The Humanizing Work Show

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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Humanizing Work Snapshots are brief episodes where we share examples of the ways we’re working to humanizing our own complex work. In this episode, the Humanizing Work team reflects on an example of how we prioritized our own work for a team collaboration day when it wasn’t obvious what to focus on.

Episode link: https://www.humanizingwork.com/humanizing-work-snapshot-prioritizing-for-the-day/

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In this episode, Peter and Richard talk with Luke Hohmann, best known as the creator of Innovation Games. We discuss how Luke moved from high-level figure skating into software development, how Innovation Games started, and what he’s doing now with his new company, FirstRoot, to bring participatory budgeting to schools.

Episode page: https://www.humanizingwork.com/luke-hohmann-on-figure-skating-innovation-games-and-participatory-budgeting/

Connect with Luke:
https://twitter.com/lukehohmann
https://firstroot.co/

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00:00 Intro
02:57 Lessons Luke learned as a champion figure skater that shaped who he is today, including tenacity, persistence, analysis, retrospection, and how to peak at the right time.
08:43 How self-belief is not enough, and gratitude runs
10:50 How Luke got into computer programming, reinforcing loops of liking what we're good at and being good at what we like, and how that shapes great teams
12:30 Moving to Michigan and finding concentrations of talent
15:20 First full time job at EDS: "I worked my way from beneath the ground up"
18:20 From floor grub to VP in less than 10 years, a journey of gratitude, Dan O'Leary and Vern Olson
21:00 Turning around broken projects and inventing the precursors for Innovation Games
23:40 What Luke learned from Vern Olson: when not to work, the importance of celebrating
30:45 The distinction between the domains of being and of doing
31:21 Fit for purpose cultures: is your culture working for you?
32:20 How the agile community sometimes plays to small
34:00 Small retrospectives vs. large ones
35:25 Agile–being prepared to take advantage of changes in your context that you don't control
38:30 Shifting from a scarcity mindset to an abundance mindset
40:15 Building products should be fun
41:00 Dependencies are just code for broken collaboration
42:00 Luke corrects Peter on how they first met
44:00 Building trust through early delivery of value
45:00 Luke's experience founding Conteneo, a self-funded enterprise startup that was acquired by Scaled Agile in 2019
49:00 Top thee goals Luke had for how to lead First Root
56:10 What it means to take a growth posture
58:09 Believing in a mission
59:18 The precarious position of democracy in the U.S., and how real collaboration is an antidote to extremism
1:03:30 Luke's advice

In this episode, Richard and Peter answer a question that comes up frequently when we’re working with leaders in an organization considering agile adoption. Sometimes, picking which team goes first is straightforward, but not always, and there are a few important trade-offs to keep in mind.

Episode link: humanizingwork.com/picking-a-pilot-team-for-agile-adoption/

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In this mailbag episode, Richard and Peter answer the question: "Our boss is pushing us to deliver a big project on a timeline that feels impossible. Saying we can't do it feels like a bad career move. How do we deal with unrealistic timelines?"

Spoiler alert... The right answer is neither “Just agree” nor “Just say ‘no’.”

Episode Page: https://www.humanizingwork.com/dealing-with-unrealistic-deadlines/

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Our background is in Agile development, and one of the reasons we find Agile approaches so useful far beyond software development is that they provide a great toolset to create real, effective teams. In this episode, we'll share the part of Agile that anyone, software-focused or not, can take away and apply in their approach to building and improving teams.