The Humanizing Work Show
Humanizing Work
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A show about making work more fit for humans and all of us humans more capable of doing great work
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4 days ago
#107 Finding the Right Style For Your Leadership Team: Lessons from Take6 and Greg Popovich | Humanizing Work Show
Most leadership teams adopt their style by accident and end up with wasteful meetings and unnecessarily noise and conflict. In this episode, Peter and Richard share an approach for figuring out the right kind of leadership team style for you based on your context. They describe the tools that fit each style and when your team might shift from one to another, drawing lessons from great music groups and sports teams.
Episode page: https://www.humanizingwork.com/finding-the-right-style-for-your-leadership-team/
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Nov 27, 2023
#106 Overcoming Burnout through Daily Purpose & Vision
Are you looking at your task list today and dreading it a bit? In this replay from the October 2023 Humanizing Work Meetup session, Richard and Peter share three recent situations when they were feeling a little burned out, and what they did to fix it. They walk through a process to think and communicate about Purpose and Vision at the micro level. That process took them less than five minutes in their examples, and energized them to make their work meaningful that day. Learn how you can do the same thing to tackle the day with energy, even when the tasks aren't something you're looking forward to.
Episode page: https://www.humanizingwork.com/overcoming-burnout-daily-purpose-and-vision/
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Nov 20, 2023
#105 How Coaches Benefit from PO Skills (plus how to develop yours)
Coaches usually focus on skills like facilitation, team formation, and conflict resolution. In this episode, Peter and Richard argue that none of those things matter if a team doesn’t get product ownership right, so coaches need to be fluent in product skills and able to coach their clients to get better in that area. Included in our conversation:
* The risk of over-focus in skill development
* Why being able to coach PO skills doesn’t necessarily make you a good PO
* Why fluency in this area is a must-have for any ScrumMaster or coach
Episode page: https://www.humanizingwork.com/how-coaches-benefit-from-po-skills/
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Nov 13, 2023
#104 Poor Backlog Refinement Is Burning $1000s Per Day
In this episode, Richard and Peter talk about the business case for getting better at product backlog refinement. What’s the financial and human cost of bad backlogs? Way more than most people realize. Here’s why it matters and what to do about it.
Episode page: https://www.humanizingwork.com/biz-case-for-better-backlogs/
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Nov 6, 2023
#103 Can Agile Even Work With This Business Model?
In this episode, Richard and Peter answer a listener question about whether an Agile approach can work with a customer-funded project model or whether you have to change your funding approach to work in an Agile way. They address the implications of Agile for things like funding, why project funding works for some orgs, and how to change things like funding in an Agile way.
Episode page: https://www.humanizingwork.com/agile-and-project-funding/
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Oct 30, 2023
#102 How Has Our Thinking On Scrum Changed?
In this special episode, Peter and Richard have a conversation with a long-time listener, client, and community member about how their thinking on Scrum has (and hasn’t) changed over the years.
Episode page: https://www.humanizingwork.com/thinking-on-scrum-changed/
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Oct 23, 2023
#101 Meetup Replay: A Path to Real Empowerment
These days, every leader seems to want empowered individuals and teams. But how do you actually get real empowerment? Just saying, “You’re empowered!” doesn’t seem to work reliably. In this Humanizing Work Community Meetup session, we explored a step-by-step path to increasing an individual or team’s empowerment in a particular area of responsibility. We walk through how to use this approach on two real examples, a COO that wants to empower their team to make M&A decisions, and a Product Leader that wants to empower developers to own decisions around a big change to the pricing model.
Episode page: https://www.humanizingwork.com/meetup-replay-a-path-to-real-empowerment/
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Oct 16, 2023
Celebrating 100 Episodes of the Humanizing Work Show
It’s episode 100 of the Humanizing Work Show! In this episode, Richard and Peter highlight their favorite episodes so far and why they’re worth revisiting. Then, they reflect on how their thinking has changed since the show started, what they’ve learned from producing the show, and what they hope is true 100 episodes from now.
Episode page: https://www.humanizingwork.com/celebrating-100-episodes
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Oct 9, 2023
#99 Two Questions to Shift Stakeholders from Solution to Problem
In this episode, Richard and Peter discuss how to work with stakeholders who always bring solution requests, like detailed requirements or technical specifications. How can you have an effective conversation to identify the underlying problem so you can collaborate with your team to solve the problem well?
