#84: Lee McCormack on rules of the joy ride, what makes a great coach, and finding meaning beyond ego

Do we really need a retrospective every sprint? by The Humanizing Work Show

PO Board Overview–How to reduce stress and overwork for Product Owners: In this episode, Richard shares our favorite tool for helping Product Owners restore some sanity to their lives. The PO Board is a way to structure the Product Backlog so that the Product Owner knows exactly what to focus on, at what level of detail, and with which stakeholders on any given day. We’ve taught this approach to thousands of Product Owners, and they regularly report that it has been a huge help in bringing some order to a job that is too chaotic and stressful too often. Episode page: https://www.humanizingwork.com/poboard/ Connect with Humanizing Work: https://twitter.com/HumanizingWork https://twitter.com/rslawrence/ https://twitter.com/tptman/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/humanizingwork https://www.facebook.com/HumanizingWork by The Humanizing Work Show

19 min listen

Does Everything in our Backlog need to be a User Story?: In this episode, Richard and Peter answer the question, “How do we know whether an item on our Product Backlog should be a User Story or a Task?” Episode page: https://www.humanizingwork.com/backlog-stories-vs-tasks/ Connect with Humanizing Work: https://twitter.com/HumanizingWork https://twitter.com/rslawrence/ https://twitter.com/tptman/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/humanizingwork https://www.facebook.com/HumanizingWork by The Humanizing Work Show

8 min listen

Why we don't like epics for agile teams: Peter and Richard mentioned in an earlier episode that they’re not fans of epics for agile teams and product owners. In this episode, they explain why and what to do instead. Episode page: https://www.humanizingwork.com/why-we-dont-like-epics/ Connect with Humanizing Work: https://twitter.com/HumanizingWork https://twitter.com/rslawrence/ https://twitter.com/tptman/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/humanizingwork https://www.facebook.com/HumanizingWork by The Humanizing Work Show

3 min listen

Nicole Forsythe on Career Transitions, Agile Coaching, and Antarctic Exploration: 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/ Connect with Humanizing Work:https://twitter.com/HumanizingWorkhttps://twitter.com/rslawrence/https://twitter.com/tptman/https://www.linkedin.com/company/humanizingworkhttps://www.facebook.com/HumanizingWork by The Humanizing Work Show

53 min listen

What’s the right size for an agile team? (Mailbag): 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/ Connect with Humanizing Work:https://twitter.com/HumanizingWorkhttps://twitter.com/rslawrence/https://twitter.com/tptman/https://www.linkedin.com/company/humanizingworkhttps://www.facebook.com/HumanizingWork by The Humanizing Work Show

7 min listen

Why We Don't Love the Five Whys: In this episode, Richard and Peter dig into the popular “5 Whys” root cause analysis technique, including the limitations of the technique and why the question “why?’ can get you in trouble. Episode page: https://www.humanizingwork.com/whats-wrong-with-the-5-whys/ Connect with Humanizing Work: https://twitter.com/HumanizingWork https://twitter.com/rslawrence/ https://twitter.com/tptman/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/humanizingwork https://www.facebook.com/HumanizingWork by The Humanizing Work Show

5 min listen

Making & Communicating Decisions in Uncertainty with the 3ID Pattern: Leaders often have to make difficult decisions in the presence of uncertainty and complexity. And they need to involve others in the process—sometimes to make a decision collaboratively, sometimes just to bring everyone along. In this episode, Peter introduces the 3ID Pattern, a structure for making decisions in uncertain times, which also works for communicating clearly about a decision that has already been made. Episode page: https://www.humanizingwork.com/3id-decision-making-pattern/ Connect with Humanizing Work: https://twitter.com/HumanizingWork https://twitter.com/rslawrence/ https://twitter.com/tptman/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/humanizingwork https://www.facebook.com/HumanizingWork by The Humanizing Work Show

