Luke Hohmann

"Calm down, take a deep breath and just talk to me“   Luke Hohmann’s new mission: Participatory Budgeting in Schools Luke Hohmann founded FirstRoot to advance participatory budgeting in schools. Let me get straight to the point: You can invest in this company in this early stage. You can also support the cause by talking about or by simply using the free software and talking about it in your kids’ school.  Luke Hohmann and me go back a long time. I met him ca. 12 years ago in one of his trainings and was fortunate enough to co-train and facilitate with him. He wrote an early book „Beyond Software Architecture“ which to me is one of the best books on software Architecture (sic!) and was ahead of its time. He then got deep into Serious Games with his Innovation Games trainings  and a great book on it. Also ahead of its time. From there he was on a constant path towards which had to end in what he does now. Through his Innovation Games, he made it to participatory budgeting in communities, in the Enterprise and other important places. Also, he built an enterprise SaaS company to further bring his ideas deeper into Companies and also enable distributed Serious Games. Now, he founded FirstRoot, bringing participatory budgeting to schools. (You will realize over the course of the pod, that we couldn’t constrain ourselves - we wouldn’t be Luke and Markus, then - from drawing all kinds of parallels to Quality of Software, agile, Portfolio Planning, Architecture, Comics for Story Mapping and what have you.) The underlying problem that Luke is tackling with FirstRoot is inequality of chances by social background, financial illiteracy (lack of education on that topic in school in general) and economic disparity. First Root is having its part in solving that problem by offering a five step process in facilitating Participatory Budgeting to pupils around the globe, based on a software solution. Steps are:  Planning Gather Ideas Refine Ideas to proposals Voting (there will always be more ideas than we can afford - „a truism in life“ Projects in implematation  In the pod Luke thoroughly leads us through an example to show us how it works and which impact it has. I put the core of the idea at the beginning of the cast. Again: If you believe in this story, you can also invest for as little as a couple of hundred dollars alongside of people like Alex Osterwalder, Lysa Adkins and many more. You also help by just using the software and bring it into schools. Just follow the „Invest“ link on firstroot.co

"Calm down, take a deep breath and just talk to me“   Luke Hohmann’s new mission: Participatory Budgeting in Schools Luke Hohmann founded <a href="https://firstroot.co" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">FirstRoot</a> to advance participatory budgeting in schools. Let me get straight to the point: You can invest in this company in this early stage. You can also support the cause by talking about or by simply using the free software and talking about it in your kids’ school.  Luke Hohmann and me go back a long time. I met him ca. 12 years ago in one of his trainings and was fortunate enough to co-train and facilitate with him. He wrote an early book „Beyond Software Architecture“ which to me is one of the best books on software Architecture (sic!) and was ahead of its time. He then got deep into Serious Games with his <a href="https://www.innovationgames.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Innovation Games</a> trainings <a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0321437292?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=enthiosys-20&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=390957&amp;creativeASIN=0321437292" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> and a great book</a> on it. Also ahead of its time. From there he was on a constant path towards which had to end in what he does now. Through his Innovation Games, he made it to participatory budgeting in communities, in the Enterprise and other important places. Also, he built an <a href="https://www.scaledagile.com/conteneo-weave/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">enterprise SaaS company</a> to further bring his ideas deeper into Companies and also enable distributed Serious Games. Now, he founded FirstRoot, bringing participatory budgeting to schools. (You will realize over the course of the pod, that we couldn’t constrain ourselves - we wouldn’t be Luke and Markus, then - from drawing all kinds of parallels to Quality of Software, agile, Portfolio Planning, Architecture, Comics for Story Mapping and what have you.) The underlying problem that Luke is tackling with FirstRoot is inequality of chances by social background, financial illiteracy (lack of education on that topic in school in general) and economic disparity. First Root is having its part in solving that problem by offering a five step process in facilitating Participatory Budgeting to pupils around the globe, based on a software solution. Steps are: <ol> <li>Planning</li> <li>Gather Ideas</li> <li>Refine Ideas to proposals</li> <li>Voting (there will always be more ideas than we can afford - „a truism in life“</li> <li>Projects in implematation</li> </ol> In the pod Luke thoroughly leads us through an example to show us how it works and which impact it has. I put the core of the idea at the beginning of the cast. Again: If you believe in this story, you can also invest for as little as a couple of hundred dollars alongside of people like Alex Osterwalder, Lysa Adkins and many more. You also help by just using the software and bring it into schools. Just follow the „Invest“ link on <a href="http://firstroot.co" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">firstroot.co</a>

EP. 27: Luke Hohmann - FirstRoot - Participatory Budgeting in Schools

Timo Lutter

Timo Lutter und seine Frau Jule sind Deutsche, die in Oslo wohnen und arbeiten. Timo hat lange als Molekularbiologe gearbeitet und arbeitet jetzt in Oslo im Rikshospitaletals Mikro-Biologe. Jule arbeitet in Oslo als Kindergärtnerin. Beide sind höchstwahrscheinlich wahrscheinlich Covid-19-positiv und tragen die Krankheit in ihrem sogenannten „milden“ Verlauf aus. Die beiden berichten aus Ihrer Erfahrung mit der Krankheit, dass schon das ist nicht mal eben einer lockeren Virusgrippe entspricht. Ich habe die Chance genutzt, Timo ein bisschen seines Virologen-Wissens zu entlocken und so kommen wir zu Erklärungen darüber  was ein Virus ist was es heisst, einen Virus zu sequentieren   warum sich Timo sicher ist, dass das Virus auf keinen Fall ein „Designervirus“ ist was Timo’s Einschätzungen zu den getroffenen Massnahmen ist wie sich Gesundheitssysteme aufgrund gegebener Umstände unterscheiden und welchen Einfluß das auf den Umgang mit dem Virus hat.  Ich wusste vorher nicht, dass Tino so viel Vorwissen zu dem Thema hat und habe einfach diese Fundgrube genutzt.   Ich würde mich über Feedback freuen. Bewertet das Podcast wo immer Ihr es hört. Empfehlt es weiter! Falls Ihr von weiteren Geschichten hört, die es lohnt zu Corona zu erzählen, meldet Euch gerne. Ich versuche gerne etwas daraus zu machen! Bis zum nächsten mal, Markus

Timo Lutter und seine Frau Jule sind Deutsche, die in Oslo wohnen und arbeiten. Timo hat lange als Molekularbiologe gearbeitet und arbeitet jetzt in Oslo im Rikshospitaletals Mikro-Biologe. Jule arbeitet in Oslo als Kindergärtnerin. Beide sind höchstwahrscheinlich wahrscheinlich Covid-19-positiv und tragen die Krankheit in ihrem sogenannten „milden“ Verlauf aus. Die beiden berichten aus Ihrer Erfahrung mit der Krankheit, dass schon das ist nicht mal eben einer lockeren Virusgrippe entspricht. Ich habe die Chance genutzt, Timo ein bisschen seines Virologen-Wissens zu entlocken und so kommen wir zu Erklärungen darüber <ul> <li>was ein Virus ist</li> <li>was es heisst, einen Virus zu sequentieren  </li> <li>warum sich Timo sicher ist, dass das Virus auf keinen Fall ein „Designervirus“ ist</li> <li>was Timo’s Einschätzungen zu den getroffenen Massnahmen ist</li> <li>wie sich Gesundheitssysteme aufgrund gegebener Umstände unterscheiden und</li> <li>welchen Einfluß das auf den Umgang mit dem Virus hat.</li> </ul> Ich wusste vorher nicht, dass Tino so viel Vorwissen zu dem Thema hat und habe einfach diese Fundgrube genutzt. Ich würde mich über Feedback freuen. Bewertet das Podcast wo immer Ihr es hört. Empfehlt es weiter! Falls Ihr von weiteren Geschichten hört, die es lohnt zu Corona zu erzählen, meldet Euch gerne. Ich versuche gerne etwas daraus zu machen! Bis zum nächsten mal, Markus

Ep. 26: Timo Lutter - Covid-19 „milder“ Verlauf, Viren und Gesundheitssysteme

Peter Bihr

This is the story of Peter Bihr and his family whoa actually wanted to visit a wedding in the United States, but instead got stranded in Costa rica. Peter and his family accidentally find themselves locked up in a place which turns out to be a bit of a paradise. There could, of course be better times and conditions to find and enjoy a paradise. But let’s listen how Peter perceives his current situation. If you know of other weird stories happening during these strange and difficult time, let me know and maybe we could make this another episode! You can reach Peter for more on his great work here.  He also publishes a fantastic, interesting and personal email newsletter.    Have fun, stay healthy and sane!

This is the story of Peter Bihr and his family whoa actually wanted to visit a wedding in the United States, but instead got stranded in Costa rica. Peter and his family accidentally find themselves locked up in a place which turns out to be a bit of a paradise. There could, of course be better times and conditions to find and enjoy a paradise. But let’s listen how Peter perceives his current situation. If you know of other weird stories happening during these strange and difficult time, let me know and maybe we could make this another episode! You can reach Peter for more on his great work <a href="https://thewavingcat.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">here</a>.  He also publishes a fantastic, interesting and personal <a href="https://tinyletter.com/pbihr" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">email newsletter</a>.  Have fun, stay healthy and sane!

Ep. 25. Peter Bihr, Corona, a golf cart, a surf board and visa extension

Henning Wolf

Markus Andrezak

Strategie Machen

Strategie Machen! Henning Wolf hat mich im Hotelzimmer bei einer Konferenz interviewt. Es geht um mein Thema Nummer eins, neben Produkt: Strategie Machen! Wir erklären, was an Strategie kaputt ist und wie man es fixen kann. Wir erklären, was die drei relevanten Ebenen in Strategie sind und wie man sie wieder koppeln kann, um alles zu reparieren. Denn es ist das Koppeln dieser drei Ebenen, was Strategie repariert. Die drei Ebenen sind: Marker: unsere Identität, ausgedrückt über unseren Antrieb, langfristige Ziele. Alles was ausdrückt, wer uns was wir sind und was wir in der Gesellschaft bewirken wollen. Unsere Identität eben. Optionen: Das ist alles, was wir als nächstes tun könnten. Alle Möglichkeiten, die wir haben. Da wir nicht alles machen können, was wir gerne machen würden, entscheidet die beste Auswahl, die Qualität unserer Entscheidungen und Committments darüber, wie es uns geht. Arbeit: Arbeit soll fliessen und es muss passend viel Arbeit auf gute Optionen angewandt werden. Arbeit auf schlechten Optionen ist nutzlos. Viel Arbeit auf guten Optionen bringt viel. Dies erklärt auch warum Output wichtiger sein kann als gedacht ;) Arbeit realisiert Optionen, Optionen verwirklichen unsere Marker. Umgekehrt helfen Marker Optionen zu bewerten (und abzuleiten) und Optionen helfen Arbeit abzuleiten. Wichtig ist, die stabilisierende Natur und langfristige Wirkung von Markern zu verstehen und akzeptieren. Ebenso ist es wichtig, die mittelfristige Wirkung und die Notwendigkeit von längerfristigen Optionen zu verstehen. nur Arbeit soll fliessen, nur hier gelten Flow-Gesetze und ähnliches. Mechanismen von Arbeit auf die anderen Ebenen zu transportieren, zerstört diese Ebenen. Deshalb ist Business Agilität mit ähnlichen Mechanismen auf diesen Ebenen auch oberflächlich gedacht und toxisch. Viel Spaß bei dieser Folge. Vielen Dank an Henning Wolf für die Zusammenarbeit und die Geduld beim Fragen unter widrigen Bedingungen im Hotel bei einer Konferenz!

Strategie Machen! Henning Wolf hat mich im Hotelzimmer bei einer Konferenz interviewt. Es geht um mein Thema Nummer eins, neben Produkt: Strategie Machen! Wir erklären, was an Strategie kaputt ist und wie man es fixen kann. Wir erklären, was die drei relevanten Ebenen in Strategie sind und wie man sie wieder koppeln kann, um alles zu reparieren. Denn es ist das Koppeln dieser drei Ebenen, was Strategie repariert. Die drei Ebenen sind: Marker: unsere Identität, ausgedrückt über unseren Antrieb, langfristige Ziele. Alles was ausdrückt, wer uns was wir sind und was wir in der Gesellschaft bewirken wollen. Unsere Identität eben. Optionen: Das ist alles, was wir als nächstes tun könnten. Alle Möglichkeiten, die wir haben. Da wir nicht alles machen können, was wir gerne machen würden, entscheidet die beste Auswahl, die Qualität unserer Entscheidungen und Committments darüber, wie es uns geht. Arbeit: Arbeit soll fliessen und es muss passend viel Arbeit auf gute Optionen angewandt werden. Arbeit auf schlechten Optionen ist nutzlos. Viel Arbeit auf guten Optionen bringt viel. Dies erklärt auch warum Output wichtiger sein kann als gedacht ;) Arbeit realisiert Optionen, Optionen verwirklichen unsere Marker. Umgekehrt helfen Marker Optionen zu bewerten (und abzuleiten) und Optionen helfen Arbeit abzuleiten. Wichtig ist, die stabilisierende Natur und langfristige Wirkung von Markern zu verstehen und akzeptieren. Ebenso ist es wichtig, die mittelfristige Wirkung und die Notwendigkeit von längerfristigen Optionen zu verstehen. nur Arbeit soll fliessen, nur hier gelten Flow-Gesetze und ähnliches. Mechanismen von Arbeit auf die anderen Ebenen zu transportieren, zerstört diese Ebenen. Deshalb ist Business Agilität mit ähnlichen Mechanismen auf diesen Ebenen auch oberflächlich gedacht und toxisch. Viel Spaß bei dieser Folge. Vielen Dank an Henning Wolf für die Zusammenarbeit und die Geduld beim Fragen unter widrigen Bedingungen im Hotel bei einer Konferenz!

Ep. 24 - Markus Andrezak, Henning Wolf: Strategie Machen!