Episode page: https://www.humanizingwork.com/from-solution-to-problem/
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Oct 2, 2023
#98 Making Sense of the ScrumMaster & Agile Coach Layoffs
In this episode, Richard and Peter answer the question: “What are your thoughts on all these ScrumMaster and Agile Coach layoffs? Many companies seem to be eliminating these roles altogether. What do you make of it?”
Episode page: https://www.humanizingwork.com/scrummaster-agile-coach-layoffs/
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Sep 25, 2023
#97 Great Facilitators Accomplish These 6 Goals
Surveys show people say less than a quarter of the meetings they attend are a valuable use of their time. In this recording of the August Humanizing Work Meetup, Peter introduces the 6 goals an effective facilitator achieves in every meeting and how to use those to ensure your meetings are reliably worth the participants’ time.
Episode page: https://www.humanizingwork.com/great-facilitators-accomplish-these-6-goals/
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Sep 18, 2023
#96 3 Mistakes New Managers Make & 3 Things To Do Instead
In this episode, Richard and Peter answer the question: “I just got promoted from developer to development manager, and I want to do my new role well. What should I be thinking about? What should I avoid?” Tune in to learn 3 ways new managers often mess things up and 3 things to do instead.
Episode page: https://www.humanizingwork.com/mistakes-new-managers-make/
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Sep 11, 2023
#95 The Latest Viral Scrum Criticism: What’s Right About It?
Another “Scrum is terrible and here’s why” post went viral on social media recently. In this episode, Richard and Peter reflect on the post, the responses to it, and what we can learn from the whole thing.
Episode page: https://www.humanizingwork.com/the-latest-viral-scrum-criticism/
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Sep 4, 2023
#94 Rethinking the Manager vs Leader Meme: What Really Matters?
You've seen them on LinkedIn: the “manager bad, leader good” infographics and listicles. But there are over a million people in the US with "manager" in their job title—surely there are lots of good ones.
In this episode, Peter and Richard explore the origin of the manager vs leader meme and reflect on whether it's actually useful for improving leadership.
Episode page: : https://www.humanizingwork.com/manager-vs-leader-meme/
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Aug 28, 2023
#93: How Top Leaders Create Clarity: 6 Tips to Communicate Through Uncertainty
Leaders walk a tightrope, creating clarity for teams with an inspiring vision while acknowledging the uncertainty of future predictions. In this episode, Peter delves into a pivotal moment for Adobe execs, one that showcases the art of communicating big shifts with clarity and integrity. From that example and dozens more, we’ll then distill the six critical tools top leaders use to paint a vivid vision while embracing the uncertain roadmap to reach it. From owning the potential downsides of a choice to communicating how and when we’ll pivot, this episode sheds light on how inspiring leaders balance ambition with grounded realism. Whether you're spearheading a corporate transformation or setting team OKRs, these insights will empower you to lead with conviction and honesty.
Episode page: https://www.humanizingwork.com/communicating-in-uncertainty/
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Aug 21, 2023
#92: The Top 5 Backlog Refinement Mistakes Almost Everyone Makes | Community Meetup Rebroadcast
Backlog refinement is critical for any agile team—if your backlog isn’t in good shape, everything downstream falls apart. But there’s a common set of mistakes almost everyone makes when it comes to backlog refinement, mistakes that make it overwhelming for Product Owners, frustrating for teams, and ultimately ineffective for everyone involved.
In this rebroadcast of the July 2023 Humanizing Work Community Meetup session, Richard looks at those top 5 backlog refinement mistakes and how to fix each one.
We host these free community meetups on the third Thursday of every month. Sign up for future community sessions at https://www.meetup.com/humanizingwork/
Episode page: https://www.humanizingwork.com/top-5-backlog-refinement-mistakes-meetup-rebroadcast
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Aug 14, 2023
#91: Navigating Commitments, Focus, and Flexibility: Insights from Scrum’s Abnormal Sprint Termination
Scrum’s rarely used “Abnormal Sprint Termination” rule can help a team strike a nice balance between the need to focus, the need to be responsive, and the desire to make and keep commitments. In this episode, we give a few examples of using this rule to get good results, and what to do if your team is struggling to make and keep commitments.
