mlevison, 7 days ago to random

10,000 Hrs of Practice will make you...

I call this the Malcolm Gladwell myth, since it his book the popularized and distorted already questionable research.

As usual, I'm not a psychologist. I don't have a PhD in any science. I do coach Agile and Scrum. I also explode the balloons I call NeuroMyths. As a general rule, if Gladwell writes about it, tread carefully.

In "Outliers", Gladwell suggests that completing 10,000 hrs in their chosen discipline will excel.

#NeuroMyths 1/5

mlevison, 8 days ago to random

#UncertaintyTax when circumstances are uncertain our brains press pause. An experiment that Berger cites: students were offered a cheap vacation and placed in three groups: pass, fail and unknown. The pass and fail groups both wanted the vacation. The uncertain group didn't want the vacation as much. Yet eventually they will either be in the pass or fail group, so their interests should be the same. The Uncertainty caused them to press pause.

#InfluenceAtWork
The Catalyst - Jonah Berger

mlevison, 14 days ago to random

• Equal Weighting for answers - as above some things may matter very little to you as an individual, yet the answer will be used to place you in a category
• Scales can't be used to compare with other people - two people might both score as 'D' Dominant, that doesn't mean they would have the same level of dominance.
• There isn't a standard test
• Originally designed in the early 1900's to assess the "Mental Energy" of army recruits

2/3 #DISC #NeuroMyths

mlevison, 19 days ago to random

Need more Influence at work? (We all do, even the self employed)

• Develop Empathy
• Listen with the Intent to Understand
• Shoe Benefit of the change is better than the Status Quo ++++++++
• Ask for Help, Don't Tell
• Find people who don't already agree with you, but aren't too far away.
• Make smaller requests first -> Larger requests later
• Reduce risk -> make decisions reversible

#Influence

mlevison, 28 days ago to random

15 yrs ago I read one book on #Influence

Since then it more doubled in size.

Then it had children.

BTW The Catalyst - Jonah Berger is so good that I have 20+ postit notes over two chapters.

(Can't alt tags to work. Books are Influence: The Psychology or Persuasion - Robert Cialdini - 2 editions and How Minds Change David McRaney)

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mlevison, 1 month ago to random

#Agile hashtag#Tools for job seekers - looking for feedback and additional ideas/tools.

https://buff.ly/3JqYljg

As I mentioned last week, I have seen hundreds of people looking for work through LinkedIn. The post is intended to 1) help people find work that is well suited for them 2) become a place where I can add additional sources for people to read.

What non-commercial sources would you add?

mlevison, 1 month ago to random

#Influence #Failures Mere exposure to ideas that are outside of our zone of acceptance can reinforce our existing beliefs. Chris Bail et al ran experiment on twitter, they had hoped to discover that getting people to listen to ideas different from their own would moderate opinions. Result: the opposite. Exposure to ideas from the other caused them to take on more extreme beliefs. https://buff.ly/4aHbbpo

Share examples of where this has undermined your work?

Source: The Catalyst - Jonah Berger

mlevison, 1 month ago to random

#Influence without Authority. To overcome the Endowment effect, it helps to highlight the cost of inaction. In the #Agile world, we often deal with teams that say, we too rushed or busy to improve. Consider showing them cost of not doing anything. Not refactoring and improving engineering practice? Highlight the increase of chaos in their code. Not improving flow? Consider measuring # of days items are stuck waiting to be worked on. Show the failure to act is already harming the team.

mlevison, 1 month ago to random

#Influence without Authority. We get kicked by the Endowment effect: It is easier to tolerate the status quo than to make change. In the #Agile world this is made worse because of a Cost Benefit Timing Gap. We pay a lot of $$ upfront and the benefit only shows up later. Sometimes much later. This tells us we need to change how we offer Change.

We must speed the time to benefit and reduce the cost/risk. Look for clever ways reduce cost of change and even make it reversible (less risk).

mlevison, 1 month ago to random

Getting other people to taken on your ideas seriously isn't about authority. At best that will get compliance. Instead it's about #Influence.

There are many paths to influence.

• Look for collaborators
• Ask open ended questions
• Freedom to make their own choices
• Reduce risks
• Focus on Relationships

How have you succeeded at influencing others?
(Hint although I don't go into geeky detail in the video, everything I share is evidence based)
https://youtu.be/mLnx5W8mXIU

mlevison, 1 month ago to random

#Influence #Failure - We have anti-persuasion radar that can kick in when we feel pushed, even if it's toward something we want. Example - many people want to speak up more in meetings. (Good). Yet when it becomes a corporate thing, now we ask: "Am I choosing to speak up for my own reasons or because it was pushed". Result: We often shutdown.

Who has seen an Agile change go off the rails right here?

Sources: The Catalyst - Jonah Berger

mlevison, 1 month ago to random

#Influence #Failure - when you try influence people with a push, you take away their autonomy and they will push back.