Dan Vacanti

Dan Vacanti - Rightsizing I met Dan years and years ago in my active time in the Kanban community. Dan was part of the very beginning of Kanban in 2007! Since then he’s been deep into Lean and Agile. Dan authored two books, "Actionable Agile Metrics for Predictability“ and "When will it be done?“. He is also the founder of Actionable Agile. Dan always had his independent thought. Most of all, he is a builder of bridges. He worked hard with Scrum.org on integrating the good ideas of Scrum and Kanban. Also, he organises the conference LeanAgile US which just happened from 25 -27 Feb 2019 in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. Possibly most noteworthy, Dan's twitter Avatar is not the usual egg provided by twitter, but a self made picture of an egg.  Here excerpts of our conversation as a loose transcript. don't take it word by word, please! Show Notes:  The underlying idea for all of us is to maximise customer value. Cost of Delay is a tool suggested as basis for ranking, prioritising and sequencing on a more objective base rather than gut feel. Hopefully based on basic economic fundamentals.  An extension of that is WSJF (Weighted Shortest Job First), which is defined by CD3= CoD / Duration. This is meant to give a shortcut to give an answer to which number does this item have in the sequence of things to be done.  But here's the caveat: It is critical enough to get the number for duration right (how long does this take to be done? - The Estimate!). But the even more critical question is: "how do we even get the number for the value of the thing we are building?"  This is where my research started, but "Let me be honest with you, and this is just me talking, nothing I found was practical or applicable in my world.“ "More importantly, I felt there we’re a whole bunch of assumptions going into this CoD number that didn’t reflect reality.“  "Let’s focus this discussion on the area of complex product development work. And we try to get that number even before start working on something. Which, by definition, is when we have the highest amount of uncertainty. And this is what struck me: How can this CoD number give us the right answer? And that’s were I started my investigation.“  Customers will always be able to ask things from us faster than we will be able to deliver them.  There are fundamental assumptions in CoD to be in place for that to make sense.  When there is uncertainty involved, we need a probabilistic approach. That means, we have to work with ranges. That means we have to think about CoD as a distribution across that range. The same is true for the duration.  Those two assumptions are not fatal. There are mathematical tools like Monte Carlo simulation that help us to come up with an answer.  BUT: If you are in a world, where you no the numbers, then CoD/D = CD3 gives you the right number. If you do not know these numbers, once you deliver the thing, these numbers could be completely different.  So now CoD can change and as well duration can change. When you now run a Monte Carlo simulation, you will realise that this is not the best tool once uncertainty sets in.  The best answer in this world is to do things by random sequencing. What matters is: right sizing items. What that means is, we need to break things up to a size where they reasonable flow through our system. So, CoD doesn’t make a difference. Duration doesn’t make a difference. What makes a difference is right sizing your items.  This flies in the face of what’s lately been said in agile, where there is a lot of talk about outcomes over output. And what we found out is that it’s actually the other way around: It’s output over outcomes. It’s the output that generates the outcome. A metaphor here is gambling, where you would place as many small bets as possible to generate outcome.  „We’re coming back to a fundamental principle of Lean, which is that value is defined by the customer.“ What is the smallest thing that we could feedback on from the customer?  Links:  Dan Vacanti on Twitter ActionableAgile, Dan's company ActionableAgile Analytics, the tool that Dan's company builds and sells Lean Agile US, Dan's conference, each February   Books:  "Actionable Agile Metrics for Predictability" by Dan  "When will it be done?" by Dan 

Dan Vacanti - Rightsizing I met Dan years and years ago in my active time in the Kanban community. Dan was part of the very beginning of Kanban in 2007! Since then he’s been deep into Lean and Agile. Dan authored two books, "Actionable Agile Metrics for Predictability“ and "When will it be done?“. He is also the founder of Actionable Agile. Dan always had his independent thought. Most of all, he is a builder of bridges. He worked hard with <a href="http://Scrum.org" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Scrum.org</a> on integrating the good ideas of Scrum and Kanban. Also, he organises the conference <a href="https://leanagileus.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">LeanAgile US</a> which just happened from 25 -27 Feb 2019 in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. Possibly most noteworthy, Dan's twitter Avatar is not the usual egg provided by twitter, but a self made picture of an egg.  Here excerpts of our conversation as a loose transcript. don't take it word by word, please! Show Notes:  The underlying idea for all of us is to maximise customer value. Cost of Delay is a tool suggested as basis for ranking, prioritising and sequencing on a more objective base rather than gut feel. Hopefully based on basic economic fundamentals.  An extension of that is WSJF (Weighted Shortest Job First), which is defined by CD3= CoD / Duration. This is meant to give a shortcut to give an answer to which number does this item have in the sequence of things to be done.  But here's the caveat: It is critical enough to get the number for duration right (how long does this take to be done? - The Estimate!). But the even more critical question is: "how do we even get the number for the value of the thing we are building?"  This is where my research started, but "Let me be honest with you, and this is just me talking, nothing I found was practical or applicable in my world.“ "More importantly, I felt there we’re a whole bunch of assumptions going into this CoD number that didn’t reflect reality.“  "Let’s focus this discussion on the area of complex product development work. And we try to get that number even before start working on something. Which, by definition, is when we have the highest amount of uncertainty. And this is what struck me: How can this CoD number give us the right answer? And that’s were I started my investigation.“  Customers will always be able to ask things from us faster than we will be able to deliver them.  There are fundamental assumptions in CoD to be in place for that to make sense.  When there is uncertainty involved, we need a probabilistic approach. That means, we have to work with ranges. That means we have to think about CoD as a distribution across that range. The same is true for the duration.  Those two assumptions are not fatal. There are mathematical tools like Monte Carlo simulation that help us to come up with an answer.  BUT: If you are in a world, where you no the numbers, then CoD/D = CD3 gives you the right number. If you do not know these numbers, once you deliver the thing, these numbers could be completely different.  So now CoD can change and as well duration can change. When you now run a Monte Carlo simulation, you will realise that this is not the best tool once uncertainty sets in.  The best answer in this world is to do things by random sequencing. What matters is: right sizing items. What that means is, we need to break things up to a size where they reasonable flow through our system. So, CoD doesn’t make a difference. Duration doesn’t make a difference. What makes a difference is right sizing your items.  This flies in the face of what’s lately been said in agile, where there is a lot of talk about outcomes over output. And what we found out is that it’s actually the other way around: It’s output over outcomes. It’s the output that generates the outcome. A metaphor here is gambling, where you would place as many small bets as possible to generate outcome.  „We’re coming back to a fundamental principle of Lean, which is that value is defined by the customer.“ What is the smallest thing that we could feedback on from the customer?  Links: <ul> <li><a href="https://twitter.com/danvacanti" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Dan Vacanti</a> on Twitter</li> <li><a href="https://actionableagile.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">ActionableAgile</a>, Dan's company</li> <li><a href="https://actionableagile.com/analytics-tools" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">ActionableAgile Analytics</a>, the tool that Dan's company builds and sells</li> <li><a href="https://leanagileus.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Lean Agile US</a>, Dan's conference, each February </li> </ul> Books: <ul> <li>"<a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/B013ZQ5TUQ" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Actionable Agile Metrics for Predictability</a>" by Dan </li> <li>"<a href="https://leanpub.com/whenwillitbedone" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">When will it be done?</a>" by Dan</li> </ul>

Ep. 23: Dan Vacanti - Rightsizing

Jabe Bloom

Marc Burgauer

Part II   This is part two of the conversation I had with Jabe Bloom and Marc Burgauer during the Devops Conference 2018 in Munich. All information can be found in the show notes of part 1, which is Episode 21 of this podcast. Here some short show notes on this second part. Show Notes On Bid Data &amp; being Data Driven "Russell Ackoff wrote a brilliant paper titled "On Data Mismanagement Systems and the basic thesis is: Managers need data to make decisions and the more data they have, the better it is. Of course, the answer is: Managers don't need more information, they need the right information" "Of course, big data is a response to a particular problem and the particular problem is "Oh god, we made such big piles of data that no human can actually process it anymore. And now we have to come up with an algorithm to summarise the data for us." On Change &amp; Culture "By definition all future things are stories. They don't exist. That's why they're in the future. You can't measure them. You can't use data to understand them. You can only use data to understand what exists now." "People think that you have to change people's thinking first. You change what they think about things and then they change their behavior and that will change the output. And that's absolutely wrong. You have to change what they're looking at and that will change their thinking. And when you want to change something, that's when you need to create those models and give people new things to look at."   Is speed still an advantage? "Right now everyone goes rushing towards high cycle time, high frequency: spin as fast as you can. If everyone is playing to the same time cycles, there is no advantage to doing that. … In fact, the advantage will be having the discipline … of having long term vision and connecting them to the capabilities of having a short cycle time. That's the next competitive advantage. We need people to be able to understand how to make commitments beyond two weeks. Period." "We need to create space for commitments. If everything is an option you have no commitments. If you had no commitments, you have no identity." Autonomy vs. Agency "I hate the word autonomy. … I think autonomy is individuating. … The way I hear the word and I think other people hear it - and I might be wrong and other people hear it differently - but the way I hear it is "I have the right to make my own decisions. I have the right to make my own rules." "If you look up the etymology of the word it means "the owner of the rules". (Whereas) Agency is my ability to chose in that environment and to see the result of it. Autonomy as the ability to act without responsibility is my concern. The ability to act without considering the feedback loop of what s the effect of what I have done. Thanks for listening! Remember to give us feedback on twitter, mail, wherever you want! Your feedback on iTunes will help us spread the word! Be prepared for the next episode in a few weeks!

Part II This is part two of the conversation I had with Jabe Bloom and Marc Burgauer during the Devops Conference 2018 in Munich. All information can be found in the show notes of part 1, which is Episode 21 of this podcast. Here some short show notes on this second part. Show Notes On Bid Data &amp; being Data Driven "Russell Ackoff wrote a brilliant paper titled "On Data Mismanagement Systems and the basic thesis is: Managers need data to make decisions and the more data they have, the better it is. Of course, the answer is: Managers don't need more information, they need the right information" "Of course, big data is a response to a particular problem and the particular problem is "Oh god, we made such big piles of data that no human can actually process it anymore. And now we have to come up with an algorithm to summarise the data for us." On Change &amp; Culture "By definition all future things are stories. They don't exist. That's why they're in the future. You can't measure them. You can't use data to understand them. You can only use data to understand what exists now." "People think that you have to change people's thinking first. You change what they think about things and then they change their behavior and that will change the output. And that's absolutely wrong. You have to change what they're looking at and that will change their thinking. And when you want to change something, that's when you need to create those models and give people new things to look at."   Is speed still an advantage? "Right now everyone goes rushing towards high cycle time, high frequency: spin as fast as you can. If everyone is playing to the same time cycles, there is no advantage to doing that. … In fact, the advantage will be having the discipline … of having long term vision and connecting them to the capabilities of having a short cycle time. That's the next competitive advantage. We need people to be able to understand how to make commitments beyond two weeks. Period." "We need to create space for commitments. If everything is an option you have no commitments. If you had no commitments, you have no identity." Autonomy vs. Agency "I hate the word autonomy. … I think autonomy is individuating. … The way I hear the word and I think other people hear it - and I might be wrong and other people hear it differently - but the way I hear it is "I have the right to make my own decisions. I have the right to make my own rules." "If you look up the etymology of the word it means "the owner of the rules". (Whereas) Agency is my ability to chose in that environment and to see the result of it. Autonomy as the ability to act without responsibility is my concern. The ability to act without considering the feedback loop of what s the effect of what I have done. Thanks for listening! Remember to give us feedback on twitter, mail, wherever you want! Your feedback on iTunes will help us spread the word! Be prepared for the next episode in a few weeks!

Ep. 22: Jabe Bloom & Marc Burgauer - Designing Systems Pt. II

Jabe Bloom and Marc Burgauer - Designing Systems Last week, beginning of December 2018, I happened to be guest of the DevOps Conference in Munich. The nice people from the organising company gave me the chance to actually make it a family meeting with my pals J Paul Reed (a giant in the field of DevOps), Marc Burgauer (from Scotland, doing Agile consulting in Banking) and Jabe Bloom (co-founder and chief scientist of Praxisflow). It was 3 really busy days, the bunch of us were continuously mingling in giving talks, workshops, being active in a panel and all kinds of fun. Finally on the last day, we all gave a huge workshop together, using all kinds of techniques and tools from all of our fields and it felt like really great collaboration - throwing together all our expertise from all the fields we've been busy in and merging the approaches. Collaboration without vanity and really sharing. It rarely feels this good!!! On the evening before the workshop, Marc, Jabe and me sat down in my hotel room and recorded roughly two hours of ramblings on designing systems. When Jabe is with you, it's always on the highest level and really abstract design theory. But Jabe has this tough in which he can really go sky high, risking to be Icarus. But just before his abstract knowledge makes gets him too close to the sun, he defends to us other mortal souls and he connects back to earth and leaves us all with a "ahhhh, I see what you mean!!!" The background is that Jabe is currently working on his PhD in Design at the Carnegie Mellon University and as such he is a monster in reading about all of the most abstract literature in design theory - specialising in change in human systems in extreme time spans (like hundreds of years). Of course, there are huge connections between these theories and what we are doing.  Having Marc in this round is a totally different perspective yet and I love how the three of us managed to blast through all kinds of topics. Honestly, this one is one for the lodert and possibly for a niche. But I guess the niche will love it. I'll make it short this time and leave it with the character of the recording: Raw, uncut and a little meandering but always true to the topic and lots of lots of depth. I love this and it feels authentic to how my life and job is. Thanks guys in being my guests and inspiration in this episode. This is part 1 of 2 parts. The next part will make up the next episode and will follow in a week or so. This just had to be out there. Some notes and hints How different timeframes and different temporality change our thinking and how we have to take care about this. We mention Bungay, User Stories, Epics, Strategy … The focus of Agile is compression of timeframes. It can be a problem once we loose the language for longer timeframes. „Employee goes „I can’t think of a way to come up with a chain of two week events that would add up to your one year story. I can’t do it. It doesn’t make any sense.“ The role of middle management in story telling and expertise. A Peter Principle of temporality, explaining micro management. OKRs and stories Humanist culture is about "What am I doing?“ not „How do I measure what I am doing?“ but "What am I doing?“‚ Determinism vs. "The Quality within", love vs. Process The more efficient you get, the more exploration you can do. Science doe not have time as a component. The scientific method is always in retrospective. It always thinks about the past and it never thinks about the future. The predictions it does on the future are based on a determined future. There is no Open in science. The thing about the Jony Yveish people out there is that they are able to imagine things that don't exist and can't be measured. You can't use determinism to get there. You can't use quantification to get there. You can only use story telling and narrative. How can Roger Martin's Knowledge funnel be used in a way that it brings mystery? It needs to be used non-linearly. You throw a thing in the middle, it pops up to the top and a mystery is born. That'd be a different way to innovate rather than simply finding "valuable problems" to solve. Doing Hackathons more right and more wrong. Apollo 13 mission story: Time constraints, a known set of components and isolation (so the team has to be put away from everybody) "If we had this, then we could make that!" Three temporalities to making sense: - How do I make sense of what's going on? - Retrospective coherence:How can I later explain why I did this in the future. (constraining) - Prospective coherence. If I put this thing that doesn't exist into the world, how does it change the stories that I'm in?  Books  John Doerr:  Measure What Matters Christina Wodtke:  Radical Focus  I guess this is really abstract stuff. I just love it and I assure that if you are a regular listener, there is a lot in it for you!