Episode page: https://www.humanizingwork.com/commitments-in-scrum-and-sprint-terminations/
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Aug 7, 2023
#90 Purposeful Quick Wins: How to Get Momentum without Avoiding the Hard Stuff
In this episode, Richard and Peter talk about quick wins, how they often emphasize the quick part but miss the win, and what to do instead at the start of a big initiative.
Episode page: https://www.humanizingwork.com/purposeful-quick-wins/
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Jul 31, 2023
#89: Collaboration and Coordination are NOT the Same Thing – Here’s Why It Matters
In this episode, Richard explains the distinction between collaborating and coordinating, when to do one or the other, and the implications for team structure, tools, and geography.
Episode page: https://www.humanizingwork.com/collaborate-vs-coordinate-episode/
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Jul 24, 2023
#88: On "The reality of Big Tech's 'fake work' problem”
In this episode, Richard and Peter discuss an article in Business Insider, “The reality of Big Tech's 'fake work' problem.” They discuss the incentives that create over-hiring and “fake work” and the antidote to it. Is it all just lazy managers, as the article suggests?
Episode page: https://www.humanizingwork.com/fake-work/
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Jul 17, 2023
#87: My Stakeholders Want It All Right Now!
In this episode, Richard and Peter answer the question: “All my stakeholders want all their stuff right now. What do I do?”
Episode page: https://www.humanizingwork.com/stakeholders-want-it-all/
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Jul 10, 2023
#86: I Can’t Get My Team to Collaborate!
In this episode, Richard and Peter answer the question: “My team members always grab things to work on separately in parallel. How can I get us collaborating more as a team?”
By the way, watch to the end for a crazy discount on the Humanizing Work Team Launch Sequence.
Episode page: https://www.humanizingwork.com/get-my-team-to-collaborate/
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Jul 5, 2023
#85: The Leadership Circle, Our Favorite Leadership Development Tool
Developing effective leadership skills can be challenging. It's difficult to even describe what makes a leader effective, let alone create a practical plan to improve your own leadership capabilities. In this episode, Peter & Richard introduce their favorite leadership development tool: The Leadership Circle.
This model provides language to identify behaviors that limit a leader's effectiveness. It also highlights capabilities that are associated with effective leadership. By using the model to assess your own leadership, you can learn how to reduce those limiting behaviors and increase your effectiveness.
Episode page: https://www.humanizingwork.com/cracking-the-code-of-effective-leadership-with-the-leadership-circle/
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Jun 26, 2023
#84: Lee McCormack on rules of the joy ride, what makes a great coach, and finding meaning beyond ego
In this episode, Richard and Peter interview world-class mountain bike coach Lee McCormack. If you’re a coach or leader of any kind—or if you just care about your own growth and development—this episode is packed with advice and inspiration.
Episode page: https://www.humanizingwork.com/lee-mccormack-interview/
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Jun 19, 2023
#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/
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Jun 12, 2023
#82: Visionary vs Facilitating Product Ownership
In this episode, Richard and Peter answer a question that’s essentially: “Most of the standard Product Ownership advice doesn’t seem to apply to my situation. Am I just doing Product Ownership wrong?” They discuss two modes of Product Ownership—visionary and facilitating—and when each one is the right approach.
Episode page: https://www.humanizingwork.com/visionary-vs-facilitating-product-ownership/
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Jun 5, 2023
#81: Designing Good Experiments
Complex problems, whether in product development or organizational change require an experimental approach. In this episode, Richard and Peter answer a question about how to design good experiments (or probes, to use the Cynefin term).
Episode page: https://www.humanizingwork.com/designing-good-experiments/
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May 30, 2023
#80: Senior Leadership Challenges in Agile Orgs (featuring Melissa Boggs)
In this episode, Peter and Richard sit down with Melissa Boggs to talk about the unique challenges senior leaders face in Agile orgs and how that led us to create our 2019 senior leader retreat. Melissa talks about her experience as a participant at the 2019 event, and the trio shares their vision for the 2023 retreat, now that Melissa has joined Richard and Peter as a co-facilitator.
