Conversational Transformation

Aiming to win robs you of valuable information

Unilateral action risks leaving out vital information

We discuss two very different stories about leaders that communicate a cultural message pithily and clearly, and reflect on why these stories were effective and how all of us can communicate culture in this way.

If your boss isn't helping like you think she should, maybe she's not from Mars, but actually trying to give you more autonomy. We reflect on this in light of real-world coaching stories.

A reader asks whether following the "bad idea" advice from last episode can lead to an unrecoverable local maximum, sentencing the team to endless patches and obscure bugs. Squirrel and Jeffrey have different takes on this based on their ancient greybeard stories.

Drawing lessons from Squirrel's driving test experiences, we explore why making a cultural or process change that's intentionally suboptimal can be surprisingly valuable.

We start with a listener question on roles in an agile team, but quickly divert to Squirrel's "driftwood theory" of hiring and role specification, which turns out to be based on effective conversations and flexible problem solving (what a surprise!)

You have nothing to lose but your ignorance.

How giving work to your boss positions you as the driving force, not the bottleneck—and more methods and mindset shifts to change the perception "gee, that tech team sure is slow".

We discover that we've given opposing advice about asking "Why" questions—including in our chapter on the Why Conversation!

Jeffrey tells us stories about three ways agile teams deal with uncertainty and we analyse why the first two often don't work and why the third is so threatening to adopt.

The fabulous Johanna Rothman, author of 18 books on tech and management, joins us for part II to describe what modern management is and how empathy, safety, and purpose can motivate and inspire your agile team.