Jabe Bloom and Marc Burgauer - Designing Systems Last week, beginning of December 2018, I happened to be guest of the <a href="https://devopsconference.de" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">DevOps Conference</a> in Munich. The nice people from the <a href="https://devopsconference.de/organizer/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">organising company</a> gave me the chance to actually make it a family meeting with my pals J Paul Reed (a giant in the field of DevOps), Marc Burgauer (from Scotland, doing Agile consulting in Banking) and Jabe Bloom (co-founder and chief scientist of <a href="https://www.praxisflow.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Praxisflow</a>). It was 3 really busy days, the bunch of us were continuously mingling in giving talks, workshops, being active in a panel and all kinds of fun. Finally on the last day, we all gave a huge workshop together, using all kinds of techniques and tools from all of our fields and it felt like really great collaboration - throwing together all our expertise from all the fields we've been busy in and merging the approaches. Collaboration without vanity and really sharing. It rarely feels this good!!! On the evening before the workshop, Marc, Jabe and me sat down in my hotel room and recorded roughly two hours of ramblings on designing systems. When Jabe is with you, it's always on the highest level and really abstract design theory. But Jabe has this tough in which he can really go sky high, risking to be Icarus. But just before his abstract knowledge makes gets him too close to the sun, he defends to us other mortal souls and he connects back to earth and leaves us all with a "ahhhh, I see what you mean!!!" The background is that Jabe is currently working on his PhD in Design at the Carnegie Mellon University and as such he is a monster in reading about all of the most abstract literature in design theory - specialising in change in human systems in extreme time spans (like hundreds of years). Of course, there are huge connections between these theories and what we are doing.  Having Marc in this round is a totally different perspective yet and I love how the three of us managed to blast through all kinds of topics. Honestly, this one is one for the lodert and possibly for a niche. But I guess the niche will love it. I'll make it short this time and leave it with the character of the recording: Raw, uncut and a little meandering but always true to the topic and lots of lots of depth. I love this and it feels authentic to how my life and job is. Thanks guys in being my guests and inspiration in this episode. This is part 1 of 2 parts. The next part will make up the next episode and will follow in a week or so. This just had to be out there. Some notes and hints How different timeframes and different temporality change our thinking and how we have to take care about this. We mention Bungay, User Stories, Epics, Strategy … The focus of Agile is compression of timeframes. It can be a problem once we loose the language for longer timeframes. „Employee goes „I can’t think of a way to come up with a chain of two week events that would add up to your one year story. I can’t do it. It doesn’t make any sense.“ The role of middle management in story telling and expertise. A Peter Principle of temporality, explaining micro management. OKRs and stories Humanist culture is about "What am I doing?“ not „How do I measure what I am doing?“ but "What am I doing?“‚ Determinism vs. "The Quality within", love vs. Process The more efficient you get, the more exploration you can do. Science doe not have time as a component. The scientific method is always in retrospective. It always thinks about the past and it never thinks about the future. The predictions it does on the future are based on a determined future. There is no Open in science. The thing about the Jony Yveish people out there is that they are able to imagine things that don't exist and can't be measured. You can't use determinism to get there. You can't use quantification to get there. You can only use story telling and narrative. How can Roger Martin's Knowledge funnel be used in a way that it brings mystery? It needs to be used non-linearly. You throw a thing in the middle, it pops up to the top and a mystery is born. That'd be a different way to innovate rather than simply finding "valuable problems" to solve. Doing Hackathons more right and more wrong. Apollo 13 mission story: Time constraints, a known set of components and isolation (so the team has to be put away from everybody) "If we had this, then we could make that!" Three temporalities to making sense: - How do I make sense of what's going on? - Retrospective coherence:How can I later explain why I did this in the future. (constraining) - Prospective coherence. If I put this thing that doesn't exist into the world, how does it change the stories that I'm in? Books <ul> <li>John Doerr: <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Measure-What-Matters-Google-Foundation/dp/0525536221/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1544733560&amp;sr=8-2&amp;keywords=radical+focus+christina+wodtke" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> Measure What Matters</a></li> <li>Christina Wodtke: <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Radical-Focus-Achieving-Important-Objectives/dp/0996006028/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1544733560&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=radical+focus+christina+wodtke" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> Radical Focus</a></li> </ul> I guess this is really abstract stuff. I just love it and I assure that if you are a regular listener, there is a lot in it for you!

Ep. 21: Jabe Bloom and Marc Burgauer - Designing Systems

I follow Matt since years. he has a couple of great books out, his latest one possibly being the top pick. It is called "Winning the brain Game". In "Winning the brain Game", Matt explains 7 fundamental flaws of the brain which hold us back from being the best problem solvers we could be. He describes how he discovered them, gives explanations from the fields of psychology and neuro science and finally gives hints on fixes for these flaws.   I discovered Matt by means of a different book he wrote quite a couple of years ago. The book was called "The laws of subtraction" in which he gave structure on how to make things simpler and how to address that problem. At the time I headed a product which was really a complicated mess and the book helped me think through several of the problems I had at the time and I have it in find memories.   Matt comes up with the following categories of flaws:   "Misleading", which contains the flaws of Leaping (jumping to the first best, shallow solution), Fixation (being stuck on the first best idea) and Overthinking (not getting into a state of delivery at all. Then there is Mediocre with Satisficing (giving in to a half baked solution and not pulling through) and Downgrading (no, it's not so important to hang in and we didn't mean to reach that level at all) And finally there is Mindless with the flaws "not invented here" (if it's not my idea, I won't listen) and Self-Censoring (It's my idea, it can't be good).    So, again:  Misleading  Leaping Fixation Overthinking   Mediocre  Satisficing Downgrading   Mindless  Not Invented Here Self-Censoring    Also, expect a definition of Strategy and a little gossip on how one of the greats, Roger L. Martin, thinks on Strategy. Also really useful for me was a description of the value of frameworks as a way of describing ways to work with tools in a non sequential, non linear way and still feel comfortable and having a feeling of progress in highly abstract knowledge work.  Another Gem for me was the framing of "assumptions" as "What has to be true? Given our strategy, what has to be true in our industry for it to work out? What has to be true for our org structure? What has to be true about what our customer really values? What about our cost? And what has to be true about our capabilities? Answering that questions opens a space right between the questions of "What is true?" and "What might be true" and help us thinking much more open about these issues.  Show Notes  "True Strategy os not about a plan, it is not about analysis. True strategy s about choice making."  "There’s a lot of talk about thinking outside of the box, And I’m here to tell you there’s an awful lot of space inside of the box, if we think about the box in the right way."  "When people say „culture eats strategy for lunch, what they’re basically talking about is when you march out a plan of action without having the buy-in or the input of those being in some sort responsible for deploying that strategy, the Status quo will defeat that plan.“  "(Culture)  does not eat for breakfast a great set of winning choices that answer - “what’s our winning aspiration?“, - "where will we play?“, - "how will we win?“,- "what capabilities do we need?“ and- "What systems are required?“  "The brain works very efficiently if there's some sort of limit. But you make that limit smart and intelligent. Just enough so that there's guidance but not prescription."  Matt's Mantra  "What appears to be the problem, isn't. What appears to be the solution, isn't. What appears to be impossible, isn't"  "I think the key to able to think differently is to be able to reframe problems" "They (Toyota) are a very innovative company. They implement close to a million ideas per year, all across the organization."  On Lean in the Toyota Way  "A lot of what we see on the surface as Lean, what really drives it (and can't be seen) is creativity. To have someone who puts on a windshield improve that work. And that's something that took me 4 years to understand."  "One of the training programs was called "Jobs Methods Training". And they introduced the concept of continuous improvement: Little ideas, implemented as quickly as possible as near to the frontline as you possibly can. It was aimed at the supervisor level. Among those was a guy called Deming."   "Until this day, you will not find a Lean Thinking program at Toyota. You will find Toyota Business Process, before that it was PDCA."  "I often get the question on what is the difference between continuous improvement and radical innovation. And it really is just a matter of scope, scale &amp; magnitude. The process is the same. The problem solving process is the same"  It's all problem solving.  "Do I teach Lean? Yes, I do tech Lean Thinking. But looks an awful lot like Design Thinking."   "In an ideal world, all this stuff (Design Thinking, Agile, Lean Startup. Lean, etc.) would just be called problem solving."  "A neuroscientist will tell that there are only two ways that human beings solve problems. Just two. One is the conscious way. And one is the unconscious way."  What is creativity?   "The best that you can do is to steep yourself in the problem so that you have as best an understanding as you possibly can. And then simply take a break. Just take a break. because that gives the hippocampus time to make the connections that we call the term creativity. Creativity is nothing more than the mash up  of certain elements, connections, criteria and memories that all boil up into that sudden burn of neuro chemical reaction that we term creativity: The Eureka moment."  "Hansei (Reflection) in Japan is a huge part of a Childs upbringing. It's an after action review: What did you expect to happen? What did actually happen? And what accounts for the difference?"  "First of all, Roger (Martin) would say that strategy is not a plan. … he would tell you the distinction is meaningless between Strategy and execution. … Essentially strategy has to cascade down onto every individual."  Finally   I hope this conversation was as much fun for you as it was for me and you could take away as much as I did. And I hope you could hear just how much fun I had!   And honestly I got a little stuck taking down notes for the show notes. It was just just too much good stuff and gems in it! To me, it was a blast!  Make sure you look up the Canvases that Matt talked about. There are links in the show notes. Also make sure to read Matt's last book "Winning The Brain Game"! Also, the earlier ones are worth the money and time! And maybe, look out for a conference close to you were you might meet him or me or both of us for some chat and a hefty dose of problem solving .   I say thanks for listening in again. If you liked it, spread the word and recommend this show to your friend, colleagues and ,maybe your boss and leave a review! If you didn't like it, please tell me how to improve!   And let's all remember the Mantra:   "What appears to be the problem, isn't. What appears to be the solution, isn't. What appears to be impossible, isn't"  Thanks again and hear you in a couple of weeks!   Links  Matthew E. May's Website Matt's latest book -  "Winning The Brain Game" Matt's book  "The Laws of subtraction" Matt's book  "The Elegant Solution -Toyota's Formula for mastering Innovation" Matt's  "Playing To Win" Strategy Canvas Matt's  "Lean Learning Loops" Canvas Roger Martin's  "The Design Of Business" - a book I often mention in my work and trainings. It is also mentioned during this conversation. - Roger L. Martins book  "Playing To Win", in which he describes Strategy as the choices as discussed during this conversation.  

I follow Matt since years. he has a couple of great books out, his latest one possibly being the top pick. It is called "Winning the brain Game". In "Winning the brain Game", Matt explains 7 fundamental flaws of the brain which hold us back from being the best problem solvers we could be. He describes how he discovered them, gives explanations from the fields of psychology and neuro science and finally gives hints on fixes for these flaws.  I discovered Matt by means of a different book he wrote quite a couple of years ago. The book was called "The laws of subtraction" in which he gave structure on how to make things simpler and how to address that problem. At the time I headed a product which was really a complicated mess and the book helped me think through several of the problems I had at the time and I have it in find memories.  Matt comes up with the following categories of flaws:  <ul> <li>"Misleading", which contains the flaws of Leaping (jumping to the first best, shallow solution), Fixation (being stuck on the first best idea) and Overthinking (not getting into a state of delivery at all.</li> <li>Then there is Mediocre with Satisficing (giving in to a half baked solution and not pulling through) and Downgrading (no, it's not so important to hang in and we didn't mean to reach that level at all)</li> <li>And finally there is Mindless with the flaws "not invented here" (if it's not my idea, I won't listen) and Self-Censoring (It's my idea, it can't be good).</li> </ul> So, again: <ul> <li>Misleading <ul> <li>Leaping</li> <li>Fixation</li> <li>Overthinking</li> </ul> </li> <li>Mediocre <ul> <li>Satisficing</li> <li>Downgrading</li> </ul> </li> <li>Mindless <ul> <li>Not Invented Here</li> <li>Self-Censoring</li> </ul> </li> </ul> Also, expect a definition of Strategy and a little gossip on how one of the greats, Roger L. Martin, thinks on Strategy. Also really useful for me was a description of the value of frameworks as a way of describing ways to work with tools in a non sequential, non linear way and still feel comfortable and having a feeling of progress in highly abstract knowledge work. Another Gem for me was the framing of "assumptions" as "What has to be true? Given our strategy, what has to be true in our industry for it to work out? What has to be true for our org structure? What has to be true about what our customer really values? What about our cost? And what has to be true about our capabilities? Answering that questions opens a space right between the questions of "What is true?" and "What might be true" and help us thinking much more open about these issues. Show Notes "True Strategy os not about a plan, it is not about analysis. True strategy s about choice making." "There’s a lot of talk about thinking outside of the box, And I’m here to tell you there’s an awful lot of space inside of the box, if we think about the box in the right way." "When people say „culture eats strategy for lunch, what they’re basically talking about is when you march out a plan of action without having the buy-in or the input of those being in some sort responsible for deploying that strategy, the Status quo will defeat that plan.“ "(Culture)  does not eat for breakfast a great set of winning choices that answer - “what’s our winning aspiration?“, - "where will we play?“, - "how will we win?“,- "what capabilities do we need?“ and- "What systems are required?“ "The brain works very efficiently if there's some sort of limit. But you make that limit smart and intelligent. Just enough so that there's guidance but not prescription." Matt's Mantra  "What appears to be the problem, isn't. What appears to be the solution, isn't. What appears to be impossible, isn't" "I think the key to able to think differently is to be able to reframe problems" "They (Toyota) are a very innovative company. They implement close to a million ideas per year, all across the organization." On Lean in the Toyota Way "A lot of what we see on the surface as Lean, what really drives it (and can't be seen) is creativity. To have someone who puts on a windshield improve that work. And that's something that took me 4 years to understand." "One of the training programs was called "Jobs Methods Training". And they introduced the concept of continuous improvement: Little ideas, implemented as quickly as possible as near to the frontline as you possibly can. It was aimed at the supervisor level. Among those was a guy called Deming."   "Until this day, you will not find a Lean Thinking program at Toyota. You will find Toyota Business Process, before that it was PDCA." "I often get the question on what is the difference between continuous improvement and radical innovation. And it really is just a matter of scope, scale &amp; magnitude. The process is the same. The problem solving process is the same" It's all problem solving. "Do I teach Lean? Yes, I do tech Lean Thinking. But looks an awful lot like Design Thinking."  "In an ideal world, all this stuff (Design Thinking, Agile, Lean Startup. Lean, etc.) would just be called problem solving." "A neuroscientist will tell that there are only two ways that human beings solve problems. Just two. One is the conscious way. And one is the unconscious way." What is creativity?   "The best that you can do is to steep yourself in the problem so that you have as best an understanding as you possibly can. And then simply take a break. Just take a break. because that gives the hippocampus time to make the connections that we call the term creativity. Creativity is nothing more than the mash up  of certain elements, connections, criteria and memories that all boil up into that sudden burn of neuro chemical reaction that we term creativity: The Eureka moment." "Hansei (Reflection) in Japan is a huge part of a Childs upbringing. It's an after action review: What did you expect to happen? What did actually happen? And what accounts for the difference?" "First of all, Roger (Martin) would say that strategy is not a plan. … he would tell you the distinction is meaningless between Strategy and execution. … Essentially strategy has to cascade down onto every individual." Finally   I hope this conversation was as much fun for you as it was for me and you could take away as much as I did. And I hope you could hear just how much fun I had!  And honestly I got a little stuck taking down notes for the show notes. It was just just too much good stuff and gems in it! To me, it was a blast! Make sure you look up the Canvases that Matt talked about. There are links in the show notes. Also make sure to read Matt's last book "Winning The Brain Game"! Also, the earlier ones are worth the money and time! And maybe, look out for a conference close to you were you might meet him or me or both of us for some chat and a hefty dose of problem solving .  I say thanks for listening in again. If you liked it, spread the word and recommend this show to your friend, colleagues and ,maybe your boss and leave a review! If you didn't like it, please tell me how to improve!  And let's all remember the Mantra:   "What appears to be the problem, isn't. What appears to be the solution, isn't. What appears to be impossible, isn't" Thanks again and hear you in a couple of weeks!  Links <ul> <li>Matthew E. May's <a href="https://matthewemay.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Website</a></li> <li>Matt's latest book - <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Winning-Brain-Game-Fixing-Thinking/dp/1259642399?keywords=winning+the+brain+game&amp;qid=1540750685&amp;sr=8-1&amp;ref=sr_1_1" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> "Winning The Brain Game"</a></li> <li>Matt's book <a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B009NE6GR0/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i3" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> "The Laws of subtraction"</a></li> <li>Matt's book <a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0743290178/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i4" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> "The Elegant Solution -Toyota's Formula for mastering Innovation"</a></li> <li>Matt's <a href="https://www.dropbox.com/s/0pr4hlyvxp17njz/2018P2WStrategyCanvas-WallSize.pdf?dl=0" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> "Playing To Win" Strategy Canvas</a></li> <li>Matt's <a href="https://www.dropbox.com/s/9ehzy9r638p7xvg/LeanLoopsCanvas2018.pdf?dl=0" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> "Lean Learning Loops" Canvas</a></li> <li>Roger Martin's <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Design-Business-Thinking-Competitive-Advantage/dp/1422177807?keywords=roger+martin+design+of+business&amp;qid=1540751076&amp;s=Books&amp;sr=1-1&amp;ref=sr_1_1" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> "The Design Of Business"</a> - a book I often mention in my work and trainings. It is also mentioned during this conversation. -</li> <li>Roger L. Martins book <a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/142218739X/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i0" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> "Playing To Win"</a>, in which he describes Strategy as the choices as discussed during this conversation. </li> </ul>

