Mindful Agility
Daniel Greening
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Mindfulness for insight, and agile for results give us the innovation and drive we need to succeed. Dan Greening and Mirela Petalli help you use both practices together to live life well.
Available episodes
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Jun 27, 2023
Trigger Translator: Discover triggers with body sensations, and then transform confrontation to communication in home and work
In this thought-provoking episode of Mindful Agility, learn how to transform confrontational encounters into productive dialogues. Ankur Shah Delight and Dan Greening share a transformational technique to handle triggering comments, guiding listeners to notice their physical reactions, pause, seek the core of the statement, rephrase it, and share with the other party. Hear an engaging case study where a potentially volatile workplace scenario is skillfully diffused. It's an essential guide for anyone seeking to enhance their communication skills, foster healthier relationships, and maintain a calm mental space amid conflict. Lean in, breathe deep, and transform your conversations.
*Resources*
* Momentum Labs, Elephant in the Room Challenge (starts July 1, 2023)
* Wikipedia, Nonviolent Communication.*Credits*
* Stinger sound Swing beat 120 xylophone side-chained by Casonika licensed CC BY 4.0*Staff*
* Daniel Greening, host, agile consultant, software executive
* Mirela Petalli, co-host, meditation guide, and neurocritical nursing instructor
* Dan Dickson, business coach, executive and management consultant *Links*
* Mindful Agility Substack ("The Mindful Sprint" weekly brief)
* Mindful Agility web site
* Mindful Agility Community Facebook group
* Mindful Agility Youtube channel
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May 30, 2023
Procrastination: Find the Cues, Choices, and Rewards that damage our Mental and Physical Health and derail our Opportunities. Tim Ferriss shares the Fear Setting exercise. Dan Greening shares his Habit Deflection approach
In this Mindful Agility podcast episode on procrastination, hosts Mirela Petalli and Dan Greening delve into the hidden costs of procrastination. Have you wondered how procrastination could impact not just your work, but also your mental and physical health? This episode uncovers shocking research findings from Sweden that link procrastination to poor health outcomes. Tune in to discover an innovative tool developed by productivity guru Tim Ferriss to help overcome his fear of failure. You'll also hear compelling personal stories of overcoming procrastination through mindfulness techniques. Are you ready to turn your procrastination habit around and boost your success and wellbeing? Don't delay; listen to this enlightening episode today.*Resources*
* Eva Skillgate et al, “Procrastination is linked to poor health – new study,” *The Conversation* (Jan 16, 2023).
* Fred Johansson et al, “Associations Between Procrastination and Subsequent Health Outcomes Among University Students in Sweden,” JAMA Network Open 6(1) (Jan 3 2023), doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2022.49346.
* Tim Ferriss, “Why you should define your fears instead of your goals,” TED2017.
* Tim Ferriss et al, Tools of Titans: The Tactics, Routines, and Habits of Billionaires, Icons, and World-Class Performers, 2017.*Credits*
* Reviewers: Ron Lussier, Stephen Zimmerman, Colleen Zimmerman, and Eve Rubell
* Stinger sound Swing beat 120 xylophone side-chained by Casonika licensed CC BY 4.0*Staff*
* Daniel Greening, host, agile consultant, software executive
* Mirela Petalli, co-host, meditation guide, and neurocritical nursing instructor
* Dan Dickson, business coach, executive and management consultant *Links*
* Mindful Agility Substack ("The Mindful Sprint" weekly brief)
* Mindful Agility web site
* Mindful Agility Community Facebook group
* Mindful Agility Youtube channel
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May 23, 2023
Move Fast and Break Cheap Things: Warren Buffett and Elon Musk staged low-cost experiments for the faster win
Want to learn the secret behind Warren Buffett's success? Curious about how SpaceX rockets are built? This episode of Mindful Agility podcast uncovers the power of low-cost experiments and how they can propel your success. Hosts Dan Greening and Dan Dickson discuss how to use low-cost experiments to reduce risk and increase reward, and suggest practical steps to apply this concept in your own life. Learn how to turn your significant projects into a series of small, manageable experiments. By embracing failure and learning from it, you can fast-track your road to success. Tune in to find out how!
*References*
* Dan Greening, Pattern: Experiment to Improve, June 11, 2015.
