Personal Thoughts
Robert Galen
We've Moved
We've Moved
Walking Their Talk, Sustainability, Inspiration
Robert Galen
Sustainability

I saw this wonderfully courageous and informative post by Sabine Canditt the other day where she wrote about Sustainable Scrum. 

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/sustainable-scrum-responsible-choice-sabine-canditt-x0gef

After just completing a The Week program facilitated by the amazing Ann-Marie Kong, it touched my heart.

That said, I wanted to highlight one comment reaction/interaction between Sabine and Erich Bühler 

Erich said—

Thank you for bringing this approach into the world! Scrum does provide an iterative approach for teams to create value, but its scope is limited to the product level and struggles with dynamics across the whole organization for several reasons.
Without updating the underlying business and financial model at a strategic level, Scrum alone cannot transform organization-wide sustainability.

Sustainability
Short-takes, Inspiration
Robert Galen
Sandy’s Take
Sandy’s Take
Short-takes, Personal Thoughts
Robert Galen
The Human Aspects of Agile Coaching
The Human Aspects of Agile Coaching
Coaching, ACGW, Personal Thoughts
Robert Galen
Keys to Building your Coaching Relationships

I talk a lot about the first step in coaching any client (individual, system, team, etc.) is to build a relationship, gain empathy and understanding, and then gain an idea of where/how to help initially. So, do NOT start to coach until you’ve done some relationship-building. 

But what does a coaching relationship, or a professional relationship in general, look like? What are aspects of that? Here are a few things that come to my mind—

  • Making + taking the time.

  • Explaining what you do—what is Agile Coaching.

  • Building some empathy; walking in their shoes; understanding where they are coming from.

  • Meeting them where they are.

  • Listening; reflective listening; building metaphors together.

  • Connecting with their language, not yours.

Keys to Building your Coaching Relationships

My Story

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Stay agile my friends

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Stay agile my friends

I’ve used this tagline for quite a while. I’m thinking for over 10 years now. I don’t think I ever explained the backstory for it and will do so now. 

I was influenced by the old Corona beer commercial where the actor closed each commercial with the line—

Stay thirsty my friends

And it made sense to me to end each post with a similar bit of encouragement from an agile perspective.

I’m writing this because it seems like our current global context for agility has never been more challenging. Yet, the notion of

Stay agile my friends

Has never been more relevant. But what is my intention and meaning behind it? Amongst many things, it implies to me—

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My Coaching Journey

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My Coaching Journey

My Colleague and friend, Chris Stone, posted an article on LinkedIn that shared a figure of his interpretation of The Agile Coach Hype Cycle. He asked me—How did your journey look? 

And it made me think…

Of my journey. Had I followed the steps that he had laid out? Where was I currently on my journey? And where might I be going?

A Look Back

I’m going to share some meaningful events and milestones in my journey—certainly not all, but reflecting on my journey to reflect forward.

Late 1990s

  • Introduced to Lean thinking, Extreme Programming, and Scrum.

  • Early direct experience while working at Micrognosis & Bell & Howell.

  • Aligning with earliest Scrum stories and practices.

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Becoming Less Humble

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Becoming Less Humble

True humility is not thinking less of yourself;

It is thinking of yourself less.

C.S. Lewis

My friend and colleague Joel Bancroft-Connors was the most recent person who gave me feedback that I might be too humble. I know, I know, but keep reading.

Joel was listening to one of my Meta-cast podcasts and he mentioned that I had a tendency to minimize or downplay or undercut my own skills and experience when sharing in a variety of forums. He’s listened to me in webinars, in live sessions, and in podcasts. And he said I often undermine my ideas, stories, and recommendations by being or seeming to be too humble in my interactions.

It’s certainly something I’ve heard before and that I’m aware of. But I have a challenge with my ego and not wanting to be braggadocios or full of myself. I believe the roots of it go back to my childhood and how I was raised. I also don’t like to think of myself as some sort of “agile expert”, even though I am. And I guess I’m not all that comfortable with the spotlight.

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Belated 2020 Accomplishments

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Belated 2020 Accomplishments

I write so often and sometimes I lose a thought or article and then find it. I found this one today (March 15th). Of course, I’m posting it a bit late, but as I read it, it felt like something that should see the light of day. So, better late than never…

I saw a post on LinkedIn the other day (late in 2020) from someone who was reflecting on their 2020 accomplishments. It read—

And I’m done for 2020!! 17 CALs, 16 CSPOs, 14 CSMs, 1 book written, 1 board of directors joined, 1/2 master’s degree completed. Maybe I’ll limit my WiP in 2021.

