Since we’re coming up to the holidays and we are all doing self-reflection here’s what tool I use for mine – my tattoo.
“The Girl With the Continuous Improvement Tattoo” – that’s what an Agile coach I’ve known for aeons called me yesterday. Only a handful of people had seen it before now, but I shouldn’t hold out on the team, so here you have it.
I heard it be called a “Kanban tattoo” before and I wasn’t quite agreeing with the term, over the years Kanban has been more consistently what I use with my teams away from the perceived rigidity of Scrum, but both have their place and they are both only powerful when tailored to serve constant betterment anyhow. So his label was more accurate but no matter what you call it, I have an Agile-type-board on my arm. Forever.
Is it crazy? Sure, but hey, some people have Tasmanian devils on their tushies out there, so there’s crazier.
Why do I have it? So many reasons.
It’s there first and foremost to keep my WIP low and focused. This was hilariously a point of contention with my tattoo artist who was insisting she draws a few more tickets because it wasn’t “balanced” so an hour was spent explaining elements of lean, the Agile manifesto and such until she eventually resigned to saying “Oh so “balanced” *would* be bad.”
Secondly, it is to remind me that I have to celebrate victories and much *has* been accomplished so my Done column -each with a big-ticket value of something major I feel I managed so far in my life- is to remind me of the dopamine hits a successful Retro brings.
Lastly, the backlog looks relatively light -heaven knows the real-life ones need a good product owner shower-and-cull every couple of months so it’s not realistic- but that is because I wanted to remember that those tickets can always change as our ears and eyes are peeled to our customers’ feedback and that I have to keep obstinately flexible.
That’s what the entire tattoo is for really – keeping me honest that I am always consciously staying open, flexible, focused on resilience, obsessed with growing and as “Agile to the bone” as I possibly can be.
I look at it and it reminds me to ask myself: Am I moving fast enough? Breaking enough things with glee? Am I always living by the manifesto -be it the original one or the updated one Bryan Finster and Co recently came up with-? Am I allowing myself to sometimes lapse to the false comfort of piling things in WIP or am I tempted to run back to some type of sequential thinking that makes me dream of the lying safety of roadmaps and calculated risks -which are nothing but a visualisation exercise in this day-and-age-?
Is it me or is it us as a team that is dropping the Agile spirit at any time and if so what in our dynamic makes us do it? Are we down in Psychological Safety? Is it because we’re emotionally disconnected? Are we having a hard time staying flexible? Are we doing a lot more impression management around each other than we should and that prevents us from being comfortable with uncertainty? And so on.
No matter how our mindsets feel forever changed towards an Agile rewire, no one is exempt from the occasional cape fatigue or burnout caused nostalgia moment pushing them to think of an earlier part of their career where we could all pretend a long term detailed plan designed two years ago is still ticking along and someone else had to worry about micromanaging our direct part in it, so I think we all need to check ourselves and keep ourselves honest.
My tattoo is my “Stay Agile FFS” self-check accountability space. And the more of the checks I perform the more I can coach my teams to do them too. They obviously do not need a tattoo to do it and one of our PeopleNotTech plays on Flexibility or Courage or even seeing a lower Aristotle Score are reason and space enough, but they still know the importance of always staying with it. Of not ever truly considering that being occasionally very tired of being courageous and accountable and open-minded and passionate, doesn’t warrant flirting with thoughts of the paternalism of waterfall, or the false sense of comfort in command and control.
So what do you do to self-check? What techniques do you employ? Do you notice when you slip? Do you ever wonder if it wasn’t “better before”? Do you re-read the manifesto? Do you listen to one of the awesome podcasts where you can hear the anguish of the Agile fight in people’s voices and you remember you belong and it’s worth it? Are you 100% honest with yourself when you’re not flexible or you feel at the limit of your resilience? When you’re in no mood to experiment, learn or break with the team? When you bemoan a sudden change of direction? When you feel your bravery resources to keep being passionate are depleted? Are you 100% honest with your teammates? Are they doing the self-checks themselves?
Where on your mind or your heart is continuous improvement tattooed?
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This Thursday on the Fundamentals of Psychological Safety Series: “Impression Management – the Dark Side of Psychological Safety” so make sure to subscribe so you have it in your inbox.
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The 3 “commandments of Psychological Safety” to build high performing teams are: Understand, Measure and Improve
At PeopleNotTech we make software that measures and improves Psychological Safety in teams. If you care about it- talk to us about a demo at contact@peoplenottech.com
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