In this week’s episode, Squirrel and Jeffrey discuss how you can use emotional outcomes in your conversations to build trust and evoke more positive responses from your customers, rather than relying solely on intellectual ones. Listen to see how you can incorporate lessons from “Emotional Rugby” in your sales and customer relations, as well as across your workplace practices. Links: - “Many of us have faced buyers who seem to agree with everything we say…but never sign the contract. We have played intellectual chess with them but not emotional rugby.” – Alan Weiss and Nancy McKay, The Modern Trusted Advisor - Simon Sinek Start With Why: https://simonsinek.com/books/start-with-why/ Our book, Agile Conversations, is out now! See https://agileconversations.com where you can order your copy and get a free video when you join our mailing list! We'd love to hear any thoughts, ideas, or feedback you have about the show. Email us at info@agileconversations.com

After last week's episode on starting before you're ready, Squirrel and Jeffrey discuss some ways you can encourage this behaviour—while still providing a safety net for participants and the wider organisation. SHOW LINKS: - Toyota Kata: https://agileconversations.com/blog/we're-the-aliens-three-ways-to-seek-safety/ - How to be helpfully demanding: https://agileconversations.com/blog/how-to-be-helpfully-demanding/ --- Our book, Agile Conversations, is out now! See https://agileconversations.com where you can order your copy and get a free video when you join our mailing list! We'd love to hear any thoughts, ideas, or feedback you have about the show. Email us at info@agileconversations.com

Squirrel and Jeffrey note examples of teams who never get started because they're aiming to do a project "right", and contrast with those who get started without being ready. SHOW LINKS: - https://twitter.com/douglassquirrel/status/1593243886180216832 --- Our book, Agile Conversations, is out now! See https://agileconversations.com where you can order your copy and get a free video when you join our mailing list! We'd love to hear any thoughts, ideas, or feedback you have about the show. Email us at info@agileconversations.com

Squirrel and Jeffrey discuss two examples where engineers are trying to get accurate answers, when getting a (slightly) wrong result would actually be better for speed or learning. --- Our book, Agile Conversations, is out now! See https://agileconversations.com where you can order your copy and get a free video when you join our mailing list! We'd love to hear any thoughts, ideas, or feedback you have about the show. Email us at info@agileconversations.com

Squirrel and Jeffrey continue discussing why you and your team might need a coach—for techniques and skills that they are already good at. This week they concentrate on practical steps for finding internal and external sources of instruction and inspiration. SHOW LINKS: - Pair Programming: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pair_programming - Mob Programming: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mob_programming --- Our book, Agile Conversations, is out now! See https://agileconversations.com where you can order your copy and get a free video when you join our mailing list! We'd love to hear any thoughts, ideas, or feedback you have about the show. Email us at info@agileconversations.com

An article by Atul Gawande on coaching for surgeons inspires Squirrel and Jeffrey to reflect on why you and your team might need a coach—for techniques and skills that they are already good at. SHOW LINKS: - Personal Best: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/10/03/personal-best - Mundanity of Excellence: https://fermatslibrary.com/s/the-mundanity-of-excellence-an-ethnographic-report-on-stratification-and-olympic-swimmers - Our podcast episode on Principle 12 of the Agile Manifesto: https://soundcloud.com/troubleshootingagile/finding-the-motivation-to-learn-stay-agile --- Our book, Agile Conversations, is out now! See https://agileconversations.com where you can order your copy and get a free video when you join our mailing list! We'd love to hear any thoughts, ideas, or feedback you have about the show. Email us at info@agileconversations.com

This week on Troubleshooting Agile, we revisit another one of our “Greatest Hits” In this episode, we look at how the Ladder can help you discover your own reasoning as well, to discover ways to promote mutual learning with your own behaviour. SHOW LINKS: - Top Business Podcasts for CEOs, from Fiona Anderson: https://www.rocktime.co.uk/insights/listen-and-learn-the-art-of-podcasting-for-ceos/ - The Ladder of Inference (annotated by Jeffrey): https://agileconversations.com/docs/TheLadderOfInference.pdf - The London Organisational Meetup: www.meetup.com/London-Action-Science-Meetup/ - Thinking Fast and Slow, Kahneman: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking,_Fast_and_Slow --- Our book, Agile Conversations, is out now! See agileconversations.com where you can order your copy and get a free video when you join our mailing list! We'd love to hear any thoughts, ideas, or feedback you have about the show. Email us at info@agileconversations.com

This week on Troubleshooting Agile, we revisit one of our “Greatest Hits” In this episode, we start describing our favourite trust-building technique: the Ladder of Inference. Our take this week is on using the Ladder to understand someone else's reasoning and align your stories, creating trust as a foundation for further improvement in your agile team. Surprisingly, the experience of using the Ladder in this way is similar to Test-Driven Development: careful, understandable, small steps with confidence, and meaningful signals from both success and failure. SHOW LINKS: - Peter Senge, The Fifth Discipline: www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B003ELY7OW/re…ding=UTF8&btkr=1 - The Ladder of Inference (annotated by Jeffrey): troubleshootingagile.com/docs/TheLadd…nference.pdf - Cognitive biases book and more: youarenotsosmart.com/ - Schwarz on unilateral control (again!): www.schwarzassociates.com/managing-per…tionships-2/ - TDD for people video: www.douglassquirrel.com/how-i-work.html - Schwarz 8 behaviours (Paula/Ted are on page 4): www.csu.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf…arter-Teams-2.pdf --- Our book, Agile Conversations, is out now! See agileconversations.com where you can order your copy and get a free video when you join our mailing list! We'd love to hear any thoughts, ideas, or feedback you have about the show. Email us at info@agileconversations.com

A listener asks, "how will we know it's working?" when considering changes of process or technology. Jeffrey and Squirrel discuss how to set "imperfect indicators" to measure your progress—or lack thereof!—along the J-shaped curve that takes you through learning to improvement. SHOW LINKS: - Tic-Tac Change: https://blog.jeffreyfredrick.com/2008/07/07/tic-tac-change-slides/ - J-Curve episode: https://soundcloud.com/troubleshootingagile/a-tale-of-two-change-models-part-ii-getting-better-by-getting-worse --- Our book, Agile Conversations, is out now! See https://agileconversations.com where you can order your copy and get a free video when you join our mailing list! We'd love to hear any thoughts, ideas, or feedback you have about the show. 
 Email us at info@agileconversations.com

Jeffrey remarks that he's working with a software team whose code is "done", that is, the organisation wants to keep using it but doesn't want to invest more in changing it. He and Squirrel reflect on when this make sense and how "software doneness" affects processes and measurements. SHOW LINKS: - Control Chart: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Control_chart - Principles of Product Development Flow: https://www.pdma.org/page/review_principles_pr --- Our book, Agile Conversations, is out now! See https://agileconversations.com where you can order your copy and get a free video when you join our mailing list! We'd love to hear any thoughts, ideas, or feedback you have about the show. 
 Email us at info@agileconversations.com