Ep. 20 - Matthew E. May: Winning The Brain Game

Norbert Haller

Intro Diese Folge ist für mich ganz besonders! Als ich Norbert besucht habe, kam ich dafür in meinen alten Berliner Kiez, in dem ich fast 20 Jahre lang gewohnt habe. (Ich war ganz ausser mir, als ich mich da umgesehen habe ;) Und auch Norbert kenne ich seit den frühen 90ern, als wir noch Autobahnkilometer auf dem Weg zu Mountainbike-Rennen abgespult haben. Natürlich haben wir auch Stunde um Stunde beim Training auf Waldwegen und -abwegen verbracht und auch in Rennen. Wenn das Gute so nah ist, ist es manchmal schwer zu erkennen, was man überhaupt vor sich hat. Und so hat es bis jetzt gebraucht um Norbert zu interviewen und mehr über sein Geschäft und seine Industrie zu lernen. Und so ist diese Folge noch mehr als viele andere true to title: In andere Welten eintauchen um Verbindungen zu finden. Norbert Haller, designed seit 20 Jahren e-Bikes. Ich habe mich in seiner Werkstatt umgeschaut. Seit langem interessiert mich, wie man das alles in Hardware anstellt, denn Hardware ist cool. Und die Skalierung bei Fahrrädern ist immens: Sehr wenige Designer arbeiten an sehr vielen Modellen in sehr hohen Auflagen. Wenn wir in Software herum jammern über Prototypen, hört hier mal rein, wie komplex sich der Prozess von Design zu Produktion in Hardware ist. Interessant auch die Beobachtungen zu Märkten. Für mich war der Killer, dass Elektromobilität jetzt doch komplett von unten kommt. Jetzt ist ein Sweet Spot, in dem die Änderungen bei Leichtfahrzeugen einfach klappen und gehen. Und schon werfen sich in der Lieferkette diejenigen mit in den Markt, die bei Autos die Felle davon schwimmen sehen. Spannend war für mich zu hören, wie lange die Konstruktion ein Suchprozess bleibt, in dem man flexibel bleiben muss. Auch in diesem Designprozess ist es so, dass nach der „Reinzeichnung“ eine Menge Detail- und Dreckarbeit anfallen, weil Design auf dem Papier und die Idee auf eine etwas brutalere (Konstruktions-)Realität treffen. Norbert beobachtet, dass jede Industrie ihren Master hat. Der Master bei Autos ist der Verbrennungsmotor und alle Lieferketten und anderen Prozesse sind um den Verbrennungsmotor aufgebaut. Das Problem der Autoindustrie ist, dass sich der Master gerade ändert und dabei zum einen unklar ist was genau der neue Master ist, aber auch: dass sie es nicht schnell genug hinbekommen, ihre Lieferketten und Prozesse inkl. Design und Konstruktion auf Batterien, und E-Antriebsstränge umzustellen. Es ist ein bisschen wie zu der Zeit als Norbert mit E-Bikes angefangen hat: E-Autos sehen noch ein bisschen behindert aus und nutzen nicht das Design-Potential des neuen Antriebs. Ganz am Ende noch ein paar Beoabachtungen, was e-Bikes mit dem Sport anstellen: Wir glauben Diversifizierung ohne Ende und neue Möglichkeiten. Mit e-Bikes fahren ist ein neuer Sport, der erst entdeckt werden muss. Es nicht einfach Fahrradfahren mit Motor. Erste Rennserien entstehen und ich bin überzeugt, wir wissen noch gar nicht was dort passieren wird. Das Level an Technik und Körperbeherrschung wird wieder ein anderes werden Jetzt aber viel Spaß mit 20 Jahren E-Bike Design mit Norbert Haller!!! Show Notes Man muss zielgerichtet sein, aber auch eine gewisse Flexibilität mitbringen, das Projekt anzupassen, wenn man merkt, sass bestimmte Bausachen nicht so funktionieren, wie gedacht." „Wenn man ein innovatives Fahrzeug für einen neuen Markt baut, gibt es während des Entwicklers teilweise einen Lernprozess. Da gibt es dann auf Seiten des Kunden einige Herausforderungen." „Wir wissen schon, was Shimano, Bosch und co. in 2-3 Jahren machen. Nur haben das dann die anderen Hersteller auch. Wenn eine Firma wirklich eigenständig in den Markt eintreten will und etwas noch innovativeres haben möchte, Da muss man doch relativ visionär sein. Da kann man dann nicht einfach die Informationen in einer einfachen Marktanalyse holen. Das wäre so als hätte Steve Jobs im nächsten Media Markt gefragt wie das iPhone aussieht. Dann hätten die ihm gesagt „mach mir ein Blackberry mit einer kleineren Tastatur für 200 $ weniger.“ „Kreativität ist schon sehr wichtig. Man muss schon sehr visionär denken. Vor allem aber die Kunden müssen auch visionär denken. Viele denken wir können das einfach abliefern. Wir merken aber, dass das Entscheidende ist, dass der Kunde auch visionär denkt und ein Verständnis hat, was kommen wird - denn der trifft nachher auch die Entscheidungen. Wir können aber auch nur Richtungen geben. Was so verlockend ist: Viele Kunden wollen einfach in den Markt kommen, der hier und jetzt ist. Das kann aber oft der erste Schritt sein, dass der Kunde keine Chance hat.“ „Fahrräder werden komplett elektrifiziert. … die Fahrrad-Industrie wächst immer mehr in die Autoindustrie hinein. Das nächste was kommt sind Lastenfahrräder, der Bereich Motorroller kommt, dann Micro-Cars und die Fahrradindustrie schlägt von unten nach oben auf. Die Autoindustrie tut sich relativ schwer.“ „Wie sehen die Hersteller der Zukunft aus? Ich bin der Meinung, dass sich neue Plattformen ergeben. In der Autoindustrie ist der Master der Verbrennungsmotor. Und es ist eine Industrie, die sich komplett um den Verbrennungsmotor aufgebaut hat. Jetzt auf einmal ist der Verbrennungsmotor nicht mehr der Master sondern er ergibt sich aus neuen Bereichen und der ist noch nicht genau definiert. Er ist bei den Batterien, den Antriebssystemen, der Digitalisierung. Um den neuen Master wird sich die Industrie herum aufbauen. Neue Marketingkonzepte und neue Geschäftsmodelle wie Sharing. … Die ehemaligen Komponentenhersteller, z. Bsp. Shimano switchen auch auf die neuen Master und bieten Antriebssysteme.“ Links  IDBerlin, Norberts Firma A2B, ein Startup, dass Norbert mit aufgebaut hatte Hawk Bikes, für die Norbert fuhr und für die er die ersten E-Bikes entwarf  Shimano Steps e-Bike Antrieb Bosch e-Bike Antrieb Bosch ABS für e-Bikes 

Intro Diese Folge ist für mich ganz besonders! Als ich Norbert besucht habe, kam ich dafür in meinen alten Berliner Kiez, in dem ich fast 20 Jahre lang gewohnt habe. (Ich war ganz ausser mir, als ich mich da umgesehen habe ;) Und auch Norbert kenne ich seit den frühen 90ern, als wir noch Autobahnkilometer auf dem Weg zu Mountainbike-Rennen abgespult haben. Natürlich haben wir auch Stunde um Stunde beim Training auf Waldwegen und -abwegen verbracht und auch in Rennen. Wenn das Gute so nah ist, ist es manchmal schwer zu erkennen, was man überhaupt vor sich hat. Und so hat es bis jetzt gebraucht um Norbert zu interviewen und mehr über sein Geschäft und seine Industrie zu lernen. Und so ist diese Folge noch mehr als viele andere true to title: In andere Welten eintauchen um Verbindungen zu finden. Norbert Haller, designed seit 20 Jahren e-Bikes. Ich habe mich in seiner Werkstatt umgeschaut. Seit langem interessiert mich, wie man das alles in Hardware anstellt, denn Hardware ist cool. Und die Skalierung bei Fahrrädern ist immens: Sehr wenige Designer arbeiten an sehr vielen Modellen in sehr hohen Auflagen. Wenn wir in Software herum jammern über Prototypen, hört hier mal rein, wie komplex sich der Prozess von Design zu Produktion in Hardware ist. Interessant auch die Beobachtungen zu Märkten. Für mich war der Killer, dass Elektromobilität jetzt doch komplett von unten kommt. Jetzt ist ein Sweet Spot, in dem die Änderungen bei Leichtfahrzeugen einfach klappen und gehen. Und schon werfen sich in der Lieferkette diejenigen mit in den Markt, die bei Autos die Felle davon schwimmen sehen. Spannend war für mich zu hören, wie lange die Konstruktion ein Suchprozess bleibt, in dem man flexibel bleiben muss. Auch in diesem Designprozess ist es so, dass nach der „Reinzeichnung“ eine Menge Detail- und Dreckarbeit anfallen, weil Design auf dem Papier und die Idee auf eine etwas brutalere (Konstruktions-)Realität treffen. Norbert beobachtet, dass jede Industrie ihren Master hat. Der Master bei Autos ist der Verbrennungsmotor und alle Lieferketten und anderen Prozesse sind um den Verbrennungsmotor aufgebaut. Das Problem der Autoindustrie ist, dass sich der Master gerade ändert und dabei zum einen unklar ist was genau der neue Master ist, aber auch: dass sie es nicht schnell genug hinbekommen, ihre Lieferketten und Prozesse inkl. Design und Konstruktion auf Batterien, und E-Antriebsstränge umzustellen. Es ist ein bisschen wie zu der Zeit als Norbert mit E-Bikes angefangen hat: E-Autos sehen noch ein bisschen behindert aus und nutzen nicht das Design-Potential des neuen Antriebs. Ganz am Ende noch ein paar Beoabachtungen, was e-Bikes mit dem Sport anstellen: Wir glauben Diversifizierung ohne Ende und neue Möglichkeiten. Mit e-Bikes fahren ist ein neuer Sport, der erst entdeckt werden muss. Es nicht einfach Fahrradfahren mit Motor. Erste Rennserien entstehen und ich bin überzeugt, wir wissen noch gar nicht was dort passieren wird. Das Level an Technik und Körperbeherrschung wird wieder ein anderes werden Jetzt aber viel Spaß mit 20 Jahren E-Bike Design mit Norbert Haller!!! Show Notes Man muss zielgerichtet sein, aber auch eine gewisse Flexibilität mitbringen, das Projekt anzupassen, wenn man merkt, sass bestimmte Bausachen nicht so funktionieren, wie gedacht." „Wenn man ein innovatives Fahrzeug für einen neuen Markt baut, gibt es während des Entwicklers teilweise einen Lernprozess. Da gibt es dann auf Seiten des Kunden einige Herausforderungen." „Wir wissen schon, was Shimano, Bosch und co. in 2-3 Jahren machen. Nur haben das dann die anderen Hersteller auch. Wenn eine Firma wirklich eigenständig in den Markt eintreten will und etwas noch innovativeres haben möchte, Da muss man doch relativ visionär sein. Da kann man dann nicht einfach die Informationen in einer einfachen Marktanalyse holen. Das wäre so als hätte Steve Jobs im nächsten Media Markt gefragt wie das iPhone aussieht. Dann hätten die ihm gesagt „mach mir ein Blackberry mit einer kleineren Tastatur für 200 $ weniger.“ „Kreativität ist schon sehr wichtig. Man muss schon sehr visionär denken. Vor allem aber die Kunden müssen auch visionär denken. Viele denken wir können das einfach abliefern. Wir merken aber, dass das Entscheidende ist, dass der Kunde auch visionär denkt und ein Verständnis hat, was kommen wird - denn der trifft nachher auch die Entscheidungen. Wir können aber auch nur Richtungen geben. Was so verlockend ist: Viele Kunden wollen einfach in den Markt kommen, der hier und jetzt ist. Das kann aber oft der erste Schritt sein, dass der Kunde keine Chance hat.“ „Fahrräder werden komplett elektrifiziert. … die Fahrrad-Industrie wächst immer mehr in die Autoindustrie hinein. Das nächste was kommt sind Lastenfahrräder, der Bereich Motorroller kommt, dann Micro-Cars und die Fahrradindustrie schlägt von unten nach oben auf. Die Autoindustrie tut sich relativ schwer.“ „Wie sehen die Hersteller der Zukunft aus? Ich bin der Meinung, dass sich neue Plattformen ergeben. In der Autoindustrie ist der Master der Verbrennungsmotor. Und es ist eine Industrie, die sich komplett um den Verbrennungsmotor aufgebaut hat. Jetzt auf einmal ist der Verbrennungsmotor nicht mehr der Master sondern er ergibt sich aus neuen Bereichen und der ist noch nicht genau definiert. Er ist bei den Batterien, den Antriebssystemen, der Digitalisierung. Um den neuen Master wird sich die Industrie herum aufbauen. Neue Marketingkonzepte und neue Geschäftsmodelle wie Sharing. … Die ehemaligen Komponentenhersteller, z. Bsp. Shimano switchen auch auf die neuen Master und bieten Antriebssysteme.“ Links <ul> <li><a href="http://www.idberlin.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">IDBerlin</a>, Norberts Firma</li> <li><a href="http://www.wearea2b.com/index.php/de/our-journey" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">A2B</a>, ein Startup, dass Norbert mit aufgebaut hatte</li> <li><a href="https://www.hawkbikes.com/e-bike/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Hawk Bikes</a>, für die Norbert fuhr und für die er die ersten E-Bikes entwarf</li> <li><a href="https://www.shimano-steps.com/e-bikes/germany/de/product-information/mtb/e8000" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> Shimano Steps</a> e-Bike Antrieb</li> <li><a href="https://www.bosch-ebike.com/de/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Bosch e-Bike</a> Antrieb</li> <li><a href="https://www.bosch-ebike.com/de/produkte/abs/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Bosch ABS</a> für e-Bikes</li> </ul>