16 min listen

Why the Effort to Humanize Work Is Worth It: Leading the kind of culture change that produces an engaged, empowered, human-centric organization can be exhausting and difficult. In this episode, Hart Shafer, the CEO of TheraSpecs, explains why it’s worth it. This is an excerpt from our Deep Dive episode on Hiring, check out the show notes for links to that full episode, which is packed with good ideas for anyone who leads or participates in the hiring process. Episode page: https://www.humanizingwork.com/why-the-effort-to-humanize-work-is-worth-it/ Connect with Humanizing Work: https://twitter.com/HumanizingWork https://twitter.com/rslawrence/ https://twitter.com/tptman/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/humanizingwork https://www.facebook.com/HumanizingWork by The Humanizing Work Show

6 min listen

The Peter Principle: Is management doomed to be incompetent?: 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/ Connect with Humanizing Work: https://twitter.com/HumanizingWork https://twitter.com/rslawrence/ https://twitter.com/tptman/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/humanizingwork https://www.facebook.com/HumanizingWork by The Humanizing Work Show

7 min listen

How Does A "User Manual For Me" Work In Practice?: In this episode, Richard answers a question from a friend in the non-profit world: “I came across a template for creating a ‘user guide for working with me.’ Are these used in the business world, and if so, do they work out in practice?” Episode page: https://www.humanizingwork.com/should-you-make-a-user-manual-for-me/ Connect with Humanizing Work: https://twitter.com/HumanizingWork https://twitter.com/rslawrence/ https://twitter.com/tptman/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/humanizingwork https://www.facebook.com/HumanizingWork by The Humanizing Work Show

6 min listen

Having Uncomfortable Conversations on a Team: In this episode, Richard and Peter answer the question: “We want to get better at having uncomfortable conversations on our team. We either avoid them or don’t handle them well. How can we improve at this?” Episode page: https://www.humanizingwork.com/having-uncomfortable-conversations-on-a-team/ Connect with Humanizing Work: https://twitter.com/HumanizingWork https://twitter.com/rslawrence/ https://twitter.com/tptman/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/humanizingwork https://www.facebook.com/HumanizingWork by The Humanizing Work Show

8 min listen

Team engagement doesn't benefit from "Enforced Team Fun”: In this episode, Richard and Peter answer the question: what’s your take on “enforced team fun”? Many teams have an expectation that everyone will participate in things like birthday celebrations and morale building events, despite the strong possibility that some on the team would experience stress and anxiety, and no evidence that holding those events increases engagement on the team. There are things outside of individual task execution that should be expected on a team, but “enforced team fun” isn’t going to help and is likely hurting. Episode Page: https://www.humanizingwork.com/what-many-leaders-get-wrong-when-trying-to-build-team-engagement/ Connect with Humanizing Work: https://twitter.com/HumanizingWork https://twitter.com/rslawrence/ https://twitter.com/tptman/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/humanizingwork https://www.facebook.com/HumanizingWork by The Humanizing Work Show

5 min listen

The Secret to Easier Prioritization: People often assume prioritization—whether for a Scrum product backlog or a personal todo list—is an analytical problem best solved with value calculations and spreadsheets. But it turns out that great product people tend to use intuition, gut feel, rather than analysis to prioritize. In this episode, Peter and Richard introduce a set of heuristics gathered from the best product people that you can use to prioritize work quickly and intuitively. Episode page: https://www.humanizingwork.com/secret-to-easier-prioritization/ ‎ Connect with Humanizing Work: https://twitter.com/HumanizingWork https://twitter.com/rslawrence/ https://twitter.com/tptman/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/humanizingwork https://www.facebook.com/HumanizingWork by The Humanizing Work Show

11 min listen

Sprint Review Agenda by The Humanizing Work Show

7 min listen

Deep Dive–A Breakthrough in Hiring: Hiring is hard everywhere. But it’s particularly challenging for human-centric organizations that want to hire for self-organization and collaboration. The differences between good and bad candidates are hard—or impossible—to determine from resume reviews and traditional job interviews. In this episode, Peter and Richard share a breakthrough hiring approach developed by their friends Hart Shafer and Annette Zinky of TheraSpecs. You’ll hear the story of how and why Hart and Annette developed a new way of hiring, and you’ll learn how to implement a similar method to transform your own hiring. Another client who just tried a little of this approach for a key position told us, “It felt like I suddenly had interviewing superpowers!” by The Humanizing Work Show

