CAPED Consultant Certification Workshop registration is open! Register now

The Humanizing Work Show

On the Humanizing Work Show, Peter and Richard explore themes related to Humanizing Work, including leadership, teams, collaboration, and motivation. Agile Software Development is a common topic, but the application of Humanizing Work goes way beyond software.

Is there a topic you’d like to hear us tackle in a future show? Let us know!

Latest Episode

A YouTube thumbnail featuring Peter Green against a blue graphic background, with the text “What Finally Worked” in large white letters and the Humanizing Work Show logo in the bottom right corner. The Surprising Move That Ended My Leadership Frustration - When frustration with a leader reached a boiling point, Peter considered escalation, confrontation, and even walking away. A simple, unexpected act of connection changed everything. This episode explores why that shift worked and how a small move toward curiosity can ease the tension we create in our own minds.

Past Episodes

A blue background with curved accents, the title “What Almost Didn’t Happen?” in large white text, a small yellow die and branching arrows hinting at alternate paths, and a tilted card showing a counterfactual gratitude question. A preview of the “Counterfactual Gratitude Questions” PDF sits on the right with a note to download the questions. Deepening Your Gratitude Practice with Counterfactual Questions
Thumbnail for The Humanizing Work Show episode 206. Large text on a blue background reads ‘How to Find the Right First Slice’ with a yellow label saying ‘Feature Mining Explained.’ On the right, two illustrated people stand beside a large Feature Mining canvas with four columns labeled Impact, Bigness, Risks, and Uncertainties. Feature Mining Overview–Finding the First Slice in Complexity
A blue Humanizing Work Show thumbnail titled “Reduce the Pain of Cross-Team Dependencies — Even if You Can’t Restructure Your Org.” The background shows a messy SAFe-style program board covered in sticky notes and red dependency lines, representing tangled cross-team dependencies. Three Strategies to Reduce the Pain of Cross-Team Dependencies
Illustration of a frustrated woman tangled in a long, unrolling list of backlog items beside bold text reading “Backlog Too Long? How to Clear the Clutter and Reclaim Your Focus.” Promotional thumbnail for The Humanizing Work Show, Episode #204. The Life-Changing Focus of a Clean Backlog
Bright yellow numeral 5 beside headline ‘Ways to Stop the Interruptions,’ with five labeled circles reading Purpose, Goals, Flow, Decisions, and Stewardship on a blue background, Humanizing Work Show branding. 5 Ways to Say No Without Being a Jerk, Backed by Research
YouTube thumbnail with the title ‘2 Key Moves for Retros That Work,’ a sprint cycle illustration leading to a notepad labeled Sprint Retrospective, and sticky notes spelling ORID ending with a beaker icon. Retrospectives that Actually Improve Things
YouTube thumbnail split into two blue halves labeled ‘Scrum vs Kanban – Best of Both?’ showing a Scrum sprint loop icon on the left and a Kanban board icon on the right, with the Humanizing Work Show logo below. Scrum vs Kanban–Getting the Most of Both
Thumbnail for the Humanizing Work Show Episode 200. Two business figures pull on a rope in a tug-of-war, standing on cliffs labeled ‘Data’ and ‘Delivery.’ A glowing question mark hangs in the middle of the rope above bold text: ‘Where’s the Trust? Metrics, Trust, and Escaping the Status Report Trap
Quick Wins Are a Trap: How Leaders Make Tackling Core Complexity Safe
How to Present to Leaders and Get Results
Vibe Coding Prototypes Advice
Thumbnail for the Humanizing Work Show episode titled ‘Fix Story Points.’ Large bold text reads ‘Fix Story Points’ with a subtitle ‘Stop Estimating the Wrong Way.’ A tilted whiteboard shows the words ‘Reference Class Stories,’ and planning poker cards with the numbers 5 and 8 are displayed in the foreground. Humanizing Work Show branding appears in the corner. How to Fix Story Point Estimation
Humanizing Work Show Episode 195 thumbnail. Left side: red ‘STOP ESTIMATING’ over a messy Gantt chart with a red slash. Right side: green ‘START FORECASTING – PAST OUTCOMES’ over a clean probability curve with a green check mark. Why Forecasting Works (and Estimating Fails)
Thumbnail for Humanizing Work Show Episode 194 titled “When Feedback Spirals.” Two speech bubbles collide with a burst of conflict, transitioning via a green arrow into a checkmark inside a speech bubble, symbolizing resolution. Subtitle text reads: “How to Prevent and Recover Fast.” From Debate to Decision: Three Strategies to Keep Feedback Useful