Ep. 19: Norbert Haller - e-Bike Design Pionier

Christian Riedel

Netflix. Wir schauen es alle. Und ich glaube, das es eine der kompliziertesten, koordinierten Arbeitsformern ist, wenn z. Bsp. 20 Autoren eine konsistente Geschichte über 6 Staffeln a 15 Folgen erzählen. Jede Folge hat dabei einen Spannungsbogen, Drehungen und Wendungen, wiedererkennbare Charaktere, authentische Emotionen, Überraschungen und am Ende immer einen Cliffhanger, der dafür sorgt, dass wir am Schirm bleiben zum Binge Watching oder eben nächste Woche wieder einschalten. Wir wissen ein bisschen darüber wie das funktioniert und es muss ein schmaler Grad zwischen Kooperation, Planung und Kreativität und Delegation sein, der da beschritten wird. Wer ganz viel dazu weiss und überhaupt darüber, wie Story Telling funktioniert und wie wir es einsetzen können ist Christian Riedel, der Gründer von Growth by Story. Christian ist mein Gast in dieser 18. Folge von Stories Connecting Dots. Christian hilft Firmen dabei, Story Telling gezielt zur Verbesserung interner Kommunikation, Alignment innerhalb der Firma und auch beim Erzählen nach aussen - im Marketing - einzusetzen. Um das zu können, hat Christian Cultural Studies und Marketing studiert. Das hat ihm aber nicht gereicht. Er hat noch Game Research und Design dazu gepackt und schließlich auch noch eine Masterclass im Drehbuchschreiben durchgezogen. Das er Geschichten schreiben kann, hat der Kurzkrimi-Preis bewiesen, den er für deine Kurzgeschichte „Terroir" bekommen hat. Beruflich hat er in vielen Positionen und Kontexten gearbeitet. Ich habe ihn durch seine Arbeit bei Jimdo kennengelernt. Bei Jimdo hat er unglaublich dazu beigetragen, der Firma ein Gesicht, eine Stimme und eben eine Geschichte auch aussen zu geben. In dieser Folge sprechen wir vor allem darüber, was Story Telling kann und wofür man es einsetzen kann. In einer, bald erscheinenden, weiteren Folge sprechen wir darüber, wie Christian mit seinen Kunden am Story Telling arbeitet. Story Telling ist etwas fundamentales, archaisches und wir alle verstehen Geschichten. Wie Laufen, Sprechen und Atmen können wir es einfach. Umso spannender ist es, sich bewusster damit auseinander zu setzen und zu verstehen was Story Telling ist und kann. Passend dazu kam mir gerade noch der Artikel Why Humans Need Stories von Patrick Tanguay unter. Geschichten gab es schon immer - sie scheinen der Kitt zwischen Menschen zu sein und die Interaktionen - z. Bsp. Kooperation - zu ermöglichen. Christian spricht einen sehr wichtigen Aspekt an: die soziale Bedeutung von Geschichten: Wenn wir Aktionen im Nachhinein nicht begründen können, wirken wir autistisch oder asozial. Geschichten helfen uns, Verhalten im Nachhinein erklären zu können - sie helfen uns Verständnis zu schaffen. Für mich sind Geschichten so wichtig, weil sie Gruppen helfen ein gemeinsames Verständnis eines gemeinsamen Vorhabens zu erreichen. Und die bedeutsamsten Vorhaben bekommen wir nur in Gruppen hin. Alleine sind wir alle Zwerge. Daher setze ich Geschichten ein, wo immer es notwendig ist, in Gruppen dieses gemeinsame Verständnis zu erzeugen. Ich rede gerne davon „Kommunikation zu erzwingen“. Natürlich mache ich das nicht alleine und es ist nicht meine Idee. Die Geschichte von agiler Produktentwicklung ist voll davon und alleine die Begriffe User Stories und User Story Mapping zeigen woher sie kommen. Geschichten sind letztlich die einfachste und billige Weise, mit möglichen Zukünften umzugehen und diese verstehen zu können. Deshalb haben sie auch einen wichtigen Platz in der Produktarbeit. Bevor wir coden und entwickeln, sollten wir uns - billiger - über Geschichten annähern um zu verstehen ob die ausgedachte Zukunft Sinn macht. Ich glaube, wir können Story Telling nicht „benutzen" ohne es zu verstehen. Ich glaube, zu verstehen, wie andere Story Telling professionalisieren und fast schon industrialisieren, hilft uns dabei, unsere Arbeit mehr als kreative Zusammenarbeit zu verstehen und weniger als ein „Abarbeiten von Aufträgen". Die Metapher Story Telling macht uns erfolgreicher als die Metaphern „Fabrik" oder „Produktion". Zitate „Man darf die Regel nicht mit dem Ergebnis verwechseln … dafür sind auch zu viele von diesen Prinzipien Ex-Post von erfolgreichen Geschichten abgeleitet worden." „Never be boring!" „Das Emotionale führt zu einem Unsicherheitsgefühl, so dass man gegebenenfalls versucht, es über Regeln und Prozesse aus der Welt zu schaffen." „Aus der Falle kommt man nur raus, wenn man sich von dem Weltbild verabschiedet, dass der Mensch ein rationales Wesen ist, das in seinem Denken einem Computer ähnelt. Das ist er nicht." „(Geschichten erzählen) … hilft denen mit Visionen und Ideen, die eigene Idee für andere greifbar zu machen." „Story Telling führt zu einer Klärung, weil ich mir erst einmal Gedanken machen muss, wie ich es jemand anderem erkläre." „Man ist versucht, das Boot mit dem Ufer zu verwechseln. … Weil es komplizierter ist, sich Gedanken über das Ziel zu machen, macht man sich lieber Gedanken darüber, das Boot zu verbessern." „Die Magie im Writers Room liegt darin, die Balance zu finden von Strukturierung (meist mit Karteikarten an der Wand) und dem Detail dahinter. Also die Szenen zu planen, aber sie dann von einer Einzelperson ausfüllen zu lassen." Links - Growth by Story: Christians Firma - „Why Humans Need Stories" - Patrick Tanguay bei kottke.org -  „Our fiction addiction: Why humans need stories" - BBC - Writers Room - die von Christian angesprochene Serie von Sundance, zu sehen bei Sky Arts

Netflix. Wir schauen es alle. Und ich glaube, das es eine der kompliziertesten, koordinierten Arbeitsformern ist, wenn z. Bsp. 20 Autoren eine konsistente Geschichte über 6 Staffeln a 15 Folgen erzählen. Jede Folge hat dabei einen Spannungsbogen, Drehungen und Wendungen, wiedererkennbare Charaktere, authentische Emotionen, Überraschungen und am Ende immer einen Cliffhanger, der dafür sorgt, dass wir am Schirm bleiben zum Binge Watching oder eben nächste Woche wieder einschalten. Wir wissen ein bisschen darüber wie das funktioniert und es muss ein schmaler Grad zwischen Kooperation, Planung und Kreativität und Delegation sein, der da beschritten wird. Wer ganz viel dazu weiss und überhaupt darüber, wie Story Telling funktioniert und wie wir es einsetzen können ist Christian Riedel, der Gründer von <a href="http://www.growthbystory.de" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Growth by Story</a>. Christian ist mein Gast in dieser 18. Folge von Stories Connecting Dots. Christian hilft Firmen dabei, Story Telling gezielt zur Verbesserung interner Kommunikation, Alignment innerhalb der Firma und auch beim Erzählen nach aussen - im Marketing - einzusetzen. Um das zu können, hat Christian Cultural Studies und Marketing studiert. Das hat ihm aber nicht gereicht. Er hat noch Game Research und Design dazu gepackt und schließlich auch noch eine Masterclass im Drehbuchschreiben durchgezogen. Das er Geschichten schreiben kann, hat der Kurzkrimi-Preis bewiesen, den er für deine Kurzgeschichte „Terroir" bekommen hat. Beruflich hat er in vielen Positionen und Kontexten gearbeitet. Ich habe ihn durch seine Arbeit bei Jimdo kennengelernt. Bei Jimdo hat er unglaublich dazu beigetragen, der Firma ein Gesicht, eine Stimme und eben eine Geschichte auch aussen zu geben. In dieser Folge sprechen wir vor allem darüber, was Story Telling kann und wofür man es einsetzen kann. In einer, bald erscheinenden, weiteren Folge sprechen wir darüber, wie Christian mit seinen Kunden am Story Telling arbeitet. Story Telling ist etwas fundamentales, archaisches und wir alle verstehen Geschichten. Wie Laufen, Sprechen und Atmen können wir es einfach. Umso spannender ist es, sich bewusster damit auseinander zu setzen und zu verstehen was Story Telling ist und kann. Passend dazu kam mir gerade noch der Artikel <a href="https://kottke.org/18/05/why-humans-need-stories" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Why Humans Need Stories</a> von Patrick Tanguay unter. Geschichten gab es schon immer - sie scheinen der Kitt zwischen Menschen zu sein und die Interaktionen - z. Bsp. Kooperation - zu ermöglichen. Christian spricht einen sehr wichtigen Aspekt an: die soziale Bedeutung von Geschichten: Wenn wir Aktionen im Nachhinein nicht begründen können, wirken wir autistisch oder asozial. Geschichten helfen uns, Verhalten im Nachhinein erklären zu können - sie helfen uns Verständnis zu schaffen. Für mich sind Geschichten so wichtig, weil sie Gruppen helfen ein gemeinsames Verständnis eines gemeinsamen Vorhabens zu erreichen. Und die bedeutsamsten Vorhaben bekommen wir nur in Gruppen hin. Alleine sind wir alle Zwerge. Daher setze ich Geschichten ein, wo immer es notwendig ist, in Gruppen dieses gemeinsame Verständnis zu erzeugen. Ich rede gerne davon „Kommunikation zu erzwingen“. Natürlich mache ich das nicht alleine und es ist nicht meine Idee. Die Geschichte von agiler Produktentwicklung ist voll davon und alleine die Begriffe User Stories und User Story Mapping zeigen woher sie kommen. Geschichten sind letztlich die einfachste und billige Weise, mit möglichen Zukünften umzugehen und diese verstehen zu können. Deshalb haben sie auch einen wichtigen Platz in der Produktarbeit. Bevor wir coden und entwickeln, sollten wir uns - billiger - über Geschichten annähern um zu verstehen ob die ausgedachte Zukunft Sinn macht. Ich glaube, wir können Story Telling nicht „benutzen" ohne es zu verstehen. Ich glaube, zu verstehen, wie andere Story Telling professionalisieren und fast schon industrialisieren, hilft uns dabei, unsere Arbeit mehr als kreative Zusammenarbeit zu verstehen und weniger als ein „Abarbeiten von Aufträgen". Die Metapher Story Telling macht uns erfolgreicher als die Metaphern „Fabrik" oder „Produktion". Zitate „Man darf die Regel nicht mit dem Ergebnis verwechseln … dafür sind auch zu viele von diesen Prinzipien Ex-Post von erfolgreichen Geschichten abgeleitet worden." „Never be boring!" „Das Emotionale führt zu einem Unsicherheitsgefühl, so dass man gegebenenfalls versucht, es über Regeln und Prozesse aus der Welt zu schaffen." „Aus der Falle kommt man nur raus, wenn man sich von dem Weltbild verabschiedet, dass der Mensch ein rationales Wesen ist, das in seinem Denken einem Computer ähnelt. Das ist er nicht." „(Geschichten erzählen) … hilft denen mit Visionen und Ideen, die eigene Idee für andere greifbar zu machen." „Story Telling führt zu einer Klärung, weil ich mir erst einmal Gedanken machen muss, wie ich es jemand anderem erkläre." „Man ist versucht, das Boot mit dem Ufer zu verwechseln. … Weil es komplizierter ist, sich Gedanken über das Ziel zu machen, macht man sich lieber Gedanken darüber, das Boot zu verbessern." „Die Magie im Writers Room liegt darin, die Balance zu finden von Strukturierung (meist mit Karteikarten an der Wand) und dem Detail dahinter. Also die Szenen zu planen, aber sie dann von einer Einzelperson ausfüllen zu lassen." Links - <a href="http://www.growthbystory.de" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Growth by Story</a>: Christians Firma - <a href="https://kottke.org/18/05/why-humans-need-stories" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">„Why Humans Need Stories"</a> - Patrick Tanguay bei <a href="https://kottke.org" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">kottke.org</a> - <a href="http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20180503-our-fiction-addiction-why-humans-need-stories" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> „Our fiction addiction: Why humans need stories"</a> - BBC - <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Writers%27_Room" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Writers Room</a> - die von Christian angesprochene Serie von Sundance, zu sehen bei Sky Arts

Ep. 18: Christian Riedel - Über Story Telling

There is no single truth, but many, I  this show we try to discover stories that explain how people and companies successfully deal with change and emerging business opportunities.

Excellent source of bleeding edge thinking about business process from the English- and German-speaking worlds.

Eclectic business thinking interview series

Stories Connecting Dots with Markus Andrezak

Roman Pichler

I don’t really dare to introduce Roman. He is such a big name in Agile Product Management. Since his beginnings in Scrum, he was totally focused: Scrum it will be, Product it will be - and everything that belongs to it. No more, no less. Clarity. In the field of Agile Product Management, he is really known for his great Scrum Product Owner courses, but also his books. His latest book is called  Strategize and is all about product strategy. Unlike with many other books on strategy, what Roman accomplishes with his book, is to get the topic out of the vague. He gives clear cut advice in an otherwise often blurry topic. Knowing Roman for many years, it actually took me until this interview to actually decode one of his main qualities: Calm and certainty. Roman, in the best sense, gives you the clarity and certainty you expect from a teacher. While many teachers may bring you to the brink of doubt, Roman in a very calm, distinct and respectful way tells you what he found out to be the core of any topic he writes about. He really helps you to accept this things and go on with them. While I sometimes struggle and have to tell the world about all the different aspects of a topic, Roman already did all the thinking and came to a conclusion. And that helps. He does not leave out the rest of the truth, he just helps you to focus on the core and makes it easy to take the next step in your journey. I guess, it also has to do with his experience: he seen them all and has been in many contexts. He is running his brand as a business since 2006 and was amongst the first Certified Scrum Trainers in Europe. He really was amongst the pioneers and saw the potential when nothing was yet clear. He also writes a prominent blog on his website. These days, his focus is on leadership and product portfolio topics. It is also the topic of his newest blog posts on his blog. The Interview During the podcast we go through the following topics:  What is a product strategy? Ways to work on product strategy in the context of new products Working on existing, mature products How to work with Roadmaps What was the writing process for Srrategize? What’s next from Roman?  Citations Here some citations from the conversation:  "The main challenge initially really is to get to a launch": On why focus and a minimal good enough product is needed in the beginning. "What good enough means, what minimal means, depends very much on the innovation we’re dealing with." "There is a correlation between the amount of time we spend on something and the level of attachment that results": On why it is psychologically so hard to change plans, even though we know it is necessary. "Two aspects are important: Do we have the right skills? And: are people empowered to do the product strategy work?" Often times, senior management is doing the product strategy work, which limits the strength and growth of the company. Management should do the business strategy and let the product department do the product strategy.“  Links   The home of Roman’s company  Roman's blog Roman’s LinkedIn Profile Lots of tools and resources that Roman invented and provides for free, e.g. the Product Vision Board template, a template for goal oriented GO Roadmaps, his Product Management Framework (a structured approach to ordering the disciplines and capabilities involved in product work) and much much more!  Strategize - Roman’s latest book, self published in 2016. Buy it! Read it!   Agile Product Management with Scrum - Roman’s 2nd book, published with Addison Wesley in its Mike Cohn Signature Series, a  German version is also available -  Scrum: Agiles Projektmanagement erfolgreich einsetzen, published with d.punkt  Oh, if you like the music in the background, it is my first try at doing the music myself.

