agile practitioners feedback to improve teams
TRANSCRIPT
Feedback to improve teams
Agile Practitioners / 20 May 2015
Rob Brown
ENERGIZED WORK / Metal Box Factory Unit 323 30 Great Guildford Street London SE1 0HS / www.energizedwork.com
What is feedback?
"...'feedback' exists between two parts when each affects the other.." (WR Ashby, "An introduction to cybernetics" 1956)
A B
ENERGIZED WORK / Metal Box Factory Unit 323 30 Great Guildford Street London SE1 0HS / www.energizedwork.com
Feedback causes/results in self-regulating systems
Where there is cause-effect you have a system!
Self-regulating systems are all around use.g.
• Riding a bicycle• Running a tap to fill a glass,• Toilet flushing, showers,• Driving, and driving in traffic
Can you suggest others?• Groups of people and self-organising teams
ENERGIZED WORK / Metal Box Factory Unit 323 30 Great Guildford Street London SE1 0HS / www.energizedwork.com
Feedback for people systems?
Based on the Johari Window: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johari_window
ENERGIZED WORK / Metal Box Factory Unit 323 30 Great Guildford Street London SE1 0HS / www.energizedwork.com
Is feedback useful?
Consistency, transparency … trust!
Trust enables rapid great changes within people: alignment and agility
ENERGIZED WORK / Metal Box Factory Unit 323 30 Great Guildford Street London SE1 0HS / www.energizedwork.com
For me “this” all started with “I”
Real 360 degree feedback from 2 peers and 1 manager every 3 months from 2002.
THE most agile company I have ever work for. Over 120 people working together in near-perfect alignment.
- And then there was Grace
Soft skills training with another company I worked for in 2007. We learned and practiced how to ask for feedback
- What do I do that helps you [with your job]?- What do I do that hinders you [from doing your job]?
ENERGIZED WORK / Metal Box Factory Unit 323 30 Great Guildford Street London SE1 0HS / www.energizedwork.com
Human feedback is tricky!
“The Ladder of Abstraction” - Peter Senge: ‘The Fifth Discipline’
We make up our minds too fast based on what we perceive as reality, when actually we’re seeing what we’ve evolved to see (hear, feel, taste etc)
- “I’ll believe it when I see it” vs
- “I’ll see it when I believe it”
This is red pill/blue pill stuff- George Lakoff and Mark Johnson:
“Metaphors we live by”
ENERGIZED WORK / Metal Box Factory Unit 323 30 Great Guildford Street London SE1 0HS / www.energizedwork.com
Non-Violent Communication - which we do not have time for today
Here’s a template though, that is useful and semi self-explanatory:
Fast track, combining with NVC
• "I see ____. I am feeling ____ because I am needing ____. Would you be willing to ____?"
Or
• "I see ____. Are you feeling ____ because you are needing ____?" followed by "Would it meet your need if I ____?"
Or
• State your own feeling and need followed by a requesthttp://www.wikihow.com/Practice-Nonviolent-Communication
ENERGIZED WORK / Metal Box Factory Unit 323 30 Great Guildford Street London SE1 0HS / www.energizedwork.com
Ambiguity, what to ignore, deeper trends - track changes over time
I make word clouds (http://www.wordle.net/create) to try make sense of it all
ENERGIZED WORK / Metal Box Factory Unit 323 30 Great Guildford Street London SE1 0HS / www.energizedwork.com
More and more people start doing it (and benefitting) spontaneously! The language of the organisation changes!
WHYasd
Take-aways
SelfPractice asking “Helps & Hinders” from each of your “stakeholders” every month. Persist!
Team Use retrospectives to collect feedback data as well. Persist!
TimeRecord the data over time, look for trends - where’s the signal? Persist! Make transparent + NVC discuss!
SystemFix the system of your ‘self’ and your team to get the best results...but it may be a little uncomfortable initially!
ENERGIZED WORK / Metal Box Factory Unit 323 30 Great Guildford Street London SE1 0HS / www.energizedwork.com
Success
Thank you.
ENERGIZED WORK / Metal Box Factory Unit 323 30 Great Guildford Street London SE1 0HS / www.energizedwork.com