hire a freelancer.
Existing team with “challenges” > 1-2 months max
If an existing team faces challenges, an outside coach can help to sort things out. Emphasis on outside coach, a person not in the team and preferably not in the organisation that reflects with the team on what’s going on and helps them out. When deeper shit surfaces and/or the problem cannot be solved in 1-2 months, there something else going on an normal management needs to step in.
Large organisation with 10 teams or more
Preferably, have a network of a couple of freelance Agile coaches that can help out. If that’s not possible, hire 1 or 2 Agile Coaches on a permanent basis to help out teams when they need them. These Agile coaches need to be fully independent and self-starters, their only job is to help solve a problem and then leave the team again. Or if new teams are formed, get them started and then leave.
Leadership that isn’t Agile > 3 months max
Now you definitely need an outsider. Never, ever use an inside Agile Coach to teach you the simple values and principles. Leadership needs to live it, action it and not just know it. If you as leadership cannot do that, look in the mirror! And for a max of 3 months you need that mirror to come from outside your organisation.
By the way: Same applies for Scrum Masters…