* Dan Dickson, Dan Greening, "1: Low-Cost Experiments," The Mindful Sprint," April 4, 2023.*Credits*
* Beta reviewers helped improve this episode: Stephen Tryon, Eve Rubell, Amelia Hambrecht, Divya Maez.
* Stinger sound Swing beat 120 xylophone side-chained by Casonika CC BY 4.0*Staff*
* Daniel Greening, host, agile consultant, software executive
* Mirela Petalli, co-host, meditation guide, and neurocritical nursing instructor
* Dan Dickson, business coach, executive and management consultant *Links*
* Mindful Agility Substack ("The Mindful Sprint" weekly brief)
* Mindful Agility web site
* Mindful Agility Community Facebook group
* Mindful Agility Youtube channel
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May 9, 2023
Psychological Safety
Toxic work and home environments are all around us: intimidation, humiliation, secret discussions, manipulation. Those environments are psychologically unsafe. When we and those around us feel unsafe, we become fearful, stop learning, and fail to improve.
Discover the power of psychological safety in fostering high-performing teams, as we dive into techniques to cultivate trust and open communication. Learn from Google's Project Aristotle case study, Mirela Petalli’s experiences in hospitals, and Dan Greening’s experiences in tech companies, which reveal the transformative impact of psychological safety on productivity and collaboration.
Join us as we challenge norms with mindfulness and agile practices to elevate team performance. Listen to this episode and transform your understanding of what it takes to create a successful, innovative, and cohesive team. Don't miss this chance to unlock your team's potential – tune in now!
This episode parallels our 2-minute newsletter (click to subscribe) The Mindful Sprint. Mirela Petalli and Dan Greening use the Psychological Safety brief as a jumping off point for more details and stories around Psychological Safety.*References*
* Duhigg, C. (2016). What Google Learned From Its Quest to Build the Perfect Team. The New York Times
* Amy Gallo (February 15, 2023) “What Is Psychological Safety?,” Harvard Business Review.*Credits*
* Beta reviewers Divya Maez, Amelia Hambrecht and Colleen Zimmerman helped improve this episode.
* Stinger sound Swing beat 120 xylophone side-chained by Casonika CC BY 4.0*Staff*
* Daniel Greening, host, agile consultant, software executive
* Mirela Petalli, co-host, meditation guide, and neurocritical nursing instructor
* Dan Dickson, business coach, executive and management consultant *Links*
* Mindful Agility Substack ("The Mindful Sprint" weekly brief)
* Mindful Agility web site
* Mindful Agility Community Facebook group
* Mindful Agility Youtube channel
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May 2, 2023
Incremental Reciprocity Builds Successful Relationships
Discover the secret behind successful partnerships in this episode on incremental reciprocity. Start with a small task without expecting anything in return, and ask your partner to match your effort. As you both grow, this technique helps measure reliability and build trust. Famous duos like Lennon-McCartney and Oprah Winfrey-Gayle King used this method to achieve greatness. Enhance your teamwork and friendships by trying this approach yourself. Give it a shot and transform your connections!
One more example of how mindfulness and agile skills help you succeed, from the Mindful Agility podcast.*Credits*
* Beta reviewers: Amelia Hambrecht, Stephen Tryon
* Beatles image from the Nationaal Archief, the Dutch National Archives, and Spaarnestad Photo. CC BY-SA 3.0 NL
* Stinger sound Swing beat 120 xylophone side-chained by Casonika CC BY 4.0 license.*Staff*
* Daniel Greening, host, agile consultant, software executive
* Mirela Petalli, co-host, meditation guide, and neurocritical nursing instructor
* Dan Dickson, business coach, executive and management consultant *Links*
* Mindful Agility Substack ("The Mindful Sprint" weekly brief)
* Mindful Agility web site
* Mindful Agility Community Facebook group
* Mindful Agility Youtube channel
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Apr 25, 2023
Five Whys for Lasting Breakthroughs
Unlock the mindful power of the Five Whys technique in this intriguing episode, with agile coach Dan Greening and corporate fixer Dan Dickson.
