The Humanizing Work Show

The Peter Principle is the idea that people get promoted until they hit the level where they’re no longer competent enough to get promoted again. In this episode, Richard and Peter discuss what this means, whether it’s always true, and how management can escape the Peter Principle.

Episode page: https://www.humanizingwork.com/the-peter-principle-management/

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In this episode, Richard and Peter answer the question, what’s the best size for an agile team? The Scrum Guide says 5-9, but how does the Humanizing Work team think about it?

Episode page: https://www.humanizingwork.com/whats-the-right-size-for-an-agile-team/

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In this episode Peter and Richard talk with Nicole Forsythe. Nicole is a librarian turned leader of Agile coaches. We discuss a variety of topics including: how work is broken and what to do about it; navigating career transitions; practical advice for agile coaches; and what we can learn from the Antarctic explorer Ernest Shackleton. The conversation was interesting and practical, and we’re thrilled to share it.

Episode page: https://humanizingwork.com/nicole-forsythe-on-career-transitions-agile-coaching-and-antarctic-exploration/

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In this episode, Richard and Peter take on the question: “My team members only want to work on their specialties. What can I do to get them to pull from the top of the backlog?”

Richard answers with a vivid story about food prep, common sense, and “grilling next week’s chicken.”

Episode page: https://humanizingwork.com/grilling-next-weeks-chicken-or-how-to-get-people-to-work-outside-their-specialty/

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Peter checks in from the beach in Ghana, Africa, sharing his thoughts on his time in Africa and his takeaways from the World Trade Promotion Organizations conference, where he gave a keynote.

Episode page: https://www.humanizingwork.com/hw-africa-wtpo-conference/

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It's been 8 years since Peter created an animated illustration of Laloux's book "Reinventing Organizations" (the source of the term "teal organization" that's become popular in the Agile community). Since then, that video has hundreds of thousands of views and the overview illustration from the video is used all over the internet as an illustration for the model.

Since releasing that video, we've learned quite a bit about the model, including its roots in the research of Clare Graves and the Spiral Dynamics model described by Don Beck and Chris Cowan. A better understanding of those roots helped us see some important nuance that was missing a bit from the Laloux model.

In this video, Peter gives a quick intro, then shares a version of a keynote talk he was asked to present at the World Trade Promotion Organization, where he describes how he currently thinks of and uses the model. Then, Richard and Peter have a brief discussion of their differing viewpoints on the usefulness of the model.

Episode page: https://www.humanizingwork.com/laloux-model-2022update/

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A course participant recently asked, “Is user story fatigue a real thing?” Richard and Peter tackle that question and try to get at the question behind the question. If it feels like user stories are more trouble than they’re worth for your team, this episode is for you.

Episode page: https://www.humanizingwork.com/user-story-fatigue/

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In this episode, Richard and Peter answer the question: “What should I do if people won’t participate in retros?” It can feel like you’re failing as a facilitator, but sometimes there’s more going on.

Episode page: https://www.humanizingwork.com/when-people-dont-participate-in-retros/

Our online course on facilitating retrospectives, especially virtual retrospectives: https://www.humanizingwork.com/facilitating-effective-retrospectives-with-miro/

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Most people know how useful feedback can be. But the actual experience of getting feedback is so often ineffective or even painful. In this episode, Richard and Peter answer the question, "How do you get useful feedback?" by sharing a six-step approach that avoids some of the most common feedback challenges.

Episode page: https://www.humanizingwork.com/how-to-get-useful-feedback/

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Our standard advice is that we should structure teams to contain complexity. Complex work is inherently emergent, and you need close collaboration with team members to address that emergence effectively.
This is much harder to do when a team spans time zones. The feedback loop to get all team members aware of and adapting to the new information can be up to a full day, a glacial pace compared to that of a co-located team.

In this episode, we share a few strategies that we’ve seen companies use to transition over time to better locate complexity within team boundaries, resulting in much faster feedback, better decisions and outcomes, and higher engagement on those teams.

Episode link (or Show Notes): https://www.humanizingwork.com/complexity-and-cross-geo-teams/

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