Are assumptions killing your curiosity? On the podcast this week, Squirrel and Jeffrey discuss abduction - but not the alien kind!! Listen to learn about the methods of abductive reasoning and coherence busting, and find out how you can apply the principles of Wordle to improve your outcomes. Links: - Abductive reasoning: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abductive_reasoning - Affirming the consequent: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affirming_the_consequent - Coherence busting: https://blog.jeffreyfredrick.com/2016/04/08/coherence-busting-explained/ -------------------------------------------------- Our book, Agile Conversations, is out now. Go to agileconversations.com to order your copy. Plus, get access to a free mini training video about the technique of Coherence Building 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 About Your Hosts Squirrel and Jeffrey first met while working together at TIM group in 2013 . A decade later, they remain united in their passion for growing organisations through better conversations. Squirrel is an advisor, author, speaker, coach, and consultant, helping companies of all sizes make huge, profitable improvements in their culture, skills, and processes. You can find out more about his work here: https://douglassquirrel.com/index.html Jeffrey is Vice President of Engineering at ION Analytics, Organiser at CITCON, the Continuous Integration and Testing Conference, author and speaker. You can connect with him here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jfredrick/

Are you wearing a Viking helmet, sun hat or graduate cap? On the podcast this week, Squirrel and Jeffrey are joined again by fellow podcast host duo Russell and Ken of the “I Need to F-ing Talk To You” podcast. In this episode, Russell and Ken detail the "hats" they use to identify the different patterns of human behavior that affect conversations, and how they use BEEF and COACH models to improve the outcome of conversations. Links: - Website, Podcast, Book, Course: www.ineedtof-ingtalktoyou.com/ - Ken Cameron: www.corporate-culture-shift.com - Russell Stratton: www.bluegemlearning.com - Forum Theatre: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forum_theatre - Situational Leadership: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Situational…eadership_theory -------------------------------------------------- Our book, Agile Conversations, is out now. Go to agileconversations.com to order your copy. Plus, get access to a free mini training video about the technique of Coherence Building 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 About Your Hosts Squirrel and Jeffrey first met while working together at TIM group in 2013 . A decade later, they remain united in their passion for growing organisations through better conversations. Squirrel is an advisor, author, speaker, coach, and consultant, helping companies of all sizes make huge, profitable improvements in their culture, skills, and processes. You can find out more about his work here: douglassquirrel.com/index.html Jeffrey is Vice President of Engineering at ION Analytics, Organiser at CITCON, the Continuous Integration and Testing Conference, author and speaker. You can connect with him here: www.linkedin.com/in/jfredrick/

Can you speed up your learning with improv? On the podcast this week, Squirrel and Jeffrey are joined by fellow podcast host duo Russell and Ken of the “I Need to F-ing Talk To You” podcast. In this episode, Russell and Ken discuss their Forum Theatre for Business methods and Squirrel considers if they’ve been missing a trick by not incorporating real actors in their conversations. Links: - Website, Podcast, Book, Course: https://www.ineedtof-ingtalktoyou.com/ - Ken Cameron: www.corporate-culture-shift.com - Russell Stratton: www.bluegemlearning.com - Forum Theatre: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forum_theatre - Situational Leadership: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Situational_leadership_theory -------------------------------------------------- Our book, Agile Conversations, is out now. Go to agileconversations.com to order your copy. Plus, get access to a free mini training video about the technique of Coherence Building 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 About Your Hosts Squirrel and Jeffrey first met while working together at TIM group in 2013 . A decade later, they remain united in their passion for growing organisations through better conversations. Squirrel is an advisor, author, speaker, coach, and consultant, helping companies of all sizes make huge, profitable improvements in their culture, skills, and processes. You can find out more about his work here: https://douglassquirrel.com/index.html Jeffrey is Vice President of Engineering at ION Analytics, Organiser at CITCON, the Continuous Integration and Testing Conference, author and speaker. You can connect with him here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jfredrick/

Can it really be more effective to throw out the plan? This week on the podcast, Squirrel talks about his late-night escapades at improv classes and why he’d prefer to travel to Mars in a starship, not a rocket. Join Squirrel and Jeffrey to find out how you can use improvisation to benefit your business. Links: - Squirrel's Making It Up event: https://squirrelsquadron.com/events/2023/03-23-makingitup.html - Impro book: https://www.goodreads.com/cs/book/show/306940 - Previous episode on "Yes And": https://soundcloud.com/troubleshootingagile/yes-and -------------------------------------------------- Our book, Agile Conversations, is out now. Go to agileconversations.com to order your copy. Plus, get access to a free mini training video about the technique of Coherence Building 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 About Your Hosts Squirrel and Jeffrey first met while working together at TIM group in 2013 . A decade later, they remain united in their passion for growing organisations through better conversations. Squirrel is an advisor, author, speaker, coach, and consultant, helping companies of all sizes make huge, profitable improvements in their culture, skills, and processes. You can find out more about his work here: https://douglassquirrel.com/index.html Jeffrey is Vice President of Engineering at ION Analytics, Organiser at CITCON, the Continuous Integration and Testing Conference, author and speaker. You can connect with him here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jfredrick/