The Five Whys method has transformed businesses and personal lives, revealing hidden causes of problems, and promoting safer, more lasting improvements. Hear intriguing stories, like how Toyota fixed a recurring production line issue for good, and how Dan Greening hosted a Five Whys "party" that possibly saved an employee's job! Learn how this simple, effective approach can help you tackle challenges in your own life. Listen now, to transform your approach to problem-solving forever!*Resources*
* Dan Greening, “Root Cause Mapping Party,” https://senexrex.com/cause-mapping/
* EPM, The 5 Whys Explained - Root Cause Analysis, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7FcK8jV2yA
* Mindful Agility, The Mindful Sprint: Five Whys for Lasting Breakthroughs*Credits*
* Thanks to beta reviewers Amelia Hambrecht and Dan D'Agostino.
* Stinger sound Swing beat 120 xylophone side-chained by Casonika, CC BY 4.0 license.*Staff*
* Daniel Greening, host, agile consultant, software executive
* Mirela Petalli, co-host, meditation guide, and neurocritical nursing instructor
* Dan Dickson, business coach, executive and management consultant *Links*
* Mindful Agility Substack ("The Mindful Sprint" weekly brief)
* Mindful Agility web site
* Mindful Agility Community Facebook group
* Mindful Agility Youtube channel
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Mar 28, 2023
Chapter 1.1: Find Success without the Recipe
By developing two uncommon skills, mindfulness and agility, you can achieve true success in most fields of life and work. You must define success on your own terms, rather than rely on others' metrics or recipes. Imitating others who have been successful works fine to get your feet wet, but it won't make you successful, because the world has new competitors, and you are a different person.
Mindfulness practices develop skills in seeing the world more clearly, along with its opportunities and dangers. With mindfulness, we can discover hidden causes more readily, and we can fix problems and exploit opportunities more easily. In a word, mindfulness gives us insight.
Agile practices develop skills in low-cost, low-risk experimentation. Insight is great, but to blaze new paths you have to take risks. There are lots of dangers in that unexplored jungle, so we need to learn how to explore safely. In a word, agile gives us innovation.
We discuss the challenges of developing mindfulness and agile skills, including the distractions of modern life and the need for ongoing study and practice. We show how mindfulness and agile practices can be applied in different fields and situations, from healthcare to career development to family life.
Mindful agility is a practical philosophy—i.e., it is composed of practices and principles. These principles of success encourage you to first think critically about your own goals, then imitate others to get the basics of a field, then use mindfulness to build competence and insight, then use agility to innovate.
This episode is chapter 1.1 of the Mindful Agility book under development. *Credits*
* Amelia Hambrecht, Rob Coles, Eve Rubell, Jeff Stuit, and Divya Maez were our beta reviewers, for whom we are super grateful. Early beta review is an agile staple: we make changes to our episode based on feedback. If you ever want to give it a try, reach out to us. If you are reading this, you are in our target audience.
* Nichols, M. (1967). The Graduate. Embassy Pictures. Amazing movie. Seven Academy Awards.
* Stinger sound Swing beat 120 xylophone side-chained by Casonika licensed under Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) to Mindful Agility
* Image of magician backed by Imitation by DALL-E*Staff*
* Daniel Greening, host, agile consultant, software executive
* Mirela Petalli, co-host, meditation guide, and neurocritical nursing instructor
* Dan Dickson, business coach, executive and management consultant *Links*
* Mindful Agility Substack ("The Mindful Sprint" weekly brief)
* Mindful Agility web site
* Mindful Agility Community Facebook group
* Mindful Agility Youtube channel
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Feb 28, 2023
Learning from Failure, Without Losing Your Mind
Learning from failure ought to be easy. Good experiments should fail, about half the time, especially if they aren't costly. And agile experiments are designed to be low cost. But failure, it turns out, freaks us out, especially when we are new to a field. That might explain why agile transformations fail at a very high rate, even though the benefits of agile are well studied. Folks in an agile transformation are new to agile, and little failures at the beginning can lead them to run away.
In this episode, Dan Dickson and Dan Greening talk about a recently published paper, "You Think Failure is Hard? So is Learning from It." We discuss the insights in the paper, and how those insights translate into agile practice.
Here's the problem
* People avoid bad news
* People are ashamed of failure
* People don't share what they learned from failure (so others have to repeat their experiments)
And so, not only do we not learn from our own failures, our friends don't discuss their failures with us. So we don't learn from our own failures or our friends' failures. Bummer.
We talk about the implications for agile: it's a problem we have to address head on. We provide some ways to make learning from failure much easier.
