The heartbeat of the IT world isn’t technology; it’s the people. After all, we work in companies to have company! Whatever our relationship with each other – be it as a peer, manager, or coach – learning is often the essential unit of currency that’s necessary to move our relationships and businesses forward. Unfortunately – and sometimes unexpectedly – the people you work with probably aren’t very good at learning. How can we teach our colleagues, direct reports, and team members to be better learners; and even blossom into continuous learners? I’m a firm believer that practicing introspection is the first step to making your environment conducive to continuous learning.
2. “People don’t buy WHAT
you do, they buy WHY
you do it.”
@JeremyWillets; Path to Agility 2016
3. Why? (Motivation)
• It aligns with one of my goals in life; to create.
• I’ve lived this journey in my own life.
• Lime + Rum + Mint + Ice =
@JeremyWillets; Path to Agility 2016
4. How? | Abstract (Process)
The heartbeat of the IT world isn’t technology; it’s the people. After
all, we work in companies to have company! Whatever our
relationship with each other – be it as a peer, manager, or coach –
learning is often the essential unit of currency that’s necessary to move
our relationships and businesses forward. Unfortunately – and
sometimes unexpectedly – the people you work with probably aren’t
very good at learning. How can we teach our colleagues, direct
reports, and team members to be better learners; and even blossom
into continuous learners? I’m a firm believer that practicing
introspection is the first step to making your environment conducive to
continuous learning.
@JeremyWillets; Path to Agility 2016
6. What? | Learning Outcomes (Product)
• Be able to articulate how introspection corresponds to continuous
learning.
• Take home tangible examples of techniques that you can use to
practice individual and group introspection.
• Introspect on your own goals and values and be able to correlate your
goals and values with learning activities you can undertake that are
aligned with them.
@JeremyWillets; Path to Agility 2016
11. Current Learning Reality
“Align yourself with activities
that will drive you to learn.”
@JeremyWillets; Path to Agility 2016
12. Chris Argyris “Success in the
marketplace increasingly
depends on learning, yet
most people don’t know
how to learn.”
@JeremyWillets; Path to Agility 2016
13. Chris Argyris “If learning is to persist,
managers and
employees must also
look inward.”
@JeremyWillets; Path to Agility 2016
24. Continuous Learning | Why? | IT World
“Learning is the essential
unit of progress for
startups.”
[and existing
businesses!]
@JeremyWillets; Path to Agility 2016
26. Continuous Learning | Why? | Humans
Creativity & Innovation
X
Innovation is not just new inventions; it’s finding new value.
@JeremyWillets; Path to Agility 2016
27. Introspection to Continuous Learning
Introspection
Self-Directed
LearningContinuous
Learning
Continuous
Improvement
@JeremyWillets; Path to Agility 2016
30. Introspection | Individually | Mental
• At the end of every day, ask yourself a set of mindfulness questions.
Examples:
• What did I do today to improve communication with my manager and peers?
• What actions did I take today to learn and grow?
• Whom did I thank today, and who recognized me?
• Was I mindful today of our company’s long-term goals?
• How engaged was I at work today?
• What did I do today to improve communication with my team?
@JeremyWillets; Path to Agility 2016
33. Introspection | Group | Mental
“Agile blurs the line between work and life because, to do agile well, we
ask people to bring their whole selves to the endeavor at hand.”
@JeremyWillets; Path to Agility 2016
42. Personal Maps | About
• To get to know your colleagues better, you’ve gotta get to know
yourself first!
• Mixes surface level and deeper information.
• Individual and group level introspection.
• A lot to ask?
Credit:
@JeremyWillets; Path to Agility 2016
43. Personal Maps | Instructions
@JeremyWillets; Path to Agility 2016
Please write nicely!
44. Personal Maps | Instructions
@JeremyWillets; Path to Agility 2016
45. Personal Maps | My Personal Map
@JeremyWillets; Path to Agility 2016
46. Personal Maps | Your Personal Map
• Pass your map to the person next to you.
• Each person will present their peer’s map to the rest of the group.
@JeremyWillets; Path to Agility 2016
47. Personal Maps | Team Personal Map
@JeremyWillets; Path to Agility 2016
48. Personal Maps | In Closing
• Me - “Goals” and “Values” paths on this map caused me to make
intentional choices about what I want to learn; and keep me
motivated to learn.
• You - What is one learning activity you could undertake in the near
future that aligns with your goals and/or values?
• Write it down on your personal map.
@JeremyWillets; Path to Agility 2016
50. Debrief | About
• Way to introspect and retrospect on an activity and re-inforce
learning.
• Can be done in private, 1-on-1, or with a team.
• Best done right after an activity ends.
Credit:
Dan Neumann Susan K. DiFabio
@JeremyWillets; Path to Agility 2016
51. Debrief | Instructions
• 5 slides with questions to prompt discussion about this session
(presentation and activity).
• Each group will discuss each slide together for 2 minutes.
• When 2 minutes is up, we’ll pull back and groups will share what they
talked about with the entire room.
• This is a chance for me to get feedback!
@JeremyWillets; Path to Agility 2016
52. Debrief | Feelings
•What did you like?
•What did you dislike?
•What did you long for?
•What are you bursting to say?
@JeremyWillets; Path to Agility 2016
54. Debrief | Meaning
•What surprised you?
•What did you discover about others?
•What did you discover about yourself?
@JeremyWillets; Path to Agility 2016
55. Debrief | Application
•How might this activity be useful to you?
•How might this activity be useful to your
team(s)?
@JeremyWillets; Path to Agility 2016
56. Debrief | What’s Next?
•What could you do?
