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Magic - The Scrum Gathering: day two

Dave Snowden

  • Agile has an overemphasis on re-applying things that worked before. There’s a lack of contextual awareness. Deal with things how they are. Don’t let agile become a religion.
  • Be a chef, not a recipe user.
  • Use language that managers will understand. Changing language changes thinking.
  • People attach to negative pattern matches more than positive ones.
  • Interventions in a complex domain should be coherent, safe to fail, small, fast, and quick.
  • Trying to solve a different problem often finds a solution to your original problem.
  • Cynefin framework
  • The primary method of knowledge sharing is storytelling. People remember stories, not rules.
  • You need to understand what your users want, not what they say they want.
  • “When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.” - Goodhart’s Law

Cara Turner - Building Creative Teams

  • Creative teams interact with work in a different way. Culturally, though, creativity is not trusted. Creativity arises from the tension between things. Creativity requires tinkering, which we are hard-wired for.
  • Tinkering and play is fun. People are much more likely to solve problems when they’re in a positive mood. Combinatorial creativity: new combinations of people or things. Ideas stick by using them. Create rich associations and force new connections in the brain.
  • Choose to have a flexible mindset.
  • Our brains reward success, so set up a safe-to-fail environment. Frequent small successes are better because the fallout from small failures is not so bad.
  • You can’t motivate people, you can only remove the demotivating factors. Autonomy is very important.
  • Retrospectives
    • Regular: keep looking where you’re going; easier to experiment; lots of feedback.
    • Attainable goals: small goals; can add value quickly.
    • Reviewed: increases value of responsibility; time boxed - constraint helps focus.
  • Try solving the anti-problem. Often generates insights about the original problem.

Happiness at work - Alexander Kjerulf

  • Denmark is the happiest country in the world. Scandanavian culture is very work happy: arbejdsglæde.
  • The balance of positive to negative experiences at work should be more than 3:1, but not more than 10:1.
  • Most important factors of happiness at work:
    • Results
      • Pride, helpful, meaningful. Feel skilled. Receive praise and recognition.
    • Relationships
      • Have coffee breaks and lunch breaks for chit chat.
      • Speak to each other. Make a point of making eye contact and saying good morning every day.
  • Things you can do to increase happiness at work
    • Move around throughout the day
    • Do random acts of kindness
    • Remember three good things a day
    • Celebrate your victories
    • #h5yr