*References*
* Dan Greening, *Root Cause Mapping Party* [on “Five Whys”], 2015, https://senexrex.com/cause-mapping/
* Mindful Agility team, Business on Fire Part I: Steve Jobs protege Ron Johnson burns JC Penney cash fast as CEO, 1:11 (2022), https://sr.link/ma1-1
* Eskreis-Winkler, L., & Fishbach, A. (2022). You Think Failure Is Hard? So Is Learning From It. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 17(6), 1511–1524. https://doi.org/10.1177/17456916211059817*Credits*
* Thanks to Dan Dickson, our guest and collaborator
* Image of athlete tripping on a dog, by DALL-E
* Stinger sound Swing beat 120 xylophone side-chained by Casonika licensed under Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) to Mindful Agility.*Staff*
* Daniel Greening, host, agile consultant, software executive
* Mirela Petalli, co-host, meditation guide, and neurocritical nursing instructor
* Dan Dickson, business coach, executive and management consultant *Links*
* Mindful Agility Substack ("The Mindful Sprint" weekly brief)
* Mindful Agility web site
* Mindful Agility Community Facebook group
* Mindful Agility Youtube channel
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Feb 7, 2023
Why Bother? Purpose Drives Creative People to Minimize Distraction, Recruit Buddies, and Build Success
Our clumsiness in life creates most of our suffering. We haven't practiced the skills we need to be happy. We don’t see what’s going on around us. We don’t see the causes early enough to prevent a train-wreck in work or life. And when we don’t know how to distinguish truth from delusion, well that leads to a world of hurt.
But if we don't have a purpose, should we or anyone else care that we mess up?
Mindfulness skills help us reduce the dumb stuff we do to ourselves. When we get more comfortable and skillful just living in our existing situation, then we can contemplate why we are here and how to actively live. Knowing where we're going, means agile skills can get us there, finding creative solutions to the tough stuff.
So, here's one way to think of our journey to higher purpose and fulfillment:
* Mindfulness skills
* Purpose
* Agile skills
A couple of months ago, Dan Greening was interviewed for another podcast, called 10,000 Heroes, by his pal Ankur Shah Delight. If you’ve wondered what the hell those Mindful Agility people were trying to do, Ankur asked the right questions. Here’s that 10,000 Heroes episode, in its entirety. If you like the idea of exploring purpose, 10,000 Heroes is a nice thing to check out. *Credits*
* Ankur Shah Delight was our guest host for this episode. He is host of the 10,000 Heroes podcast. The original of this episode is
#00039 The curious offspring of Agile and Mindfulness with Dan Greening. If you're curious, check out the follow up episode *
*Nate signs up for Yet Another Challenge – this time applying Dan Greening’s Mindful Agility to his professional life.
* Tom Looy, Ron Lussier, Amelia Hambrecht, Divya Maez were our beta reviewers, for whom we are super grateful. Early beta review is an agile staple: we make changes to our episode based on feedback. If you ever want to give it a try, reach out to us. If you are reading this, you are in our target audience.
* Stinger sound Swing beat 120 xylophone side-chained by Casonika licensed under Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) to Mindful Agility
* Image of anime bear with a purpose list by DALL-E*Staff*
* Daniel Greening, host, agile consultant, software executive
* Mirela Petalli, co-host, meditation guide, and neurocritical nursing instructor
* Dan Dickson, business coach, executive and management consultant *Links*
* Mindful Agility Substack ("The Mindful Sprint" weekly brief)
* Mindful Agility web site
* Mindful Agility Community Facebook group
* Mindful Agility Youtube channel
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Jan 17, 2023
The OODA loop: Learn faster and smarter while slowing down impediments. An American military strategist used OODA to beat enemies in war. OODA can help you succeed with peace of mind.
The faster and better we take action against impediments, the more successful we'll be, according to renowned military strategist John Boyd, developer of the OODA Loop.
The OODA loop is observe, orient, decide and act. It’s how we take action in new situations and succeed. In this episode of the Mindful Agility podcast, Tom Looy explores how John Boyd used the OODA Loop to help fighter jet pilots, and ultimately whole military campaigns, succeed against enemies. You can use it in your own life, even to overcome your own “opponents,” the dysfunctions that hold you back.
The most important things in the OODA loop are first to observe what you can and reorient your mental model to fit the data that you have. Sometimes that means you have to destroy your old mental model of how the world works, because it's not working anymore, and substitute something new that does work.
