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…

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Watch the Design Thinking primer

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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. …

Directional talk, or dialogue?

Previously I shared CALM for receiving critical feedback. You can also have a Curious Active Listening Mindset for giving feedback.

In fact, from directional conversations to dialogue, CALM can be a #leadership #mindset and style of conversation entirely.

Curious Active Listening Mindset (CALM) For <Giving Feedback>

1. Set-up the stage for a dialogue

• “Can I share with you something I noticed?”

2. State the facts — just the situation and observed behavior

• Avoid making comments of character judgment

3. Invite their thoughts — calmly with curiosity, listen to understand

• Suspend assumptions
• Quiet the mind, no listening to respond, no parallel thinking
• Listen with no interruption, no interpreting while listening

4. Playback what was said

• Acknowledge what was heard

5. Offer support

• Differences are ok, ask more questions for mutual understanding

6. Offer to speak again

Curious Active Listening Mindset (CALM) For <Receiving Feedback>

1. Calmly with curiosity, listen to understand

• Suspend assumptions
• Quiet the mind, no listening to respond, no parallel…

Receiving critical feedback is dreadful. Our defensive routines get triggered and however we might understand that the feedback giver is speaking with good intention, it’s still difficult to listen.

Try CALM — “Curious Active Listening Mindset“:

1. Calmly with curiosity, listen to understand

• Suspend assumptions
• Quiet the mind, no listening to respond, no parallel thinking
• Listen with no interruption, no interpreting while listening

2. Playback what was said

• Acknowledge what was heard

3. Ask for support

• Differences are ok, voice back as necessary
• Ask to co-create solutions

4. Agree to speak again

With a Curious Active Listening Mindset, there’s a…