•What do you have a passion to do?
•What experiments could you try?
•What do you plan to do?
@JeremyWillets; Path to Agility 2016
Talked about the Why, How, and What – let’s go on a journey.
Current job
Learning as part of job responsibilities
Peer motivation element to learning
You need to “pull” learning to you – nobody’s going to feed it to you.
Dealt with this when trying to convey Agile to smart people!
Talked about my learning journey, let’s move on to introspection.
Examining yourself, analytically, trying to figure out what you want from your job, from life, from your relationships, etc.
Getting to know who you are. Will ultimately give you the skill set to teach and coach other people – whether it’s as a parent, manager, co-worker, etc.
Team level
Getting to know your co-workers.
Create personal bonds that go past employee level
Go deeper as a team.
Our field demands it.
Whether you’re Agile or not; regardless of what Agile process you use.
We, as humans, need it.
Born with an innate desire to learn and stretch our learning muscles.
If we cut off that desire, we lose a piece of what it means to be human.
Learning triggers something in us and makes us happy
The way people feel in the workplace has a direct impact on the work they produce
Continuous learning is a way to re-discover our creativity and capacity to innovate:
Creativity and innovation can’t happen in a vacuum.
Talked about my learning journey, introspection, and how introspection correlates to continuous learning; let’s talk about methods for introspection.
Solitary Physical Exercise
Happiness vs. Joy; Passion vs. Purpose
These words may seem synonymous in nature, but what do they mean to you?
How do they interplay with one another?
Bringing your “whole” self to work
Being comfortable enough with yourself to bring the entirety of who you are to the workplace.
Striving for wholeness at work as method of learning RE: our company and our people - extraordinary things happen when you do this:
Agile Retrospectives
A whole litany of techniques available that can dig deep or only touch the surface.
Check-Ins
“I feel…”
Emotional level set of the stage as the opening of a meeting
Legos as window inside who you and your team are. Lego Serious Play
Very Agile type of planning tool, even though it’s methodology agnostic (might have some SAFe applications)
Divide in to groups (if not already).
Talked about my learning journey, introspection, how introspection correlates to continuous learning, and methods for introspection. Let’s do an exercise that has some introspection baked in to it.
On the Happy Melly site, it’s framed as an activity to get to know your team better; but the first step in this activity is actually to look at yourself (introspect).
The exercise asks for surface level information, such as where you live and work. But it also asks for deeper information, such as what you value and what your personal goals are. It requires a certain level of introspection at the personal level.
If you’re conducting this exercise within a team, it allows for team level introspection.
I will acknowledge that it might be asking a lot for attendees to introspect “on the spot” in the presence of strangers. At a minimum, I will ask attendees to participate in this activity and view it as a practice attempt, whereby they’ll learn about this technique (and be able to take it home and teach it to others).
I will ask that attendees take a piece of paper (either from their own notebook or from the blank papers at each table) and copy the slide.
Attendees will have 5 minutes to populate their maps.
Don’t feel like sharing something - just leave that node blank.
Questions before we begin?
Will someone read my personal map out to the group? (From “Home” clockwise to “Goals”.)
Making music & this conference talk
Another way to do this with a smaller group of people.
Your tapping in to different bits of introspection in some of those nodes; the commonality can be powerful and unifying.
After all personal maps have been presented, I will ask attendees to return their peer’s map to them.
Talked about my learning journey, introspection, how introspection correlates to continuous learning, and methods for introspection. We did an exercise that has some introspection baked in to it.
Fun, creativity, experimentation
Learning was kind of a “pull” system
“Brass tacks” – you need to have skills.
standardized testing
Learning was kind of a “push” system
Environment is fun again!
A mix of both – discovering who you are, but then realizing that you can’t be Peter Pan any longer.
You have to grow up and go out in to the real world.
Learning was a mixture of “pull” and “push” (I went to a liberal arts college, after all)
First, entry level job
Learning and solidifying the practices of the org. you joined.
Learning definitely was “push” system – it was squarely geared around the learning necessary to do my job. There was ZERO continuous learning.
Your new organization might be Agile, but it also might not be.
Pyramidal org. chart, where you can “climb the ladder”
First, entry level job
Might very well be diametrically be opposed to what you were taught when you were young.
Current job
A new education
Technical Writing
After 5 years, transitioned to a job that required me to learn.
Then I heard about this; and it changed my life.
I realized the values in the agile manifesto are in our DNA.
Modern business has slowly sucked them out of us and caused us to perceive them as wrong.
And Pablo Picasso was quoted as saying, “Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain one when we grow up.” If we are all creative. All innovators. How do we keep experimenting and discovering as adults? Can our creativity stay alight in our corporate lives?"
Sir Ken Robinson TED Talk
The extraordinary capacities that children have for innovation. Growing up we are naturally creative, inquisitive and with exceptional talent, which Sir Ken believes is squandered during our education. By the time we reach adulthood, our creativity has been literally ‘educated out of us’ by the barriers of school, society and corporate business.
If we are all creative. All innovators. How do we keep experimenting and discovering as adults? Can our creativity stay alight in our corporate lives?"
Mindfulness
Khan academy example of kids doing this during the course of their day
Covey’s “Sharpening the Saw”
When you learn something truly valuable, internalize it, introspect on how you can apply it, and attempt to teach it to someone within 48 hours.
You end up listening more like a teacher (coach) instead of a student.
You also show off what you know so that others who haven’t been exposed to this idea can learn and potentially take it a different way.
[consider creating some sort of takeaway handout based on this idea for the material to resonate]