There's feedback involved in this loop. When we observe something anomalous, we might need more information to understand what is happening. So that's feedback that brings us right back to the beginning of the ooda loop.
Then when we stick data into our model, we may discover that the model generates something weird or it doesn't match what we expect. So we need to get more data. We need to adjust things in our model. We may go right back again to observe more stuff before we can even make a decision. So that's why there's feedback directly from observing back to the beginning of the OODA loop or from orienting back to the beginning of the OODA loop.
What John Boyd discovered was that the faster we can operate through this loop, the more success we'll have in many areas, not just in military combat.
Faster looping wins because if we're looping faster than our opponent, our opponent doesn't have time to reorient their own mental models. And so we just confuse them. And win.*References*
For a book on John Boyd and the OODA Loop, see
* Osinga, F. P. B. (2006). Science, Strategy and War: The Strategic Theory of John Boyd (1st edition). Routledge.
For an article examines the implications of the OODA loop on the Ukraine-Russia war, see
* Flaherty, C. (2022, March 23). The OODA Loop, Information Warfare, the Ukrainian Defense and the Collapse of the Russian Army. OODA Loop. https://www.oodaloop.com/archive/2022/03/23/the-ooda-loop-information-warfare-the-ukrainian-defense-and-the-collapse-of-the-russian-army/
For an article showing how leading indicators are essential for all agile methodologies, including OODA, see
* https://senexrex.com/pattern-measure-progress/
*Staff*
* Daniel Greening, host, agile consultant, software executive
* Mirela Petalli, co-host, meditation guide, and neurocritical nursing instructor
* Dan Dickson, business coach, executive and management consultant *Links*
* Mindful Agility Substack ("The Mindful Sprint" weekly brief)
* Mindful Agility web site
* Mindful Agility Community Facebook group
* Mindful Agility Youtube channel
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Dec 27, 2022
Failure in Dublin: Matt Learns Lessons the Hard and Fast Way, through Experiments
When we fail, we can easily fall into anxiety, guilt, or depression. But failure can lead us toward success. A simple Google search reveals many famous people discuss their failures and subsequent successes. We can succeed through failure, too!
In this episode of the Mindful Agility podcast, Mirela Petalli, Matthew Zimmerman, Dan Dickson and Dan Greening discuss an episode of Matt's life. He moved to Ireland, thinking it would solve all his problems, and discovered: Nope. But through that humiliating experience, Matt unexpectedly discovered folks he could count on, and years later, he realized his experiment gave him new powers.*References*
* Eskreis-Winkler, L., & Fishbach, A. (2022). You Think Failure Is Hard? So Is Learning From It. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 17(6), 1511–1524. https://doi.org/10.1177/17456916211059817*Credits*
* Image of humiliated traveler by DALL-E.
* Stinger sound Swing beat 120 xylophone side-chained by Casonika licensed under Attribution…
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Nov 15, 2022
Wine Store: The pandemic compels old school Manhattan store to modernize to retain market. Can mindfulness and agile get Dan Dickson unstuck?
People around us need help. Our inclination is to rush in, fix the problem, and rush out. After all we have stuff we need to do, ourselves. But we can get stuck. And stay stuck. For months.
Dan Dickson wanted his friend’s pet project, a wine store in Manhattan, to succeed. Dan had the skills to add online transactions to their web site. But, he didn’t want to get stuck doing all the work forever.
Dan Dickson built the new site, and created the wine database structure. Because he didn’t want to create a dependency, he left the work to the store staff. They added a few new entries were made to the database, but they were incorrect.
Through a couple of tries, and many months, it never went live.
He set everything up not to get stuck. And there he was: stuck.
He commiserated with Mirela Petalli MSN-ed RN, Dan R Greening, and Matt Zimmerman on the Mindful Agility team.
Hidden challenges were the problem. Dan Dickson couldn't find a path forward, until he looked at the bigger pic…
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Oct 4, 2022
Mindful Parenting: Christina Smith Shares How Agile Methods And Frequent Feedback Give Her Children The Tools They Need To Succeed
In this episode Christina Smith, a certified scrum master, shares how she started using scrum and mindfulness not only in her work, but also her parenting.
