Humanizing Work 2021 Conference Program

HW 2021 Orientation

Welcome & Kickoff

The best learning happens with others. Let’s crawl out of our caves of isolation and celebrate engaging with the community. Join us to start the day by getting connected with your HW learning group.

Creating a Useful Strategy

Peter Green

A great strategy helps guide decision-making without being overly constrained or vague, but coming up with that balance is really hard! This leaves many of us ignoring strategy altogether, either making decisions reactively or creating big grand plans that are out of date as soon as they hit the ground. Whether you’re thinking about the context of your own career, a product roadmap, or for an entire organization, a good strategy removes the biggest psychological friction involved in decision-making. In this session, we’ll introduce the approach we’ve used to create strategies that reduce that friction while balancing the need for clarity with the ability to respond to change.

Org Change Experiments

Richard Lawrence

Organizational change is a complex problem. There are lots of interdependent variables, lots of humans involved, lots of uncertainty. This demands an experimental, probe-sense-respond approach. There are good resources out of the Lean Startup community for designing product experiments. But there’s no comprehensive advice about org change experiments. In this session, we’ll look at how to design good org change experiments and review several common experiment types that work well. Bring your own org change hypotheses to practice with!

Encouraging Healthy Conflict

Tricia Broderick

Do teams really need conflict? Yes, they absolutely do. Conflict is a sign that something is trying to happen. The best outcomes are achieved from diverse experiences and contributions, thus conflict is essential. Unfortunately, many people try to avoid conflict, which often just leads to drama. And no teams should ever want drama! This session examines the differences between conflict and drama, why conflict is essential, and reasons why conflict becomes drama. Most importantly, expect to practice several techniques (new ones too!) that de-escalate drama back to conflict.

Lunch & Learning Group Discussions

Lightning Talks

HW Community Members

Lightning Talks are created and presented by various community members. They’re fun, fast, and educational. They provide an opportunity for people to share something quick and valuable that they’ve learned, that worked well on their team, or that they’re particularly excited about! With such a short format, Lightning Talks get right to the point for rapid learning. The constraints lead to creative ways to share an important topic without the luxury for any rambling or “filler”. Speakers have to give you the 80/20 slice – the 20% of the content that gives you 80% of the benefit. In an hour, you get to choose from nine different lightning talks, so there’s a great variety of content. Best of all, we get a chance to hear from a diverse set of voices!

How to Convince People You’re Right

Peter Green

You’ve got a killer idea, you can see how it will work and benefit everyone, but when you share the idea, people just don’t seem to get it. You explain it more thoroughly, and they still aren’t convinced. “How are they not getting this?” you wonder to yourself. Your idea, in fact, might be killer, but that doesn’t matter if you can’t help others see it, and there’s a pretty simple formula for how to do that. In this session, we’ll look at a few key moves you can make that will take your ability to influence others from meh to yeah!

How BDD Can Help a Team Manage (or eliminate) Overcommitment

Richard Lawrence

Overcommitment is rampant on agile teams, which kills motivation and undermines continuous improvement. Worse still, overcommitment creates a cycle of ongoing overcommitment as pressure increases and predictability decreases. Behavior-Driven Development (BDD) can break that cycle. BDD shortens feedback loops and amplifies shared understanding, making it easier to commit appropriately or to renegotiate commitments early. Learn how you can adopt BDD to cure overcommitment on your team.

Inclusion: Lessons Learned During a Really Hard Year

Tricia Broderick, Angie Ham

Agilists acknowledge the valuable results gained from the wisdom of a crowd. Yet, are we fully experiencing all of the wisdom that is in our teams? Many people have increased their awareness around diversity, and workplaces have stepped up their focus on recruitment and demographic representation. Creating opportunities are important steps, but without creating a culture of inclusion, not all individuals are currently able to contribute to their fullest. We must move our organizations, teams, and our own minds to real growth in our interactions. In this session, Angie and Tricia will highlight common inclusivity challenges they have wrestled with. For example, how can we engage and support a person who doesn’t exhibit traditionally admired leadership characteristics within a specific culture? Or how are our inherent and often unconscious biases impacting our interaction approach and how we encourage, support, and value our team members? Expect to explore practical next steps, considerations, and tips about how to move heightened awareness into concrete action that promotes and includes the best version of each person.

Learning Groups

Conference Night In!

Think you’ll miss out on our annual conference party shenanigans? Think again. We’re rounding up the gang for yet another outrageous surprise.