79 min listen

Mark Ethier, founder of iZotope: In this episode, Richard and Peter talk with Mark Ethier, founder of leading audio production software company iZotope. Even if you’ve never heard of iZotope, you’ve heard the results of their products—they’ve won Emmy, Oscar, and NAMM awards for their contributions to TV, film, and music production. Among other topics in this dense episode, Richard, Peter, and Mark discuss how iZotope went through different “stages” of Agile, what Mark has learned in two decades as a leader, how to develop managers, and the future of work and of music. Episode page: https://www.humanizingwork.com/mark-ethier-founder-izotope/ Connect with Mark: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markethier/ Connect with Humanizing Work: https://twitter.com/HumanizingWork https://twitter.com/rslawrence/ https://twitter.com/tptman/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/humanizingwork https://www.facebook.com/HumanizingWork by The Humanizing Work Show

86 min listen

What do I focus on as a new ScrumMaster?: In this episode, Richard and Peter answer the question: “What should I focus on as a new ScrumMaster?” They explain why focusing on making your team do Scrum well is tempting but a dead end and what you should focus on instead. Episode page: https://www.humanizingwork.com/new-scrummaster-focus/ Connect with Humanizing Work: https://twitter.com/HumanizingWork https://twitter.com/rslawrence/ https://twitter.com/tptman/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/humanizingwork https://www.facebook.com/HumanizingWork by The Humanizing Work Show

6 min listen

Couch to Running 45 Miles Across the Grand Canyon by The Humanizing Work Show

35 min listen

Overcoming Resistance to Change: In this episode, Richard and Peter answer the question, “How do you overcome resistance to change?” Episode page: https://www.humanizingwork.com/overcoming-resistance-to-change/ Connect with Humanizing Work: https://twitter.com/HumanizingWork https://twitter.com/rslawrence/ https://twitter.com/tptman/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/humanizingwork https://www.facebook.com/HumanizingWork by The Humanizing Work Show

9 min listen

Five Lessons in Career Development Peter Learned in his Career: This episode includes an excerpt from one of our monthly Humanizing Work Conference Alumni community sessions. In the session, Peter shared a 20 minute presentation about his circuitous career path and five lessons he’s learned along the way. Episode page: https://www.humanizingwork.com/5-lessons-in-career-development Connect with Humanizing Work: https://twitter.com/HumanizingWork https://twitter.com/rslawrence/ https://twitter.com/tptman/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/humanizingwork https://www.facebook.com/HumanizingWork by The Humanizing Work Show

20 min listen

How To Have a More Effective Daily Scrum Tomorrow: In this episode, Richard and Peter give 3 quick tips you can use to have a more effective Daily Scrum right away. Too many teams waste this important meeting on a boring status report instead of using it to create team alignment and make every day matter. Episode page: https://www.humanizingwork.com/daily-scrum-episode/ Connect with Humanizing Work: https://twitter.com/HumanizingWork https://twitter.com/rslawrence/ https://twitter.com/tptman/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/humanizingwork https://www.facebook.com/HumanizingWork by The Humanizing Work Show

9 min listen

Two Key Moves for Better Sprint Retrospectives: The Sprint Retrospective is perhaps the most important event in Scrum. In this episode, Richard and Peter share their two favorite ways to make the Sprint Retrospective meeting way more effective. If your team’s retros have become boring, repetitive, or just a waste of time, these two key moves will bring them back to life. Episode page: https://humanizingwork.com/better-sprint-retrospectives-episode/ Connect with Humanizing Work: https://twitter.com/HumanizingWork https://twitter.com/rslawrence/ https://twitter.com/tptman/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/humanizingwork https://www.facebook.com/HumanizingWork by The Humanizing Work Show

13 min listen

Seven Skills All Great Coaches Master: In the previous episode of the show, Peter and Richard mentioned the importance of team coaching to increase your chances of a healthy, successful team. In this episode, they look at the seven skills all great coaches master. Episode page: https://www.humanizingwork.com/seven-skills-all-great-coaches-master/ Connect with Humanizing Work: https://twitter.com/HumanizingWork https://twitter.com/rslawrence/ https://twitter.com/tptman/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/humanizingwork https://www.facebook.com/HumanizingWork by The Humanizing Work Show

