MBA213: Applying Theory of Constraints
Jul 28, 2020
Show notes
If you want to accelerate and deliver with greater speed and flexibility that’s critical to serving your customers, combine Agile with Theory of Constraints. Clarke Ching shows us how.
Show Notes
Perhaps you have Agile teams that are doing everything right; they’re limiting work in progress, communicating well, and delivering with quality. But maybe you want to accelerate and deliver with greater speed and flexibility that’s critical to serving your customers.
Theory of Constraints is an approach to helping organizations achieve their goals by identifying bottlenecks.
Listen to the full episode to understand how to combine Theory of Constraints and Agile practices to accelerate delivery.
MBA212: Transforming Your Work with Modern Agile
Jul 07, 2020
Show notes
Joshua Kerievsky shares the four principles of Modern Agile and how they can help you find better ways of working and achieve better business outcomes.
MBA211: Adaptive Leadership
May 19, 2020
Show notes
In this time of unrelenting change, we need leadership at all levels. Here's what you need to help your team succeed.
MBA210: Vital Communication
Apr 14, 2020
Show notes
Communication is vital to success on teams and organizations. In this episode, Tommy Re shows us how to dramatically improve communication.
MBA209: Visual Thinking
Mar 31, 2020
Show notes
Grant Wright Shares simple Visual Thinking tools and practices to help your team get aligned and retain information.
Show Notes
Do you want to increase retention of information, ensure alignment and a shared understanding, and increase creativity? Visual Thinking can help get everyone on the same page, increase the team’s ability to solve problems, and help everyone remember what was discussed.
Listen
to the full episode to understand the tools and techniques of Visual Thinking
and how they can benefit you on your next initiative.
Additional Resources
Useful books on Visual
Thinking:
The Sketchnote Handbook by Mike Rohde
The Sketchnote Workbook by Mike Rohde
Visual Thinking by Willemien Brand
The Non-Designer’s Design Book – Design and
Typographic Principles for the Visual Novice by Robin Williams
Thinking With Your Pen by Martin Haussmann
Other related books:
The Art of Explanation – Making your ideas,
products & services easier to understand by Lee Lefever
Resonate – Present Visual Stories that
Transform Audiences by Nancy Duarte
Other useful resources:
Www.verbaltovisual.com –
Doug Neil – great videos on sketch noting, suitable for beginners
Www.gamestorming.com –
Dave Gray’s co-creation tools with lots of great visual facilitation
ideas
Www.xplane.com –
Dave Gray’s consulting company – useful blog & other info
YOUR HOMEWORK Don’t be intimidated by visual thinking. Start small with doodles in your own notebook or add a few hand-drawn visuals in your next PowerPoint deck. Don’t forget that using colored Post-It Notes is a form of visualization too. Get inspired by searching Instagram for #VisualThinking. Finally, start building your own hand-drawn icon library by having several pre-defined shapes and images that you practice and can draw.
Grant Wright has over 20 years’ experience of delivering and leading enterprise-scale transformation and digital service design across government and financial services sectors. He is a Principal Consultant and Director of Scarlett Solutions, a UK based consultancy specializing in business analysis/architecture, agile product management and business transformation. He actively practices Visual Thinking throughout his work and is passionate about its ability to create alignment, improve understanding and generate creative ideas.
Thank you for listening to the program
To get more valuable content to enhance your skills and advance your career, you can subscribe on iTunes and other podcatchers.
Also, reviews on iTunes are highly appreciated! I read each review and it helps keep me motivated to continue to bring you valuable content in each episode.
MBA208: Facilitative Leadership
Mar 19, 2020
Show notes
Author Michael Levine helps us unleash the power of large, diverse teams of smart, experienced individuals to deliver positive business results.
Show Notes
How
can you unleash the power of large, diverse groups of smart, experienced
individuals to deliver positive business results through software development?
Large-scale
software development is a complex endeavor, especially in today’s volatile,
uncertain, complex, and ambiguous world.
While groups of people have come together in the past to achieve great
things (build the pyramids, send humans to the moon), the complexity and scale of
software development requires a different type of leadership, especially in an Agile
environment.
For
large, diverse teams to successfully develop software solutions, we need people
who can both lead those teams to the right outcomes and create the type of
environment within the organization where teams can succeed.
Facilitative Leadership
Command
and control or directive leadership styles don’t create the environment where
Agile software development teams can succeed.