Like most parents, Christina wants her children to lead happy and fulfilling lives, both now and when they are adults. She also needs them to take out the trash now and then too. Stressed with trying to be a perfect parent, Christina decided to experiment and apply the same techniques she uses as an agile scrum master at work to her parenting, and the results were surprising.
*Links*
* Kanban for Home: An easy way to start using Kanban at home by Parent Lightly
* What is Scrum? The Scrum Alliance Quick Guide to Scrum
* Contact Christina Smith via LinkedIn
* Cavu: Professional Scrum Training
* Trello.com: A popular and free online Kanban tool
* Raising Your Spirited Child: The book mentioned by Christina
*Credits*
* Stinger sound Swing beat 120 xylophone side-chained by Casonika licensed under Attribution 4.0 Inter…
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Sep 13, 2022
Enjoy.com Crashes Into Reality, Bye Bye $500 Million: Ron Johnson confidence, venture capital fueled unsafe speed. Mindful Agility was too slow, cautious for their taste
In this third and final episode on fabled merchandiser, Ron Johnson, we discuss the startup Enjoy.com, which turned $500M of invested capital and goodwill into nothing. This was Johnson's second attempt as a CEO. What did he learn from that failure? How did it shape his new company?
Your co-hosts, Dan Dickson and Dan Greening, bring perspectives of traditional and agile management, finance and technology, retail and service. We think our analysis demonstrates how you can make better choices in your own projects, big and small, for much greater levels of success.
We examine this company from the lens of Mindful Agility:
* How well did Enjoy understand its ecosystem, did it examine conditions without bias?
* As Enjoy matured, did it lean into potential risks, to explore and learn more?
* Did Enjoy mitigate risk and preserve options?
* Did Enjoy direct its evolution with low-cost, high-return experiments?
And finally, we armchair quarterback what we might have done as execs at…
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Aug 16, 2022
Business on Fire Part II: Could Business Mindfulness Have Stopped the Failure of Steve Jobs' Protege Ron Johnson at JC Penney?
This is the second episode of a three-part series on fabled merchandiser, Ron Johnson, and how he failed to restore JC Penney to its former leadership in retailing. In this episode we're going to be talking very explicitly about business mindfulness and how it applies.
If you want to understand "business mindfulness," this is the episode for you. If you'd like some background on scaling mindfulness, you'll like Episode 2 on self-similarity (our first full episode). If you'd like to hear our detailed failure analysis of Ron Johnson and JCPenney, that's in Episode 11, the one just before this.
Mindful businesses share a set of six characteristics, which we introduce at the beginning. Then we talk about different examples of each characteristic, from some mindful businesses we know about, such as Toyota and Trader Joe's, and with counterexamples from JCPenney.
*References*
* Sutcliffe, K. M., & Vogus, T. (2014). Organizing for Mindfulness. The Wiley Blackwell Handbook of Mindfulness…
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Jul 19, 2022
Business on Fire Part I: Steve Jobs protege Ron Johnson burns JC Penney cash fast as CEO
As an executive working for other CEOs, Ron Johnson succeeded wildly in redesigning Target stores and building Apple Stores from scratch. But then, as a CEO, Ron Johnson crashed and burned two later companies.
Join Dan Dickson, a seasoned retail executive and Harvard Business School grad, and Dan Greening, co-host of Mindful Agility, as we talk about Ron Johnson's first failure, JC Penney.
Major shifts in management practice arise in response to crises. Lean Manufacturing helped Toyota and Japan survive, after the Japanese industrial base had been destroyed in World War II. Lean Manufacturing now dominates the auto industry, and failure to adopt its principles bankrupted General Motors and others.
Agile management practices arose in response to growingly spectacular software project failures. It is now dominates software teams and is expanding to other creative teams and whole businesses. "Business agility" is emerging as a trend in business management.
This is the first of three e…
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Jun 28, 2022
Want lasting change? Label emotions
If we want lasting change, emotions may be our strongest opponent.
When forced to change, people feel fear, rage, anxiety, and other emotions.
Emotions are designed to satisfy basic needs: defend, fight, flight, reproduce. But when they overwhelm us, they shut down logic. They’re great when we’re suddenly confronted by a lion in the African savanna, we don’t have to take time to think. We just feel fear and run. But when building a strong family, or tackling some other tough, long-term challenge, emotions can confuse and distract us. We often don’t even notice that we’re feeling fear, rage, lust, or love… we just feel and act, no thinking required.