Deliberate Practice for Work
A woman with long hair stands facing a task board covered in sticky notes. Large white text reads “The Pain of PI Planning,” and below it, highlighted in yellow-green with a dark overlay, the subtitle says “How to Fix It with CAPED.” The Humanizing Work Show logo and Episode #192 appear in the lower left. Pi Planning Is Broken. Here’s a Better Way
Split-screen image showing a chaotic office with ping-pong table and party decorations on the left, and a calm, focused workspace with a person working at a desk on the right. Bold text in the center reads: ‘Calm = Productive?’ The Power of a Calm Culture: Building Sustainable Team Productivity
Team Resets
Steven Puri on Flow States and Creativity
Photos of Mark Ethier, Peter Green, and Richard Lawrence with a title that says "Building High Performance through Empowerment and purpose." The subtitle is "How Mark Ethier built iZotope into a music industry powerhouse. [Rebroadcast] How Mark Ethier Built a High-Performing Organization Through Empowerment and Purpose
Image of a product owner in front of three concentric circles. Text says Caught in the middle in large font, then Internal PO's have a different job in smaller font Internal Product Owner Advice
Which Parts of Scrum are Essential
Using Breakouts In Team Meetings
Tough Feedback Creates a Productivity Flywheel
Wildcards Episode
The Top 3 Traits of Successful Leaders
Two office workers having a discussion about feedback. How to Give Feedback That’s True, Useful, and Kind
Team Empowerment Map
Improvement Fatigue? Time for an Appreciation Retro
Three Keys to Productive Backlog Refinement
One Breakthrough Tip to Improve Each Scrum Meeting
Great Strategy in a Complex World thumbnail, with an image of the Strategy Canvas Great Strategy in a Complex World
How to Split a User Story (HW Show Episode)
How to Make Change Management Joyful and Collaborative
Are You in a Split Product Owner Role? How to Make It Work
CAPED Phases 3-4 Episode–Analytical Planning and Iterative Execution
Caped Phase 2 Episode: Active Planning
CAPED Phase 1–Complexity Aware Project Kickoffs
CAPED: A Smarter Way to Plan Complex Work
Should You Backfill That Leadership Role—or Rethink It?
“But in the Real World…”
Building Trust with Rachel Botsman
Empowerment Breaks if Any of Three Things Are Missing
How the Progress Principle Can Help Your Goals Stick This Year
Five Ways to Get Fired Up for 2025
Leadership Lessons from the Vineyard: A Conversation with Steven Thompson
4-Steps to Go From Resistance to Action
Backlog Refinement: Avoiding the Detail Trap
How to Run an Effective Year-End Retrospective
Annual Planning That Actually Works
Are Product Owners & Product Managers the same thing?
How to Make a Team Faster (Without Burning Out)
How to Manage Deadlines in Agile
Kevin Goldsmith
Behind the Scenes of a 50-Person Remote Retro
Decision-Making in Consensus Cultures
What Businesses Can Learn From Jazz
But We Must Management
The Art of Focused Conversation
Cross-Team Coordination
To Plan or Not to Plan?
When Purpose and Strategy Don’t Matter
Projects Shouldn’t Start Green, They Should Earn It
Giving Great Answers to On-The-Spot Questions
Daily Scrum Taking Too Long?
Agile’s Three Tribes: People, Performance, and Process
Setting Team Goals: 5 Tips for Getting it Right
The Fishbowl & the Psychological Costs of Agile
Leadership Communication Strategies
How to Launch a Highly Effective Leadership Team
5 Lessons from Music to Help You Succeed at Work
Why You Should Amplify Your Amundsens and Dampen Your Shackletons
The Duck Canopy Incident & Its Unexpected Lessons for Work
Why Agile Jobs Are Vanishing, and What to Do About It
Employee Engagement Is Terrible. Why It Matters and What Can Be Done.
The Complex Boundary Between Product & Engineering Leadership
Can’t fix it? Make it more visible
How We Dealt with Resistance to Change
Do Product Owners Do Strategy?
How to Communicate Strategy with the Strategy Steps Canvas
Burnout and Disengagement on Agile Teams
Four Trail Strategies to Transform a Bad Day at Work
How to Make Your Process Fit Your Work
How to Craft a Vision Statement That’s Not Just Corporate-Speak
How to Tackle Your Business’s Biggest Risk with David J Bland
How to Get Agile Team & Org Structure Right
How to Get Useful Feedback on a Work-in-Progress
Immunity to Change
How an Incremental, Small Slice Approach Gives Real Progress
3 Tools to Resolve (Almost) Any Conflict
What Leaders Need to Know About Leading Agile Teams
What To Do When You’re Overcommitted and Feel Stuck
Fix Your Meetings with DAVID
Can We Train AI to Be a Business Coach?
Alistair Cockburn on Use Cases & User Stories
Cross-Functional Teams & Real-World Challenges