I don’t really dare to introduce Roman. He is such a big name in Agile Product Management. Since his beginnings in Scrum, he was totally focused: Scrum it will be, Product it will be - and everything that belongs to it. No more, no less. Clarity. In the field of Agile Product Management, he is really known for his great Scrum Product Owner courses, but also his books. His latest book is called <a href="https://www.amazon.de/Strategize-Product-Strategy-Roadmap-Practices/dp/0993499201/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> Strategize</a> and is all about product strategy. Unlike with many other books on strategy, what Roman accomplishes with his book, is to get the topic out of the vague. He gives clear cut advice in an otherwise often blurry topic. Knowing Roman for many years, it actually took me until this interview to actually decode one of his main qualities: Calm and certainty. Roman, in the best sense, gives you the clarity and certainty you expect from a teacher. While many teachers may bring you to the brink of doubt, Roman in a very calm, distinct and respectful way tells you what he found out to be the core of any topic he writes about. He really helps you to accept this things and go on with them. While I sometimes struggle and have to tell the world about all the different aspects of a topic, Roman already did all the thinking and came to a conclusion. And that helps. He does not leave out the rest of the truth, he just helps you to focus on the core and makes it easy to take the next step in your journey. I guess, it also has to do with his experience: he seen them all and has been in many contexts. He is running his brand as a business since 2006 and was amongst the first Certified Scrum Trainers in Europe. He really was amongst the pioneers and saw the potential when nothing was yet clear. He also writes a prominent <a href="romanpichler.com/blog" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">blog</a> on his <a href="romanpichler.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">website</a>. These days, his focus is on leadership and product portfolio topics. It is also the topic of his newest blog posts on his blog. The Interview During the podcast we go through the following topics: <ul> <li>What is a product strategy?</li> <li>Ways to work on product strategy in the context of new products</li> <li>Working on existing, mature products</li> <li>How to work with Roadmaps</li> <li>What was the writing process for Srrategize?</li> <li>What’s next from Roman?</li> </ul> Citations Here some citations from the conversation: <ul> <li>"The main challenge initially really is to get to a launch": On why focus and a minimal good enough product is needed in the beginning.</li> <li>"What good enough means, what minimal means, depends very much on the innovation we’re dealing with."</li> <li>"There is a correlation between the amount of time we spend on something and the level of attachment that results": On why it is psychologically so hard to change plans, even though we know it is necessary.</li> <li>"Two aspects are important: Do we have the right skills? And: are people empowered to do the product strategy work?" Often times, senior management is doing the product strategy work, which limits the strength and growth of the company. Management should do the business strategy and let the product department do the product strategy.“</li> </ul> Links  <ul> <li>The home of <a href="romanpichler.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Roman’s company</a> </li> <li>Roman's <a href="http://romanpichler.com/blog" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">blog</a></li> <li>Roman’s <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/romanpichler/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">LinkedIn Profile</a></li> <li>Lots of <a href="https://www.romanpichler.com/tools/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">tools and resources</a> that Roman invented and provides for free, e.g. the <a href="https://www.romanpichler.com/tools/vision-board/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Product Vision Board</a> template, a template for goal oriented <a href="https://www.romanpichler.com/tools/product-roadmap/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">GO Roadmaps</a>, his <a href="https://www.romanpichler.com/tools/product-management-framework/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Product Management Framework</a> (a structured approach to ordering the disciplines and capabilities involved in product work) and much much more!</li> <li><a href="https://www.amazon.de/Strategize-Product-Strategy-Roadmap-Practices/dp/0993499201/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> Strategize</a> - Roman’s latest book, self published in 2016. Buy it! Read it! </li> <li><a href="https://www.amazon.de/Agile-Product-Management-Scrum-Addison-Wesley-ebook/dp/B003BW0C9I/ref=la_B00359XCV2_1_3?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1520155250&amp;sr=1-3" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> Agile Product Management with Scrum</a> - Roman’s 2nd book, published with Addison Wesley in its Mike Cohn Signature Series, a <a href="https://www.amazon.de/Agile-Produktmanagement-mit-Scrum-Erfolgreich-ebook/dp/B00IA01VAA/ref=la_B00359XCV2_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1520155499&amp;sr=1-1" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> German version</a> is also available -</li> <li><a href="https://www.amazon.de/Scrum-Agiles-Projektmanagement-erfolgreich-einsetzen-ebook/dp/B019IKAARU/ref=la_B00359XCV2_1_2?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1520155250&amp;sr=1-2" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> Scrum: Agiles Projektmanagement erfolgreich einsetzen</a>, published with d.punkt</li> </ul> Oh, if you like the music in the background, it is my first try at doing the music myself.

Ep. 16: Roman Pichler - Strategize

Fridtjof „Fridel“ Detzner hat die letzten 18 Jahre mit seinen Freunden daran gearbeitet von einem Bauernhof aus die Voraussetzungen für Jimdo zu schaffen und dann Jimdo mit aufgebaut. Dort hilft er auch noch ein bisschen mit, er sucht aber nach neuen Feldern.  Fridtjof „Fridel“ Detzner hat die letzten 18 Jahre mit seinen Freunden daran gearbeitet von einem Bauernhof aus die Voraussetzungen für Jimdo zu schaffen und dann Jimdo mitkönnen aufgebaut. Dort hilft er auch noch ein bisschen mit, er sucht aber nach neuen Feldern. Darum hat Fridel ein Jahr hinter sich, dass anders war als anderen vorher. Er ist mit einem Fernsehteam durch die Welt gereist um für die Serie Founders Valley zu drehen. Sie wird weltweit ausgestrahlt und Du kannst sie auch  auf youtube anschauen. Dafür ist das Team monatelang durch die Welt gefahren. In anderen Kulturen und Kontexten wurde geschaut,  was „Gründen“ dort bedeutet was Gründer dort antreibt welche Probleme Gründer und die Gesellschaft dort haben ob esMuster von Gemeinsamkeiten mit Startups bei uns gibt  Und wenn einer eine Reise tut, dann kann er was erzählen. Und hier erzählt Fridel uns über die Erfahrungen in den anderen Ländern, und was diese Erfahrungen mit ihm machen und zu welchen Erkenntnissen und Konsequenzen sie ihnen treiben. Wir hören von Gründergeschichten im Kontext von Mangel und instabilen Gesellschaften und extremem Kontrast von Armut und Reichtum. Er erzählt von Sein und Schein und vom Kontrast zwischen Erwartung und echter Erfahrung. Wir hören von Glück und Unglück und ihrer Nähe zueinander und von ihren Geschwistern Erfüllung und Trott. Wir stellen fest, dass einiges was spießig scheint für uns überraschend Sinn machen kann, genauso wie Dinge, die zu „corporate“ erscheinen. Aber auch darüber, dass vieles nur im Machen (und dann im Reflektieren) gelernt werden kann. So wie Fridel es meistens macht. Diese Episode hat mir besonders Spaß gemacht: Fridel und ich kennen uns seit langem und wir haben einiges zusammen gemacht. Wir teilen aber auch viele Interessen und Einstellungen im „Beruf“ und im Rest des Lebens miteinander. Vielleicht hört man es. Viel Spaß bei dieser sehr persönlichen Folge von Stories Connecting Dots. Wenn es Dir gefällt, empfiehl die Folge und den Podcast bitte weiter und schicke mir Feedback und Ideen. Gern aber auch, wenn etwas für sich nicht stimmt! Hilf mir und schicke ein Review mit 5 Sternen an iTunes! Bis in ein paar Wochen mit Folge 16! Links - Founders Valley bei der Deutschen Welle - Founders Valley  bei youtube - Simon Sinek’s  Ted Talk „How Great Leaders Inspire Action“, den Fridel mehrfach anspricht. -  Das Buch „Start with Why!“ dazu von Simon Sinek

Fridtjof „Fridel“ Detzner hat die letzten 18 Jahre mit seinen Freunden daran gearbeitet von einem Bauernhof aus die Voraussetzungen für Jimdo zu schaffen und dann Jimdo mit aufgebaut. Dort hilft er auch noch ein bisschen mit, er sucht aber nach neuen Feldern. Fridtjof „Fridel“ Detzner hat die letzten 18 Jahre mit seinen Freunden daran gearbeitet von einem Bauernhof aus die Voraussetzungen für Jimdo zu schaffen und dann Jimdo mitkönnen aufgebaut. Dort hilft er auch noch ein bisschen mit, er sucht aber nach neuen Feldern. Darum hat Fridel ein Jahr hinter sich, dass anders war als anderen vorher. Er ist mit einem Fernsehteam durch die Welt gereist um für die Serie <a href="http://dw.com/foundersvalley" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Founders Valley</a> zu drehen. Sie wird weltweit ausgestrahlt und Du kannst sie auch <a href="https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLovlAKbQVz6CgL-YYNJSD7lspCSq6d38R" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> auf youtube anschauen</a>. Dafür ist das Team monatelang durch die Welt gefahren. In anderen Kulturen und Kontexten wurde geschaut, <ul> <li>was „Gründen“ dort bedeutet</li> <li>was Gründer dort antreibt</li> <li>welche Probleme Gründer und die Gesellschaft dort haben</li> <li>ob esMuster von Gemeinsamkeiten mit Startups bei uns gibt</li> </ul> Und wenn einer eine Reise tut, dann kann er was erzählen. Und hier erzählt Fridel uns über die Erfahrungen in den anderen Ländern, und was diese Erfahrungen mit ihm machen und zu welchen Erkenntnissen und Konsequenzen sie ihnen treiben. Wir hören von Gründergeschichten im Kontext von Mangel und instabilen Gesellschaften und extremem Kontrast von Armut und Reichtum. Er erzählt von Sein und Schein und vom Kontrast zwischen Erwartung und echter Erfahrung. Wir hören von Glück und Unglück und ihrer Nähe zueinander und von ihren Geschwistern Erfüllung und Trott. Wir stellen fest, dass einiges was spießig scheint für uns überraschend Sinn machen kann, genauso wie Dinge, die zu „corporate“ erscheinen. Aber auch darüber, dass vieles nur im Machen (und dann im Reflektieren) gelernt werden kann. So wie Fridel es meistens macht. Diese Episode hat mir besonders Spaß gemacht: Fridel und ich kennen uns seit langem und wir haben einiges zusammen gemacht. Wir teilen aber auch viele Interessen und Einstellungen im „Beruf“ und im Rest des Lebens miteinander. Vielleicht hört man es. Viel Spaß bei dieser sehr persönlichen Folge von Stories Connecting Dots. Wenn es Dir gefällt, empfiehl die Folge und den Podcast bitte weiter und schicke mir Feedback und Ideen. Gern aber auch, wenn etwas für sich nicht stimmt! Hilf mir und schicke ein Review mit 5 Sternen an iTunes! Bis in ein paar Wochen mit Folge 16! Links - <a href="http://dw.com/foundersvalley" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Founders Valley</a> bei der Deutschen Welle - Founders Valley <a href="https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLovlAKbQVz6CgL-YYNJSD7lspCSq6d38R" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> bei youtube</a> - Simon Sinek’s <a href="https://www.ted.com/talks/simon_sinek_how_great_leaders_inspire_action?language=de" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> Ted Talk „How Great Leaders Inspire Action“</a>, den Fridel mehrfach anspricht. - <a href="https://www.amazon.de/Start-Why-Leaders-Inspire-Everyone/dp/1591846447/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1516982129&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=simon+sinek+start+with+why" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> Das Buch „Start with Why!“</a> dazu von Simon Sinek

Ep. 15. - Fridtjof Detzner: Founders Valley

Christopher Avery

Episode 14: Christopher Avery - The Responsibility Process    This episode is quiet. Quiet and deep. I am happy that Christopher Avery took the time and explained the Responsibility Process to us. I will let Christopher explain it in the podcast - the topic is complex, deep and sensitive. He's much better in this than I am. I think it is important to try to wrap your head around this model which might change your understanding of responsibility from a model of blame and shame to a model of freedom to choose and to be conscious. Some quotes from the podcast "We've been taught that to be a responsible person, you have to give up your impractical ambitions and do something more practical" "How are you?" is an awkward question for Europeans, we tend to answer. Here is Christopher's reply to the question: "How are you?" "I am free, powerful and at choice, thank you!" "Conscious choices on repetitive behaviour do have effect. Central ingredients to the Responsibility Process "Intention, Awareness and Confront!" Which answers does the responsibility process bring for teams? "A team to really be called a team is when a group of people rise to the occasion of shared responsibility" At ca. 1:01 Christopher comes up with a great summary of what responsibility means for teams. "It's not so much that we divide accountabilities, it is more that we feel aligned and integrated as a unit towards something". "For us to be successful, we have to actually get past accountability processes and get to the place of real time communication around shared ownership for something bigger than myself." Work Life Integration "Work life balance is a metaphor of scarcity. I prefer work life integration, which means that

Episode 14: Christopher Avery - The Responsibility Process This episode is quiet. Quiet and deep. I am happy that Christopher Avery took the time and explained the Responsibility Process to us. I will let Christopher explain it in the podcast - the topic is complex, deep and sensitive. He's much better in this than I am. I think it is important to try to wrap your head around this model which might change your understanding of responsibility from a model of blame and shame to a model of freedom to choose and to be conscious. Some quotes from the podcast "We've been taught that to be a responsible person, you have to give up your impractical ambitions and do something more practical" "How are you?" is an awkward question for Europeans, we tend to answer. Here is Christopher's reply to the question: "How are you?" "I am free, powerful and at choice, thank you!" "Conscious choices on repetitive behaviour do have effect. Central ingredients to the Responsibility Process "Intention, Awareness and Confront!" Which answers does the responsibility process bring for teams? "A team to really be called a team is when a group of people rise to the occasion of shared responsibility" At ca. 1:01 Christopher comes up with a great summary of what responsibility means for teams. "It's not so much that we divide accountabilities, it is more that we feel aligned and integrated as a unit towards something". "For us to be successful, we have to actually get past accountability processes and get to the place of real time communication around shared ownership for something bigger than myself." Work Life Integration "Work life balance is a metaphor of scarcity. I prefer work life integration, which means that