By training ourselves to notice and label emotions, we allow them to continue to exist. But can put them on the same playing field as other factors relevant to our goals.
We have to start with ourselves. If we label the emotions of family members or teammates, we rob them of agency. But if we label our own emotions, we signal…
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Jun 7, 2022
Hand to mouth awareness: stop harmful habits and get a great smile
Nurse Heather's four year old son, Jack, likes to put his fingers in his mouth. But this can lead to dental problems in the future. She heard the episode about Matt learning to keep track of his keys, by noticing that he was setting them down and saying "I'm putting my keys on the counter." Heather wondered whether it could help her son.
We also discover that Heather has bigger plans, involving her husband, and this was just a practice run.
These last two episodes explore "noticing and labeling." There's been a lot of recent psychological research on these techniques.
*Links*
* Subscribe to newsletter at https://mindfulagility.com
* Follow our social media: Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn
* Join our Facebook community: Mindful Agility Community
*Credits*
* The sting separator sound used in this episode is a derivative of Swing beat 120 xylophone side-chained by Casonika used under license CC BY by Daniel Greening.*Staff*
* Daniel Greening, host, agile consultant, software…
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May 17, 2022
You Lost Your Keys. Again?!
We all have hapless friends who would lose their head if it wasn't attached. Maybe we are that friend! Matt recently moved in with his girlfriend, Mirela Petalli (our co-host), and Matt realized losing his keys kept making them late. Can mindful agility help?
Matt and Mirela worked together. Matt is familiar with Scrum, an agile technique; Mirela is familiar with mindfulness. Together they take us on an exploration of how mindfulness alone can help us get more done. When we bring in agile, we raise the bar further. Does mindful agility help Matt keep track of his keys?
This is the first episode where we get more specific with agile—weekly sprints, measuring outcomes, retrospectives—all in the context of home life.
Do these practices bring knock-on effects? Let's see what happens with Matt's long-stalled exercise ambitions.
*Links*
* Subscribe to newsletter at https://mindfulagility.com
* Follow our social media: Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn
* Join our Facebook community:…
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Apr 26, 2022
Noah Rasheta: Fewer Expectations, More Success
Our stories provide a shorthand self, which gives us focus while the stories make sense, but they put our happiness at risk. If we imagine them to be complete and permanent we are doomed to suffer.
When we release our attachment to our stories, we create freedom. Only through our actions will we transform ourselves and our world. The stories are only decorative.
We talk with Noah Rasheta about the stories around him, as he lives a life with fewer attachments. We find out how we can avoid those attachments by doing things, but not being things.
Noah Rasheta is the host of the Secular Buddhism podcast and author of three books on Buddhism.
*Links*
* Mindful Agility Web Site, for links to the Mindful Agility podcast, resources, and blog
* Secular Buddhism Web Site, for links to the Secular Buddhism podcast, books, and resources
* Stephen Batchelor Web Site, for books and courses
* Rick Hansen, Buddha's Brain: The Practical Neuroscience of Happiness, Love & Wisdom, New Harbing…
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Apr 5, 2022
Noah Rasheta: The Entrepreneur Driving the School Bus
When we choose ambitious goals, we're going to create stories about them. But nothing lasts forever: our jobs, our achievements, our friends, our relationships... or our stories. If we attach our identities to ephemeral stories (and aren't all our stories ephemeral?), we will suffer.
Noah Rasheta, the host of the Secular Buddhism podcast and author of three books on Buddhism, abandons the story he told himself and others, that he was a successful entrepreneur. He takes us on a journey of self-discovery, finding comfort with unknown challenges, changing stories, and new pivots that may be needed. From entrepreneur to school bus driver to ... well, you decide if he's an entrepreneur or just having fun.
*Links*
* Mindful Agility Web Site, for links to the Mindful Agility podcast, resources, and blog
* Secular Buddhism Web Site, for links to the Secular Buddhism podcast and resources
* Steve Blank, "Why the Lean Startup Changes Everything," Harvard Business Review (May 2013).
*…
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Mar 15, 2022
Iterations for Ukraine
The Russian war on Ukraine is in full force. The Mindful Agility co-hosts have ties to Eastern Europe. We are contending with our own reactivity, as we interact with others less familiar with the region.