Episode page: https://www.humanizingwork.com/senior-leadership-challenges-in-agile-orgs/
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May 21, 2023
#79: The One Where Peter Apologizes to the CEO
In this episode, Peter tell the story of a time where his own reactive tendencies limited his effectiveness—in a big way—in an interaction with his CEO. Richard interviews Peter about what he learned from the experience, how he’d handle it now, and what advice he has for other leaders in challenging situations.
Episode page: https://www.humanizingwork.com/peter-apologizes-to-the-ceo/
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May 15, 2023
#78: A Tool to Get Unstuck in a Frustrating Situation
In this episode, Richard and Peter share their favorite tool for figuring out what to do in a frustrating situation where you don’t have the power to just fix it, including a few real examples.
Episode page: https://www.humanizingwork.com/own-influence-respond-episode/
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May 8, 2023
#77: They’re All Customers
In this episode, Richard and Peter look at how customer research tools are useful in all kinds of contexts beyond product development. Got a relationship with a stakeholder at work that you’d like to improve? Learn how you can use customer research tools to better understand that stakeholder’s needs and how you and your team can help solve them.
Episode page: https://www.humanizingwork.com/theyre-all-customers/
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May 1, 2023
#76: The 15 minutes that reveal the health of your team
How do you assess the health of a team? You could conduct surveys and interviews of team members and stakeholders. You could look at the results the team produces. You could watch them work for a week or two. Or, as Peter & Richard explain in this Humanizing Work Show episode, you could just observe a team’s Daily Scrum (aka Daily Standup) and learn 80% of what you need to know about health of a team.
Episode page: https://www.humanizingwork.com/15-minutes-reveal-team-health/
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Apr 24, 2023
#75: How does my work as a developer change in Scrum?
In this episode, Richard and Peter answer the question: “Our team is adopting Scrum, how does my role (as a developer) change?” Obviously, you’ll be doing Scrum now and you weren’t before, but beyond the obvious, there are three big ways you can expect your work to change.
Episode page: https://www.humanizingwork.com/developer-in-scrum/
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Apr 17, 2023
#74: How much of Scrum should be standardized across teams?
In this episode, Richard and Peter answer the question: “How much should we standardize across our organization? Is it important that our sprint lengths match, that we estimate the same way, that we use the same tools, that we report the same metrics, etc.?” Obviously, standardizing everything isn’t going to work, but neither will standardizing nothing. So, where do you draw the line?
Episode page: https://www.humanizingwork.com/how-much-standardization/
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Apr 10, 2023
#73: What do I focus on as a new Product Owner?
In this episode, Richard answers the question: “What should I focus on as a new Product Owner?” Being a Scrum Product Owner is a big job, and it’s easy to get overwhelmed, so Richard breaks down what’s most important to focus on in the early days and in what sequence.
Episode page: https://www.humanizingwork.com/new-product-owner-focus/
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Apr 3, 2023
#72: 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/
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Mar 27, 2023
#71: Culture Signals
Why does Zappos celebrate wildly inefficient customer service calls? Why did FAVI brick up the window that allowed managers to see what was happening on the factory floor? Culture signals.
In this episode, Richard and Peter explain how culture signals work and how leaders can design their own culture signals to create the changes they want to see.
Episode page: https://www.humanizingwork.com/culture-signals-episode/
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Mar 21, 2023
#70: Scrum Roles in the Real World
In this episode, Richard and Peter answer the question: “I get the basic definitions of the Scrum roles. In the real world, though, what do these roles look like when they’re done well?” Hear their take on what it means to be a great ScrumMaster, Product Owner, or Scrum developer, beyond the “by the book” Scrum Guide answers.
Episode page: https://www.humanizingwork.com/scrum-roles-in-the-real-world/
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Mar 13, 2023
#69: Should Managers Be In Retrospectives?
In this episode, Richard and Peter answer the question: “What are your thoughts on including managers in retrospectives?” Even if a manger wants to be helpful, the answer is complicated…
Episode page: https://www.humanizingwork.com/managers-in-retros/
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Mar 6, 2023
#68: Dealing with Interruptions on a Scrum Team
In this episode, Richard answers the question: “Our team is trying to use Scrum, but we get a lot of interruptions, a lot of work that pops up mid-sprint. How do we handle that kind of thing well?” He explains how to borrow a couple of concepts from Kanban to accommodate emergent work on a Scrum team in a healthy way.