In the case of Tidepods and the Tidepod madness, Proctor and Gamble produced videos telling people how bad they were. They recruited a football played nicknamed Gronk (What a great nickname), to tell people not to eat Tidepods. They did all the right things. Yet they made the problem worse.
....

mlevison, 1 month ago to random

@mattwynne Happy Easter - when you have a moment.

What is the status of the Cucumber/BDD world. What repos/projects should I point people to? I see Reqnroll as a replacement for SpecFlow. Any change in the main Cucumber game?

mlevison, 1 month ago to random

#Influence Warnings become recommendations. TidePods are classic example. A warning tweet, helped spark the tidepod challenge. This is true of many health warnings. People feel their Autonomy is taken away and they pushback.

To really influence, start with taking time to understand the other person’s needs.

mlevison, 1 month ago to random

I need your help, compiling a top ten list. What are your Top Evil Reasons a Manager in #Agile Organization needs influence:

1. …

2. To sabotage other teams

3. To undermine stakeholders they don’t like.

Evil reasons only

mlevison, 2 months ago to random

I need your help, compiling a top ten list. What are your Top Good Reasons a Manager in #Agile Organization needs influence:

1. …

2. To remove impediments;

3. To bring about larger scale change i.e. cross group or department

Good Answers only today. Evil reasons will come tomorrow

mlevison, 2 months ago to random

Eustress is a popular idea in the world of work. The idea that some stress can be positive (improving performance) to a point and then past that point the stress hurts performance.
https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/56acc1138a65e2a286012c54/223fd63d-1212-49f5-999c-6c0722255472/HebbianYerkesDodson.jfif?format=1500w

I can just imagine some leaders I've met sizing individuals up and asking themselves (cue the cackle): "How much pressure can I apply to this person for better performance."

#NeuroMyths #WorkMyths

1/5

mlevison, 2 months ago to random

Eustress in humans is poorly studied, some make the case it doesn't exist: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/bies.201900238, while others https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8872528/ are attempting to measure it.

My takeaway - at worst it doesn't exist. If it does exist, then it isn't yet well enough defined to be useful.

(1) Yerkes, R.M., and Dodson, J.D. (1908). The relation of strength of stimulus to rapidity of habit formation. Journal of Comparative Neurology of Psychology, 18(5), 459-482.

#NeuroMyths #WorkMyths
4/4

mlevison, 3 months ago to random

As Google becomes useless and LLMs regurgitate drivel, I'm looking for Independant minded #Agile Blogs. I'm trying to curate a set of trusted sources that I can recommend to students.

Examples of what I want: https://dannorth.net/blog/, https://simplybegin.co.uk/blog/, https://medium.com/the-liberators

Please boost for reach - my current list follows.

Exclusions #SAFe

mlevison, 3 months ago to random

Wow. "Scrummerfall: Blending Agile and Waterfall" https://www.amazon.ca/Scrummerfall-Blending-Waterfall-Deliberate-Development/ this book exists and the author thinks it's a good idea. They have no idea the origin of the term.

mlevison, 3 months ago to random

#Hivemind some help. In my personal #Agile friend group, I know 10-15 people who're looking for work right now. I plan to make infrequent postings to promote my friends. Help them network, etc.

Two things:

• What would you want to know about someone that would get you to connect and talk to them?
• How would I need to frame the whole thing so that you repost/reshare so these people get to know more people than I do?

(The post will be on LinkedIn since that's were ppl have profiles)

mlevison, 3 months ago to random

@grimalkina so I skimmed the paper. Deeper reading before I make any real comments, except - I need a better thinking hat.

Then I checked out: https://www.pluralsight.com/developer-success-lab and I became even happier.

You knowledge of the research lit is way better than mine. So a funny question we're updating our article on Team Size: https://agilepainrelief.com/blog/scrum-team-size.html have I missed any sources?

mlevison, 3 months ago to random

Two Pizza Teams and Bezos. I'm trying to track where and what he said. Many sources cite the Investor newsletters: https://quartr.com/insights/business-philosophy/collection-jeff-bezos-shareholder-letters

I read them, no pizza and no mention of team size.

Does anyone have an actual source for this?

mlevison, 3 months ago to random

@devondundee idea for the back of your MacStories brain - the Journaling prompt is amazing for users of apps like DayOne, Dairly and ??. However for those of who journal in other apps i.e. Obsidian, it’s a step to far since the api isn’t exposed to shortcuts.

Perhaps you have an idea about how to expose this to Obsidian?

So far I only see write a single purpose app (Open Source) that uses the API to speak to a vault. I would create this myself but I’ve never coded XCode/Swift

mlevison, 4 months ago to javascript

#JavaScript - has the readability of C, the type safety of python and the performance of Basic. Remind me again why people program in voluntary?