The Importance of Conversation in Knowledge Work

In the final episode of the first season of The Idealcast, Gene Kim sits down with Jeffrey Fredrick, coauthor of Agile Conversations, to synthesize and reflect upon some of the major themes from the entire season. 

In Gene’s continued quest to understand why organizations behave the way they do, Fredrick helps connect the dots and points to new areas that deserve more study. They discuss the nature of knowledge work, including how software creation requires so much more conversation and joint cognitive work, and the challenges this presents. They also dive into the bodies of knowledge that are required as we push more decision making and value creation to the edges of the organization. 

Then, Gene and Fredrick revisit the concept of integration and why it’s so much more important now than 50 years ago. And finally, they discuss why “Are you happy?” and “Are you proud of your work?” are two very powerful questions and what they actually reveal about people and the work they’re performing. And why this is all so important as we try to create organizations that maximize learning for everyone.

BIO:

Jeffrey Fredrick is an internationally recognized expert in software development with over 25 years’ experience covering both sides of the business/technology divide. His experience includes roles as Vice President of Product Management, Vice President of Engineering, and Chief Evangelist. He has also worked as an independent consultant on topics including corporate strategy, product management, marketing, and interaction design. Jeffrey is based in London and is currently Managing Director of TIM, an Acuris Company. He also runs the London Organisational Learning Meetup and is a CTO mentor through CTO Craft.

Twitter: https://twitter.com/Jtf 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jfredrick/

Website: https://www.conversationaltransformation.com/

YOU’LL LEARN ABOUT

• The nature of knowledge work and how it requires more conversation and joint cognitive work and the challenges it presents
• The body of knowledge required in decision making and value creation for the organization
• Concepts of integration and why it’s important now
• What the questions, “Are you happy?” and “Are you proud of your work?,” reveal about people and their work
• How Dr. Thomas Kuhns’s work pertains to management models

RESOURCES

• Agile Conversations: Transform Your Conversations, Transform Your Culture by Douglas Squirrel and Jeffrey Fredrick
• Continuous Integration and Testing Conference (CITCON)
• The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Dr. Thomas Kuhn
• A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry (ACOUP)
• The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni
• Dr. Steve Spear’s episode on The Idealcast
• Dr. Steve Spear’s 2020 DevOps Enterprise Summit Talk
• Michael Nygard’s episode on The Idealcast
• MIT’s Beer Game
• Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman
• The DevOps Enterprise Journal
• Reinventing Organizations by Frederic Laloux
• Crossing the Chasm: Marketing and Selling High-Tech Products to Mainstream Customers by Geoffrey A. Moore
• Command in War by Martin van Creveld
• Continuous Deployment at IMVU: Doing the impossible fifty times a day by Timothy Fitz
• Sooner Safer Happier: Antipatterns and Patterns for Business Agility by Jonathan Smart

TIMESTAMPS

[00:11] Intro

[03:13] Meet Jeffrey Fredrick

[03:54] Why conversations are important

[08:03] Why conversations are more important now than 100 years ago

[11:02] The Five Dysfunctions of a Team

[13:08] Integration

[16:33] The need for better integration now

[20:18] What is information hiding and why it’s important

[26:32] The pace of change moves the trade-off

[31:41] Two important questions to ask

[42:17] The system of fast and slow

[48:25] Selection bias

[51:07] Thank you from Gene

[52:13] Jeffrey’s significant a-ha moment

[59:45] Injecting change

[1:06:24] Structure and dynamics

[1:12:44] Command in War

[1:23:39] Complaining about a feature factory

[1:25:40] Standardized work and integrating feedback

[1:22:21] Two elements of information flow

[1:36:49] Insights on peer programming

[1:43:54] Learning more and learning earlier

[1:45:55] Is there something missing?

[1:48:50] Contacting Jeffrey Fredrick

[1:49:55] Outro