Episode page: https://www.humanizingwork.com/dealing-with-interruptions-on-a-scrum-team/
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Feb 27, 2023
#67: A Path to Real Empowerment for Teams
Just saying “you’re empowered” doesn’t make it happen. In this episode, Peter and Richard offer a more nuanced way to think about empowerment and a structured path to increase the level of empowerment for your employees and teams.
Episode page: https://www.humanizingwork.com/path-to-empowerment/
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Feb 20, 2023
#66: Sprint Review Agenda
In this episode, Richard and Peter share an agenda you can use for a Sprint Review meeting—or for any meeting where you want to share and get feedback on complex, meaningful work-in-progress. Too many Sprint Reviews are a demo with no useful feedback or a deep dive into the weeds on problem-solving. The best review meetings combine a deliberate demo with a well-structured feedback session. Learn how you can have this kind of review.
Episode page: https://www.humanizingwork.com/ReviewAgenda/
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Feb 14, 2023
#65: 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/
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Feb 6, 2023
#64: 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/
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Jan 30, 2023
#63: These Six Things Improve How Teams Work
The health of teams has a direct impact on organizational results as well as on individuals’ happiness in their work. In this episode, Richard and Peter outline the 6 conditions that researchers J Richard Hackman and Ruth Wegeman have discovered are critical for a team to be healthy and effective. They also cover what you can do to contribute to those conditions, whether you’re a leader or a junior team member.
Episode page: https://www.humanizingwork.com/these-six-things-improve-how-teams-work/
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Jan 23, 2023
#62: 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/
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Jan 16, 2023
#61: 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/
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Jan 9, 2023
#60: Effective Sprint Reviews
In this episode, Richard and Peter dig into how to have an effective Sprint Review meeting. Great Sprint Reviews, achieve 3 goals and answer 3 key questions. Learn how do accomplish this on your team. (And discover why “Sprint Demo” is too limited a name for this meeting.)
While this is explicitly Scrum-focused, it’s really about how to have a meeting to review a body of work as a team, whether you’re using Scrum or not.
Episode page: https://www.humanizingwork.com/effective-sprint-reviews-episode/
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Jan 3, 2023
#59: 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/
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Dec 19, 2022
#58: 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/
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Dec 12, 2022
#57: Why Scrum works when it works
Peter and Richard are often asked: “Why do you guys like Scrum so much? It seems like a lot of meetings, and I see a lot of teams struggling with it. But you recommend it for a lot of situations, and it seems like you’ve thought a lot about it.”
In this episode, they explain why Scrum works when it works and why it’s still their favorite approach for product development, including outside of software development.
Episode page: https://www.humanizingwork.com/why-scrum-works-when-it-works/
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Dec 5, 2022
#56: What’s Management’s Job When Teams Are Empowered?
In organizations where teams and individuals are empowered to own and direct their own work, what do managers do? Is there even a role for a manager in an empowered org? In this episode, Richard and Peter introduce the Humanizing Work Three Jobs of Management model, showing how skillful managers can add significant value in their role.
Episode page: https://www.humanizingwork.com/three-jobs-of-management-hw-show/
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Nov 28, 2022
How do you split a “technical story”?
In this episode, Richard and Peter take on the challenge of so-called “technical stories,” backlog items that emerge from a development team and that don’t represent a clear slice of customer value. How should a product owner handle these? Are “technical stories” even a thing?
Episode page: https://www.humanizingwork.com/technical-stories/
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Nov 21, 2022
The Healthy Way To Do Commitments & Accountability
Making clear commitments and having regular discussions about accountability is a hallmark of every successful organization and, outside of work, every successful relationship. In this episode, Peter covers how to make a commitment with integrity, how to honorably break or renegotiate a commitment when necessary, and how to have effective conversations about accountability.
Episode page: https://www.humanizingwork.com/commitments-accountability/
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Nov 14, 2022
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/
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Nov 7, 2022
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/
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Oct 31, 2022
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/
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Oct 24, 2022
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/
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Oct 17, 2022
Measuring the Success of Agile Adoption
In this episode, Richard and Peter take on two related questions: “Can those Agile success surveys be believed?” and “How should we think about measuring the success of our own Agile adoption?”