Feature Hostage Negotiation
How to Set the Right Goals for 2024
When Your Team Inspects But Doesn’t Adapt
Culture Signals for Everyone
Finding the Right Style For Your Leadership Team: Lessons from Take6 and Greg Popovich
Overcoming Burnout through Daily Purpose and Vision
How Coaches Benefit from PO Skills
The Business Case for Better Product Backlog Refinement
Can Agile Even Work With This Business Model?
How Has Our Thinking On Scrum Changed?
Meetup Replay–A Path to Real Empowerment
Celebrating 100 Episodes
Two Questions to Shift Stakeholders from Solution to Problem
Making Sense of the ScrumMaster & Agile Coach Layoffs
Great Facilitators Accomplish These 6 Goals
3 Mistakes New Managers Make & 3 Things To Do Instead
The Latest Viral Scrum Criticism: What’s Right About It?
Rethinking the Manager vs Leader Meme
Communicating In Uncertainty
Top 5 Backlog Refinement Mistakes Meetup Rebroadcast
Commitments in Scrum and Abnormal Sprint Terminations
Purposeful Quick Wins: How to Get Momentum without Avoiding the Hard Stuff
Collaborate vs Coordinate
Big Tech's "fake work" problem On “The reality of Big Tech’s ‘fake work’ problem”
My Stakeholders Want It All Right Now
I Can’t Get My Team to Collaborate
Cracking the Code of Effective Leadership with the Leadership Circle
Interview with Lee McCormack
Do we need a sprint goal?
Visionary vs Facilitating Product Ownership
Designing Good Experiments
Senior Leadership Challenges in Agile Orgs
The one where Peter apologizes to the CEO
Own-Influence-Respond
They’re All Customers
The 15 minutes that reveal the health of your team
How does my work as a developer change in Scrum?
How much of Scrum should be standardized across teams?
What do I focus on as a new Product Owner?
What do I focus on as a new ScrumMaster?
Culture Signals
Scrum Roles in the Real World
Should Managers Be In Retrospectives?
Dealing with Interruptions on a Scrum Team
A Path to Real Empowerment for Teams
Review Agenda
Feature Mining Q&A
Seven Skills All Great Coaches Master
These Six Things Improve How Teams Work
The Secret to Easier Prioritization
Two Key Moves for Better Sprint Retrospectives
Effective Sprint Reviews
How To Have a More Effective Daily Scrum Tomorrow
Effective Sprint Planning
Why Scrum works when it works
The Three Jobs of Management (HW Show)
Dealing with “technical stories”
The Healthy Way To Do Commitments & Accountability
Mark Ethier, founder of iZotope
Making & Communicating Decisions in Uncertainty with the 3ID Pattern
Melissa Boggs: Changing the Rules for Work
The Surgeon General Has Something to Say About Humanizing Work
Measuring the Success of Agile Adoption
Couch to Running 45 Miles Across the Grand Canyon
Humanizing Work 2022 Conference Participant Takeaways
Agile CPG Innovation with Vivian Rhoads
PO Board Overview
Don’t Bring Me Problems, Bring Me Solutions
Five Lessons in Career Development
Do we really need a retrospective every sprint?
Having Uncomfortable Conversations on a Team
Why the Effort to Humanize Work Is Worth It
A Breakthrough in Hiring with TheraSpecs
Should you make a “User Manual for Me”?
Does Everything in our Backlog Need to be a User Story?
What’s Wrong with the 5 Whys
Overcoming Resistance to Change
What Many Leaders Get Wrong When Trying to Build Team Engagement
Why we don’t like epics
The Peter Principle & Management
What’s the right size for an agile team?
Nicole Forsythe on Career Transitions, Agile Coaching, and Antarctic Exploration
Grilling next week’s chicken (or how to get people to work outside their specialty)
Humanizing Work at the WTPO Conference in Africa
Laloux Culture Model (2022 Update)
User Story Fatigue
When People Don’t Participate In Retros
How To Get Useful Feedback
Complexity and Cross-Geo Teams
Humanizing Work Snapshot: Prioritizing for the Day
Handling Unrealistic Deadlines
March 2022 Community of Practice Recap
Luke Hohmann on Figure Skating, Innovation Games, and Participatory Budgeting
How Do You Decide What Goes on a Management Backlog?
Picking A Pilot Team for Agile Adoption
Richard Lawrence and Leslie Brooks on Adopting Behavior-Driven Development
Season 2 Episode 5: How Tools Like Scrum and XP Help Create Real Teams
Season 2 Episode 4: Adobe Audition Team Reunion
Season 2 Episode 3: What Kills Great Teams, and What Can You Do About It?
Season 2 Episode 2: Jazz, Teams, and Work
Season 2 Episode 1: Most Great Work Happens in Teams
Season 1 Episode 5: Why Humanizing Work Is Emerging Now
Season 1 Episode 4: The Importance of Personal Growth
Season 1 Episode 3: Creating Motivation at Work
Season 1 Episode 2: The Relationship (or Conflict) Between Ease and Meaning at Work
Season 1 Episode 1: What is Humanizing Work?