12 min listen

Feature Mining Q&A: Feature Mining is a technique for figuring out where to start on a big, complex idea. Following up on a Feature Mining webinar on February 6, 2023, in this episode, Richard and Peter answer questions from the webinar and from other workshops on the topic of Feature Mining. If you’re not familiar with the Feature Mining technique, don’t worry, there’s a short intro to it before the Q&A. Episode page: https://www.humanizingwork.com/feature-mining-qa-episode/ Connect with Humanizing Work: https://twitter.com/HumanizingWork https://twitter.com/rslawrence/ https://twitter.com/tptman/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/humanizingwork https://www.facebook.com/HumanizingWork by The Humanizing Work Show

36 min listen

The Surgeon General Has Something to Say About Humanizing Work: In this episode, Richard and Peter look into a recent report from the US Surgeon General on “Workplace Mental Health & Well-Being” as well as the business media’s puzzling reporting on it. Spoiler alert: the Surgeon General has a lot to say about why making work fit humans matters and the mainstream business media can’t make sense of it. Episode page: https://www.humanizingwork.com/surgeon-general-report/ Connect with Humanizing Work: https://twitter.com/HumanizingWork https://twitter.com/rslawrence/ https://twitter.com/tptman/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/humanizingwork https://www.facebook.com/HumanizingWork by The Humanizing Work Show

7 min listen

#83: Do we need a sprint goal?: In this episode, Richard and Peter talk about sprint goals. When are they useful? What might you do instead? Episode page: https://www.humanizingwork.com/sprint-goal/ Connect with Humanizing Work: https://twitter.com/HumanizingWork https://twitter.com/rslawrence/ https://twitter.com/tptman/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/humanizingwork https://www.facebook.com/HumanizingWork by The Humanizing Work Show

9 min listen

Melissa Boggs: Changing the Rules for Work: In this episode, Richard and Peter talk with leadership coach and speaker Melissa Boggs. We dig into a range of topics, including her former role as Chief ScrumMaster at Scrum Alliance, the lesser-known challenges of leadership, coaching and being coached, and the ways the rules of work need to change to create more human-centric organizations. Episode page: https://www.humanizingwork.com/melissa-boggs-interview/ Connect with Humanizing Work: https://twitter.com/HumanizingWork https://twitter.com/rslawrence/ https://twitter.com/tptman/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/humanizingwork https://www.facebook.com/HumanizingWork by The Humanizing Work Show

71 min listen

Effective Sprint Planning: In this episode, Richard and Peter dig into the 3 conditions for an effective Sprint Planning meeting. While this is explicitly Scrum-focused, it’s really about how to have a good team planning meeting, whether you’re using Scrum or not. Episode page: https://www.humanizingwork.com/effective-sprint-planning-episode/ Connect with Humanizing Work: https://twitter.com/HumanizingWork https://twitter.com/rslawrence/ https://twitter.com/tptman/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/humanizingwork https://www.facebook.com/HumanizingWork by The Humanizing Work Show

11 min listen

Vivian Rhoads on Agile Innovation for Consumer Packaged Goods: In this episode, Richard and Peter interview Vivian Rhoads, President of the Women’s Health business unit at Pharmavite. Vivian has adapted ideas and practices from agile software development to build highly-productive innovation teams in the vitamin and supplement space. Vivian’s work at Pharmavite reduced their cycle time for new innovations from a few years down to a few months and increased throughput from a 1 or 2 new products each year to a few dozen. This episode has great insights for anyone trying to take agile beyond the typical software context. Episode page: https://www.humanizingwork.com/agile-cpg-innovation-with-vivian-rhoads/ Connect with Humanizing Work: https://twitter.com/HumanizingWork https://twitter.com/rslawrence/ https://twitter.com/tptman/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/humanizingwork https://www.facebook.com/HumanizingWork by The Humanizing Work Show

66 min listen

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#84: Lee McCormack on rules of the joy ride, what makes a great coach, and finding meaning beyond ego

#84: Lee McCormack on rules of the joy ride, what makes a great coach, and finding meaning beyond ego

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