A Facilitative Leader uses a different style of leadership. They use the elements of rigor, alignment,
and efficiency to achieve better outcomes.
Rigor
leads to better decision-making by establishing an approach to
decision-making. Defining the decision
to be made and using meaningful data removes bias and leads to better decisions.
To
overcome the complexity of many individuals creating a large software solution,
the Facilitative Leader must ensure alignment by setting a vision and common
goals. Alignment towards a compelling
goal leads to everyone’s engagement and the entire team contributing their
diverse skills and thinking to achieving that goal.
By developing a rigorous
approach to decision making and gaining alignment within the team, the Facilitative
Leader can create efficiency by eliminating waste. Ensuring that the team is able to focus on
achieving the goal is critical. Meetings
need to have goals and agendas that bring the team members closer to developing
the right software solution.
Listen to the full episode to understand how to put people first and become a facilitative leader.
YOUR HOMEWORK Go on a Gemba Walk. Go see real users and observe how they use the system. This gives you insights to better and more valuable solutions for your customers.
Michael Levine is an expert on lean and agile software development and the author of three books. His previous books are Tale of Two Systems: Lean and Agile Software Development for Business Leaders, and Tale of Two Transformations: Bringing Lean and Agile Software Development to Life. His third book is People Over Process: Leadership for Agility.
Thank you for listening to the program
To get more valuable content to enhance your skills and advance your career, you can subscribe on iTunes and other podcatchers.
Also, reviews on iTunes are highly appreciated! I read each review and it helps keep me motivated to continue to bring you valuable content in each episode.
MBA207: Bad Behaviors in the Workplace
Mar 04, 2020
Show notes
Paul Pelletier helps us to understand the root causes of disrespectful behaviors at work and how to address them.
Show Notes
Have you ever witnessed toxic behaviors that bring down a team or lead to project failures? Bad behaviors can come in a variety of forms; from rolling your eyes when someone is talking to outright bullying.
These disrespectful behaviors disrupt meetings, lead to a lack of collaboration, and cost organizations millions of dollars each year in failed projects and employee turnover.
But what can we do about these bad behaviors? Paul Pelletier provides some tips and advice on how to approach these issues and address them before they have a negative effect on the team.
Listen to the full episode to understand the root cause of these disrespectful behaviors and how to address them.
Addressing Bad Behaviors at Work
YOUR HOMEWORK Spend a few minutes creating rules of engagement or ground rules with the team so that you can refer back to what was agreed when bad behaviors start.
Paul Pelletier has been a corporate lawyer, an executive, a project manager, and is frequent keynote speaker. He’s a ground breaking expert in bullying, workplace respect & conflict management and the author of “The Workplace Bullying Handbook”.
Thank you for listening to the program
To get more valuable content to enhance your skills and advance your career, you can subscribe on iTunes and other podcatchers.
Also, reviews on iTunes are highly appreciated! I read each review and it helps keep me motivated to continue to bring you valuable content in each episode.
MBA205: Beyond Data Literacy
Feb 05, 2020
Show notes
Lori Silverman helps us get real value from data by developing core competence and creating the culture needed to support collaborative data-informed decision making.
Show Notes
Many organizations are trying to use data for better decision making. Unfortunately, most aren’t getting the value they expected. Recent research suggests that people and process are impediments to seeing value from data efforts.
To get to collaborative informed decision making and getting real business value from data, we need to change our culture and develop core competencies across the organization.
What’s missing from most organizations is an understanding of the decision making process that we’re using. What is the model or framework you’re going to use in a collaborative way to get the right parties involved and for the right data to be collected to make the right decision?
We need people who can shepherd organizations from data to decisions to actions to real business results.
Listen to the full episode to understand how to help your organization make this shift and the role you can play to promote collaborative informed decision making.
Beyond Data Literacy: Shepherd your organization from data to results
YOUR HOMEWORK Start asking questions related to metrics and data. How will the data be used? What question are we trying to answer? What actions will we take based on the data?
For almost 30 years, Lori Silverman has helped firms develop and implement successful long-term strategies. Lori was the Program Director for the Project Management Master’s Certificate at UW-Madison and taught in UW-Milwaukee’s Project Management Certificate Program. She is an author and keynoted at several industry conferences.
To get more valuable content to enhance your skills and advance your career, you can subscribe on iTunes and other podcatchers.
Also, reviews on iTunes are highly appreciated! I read each review and it helps keep me motivated to continue to bring you valuable content in each episode.
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