Our friend, Rob Coles, discusses how he employed an agile strategy to direct funds to individuals on the ground in Ukraine. He ran several iterations, adapting with each new discovery to send money more effectively.
To understand the challenges ahead, we can employ compassion. There are combatants, refugees, residents of war zones, anxious news consumers, and people dealing with economic upheaval. There will be more suffering coming, with refugee resettlement, people with PTSD, social and economic instability. No matter who wins, if we can even name a winner, there will be many broken pieces that will take years or generations to repair.
We can use tough challenges, like war, to explore mindfulness and agile. Mindfulness helps us discover truths hidden in plain sight. Agile helps us…
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Feb 15, 2022
95% Vegan, 100% Happy: Goals and Compassion
Today we're discussing goals, interdependence and compassion.
Nurse Heather faced a challenge that the rest of us encounter. She had a goal that seemed incompatible with her family and environment.
Our goals and our social environment often conflict. In our personal lives, if we want to stop smoking, focus more on studying, or lose weight, our family and friends can present big challenges. In our work lives, too, if we want to meet with teammates daily, get feedback weekly, or honestly experiment- i.e., when failure is possible- our colleagues, customers and bosses can present big challenges.
Compassion, the ability to adopt the perspective of others, is an important mindfulness skill. Highly compassionate people are often great negotiators and compassion can help us persist through many challenges.
As you listen to Nurse Heather tell her story, try to think from a compassion perspective. How is Nurse Heather feeling? What about her friend, her husband, her children? *Staff*
*…
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Feb 1, 2022
Resolutions Just Humiliate Me: Goals and Reactivity
Improvement is hard enough, whether we're trying to fix a Fortune 100 company or quit smoking. Our reactivity can create unrealistic expectations and then encourage others to dictate our futures. Reactivity tells us to give up when our first attempts fall short. It tells us to feel guilty, which can sideline us further.
Mindfulness meditation teaches us to harness those few seconds between our emotions and actions. It can push the pause button on our amygdalas and increase our likelihood of success, in everything we do.
Join us as we explore the intersection of mindfulness and agility in overcoming challenges and achieving our goals.*References*
* Greening, DR, Align to a Driving Purpose, https://senexrex.com/driving-purpose/
* Tang YY, Posner MI, Rothbart MK (2014) Meditation improves self-regulation over the life span: Meditation improves self-control over the life span. Ann. N.Y. Acad. Sci. 1307(1):104–111.
* Valk SL,et al (2017) Structural plasticity of the social brain:…
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Jan 1, 2022
Zooming In and Out on Life: Self-Similarity
Many systems exhibit self-similarity. If you zoom in or out, you keep seeing similar patterns. Recognizing self-similarity can help us become more agile at different scales of our lives and work. We can discover new insights, even when our limited language and perspective gets in the way.
Meditation is a big part of mindfulness. This episode experiment includes a guided meditation on the topic.
*Credits*
The sting separator sound used in this episode is a derivative of Swing beat 120 xylophone side-chained by Casonika used under license CC BY by Daniel Greening.*Staff*
* Daniel Greening, host, agile consultant, software executive
* Mirela Petalli, co-host, meditation guide, and neurocritical nursing instructor
* Dan Dickson, business coach, executive and management consultant *Links*
* Mindful Agility Substack ("The Mindful Sprint" weekly brief)
* Mindful Agility web site
* Mindful Agility Community Facebook group
* Mindful Agility Youtube channel
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Dec 30, 2021
Trailer
Welcome to the Mindful Agility podcast.
Mindfulness and agile can help you lead a more fulfilled life, at work and at home. Mindfulness practices help us gain insight and clarity, while agile practices help us forge new paths. We explore both.
*Support us*
* Rate the podcast and its episodes. Share the podcast with friends. Follow and comment in our Facebook page, "Mindful Agility podcast".
*Hosts*
* Mirela Petalli is a trained mindfulness instructor and a neuro critical care nursing instructor. Mirela and Dan have studied mindfulness together for a few years.
* Dan Greening is an enterprise agile coach. He led the agile coaching teams at Skype and Citrix to help improve their ability to innovate. He’s started a few companies. Between startup 1 and 2, he miraculously finished a long-postponed computer science PhD. And after startup 3, he cleaned the garage, another miracle.
*Human References*
* Mindful Staff (2020) The Science of Mindfulness. Mindful. https://www.mindf…
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