Scrum. XP. Kanban. Squads. Pods. Feature teams. Trying to figure out the ideal tech team structure and process? Listen to this first! On this week’s episode, Squirrel and Jeffrey discuss why the "right" choice isn’t going to solve your problems, and what you should be focusing on instead. Links: - Squirrel’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/douglassquirrel/status/1636738222955872256 - Krakow keynote 18 May: https://aceconf.com/speaker/387/douglas-squirrel Our book, Agile Conversations, is out now. Go to agileconversations.com to order your copy. Plus, get access to a free mini training video about the technique of Coherence Building 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 About Your Hosts Squirrel and Jeffrey first met at CITCON in 2006 and later worked together at TIM group. 17 years later, they remain united in their passion for growing organisations through better conversations. Squirrel is an advisor, author, speaker, coach, and consultant, helping companies of all sizes make huge, profitable improvements in their culture, skills, and processes. You can find out more about his work here: https://douglassquirrel.com/index.html Jeffrey is Vice President of Engineering at ION Analytics, Organiser at CITCON, the Continuous Integration and Testing Conference, author and speaker. You can connect with him here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jfredrick/

Jeffrey is fresh in from IT Revolution’s DevOps Forum in Portland, where one of his takeaways was the power of streamlining and doing the absolute minimum. Join us on this week’s episode where Jeffrey discusses what tech teams can learn from the calamitous collapse and subsequent rebuilding of a highway outside San Francisco in 2007, and Squirrel shares his “Independence Day method" to discover the limits of what's possible. Links: - IT Revolution Guidance papers: https://itrevolution.com/resources/ - Overpass: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacArthur_Maze#2007_I-580_East_Connector_collapse - Independence Day: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independence_Day_(1996_film) - Krakow keynote 18 May: https://aceconf.com/speaker/387/douglas-squirrel Our book, Agile Conversations, is out now! Go to agileconversations.com to order your copy. Plus, get access to a free mini training video about the technique of Coherence Building 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

Study Groups are a great way of developing new skills in the team and strengthening the learning culture in your organisation, but if not executed currently, their impact can be limited. Listen to this week’s episode to discover how to get company-wide benefits from your study group, and why you shouldn’t look at learning activities as “perks” for your team - even if they come with pizza! Links: - https://twitter.com/douglassquirrel/status/1631284049971953665 - Getting Started with Radical Collaboration: https://itrevolution.com/articles/getting-started-with-radical-collaboration/ - Podcast: Learning Through Action: https://soundcloud.com/troubleshootingagile/learning-through-action - Podcast: A Radical Enterprise: https://soundcloud.com/troubleshootingagile/a-radical-enterprise-part-i and https://soundcloud.com/troubleshootingagile/a-radical-enterprise-part-ii Our book, Agile Conversations, is out now! Go to agileconversations.com to order your copy. Plus, get access to a free mini training video about the technique of Coherence Building 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

Is there a place for Stack Ranking? Squirrel and Jeffrey concur that Stack Racking can be problematic, but Jeffrey has some ideas about where this sub-par practice comes from, which underline the importance of difficult conversations about performance no matter how you create them (even with a stack rank) Links: - Vitality Curve (Stack Ranking):https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitality_curve - Poppendiecks on compensation: http://www.poppendieck.com/pdfs/Compensation.pdf - Chesterton’s Fence: https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Chesterton%27s_Fence Our book, Agile Conversations, is out now! Go to agileconversations.com to order your copy. Plus, get access to a free mini training video about the technique of Coherence Building 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

Could Chat GPT improve our conversations? While pondering a difficult conversation with an unhappy client, Squirrel took to Chat GPT to see if he could recreate the dialogue. Listen to this week’s episode to discover his findings, and learn about how you could use prompt engineering and role playing with chatbot to get better results from your conversations. Links: - ChatGPT @ OpenAI: https://chat.openai.com/chat - Agile Conversations Dojo: https://www.meetup.com/agile-conversations-dojo/ - Conversational Dojo kit: https://itrevolution.com/product/conversational-dojo-kit/ Our book, Agile Conversations, is out now! Go to agileconversations.com to order your copy. Plus, get access to a free mini training video about the technique of Coherence Building 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, Jeffrey is joined by guest Elisabeth Hendrickson, who shares her powerful dream that inspired a new theory of office politics. Elisabeth and Jeffrey discuss the behaviors that lead to toxicity, and how to utilise the core value of consent to evoke positive change. Recorded live at CITCON. Links: - Elisabeth’s company, Curious Duck: https://curiousduck.io - Elisabeth’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/testobsessed/ - CITCON: https://citconf.com 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