Ep. 14 - Christopher Avery: The Responsibility Process

John Cutler

This time my guest is John Cutler. He is the hardest working man in product business. At least he is the hardest and most writing man in product business. since ages he writes, thinks and muses about things he observes and wonders about in what we see as our jobs in product work. John might actually really be one of the hardest working men in our business. On top of writing on a nearly daily basis, he has a plain normal day job. Well, what’s normal. He is Senior Product Manager for Search and Relevance at Zendesk. Asked how he gets all of this done, he says he needs it. He says, he accepts mediocrity in his writing to get anything done. That’s close to the things Denise said in the last podcast. What I really love about what John writes is his (in the best sense of the word) pragmatic and un-ideological view. I see this in many people who still have a day job. Not being connected to and being reliant on consulting and methods and marketing sometimes helps bring things to the point. Not only does John write a lot, he writes good stuff as well. A couple of months ago he wrote a blog post on feature factories, places where we don’t feel the impact of what we are doing. Listen to how that came about and how we take that topic to more interesting insights on how innovation in product might soon occur in unexpected places. And now, please join our chat! Have fun!  Chapters  0:00:00 Why and how John writes such a lot 00:08:58 Context and tensions in the product world 00:11:44 How the most common sense things can be useless in a different context 00:18:15 The common thread in John's writing and viewpoints 00:21:52 Tangible vs. digital products 00:26:50 The huge story of the feature factory and what we learned from it    Chapter Notes 00:00:00 Why and how John writes such a lot "I am a pattern matcher .. I go through my pattern library" "The first thing I had to do was to accept I wouldn't get it right every time" "It starts with an emotion in lots of cases" "I like to ask why! when I was in school, I was part of a performance and my costume was a question mark on the top of my head." 00:08:58 Context and tensions in the product world "I think as product professionals one of our core skills is understanding the fitness landscape." "When I think of hiring, the no. 1 thing I look for is 'does the person display a strong ability for sense making and understands systems thinking and how things are fitting together'?." "You know, systems thinking can be a bit of a curse, too … there's the 'why-askers' and there's the 'shut-up-and get-this-shit-done-people' and you need this balance between those things." 00:11:44 How the most common sense things can be useless in a different context "When we put up a large portfolio board, all the frontline engineers immediately loved it, as they could see what's coming down the line. When the first executives saw it, they resisted, they actually wanted it to be taken down." "You have to be yourself. Because if you're trying to not be yourself - unless you're really good at that - you gonna be less than yourself." 00:18:15 The common thread in John's writing and viewpoints "I like all the crazy diverse engineers that I work with, the UX folks I work with, I like the hackers, I like the problem solvers, I like the designers. And if there's one theme - I guess I have a point of view - I think we make better products that way." "It was actually a satire on how people can act like they let their team participate while they're not. Like: tell your team that you build an MVP to iterate on it and then don't iterate on it. And you'll steal their soul. Or take credit all the time without mentioning the team. Or: organise a hackney for one day so that everybody feels great for one day and then get back to work." 00:21:52 Tangible vs. digital products "It's a service ecology. And when I say that I like that, because I think products may be like touch points. But if you think about it, I think that this might bring back the idea of craftsmanship. The idea of being people again and again. … And I think that many designers … there is something beautiful about delivering the thing … and I value this idea. But what I also love is to see this thing evolve." "And often designers and other people see agile development as a curse. They think that this is antithetical to delivering a wonderful experience. And meanwhile I see it as an amazing opportunity. The problem is not to reduce the complexity in your product, not to make it a Frankenproduct. But it doesn't need to be that way." 00:26:50 The huge story of the Feature Factory "No everybody wants to take the adventure the same way" "I think we do junior product people and people working in this a little bit of a disservice by training them on the highly transactional type of work in exclusion of some of the systems thinking stuff." "A feature factory is an environment is optimised for output. -and which is optimised for output over understanding if those things work." "It is optimised for output but on a human level you're not sensing the impact, you're only sensing the cost." "An interesting problem is rapid growth. Let's say the problem you're trying to solve requires 160 people to work on your particular problem. … If you want to copy Spotify, what you should copy is to get Agile coaches in. … What I love about Spotify is that they say they are bad at big projects." "We've moved past custom and genesis type efforts. We're in the product/commodity era. And so the innovation might come in other dimensions to do that. And, again, it always comes at a cost. Links  John on Medium John's post on "Feature Factories" John’s post "To the Drifters, Makers, Why-Askers, and Systems Thinkers…" Hacker Noon on Medium, where many of John's posts are published  Oops, the ending sounds like more and it seems we have to explore a little bit more at some time on how different stages of genesis, custom, product and commodity require different vectors of innovation. So, let's see and hope that there will be more on this in the future! This chat really was a fun experience and incredibly easy to edit. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did. And I hope this also made you a little bit hungry for more! And I also hope that - if you didn't know John before - what I meant with pragmatic and un-ideological. But I also see these statements as so so including and inviting. If you enjoyed this episode as much as I did, please recommend us, send us feedback on any of the channels we are available and give us that review on iTunes and whatever helps us to reach out! I hope you listen again in a couple of weeks, when it's time for episode 12!

This time my guest is <a href="https://twitter.com/johncutlefish" rel="noopener nofollow" target="_blank">John Cutler</a>. He is the hardest working man in product business. At least he is the hardest and most writing man in product business. since ages he writes, thinks and muses about things he observes and wonders about in what we see as our jobs in product work. John might actually really be one of the hardest working men in our business. On top of writing on a nearly daily basis, he has a plain normal day job. Well, what’s normal. He is Senior Product Manager for Search and Relevance at Zendesk. Asked how he gets all of this done, he says he needs it. He says, he accepts mediocrity in his writing to get anything done. That’s close to the things Denise said in the last podcast. What I really love about what John writes is his (in the best sense of the word) pragmatic and un-ideological view. I see this in many people who still have a day job. Not being connected to and being reliant on consulting and methods and marketing sometimes helps bring things to the point. Not only does John write a lot, he writes good stuff as well. A couple of months ago he wrote a blog post on feature factories, places where we don’t feel the impact of what we are doing. Listen to how that came about and how we take that topic to more interesting insights on how innovation in product might soon occur in unexpected places. And now, please join our chat! Have fun! Chapters <ol> <li>0:00:00 Why and how John writes such a lot</li> <li>00:08:58 Context and tensions in the product world</li> <li>00:11:44 How the most common sense things can be useless in a different context</li> <li>00:18:15 The common thread in John's writing and viewpoints</li> <li>00:21:52 Tangible vs. digital products</li> <li>00:26:50 The huge story of the feature factory and what we learned from it</li> </ol>   Chapter Notes 00:00:00 Why and how John writes such a lot "I am a pattern matcher .. I go through my pattern library" "The first thing I had to do was to accept I wouldn't get it right every time" "It starts with an emotion in lots of cases" "I like to ask why! when I was in school, I was part of a performance and my costume was a question mark on the top of my head." 00:08:58 Context and tensions in the product world "I think as product professionals one of our core skills is understanding the fitness landscape." "When I think of hiring, the no. 1 thing I look for is 'does the person display a strong ability for sense making and understands systems thinking and how things are fitting together'?." "You know, systems thinking can be a bit of a curse, too … there's the 'why-askers' and there's the 'shut-up-and get-this-shit-done-people' and you need this balance between those things." 00:11:44 How the most common sense things can be useless in a different context "When we put up a large portfolio board, all the frontline engineers immediately loved it, as they could see what's coming down the line. When the first executives saw it, they resisted, they actually wanted it to be taken down." "You have to be yourself. Because if you're trying to not be yourself - unless you're really good at that - you gonna be less than yourself." 00:18:15 The common thread in John's writing and viewpoints "I like all the crazy diverse engineers that I work with, the UX folks I work with, I like the hackers, I like the problem solvers, I like the designers. And if there's one theme - I guess I have a point of view - I think we make better products that way." "It was actually a satire on how people can act like they let their team participate while they're not. Like: tell your team that you build an MVP to iterate on it and then don't iterate on it. And you'll steal their soul. Or take credit all the time without mentioning the team. Or: organise a hackney for one day so that everybody feels great for one day and then get back to work." 00:21:52 Tangible vs. digital products "It's a service ecology. And when I say that I like that, because I think products may be like touch points. But if you think about it, I think that this might bring back the idea of craftsmanship. The idea of being people again and again. … And I think that many designers … there is something beautiful about delivering the thing … and I value this idea. But what I also love is to see this thing evolve." "And often designers and other people see agile development as a curse. They think that this is antithetical to delivering a wonderful experience. And meanwhile I see it as an amazing opportunity. The problem is not to reduce the complexity in your product, not to make it a Frankenproduct. But it doesn't need to be that way." 00:26:50 The huge story of the Feature Factory "No everybody wants to take the adventure the same way" "I think we do junior product people and people working in this a little bit of a disservice by training them on the highly transactional type of work in exclusion of some of the systems thinking stuff." "A feature factory is an environment is optimised for output. -and which is optimised for output over understanding if those things work." "It is optimised for output but on a human level you're not sensing the impact, you're only sensing the cost." "An interesting problem is rapid growth. Let's say the problem you're trying to solve requires 160 people to work on your particular problem. … If you want to copy Spotify, what you should copy is to get Agile coaches in. … What I love about Spotify is that they say they are bad at big projects." "We've moved past custom and genesis type efforts. We're in the product/commodity era. And so the innovation might come in other dimensions to do that. And, again, it always comes at a cost. Links <ul> <li><a href="https://medium.com/@johnpcutler" rel="noopener nofollow" target="_blank">John on Medium</a></li> <li>John's post on "<a href="https://hackernoon.com/12-signs-youre-working-in-a-feature-factory-44a5b938d6a2" rel="noopener nofollow" target="_blank">Feature Factories</a>"</li> <li>John’s post "<a href="https://hackernoon.com/to-the-drifters-makers-why-askers-and-systems-thinkers-d6bf4991dd9" rel="noopener nofollow" target="_blank">To the Drifters, Makers, Why-Askers, and Systems Thinkers…</a>"</li> <li><a href="https://hackernoon.com" rel="noopener nofollow" target="_blank">Hacker Noon</a> on Medium, where many of John's posts are published</li> </ul> Oops, the ending sounds like more and it seems we have to explore a little bit more at some time on how different stages of genesis, custom, product and commodity require different vectors of innovation. So, let's see and hope that there will be more on this in the future! This chat really was a fun experience and incredibly easy to edit. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did. And I hope this also made you a little bit hungry for more! And I also hope that - if you didn't know John before - what I meant with pragmatic and un-ideological. But I also see these statements as so so including and inviting. If you enjoyed this episode as much as I did, please recommend us, send us feedback on any of the channels we are available and give us that review on iTunes and whatever helps us to reach out! I hope you listen again in a couple of weeks, when it's time for episode 12!

Ep. 11: John Cutler - Writing and Thinking on Product work

Jan Chipchase

I am incredibly happy and proud to have Jan Chipchase as the guest of this show! I have followed Jan’s work and steps since years and years. Then, he was first the Executive Creative Director of Global Insights at frog and then Principal Scientist at Nokia. For me, it all started when I wanted to get deeper into understanding how I can learn about the clients that use my products. When guessing wasn’t enough and guessing how to get closer also wasn’t enough. I sucked up all the writing and presentations by Jan, that I could find in the Internet. For years, I (we!) had to guess how he is doing things and were impressed by his decisiveness and his uncompromised search for exploring the boundaries of what he (we) knows and how he approaches extending that knowledge through experiences. He pushed the boundaries of field research and goes to where the potential clients of his clients are: From the streets of Tokyo to the highlands of the Hindu Kush or small towns in Zimbabwe. He does that with what he calls Pop Up studios. Now, finally, after 6 years of work he has funded his next book - The Field Study Handbook - on kickstarter. And he has done this with huge success but much more with lots of experiments - again - and the most interesting kickstarter rewards, like a walk on The Hindu Kush with him or a three day mountain retreat. Also, beyond owning, managing and driving his innovation and research consultancy, Studio D, he „discovered“ his own luggage brand - driven from the requirements of his road work. This company - SDRTraveller - now also, has transformed from an - as he says - expensive hobby or side line project - to a business. Please enter with me, the world of Jan Chipchase, and learn how he helps companies discover what to do next, drive their organizational wisdom and how he makes all this his reality - in places ranging from San Francisco, Tokyo and Berlin to Tajikistan and Afghanistan. Chapters  00:00:26 Intro - Those Projects 00:11:04 Organizational Wisdom - How to figure out what to do next 00:19:14 The Art &amp; Science of those projects 00:28:17 What can we learn from remote experiences on the edges 00:32:17 Many ways of doing research - from light to intense 00:36:59 Finding people for those projects 00:40:01 Creating a luggage brand: SDR Traveller 00:45:30 The Field Study Handbook  Chapter Notes 00:00:26 Intro - Those Projects „(Our clients) normally have a lot of data at hands that reveals what people are doing and how people are doing. And what we provide is the Why.“ „I personally want to push myself and part of that is taking me into places that I am less comfortable“ „Something I learned a while ago: If you are the first person to go into a place and start to ask questions, you can have a disproportionate impact, because the learning curve is really steep. I love to be in that environment where I know little and have to get a lot done.“ 00:11:04 Organizational Wisdom - How to figure out what to do next The cone of possibility - the sense of where an organization is now and what it thinks is possible in the future. Work on the fringe of the cone of possibility: „Turning a hunch into data into information into knowledge into insight - and that’s typically what that first phase of a project is.“ „A really great project will turn that insight into organizational wisdom“. „Sometimes the highest accolade for such an early phase of a project is that people say that it’s common sense.“ „And then, of course, common sense changes over time“ „What we as a studio do, is make them understand (the things) they can not measure.“ 00:19:14 The Art &amp; Science of those projects „How do you structure projects so that every one from the CEO down to the intern know they will come away from a project knowing they experienced something they won’t experience again in their life?“ „And everyone who was in it will become an advocate …“ „The science is understanding how humans absorb information and energy levels and all these other things. And the art of it is when to step away from process and let things play out.“ 00:28:17 What can we learn from remote experiences on the edges The example of understanding money transactions on mobile devices in Zimbabwe. 00:32:17 Many ways of doing research - from light to. intense „There are many different ways to figure out what to do next.“ „Everyone who sells a process without trying to figure out what the client wants is an idiot, frankly - or is a traditional consultancy.“ 00:36:59 Finding people for those projects „Two people flying in, hire a local team of 10 in three cities, then bouncing between these local teams - that’s a fairly typical setup." „In my experience, I only need one local I trust to build up a local team.“ „I would hope that pretty much every person we’ve hired over the years, we could go back to and they’d be comfortable continuing to work with us.“ 00:40:01 Creating a luggage brand: SDR Traveller "The trigger for it was: I was on a trip to Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Tajikistan. And the piece of luggage I had, which is their really nice ArcTeryx bag: Two people died to steal it and every single boarder crossing I went through they searched it inside out. And I said: OK, I ant a piece of luggage that people ignore and does the job.“ „Ultimately I created an absolutely minimal Duffle called the D3. … It is designed to be ignored, fundamentally. … when people see it, we want them to dismiss it.“ „We started the brand three years ago, and then last year ago it transformed from an expensive hobby into a business.“ „We have a bunch of products that are quirky, wonderfully quirky.“ The story of the money bags: „We built the product based on a real need, and then we brought the product out there and it’s really interesting to see the people who buy that stuff. … it’s what you would imagine and then times 10 in terms of diversity of use cases and places.“ 00:45:30 The Field Study Handbook „With this projected, I decided I want it to take as long as took. I thought it would take two years. The whole project, what it took was six years. … it was for three years, every single day between one and eight hours.“ „And then, 2 years ago, I decided that I want to design the book.“ „This project was not about hitting a deadline. It was about taking as long as it took to get the job done. And recognizing that I will probably never be able to do another project like this again and recognizing that I should probably enjoy the moment.“ "And then Dan said I should consider kickstarter. And then two weeks before we did the kickstarter, we said, maybe should launch a kickstarter.“ „Two weeks before we hadn’t anything in place. … we created a bunch of rewards. I woke up, I think, at two am. I set the reward total two 22.000. We thought that would be right goal to aim for. I have to say, I never thought I will get the money to pay the book off. And that’s not ultimately the motivation. Then at 6am we pressed the button and started the kickstarter. Went away and had a coffee. Came back and 4 hours later we hit the goal.“ „The reason to work with kickstarter is really to learn how kickstarter works.“ „(The motivation to put artifacts out there) is really driven by the motivation to attract interesting conversations. Because interesting conversations lead to projects. And this projects then affect ten of thousands or millions of people.“ „(One of the rewards) is to sign up to a borderland expedition, which is to Tadjikistan. And if you’re maybe a little bit more on the edge, a reward is a short walk in the Hindu Kush. So: come with me to Afghanistan.“ „When someone clicks on that button that says „I pledge 10.000 Dollars“, really, they are committing to something that is far greater than merely a trip. And I’ve been through it myself and I understand the psychology of it. That process is in itself a thing that will shape who you are.“ Links to people, things and places mentioned Jan’s activities  Jan’s homepage Studio D Radiodurans - Jan’s Design and Innovation agency The Field Study Handbook, here on  kickstarter Luggage by SDR Traveller „The Fixer List“ Jan’s book „Hidden in Plain Sight“  People  Craig Mod Lee John Phillips - the Illustrator of The Field Study Handbook  Presentations &amp; Articles by Jan   61 Glimpes of the Future  A Year in Reflection  Twelve Concepts in Autonomous Mobility „What if you could take the Studio out of the Studio“ - presentation on his process an methods, especially the Pop Up Studio „The anthropology of mobile phones“  Now, with this being sad, if it is still before May 27 2017, I urge you to visit the  kickstarter page of The Field Study handbook and see which reward you want to choose rather than if you want to choose any. Participate while it works. If you listen to this podcast later than that, I am sure there will somehow be a way to obtain the book. An epic like this deserves it. In any case, take a look at the luggage by SDR Traveller and whatever might have triggered your interest. Also, the homepage of Studio D and Jan have great inspiring content, well written and enriched with awesome fotos, giving a great impression of what is possible. If you liked this episode, please don’t forget to share my podcast, send me feedback or give me that five star review on iTunes! If you are new to this podcast, have a look at the older episodes. There are some gems amongst them. Thanks for your interest and hear you soon! Markus