Episode page: https://www.humanizingwork.com/measuring-the-success-of-agile-adoption/
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Oct 10, 2022
Couch to Running 45 Miles Across the Grand Canyon
In October 2022, Peter ran across the Grand Canyon, not just once, but twice in a single day. In October 2019, Peter could barely run a mile. In this episode, Richard interviews Peter about this huge transformation in his life and the lessons for individuals and teams who want to create their own sustainable, positive changes.
Episode page: https://humanizingwork.com/couch-to-running-45-miles-across-the-grand-canyon/
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Oct 4, 2022
Participant's Key Takeaways from the 2022 Humanizing Work Conference
We’ve just returned from hosting the 2022 edition of our annual Humanizing Work Conference in Veil, Colorado. On the last day of the conference, we asked a few of the participants to share an idea or concept they picked up that was particularly meaningful or useful to them, that they thought you might benefit from hearing.
In this episode, you’ll get a glimpse into the takeaways from seven participants on ideas you can use at work right away.
Episode page: https://www.humanizingwork.com/humanizing-work-2022-conference-participant-takeaways/
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Sep 26, 2022
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/
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Sep 19, 2022
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/
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Sep 12, 2022
The Problem with the Phrase "Don't Bring Me Problems, Bring Me Solutions"
In this episode, Richard and Peter answer the question: “I was in a 1:1 with my boss and I shared a problem I was observing on the team. She reminded me of her motto: ‘don’t bring me problems, bring me solutions.’ The challenge was that I didn’t have a solution. Should I wait to share the problem until I’ve come up with a solution?”
They also get into why managers shouldn’t say this, even if their intentions are good, and what to do instead.
Episode page: https://www.humanizingwork.com/dont-bring-me-problems-bring-me-solutions/
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Sep 6, 2022
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
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Aug 29, 2022
Do we really need a retrospective every sprint?
In this episode, Richard and Peter answer the question: “Do we really need a retrospective every sprint? It seems like a waste to do them that often.”
Episode page: https://www.humanizingwork.com/do-we-really-need-a-retrospective-every-sprint/
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Aug 23, 2022
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/
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Aug 15, 2022
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/
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Aug 9, 2022
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!”
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Aug 1, 2022
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/
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Jul 25, 2022
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/
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Jul 18, 2022
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/
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Jul 12, 2022
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/
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Jul 5, 2022
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/
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Jun 28, 2022
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/
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Jun 20, 2022
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/
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Jun 14, 2022
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/
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Jun 7, 2022
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/
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May 31, 2022
Grilling next week's chicken (or how to get people to work outside their specialty)
In this episode, Richard and Peter take on the question: “My team members only want to work on their specialties. What can I do to get them to pull from the top of the backlog?”
Richard answers with a vivid story about food prep, common sense, and “grilling next week’s chicken.”
Episode page: https://humanizingwork.com/grilling-next-weeks-chicken-or-how-to-get-people-to-work-outside-their-specialty/
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May 23, 2022
Africa WTPO Conference Recap (Snapshots)
Peter checks in from the beach in Ghana, Africa, sharing his thoughts on his time in Africa and his takeaways from the World Trade Promotion Organizations conference, where he gave a keynote.
Episode page: https://www.humanizingwork.com/hw-africa-wtpo-conference/
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May 17, 2022
Laloux Culture Model Update 2022
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.
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May 10, 2022
User Story Fatigue (Mailbag)
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/
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
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May 3, 2022
When People Don't Participate In Retros (Mailbag)
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/
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
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Apr 26, 2022
How To Get Useful Feedback
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/
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
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Apr 19, 2022
Complexity and Cross-Geo Teams
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 page: https://www.humanizingwork.com/complexity-and-cross-geo-teams/
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
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Apr 12, 2022
Prioritizing For The Day | A Humanizing Work Company Snapshot
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.
Check out the episode page for an image we refer to in this episode.
