Dear Aurel, Bao, Claudio and others, thanks for responding to my “Authentic Conversations and the Art of Feedbacking” video post and posing the essential, genesis question “What is an authentic conversation?”

If I give you the answer it’s no longer authentic — real and true to you — so you’re going to have to figure it out on your own. Jk, rhetoric aside, I’d be happy to share my thoughts.

There was also a related question, “Are directional talks wrong entirely?” Let me combine the answers.

The measurement is trust. An authentic conversation is a mutual attempt to be honest…

Transcript

Why is it so hard to have an authentic conversation? The type of conversation that you feel safe, comfortable, connected with the other person and even if it’s a tough topic, there’s mutual respect and willingness to come to a shared understanding. Either it is in a personal or business situation, wouldn’t it be great if every conversation can be deeply engaging and meaningful like this…

Usually there’s power at play in uncomfortable conversations. If you’re the initiator of the conversation, check-in with yourself if the conversation is becoming directional talk, rather than a dialogue. Obviously you’ll want to…

Read the original article

Watch the Design Thinking primer

Take the Scrum Crash Course

Practice Rapid Design Thinking

Transcript

Hi, I’m Coach Takeshi. As some of you may have already read from my 2018 viral article, I am a big fan of the hybrid practice of Design Thinking plus Agile Scrum. In this video I’d like to explain why.

In doing so, first, I’d like to take us back to remind ourselves why we do agile.

1911, Taylorism and the history changing success of the Ford Model T factory. Scientific Management all the way to Waterfall project management — they…

Stuck with a customer challenge? No problem, let’s visualize it.

Sharing my Rapid Design Thinking Template that I frequently use in individual and team coaching sessions.

Rapidly going through the sequence of empathizing with the customer, defining the problem and challenge, ideating and creating building blocks for potential solutions, all on a one page visual; it’s an exhilarating experience that often takes less than 30 minutes and fits in within a one hour coaching session. And it’s not unusual that breakthrough solutions are born on the spot.

Here’s an example:

This is a one hour fifty minute condensed version of my otherwise one day Scrum Crash Course that I give to leaders and teams that are about to embark on a Scrum product development journey. Although it is hyper condensed, no corners are cut short as I insist: when we do Scrum, we do proper Scrum.

Download the workbook | Watch on YouTube

Transcript

Welcome to my Scrum Crash Course. Hi, I’m Coach Takeshi. If we’re going to do Scrum, let’s do Scrum properly. No “scrummy”, or “pick and chose” scrum, ok? …

Practicing Empiricism in Learning Interventions

As learning professionals, we coach, train, consult and facilitate our client teams to measure their activities and create feedback loops so that they can adapt and iterate to learn. We call it empiricism or evidenced based management.

It would be hypocrisy if we coaches, trainers, consultants don’t uphold ourselves to the same standards of inspection: we are accountable for measuring the efficacy of the learning interventions we provide.

The following are two frameworks that we use to help ourselves continuously learn from the quality and impact of our work at Agile Organization Development.

Phillips ROI Model

The Phillips ROI model is an extension…

OD is a Team Effort

Thank you for your interest in our tribe at Agile Organization Development. My name is Takeshi and I lead the tribe.

In my journey in becoming an Organization Development (“OD”) professional, I have come to realize the following:

• OD is a practice of interventions; specifically, learning interventions.
• OD is ineffective unless approached as a multifaceted practice:
• Learning interventions come in many modalities — e.g. coaching, training, facilitation and advising.
• Specifically for coaching, I find a hybrid approach between classic behavioral coaching (e.g. International Coaching Federation (ICF) style executive coaching) and process coaching (e.g. …