This was from a CST and the 47 letter combinations equaled training that they had delivered.

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Storytelling lessons I've learned on my journey...

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Storytelling lessons I've learned on my journey...

I’m of the mind that Storytelling is THE communication imperative for today’s most effective leaders. But the question is always—

  • What does Storytelling “look like?”

  • How do I start the Storytelling path?

  • And, how do I become a great Storyteller?

And, while I don’t profess to be a “professional” Storyteller, I have become a solid Storyteller over the years, so this article is intended to share some of my learnings.

Storytelling Considerations

Stories are found, not made

You have to first become an active observer of your surroundings. You have to pay attention and, dare I say it, write things down. This is why I’m such an avid proponent of journaling. And by journaling, I mean old-fashioned paper and pen journaling. Jerry Weinberg wrote a book called Weinberg on Writing, where he shared his fieldstones technique for gathering story nuggets (fieldstones) that you later piece together into effective stories. The wonderful thing about this idea is you can “reuse” your stones.

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Fireside Chats with the Moose

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In 2019 I was invited to do a fireside chat at the AgileDev conference in Vegas. The idea was to invite—

  • A wizened vet from the agile movement,

  • Someone with deep & broad experience, and

  • Someone with some opinions to share.

Check, check, and check. And have some folks ask them questions. About anything. I think the idea was borrowed from the Agile Conference where they had invited some incredible agile folks into these sorts of sessions.

There were some “ringers” in the audience, thank you Chris Murman, and some of the questions made me quite emotional. There may have even been a few tears.

Fireside Chats

As part of my Agile Moose Herd activity, I recently had the idea to do a Fireside Chat once a month and see what the interest level was and value might be. An experiment if you will…

So, to that end, I invite everyone & anyone to come to A Fireside Chat series with Bob Galen. Bring what’s on your mind from an agile perspective, Ask Me Anything, and we can see where the conversation goes. As my buddy Josh Anderson likes to remind me, I’m rarely (never) at a loss for words.

Hopefully, we can have some rich discussions and a bit of fun while doing so. I’d be honored if you could join us…

Schedule

  • October 8th

  • November 11th

  • December 9th

Please note: each chat is limited to 10 attendees so that the discussions can be more focused & personal. If you’d like to join me, please register here to attend one or more chats.

Stay agile my friends,

Bob.

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Read Me

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I was talking with my friend Josh Anderson on our Meta-cast the other day and he brought up the notion of having a “read me” file which contained information for his team about him.

Mostly the idea is to share collaborative information to make it more transparent and easier for his team members to 

  • Generally, understand him and get to know him;

  • Know how to get his attention;

  • Figure out how he processes information;

  • Share some personal information.

I believe part of the genesis of the idea comes from collaborative projects and repositories like GitHub. https://www.makeareadme.com/

Josh shared his ReadMe with me and I found it quite useful.

I also found this article which has quite a few examples from real people - https://hackernoon.com/12-manager-readmes-from-silicon-valleys-top-tech-companies-26588a660afe

And I thought I’d give it a go for myself. While it isn’t exhaustive, it does make transparent some of my tendencies…

Here’s my first attempt at a ReadME

I’ll let you know in a later post whether it seems as if this level of transparency and insight helps people “connect” with me better.

Stay agile my friends,

Bob.

 

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Defining Moments

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Defining Moments

It was 2001 and I was working at Lucent (Bell Labs) here in Raleigh, NC. In their Optical Networking (Telecomm) group.

In September of that year, the attacks on NYC, Pentagon, and Pittsburg occurred. I was working when it happened and I remember with dread watching both of the World Trade Center towers topple in succession. It was terrible and I’ll never forget it.

I’d moved to North Carolina from the Northeast and I’d spent ~10 years of my life working with FinTech clients in NYC. For example, I’d worked with Cantor Fitzgerald folks for years and lost quite a few friends and colleagues there.

A few months later, the Telecomm bubble burst. Which meant firms like Alcatel, Nortel, and Lucent laid off thousands of workers. I was but one of those on the list.