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Apr 6, 2022
March 2022 Community of Practice Recap
We host four Humanizing Work Communities of Practice. On the first Friday of each month, alumni of our annual conference meet to stay connected and dig into advanced topics about humanizing their work. On the second through fourth Fridays, our ScrumMaster, Product Owner, and leadership communities meet.
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Apr 4, 2022
Luke Hohmann on Figure Skating, Innovation Games, and Participatory Budgeting
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/
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
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Mar 29, 2022
What Goes on a Management Team Backlog? (Mailbag)
Sometimes a management team decides they want to use something like Scrum to organize their own work. But they’re not building a product, so what should their backlog look like? In this mailbag episode, Peter and Richard answer the question, “How do we create a good backlog for our management team?”
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Mar 22, 2022
How to choose a pilot team (Mailbag)
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 page: humanizingwork.com/picking-a-pilot-team-for-agile-adoption/
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
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Mar 21, 2022
Dealing with Unrealistic Deadlines on an Agile Team (Mailbag)
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/
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
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Aug 6, 2019
S2E5: How Tools Like Scrum and XP Help Create Real Teams
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.
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Jul 23, 2019
S2E4: Adobe Audition Team Reunion
Peter reunites with a few team members from the Adobe Audition team, the first Scrum Team at Adobe in 2005. We laugh, we cry, we dig into what made that team so memorable for all of us and how we've applied what we learned to future teams.
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Jun 21, 2019
S2E3: What Kills Great Teams, and What Can You Do About It?
There are a few factors that can kill a team that are external things, and hence out of its control. But almost all of the things that we've seen kill a team are related to individuals' capability to collaborate and lead effectively. In this episode, we share the things we've seen that are most toxic on teams, and the antidotes we've seen most effective in addressing those toxins.
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Jun 6, 2019
S2E2: Jazz, Teams, and Work
Peter's first career was as a musician playing trumpet in jazz and other groups. As his second career in Humanizing Work unfolded, he realized that jazz groups provided some amazing lessons for work teams on collaboration, listening, group creativity, and individual and collective growth. In this episode, Peter reunites with some of his old buddies and a few new friends from the jazz community to play some jazz. Between tunes, we go behind the scenes to hear from the musicians themselves about what they're thinking about, practicing, and hoping for when they are part of a team called a "jazz combo".
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May 8, 2019
S2E1: Most Great Work Happens in Teams
Great work, innovative work, impactful work is almost NEVER a solo effort. In fact, most important work is done by teams small and large. Unfortunately most of the work groups that people call a team aren't really a team. In this episode, we'll share our definition of a team and the key components that set a team up to be successful.
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Apr 2, 2019
S1E5: Why the Humanizing Work Movement is Emerging Now
In this episode, we examine the historical trends that are creating the need for the Humanizing Work movement to emerge today. We seem to have hit the limits of a mechanistic view of work, and are transitioning into something new, or more correctly, a restoration of a human-centric approach to work, but one that includes emergence and the benefits of technology and scale.
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Mar 22, 2019
S1E4: We Are Built To Grow!
Growth is a core human need. We are built to grow. In this episode we look at research, discuss examples, and share stories about what growth means and why it's a core component of Humanizing Work.
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Mar 6, 2019
S1E3: What’s My Motivation Here?
In this episode, we share some of the research into what leads to motivation and engagement at work. Many in the Humanizing Work community will be familiar with Dan Pink's work summarizing the research here. We'll go more broadly here, all the way back to McGregor's Theory X & Y, Self-Determination Theory, Pink, Doshi & McGregor's Primed to Perform, and more. And if you're thinking: "Wait, there's so much to focus on, what's really important here?", we'll help you out by drawing a few patterns across all of the research and, most importantly, what you can do to increase your own motivation, regardless of the context around you.
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Feb 28, 2019
S1E2: The Link Between Flow, Ease, and Meaning at Work
The great Eli Goldratt once asked his daughter if he wanted work to be meaningful or easy; she couldn't have both. In this episode, we use Goldratt's own Evaporating Cloud technique to break that conflict as we share how greater ease and greater meaning are interrelated and core components of Humanizing Work. We get into discussions of flow, its applications in music sight-reading and downhill mountain biking, and how "easy" might not be the right term here, and how growth is another key aspect of meaningful work. Finally, we share out advice on how to create more ease and meaning in our own individual work.
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