I am incredibly happy and proud to have Jan Chipchase as the guest of this show! I have followed Jan’s work and steps since years and years. Then, he was first the Executive Creative Director of Global Insights at frog and then Principal Scientist at Nokia. For me, it all started when I wanted to get deeper into understanding how I can learn about the clients that use my products. When guessing wasn’t enough and guessing how to get closer also wasn’t enough. I sucked up all the writing and presentations by Jan, that I could find in the Internet. For years, I (we!) had to guess how he is doing things and were impressed by his decisiveness and his uncompromised search for exploring the boundaries of what he (we) knows and how he approaches extending that knowledge through experiences. He pushed the boundaries of field research and goes to where the potential clients of his clients are: From the streets of Tokyo to the highlands of the Hindu Kush or small towns in Zimbabwe. He does that with what he calls Pop Up studios. Now, finally, after 6 years of work he has funded his next book - The Field Study Handbook - on kickstarter. And he has done this with huge success but much more with lots of experiments - again - and the most interesting kickstarter rewards, like a walk on The Hindu Kush with him or a three day mountain retreat. Also, beyond owning, managing and driving his innovation and research consultancy, Studio D, he „discovered“ his own luggage brand - driven from the requirements of his road work. This company - SDRTraveller - now also, has transformed from an - as he says - expensive hobby or side line project - to a business. Please enter with me, the world of Jan Chipchase, and learn how he helps companies discover what to do next, drive their organizational wisdom and how he makes all this his reality - in places ranging from San Francisco, Tokyo and Berlin to Tajikistan and Afghanistan. Chapters <ul> <li>00:00:26 Intro - Those Projects</li> <li>00:11:04 Organizational Wisdom - How to figure out what to do next</li> <li>00:19:14 The Art &amp; Science of those projects</li> <li>00:28:17 What can we learn from remote experiences on the edges</li> <li>00:32:17 Many ways of doing research - from light to intense</li> <li>00:36:59 Finding people for those projects</li> <li>00:40:01 Creating a luggage brand: SDR Traveller</li> <li>00:45:30 The Field Study Handbook</li> </ul> Chapter Notes 00:00:26 Intro - Those Projects „(Our clients) normally have a lot of data at hands that reveals what people are doing and how people are doing. And what we provide is the Why.“ „I personally want to push myself and part of that is taking me into places that I am less comfortable“ „Something I learned a while ago: If you are the first person to go into a place and start to ask questions, you can have a disproportionate impact, because the learning curve is really steep. I love to be in that environment where I know little and have to get a lot done.“ 00:11:04 Organizational Wisdom - How to figure out what to do next The cone of possibility - the sense of where an organization is now and what it thinks is possible in the future. Work on the fringe of the cone of possibility: „Turning a hunch into data into information into knowledge into insight - and that’s typically what that first phase of a project is.“ „A really great project will turn that insight into organizational wisdom“. „Sometimes the highest accolade for such an early phase of a project is that people say that it’s common sense.“ „And then, of course, common sense changes over time“ „What we as a studio do, is make them understand (the things) they can not measure.“ 00:19:14 The Art &amp; Science of those projects „How do you structure projects so that every one from the CEO down to the intern know they will come away from a project knowing they experienced something they won’t experience again in their life?“ „And everyone who was in it will become an advocate …“ „The science is understanding how humans absorb information and energy levels and all these other things. And the art of it is when to step away from process and let things play out.“ 00:28:17 What can we learn from remote experiences on the edges The example of understanding money transactions on mobile devices in Zimbabwe. 00:32:17 Many ways of doing research - from light to. intense „There are many different ways to figure out what to do next.“ „Everyone who sells a process without trying to figure out what the client wants is an idiot, frankly - or is a traditional consultancy.“ 00:36:59 Finding people for those projects „Two people flying in, hire a local team of 10 in three cities, then bouncing between these local teams - that’s a fairly typical setup." „In my experience, I only need one local I trust to build up a local team.“ „I would hope that pretty much every person we’ve hired over the years, we could go back to and they’d be comfortable continuing to work with us.“ 00:40:01 Creating a luggage brand: SDR Traveller "The trigger for it was: I was on a trip to Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Tajikistan. And the piece of luggage I had, which is their really nice ArcTeryx bag: Two people died to steal it and every single boarder crossing I went through they searched it inside out. And I said: OK, I ant a piece of luggage that people ignore and does the job.“ „Ultimately I created an absolutely minimal Duffle called the D3. … It is designed to be ignored, fundamentally. … when people see it, we want them to dismiss it.“ „We started the brand three years ago, and then last year ago it transformed from an expensive hobby into a business.“ „We have a bunch of products that are quirky, wonderfully quirky.“ The story of the money bags: „We built the product based on a real need, and then we brought the product out there and it’s really interesting to see the people who buy that stuff. … it’s what you would imagine and then times 10 in terms of diversity of use cases and places.“ 00:45:30 The Field Study Handbook „With this projected, I decided I want it to take as long as took. I thought it would take two years. The whole project, what it took was six years. … it was for three years, every single day between one and eight hours.“ „And then, 2 years ago, I decided that I want to design the book.“ „This project was not about hitting a deadline. It was about taking as long as it took to get the job done. And recognizing that I will probably never be able to do another project like this again and recognizing that I should probably enjoy the moment.“ "And then Dan said I should consider kickstarter. And then two weeks before we did the kickstarter, we said, maybe should launch a kickstarter.“ „Two weeks before we hadn’t anything in place. … we created a bunch of rewards. I woke up, I think, at two am. I set the reward total two 22.000. We thought that would be right goal to aim for. I have to say, I never thought I will get the money to pay the book off. And that’s not ultimately the motivation. Then at 6am we pressed the button and started the kickstarter. Went away and had a coffee. Came back and 4 hours later we hit the goal.“ „The reason to work with kickstarter is really to learn how kickstarter works.“ „(The motivation to put artifacts out there) is really driven by the motivation to attract interesting conversations. Because interesting conversations lead to projects. And this projects then affect ten of thousands or millions of people.“ „(One of the rewards) is to sign up to a borderland expedition, which is to Tadjikistan. And if you’re maybe a little bit more on the edge, a reward is a short walk in the Hindu Kush. So: come with me to Afghanistan.“ „When someone clicks on that button that says „I pledge 10.000 Dollars“, really, they are committing to something that is far greater than merely a trip. And I’ve been through it myself and I understand the psychology of it. That process is in itself a thing that will shape who you are.“ Links to people, things and places mentioned Jan’s activities <ul> <li><a href="http://janchipchase.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Jan’s homepage</a></li> <li><a href="http://www.studiodradiodurans.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Studio D Radiodurans</a> - Jan’s Design and Innovation agency</li> <li><a href="https://www.thefieldstudyhandbook.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">The Field Study Handbook</a>, here on <a href="https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/janchipchase/the-field-study-handbook" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> kickstarter</a></li> <li>Luggage by <a href="http://sdrtraveller.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">SDR Traveller</a></li> <li>„<a href="http://thefixerlist.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">The Fixer List</a>“</li> <li>Jan’s book „<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Hidden-Plain-Sight-Extraordinary-Tomorrows/dp/0062125699/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Hidden in Plain Sight</a>“</li> </ul> People <ul> <li><a href="https://craigmod.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Craig Mod</a></li> <li><a href="http://www.greenhillstudios.co.uk/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Lee John Phillips</a> - the Illustrator of The Field Study Handbook</li> </ul> Presentations &amp; Articles by Jan <ul> <li><a href="https://medium.com/todays-office/6-1-glimpses-of-the-future-e3fdb510dcc1#.pj6fagmrv" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> 61 Glimpes of the Future</a></li> <li><a href="https://medium.com/todays-office/a-year-of-reflection-820d228d999c#.hcbhson3w" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> A Year in Reflection</a></li> <li><a href="https://medium.com/hidden-in-plain-sight/concepts-in-autonomous-mobility-80732bc4a44d#.1td8oqda7" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> Twelve Concepts in Autonomous Mobility</a></li> <li>„<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CFwCeEzjoJg" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">What if you could take the Studio out of the Studio</a>“ - presentation on his process an methods, especially the Pop Up Studio</li> <li>„<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qn2NR901NMY&amp;t=186s" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">The anthropology of mobile phones</a>“</li> </ul> Now, with this being sad, if it is still before May 27 2017, I urge you to visit the <a href="https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/janchipchase/the-field-study-handbook" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> kickstarter</a> page of The Field Study handbook and see which reward you want to choose rather than if you want to choose any. Participate while it works. If you listen to this podcast later than that, I am sure there will somehow be a way to obtain the book. An epic like this deserves it. In any case, take a look at the luggage by <a href="http://sdrtraveller.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">SDR Traveller</a> and whatever might have triggered your interest. Also, the <a href="http://www.studiodradiodurans.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">homepage of Studio D</a> and <a href="http://www.janchipchase.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Jan</a> have great inspiring content, well written and enriched with awesome fotos, giving a great impression of what is possible. If you liked this episode, please don’t forget to share my podcast, send me feedback or give me that five star review on iTunes! If you are new to this podcast, have a look at the older episodes. There are some gems amongst them. Thanks for your interest and hear you soon! Markus

Ep. 9: Jan Chipchase - Field Studies & What to do Next

Jeff Patton

Episode 7 - Jeff Patton - User Story Maps and the discovery of great products Another one of the greats. I follow his work since years, I integrate lots of what he does in my work. Everyone knowing me or having had a training with me, knows what he does with Story Maps. But having come up with Story Maps and having written the first book around is „this little thing“ to Jeff Patton. Jeff is really deep into product work and he has lots of thoughts to offer on Agile and especially on everything around stories and story thinking. And one of the reasons he knows all about that is because he was already there when it happened. He was in the same building with Kent Beck when Extreme Programming happened and Stories came up. He was coached by Rob Mee of Pivotal Tracker fame. So, this is not just a deep dive on stories and the Story Mapping technique that emerged form it but also some oral history on how and where it all started to happen. Nowadays, Jeff more and more dives into the discovery phase and at the end of the podcast we will hear lots about this and where this might clash with Agile or how it is taught in most cases. But what is so relaxing is that we really don’t talk much process. And I think the reason is that product is much less process than it is orthogonal to process and it is about thinking of quality, what quality means to whom, for whom we’re building things and having empathy for them. Speaking of empathy: Enjoy a nice conversation with a humble, humorous and relaxed Jeff Patton! Chapters  0:02:04 (User) Stories - the base of all 0:13:19 Documents are like vacation stories 0:31:43 Story Maps - what it is, how i emerged 0:43:10 How to teach Story Maps 0:55:34 Struggling with the backlog as a prioritised list 0:57:54 Products we like: A BMW 335 convertible, Netflix and Spotify, an EV 320 Microphone and a Sonos speaker 1:04:34 Why have (Agile) things gotta be so complicated? 1:11:44 Is software harder than software and: First off, no process is going to help you  Chapter Notes 2:04 (User) Stories - the base of it all Going down memory lane, meeting lots of now famous people, e.g. Kent Beck "People have gotten User Stories wrong from the beginning" "When I first heard the term "Stories" I thought it was stupid - what we’re doing is important stuff. Stories  … that sounds like fantasy or fiction … it doesn’t sound serious at all" "What Kent meant with stories was really stories. We should be talking with each other and telling stories about the products" "The goal is building shared understanding" "What we are talking about isn’t what to build. What we’re talking about with each other is: who’s using this product and why and what benefit they get. and understanding that we can then talk about together about what to build." "Where things go horribly wrong is when people use stories and try to do what they used to do." "So, people try to use stories as an alternative to other specification algorithms, when that’s not what they were meant to be" How stories are not precise and complete 8:22 Comparing stories and UML The promise with UML was that you had to learn UML and then you had to talk to someone who knew UML. Stories fix all this. "Stories fix all kind of crappy documentation. Because know we have humans to talk to to explain things" "I keep telling people that if you’re using stories, you have to change your process"  "The problem stories don’t solve is the way you specify. … If you’re using stories, you still have to figure out ways to specify." "I think people write documents because they don’t like to talk to each other." 11:15 Documents are like vacation photos  „The minute you write stories and hand them over without having a conversation, that’s the moment when things start to go wrong.“ 17:14 How Kent Beck never called "stories" "user stories" Rumors and misconceptions on stories and sizes and templates  How somehow people and many Scrum Master are spreading the rumor of „we have to use (User) Stories all the way   "The way Agile works is we build little things, and we work in short cycles. … But the problem is that when we build a product that is supposed to go to the market and create value it is not something we build in days." "Those things we can build in a few days hardly have value and it becomes hard to tell a story about those things" "I learned these things around 2000 and we called them stories and not user stories, and we didn’t use the term epic and you know, the user story template - we certainly didn’t use that." 23:14 How the founder of Pivotal Tracker, Rob Mee, was Jeff’s XP coach, refused using the template in his tool and now it does anyway: "I’m never gonna put that stupid template inside of Tracker … well, it’s in there now. And I’m sure not because Rob thinks it’s a good idea." "But the template falls apart super easy. … The conversations we need to have are far more sophisticated than that." "As a user I want just dumbs down all the rich conversations we need to have …" The three (or five?) C’s of stories Ron Jeffries 3 C’s: Card Conversation, Confirmation "The conversation is not about the acceptance criteria but about Who, What and Why! … It’s meant to be a bit of a back and forth." "What I see people doing these days is: Card -&gt; Conformation" Documents are contracts and with stories "we finally recognise that documents are never gonna be good enough, they’re never gonna be precise enough and what matters is understanding and the only way we get it is by talking to each other." "Shared documents aren’t shared understanding" and that will make a lot of people uncomfortable. 31:43 Story Maps - what it is, how it emerged A solution for breaking big things down that take weeks and weeks to build into little things we can build in days. The metaphor of rocks that when you break them, remain rocks … just: little rocks. Just like big stories (no matter if you call them epics or not) that when you break them down just remain … stories. "Story mapping is the thing that I used to do to get from a big idea to break it down into small parts." How story maps emerged from the technique called "User Task Model" over "Span Plan" (influenced by the Poppendiecks) to Story Maps (which name came up in a discussion with Alistair Cockbourn). How Jeff wanted to write a huge book on everything outside of Agile, but then Story Maps took off and then the small book on story Maps got bigger and bigger. A next book is planned. Jeff is not afraid, and still has lots to say. It’ll be easy. Ha! Jeff’s book has three forewords. It reflects the mantra of product work, being credited to Marty Cagan, that it’s all about the intersection between valuable, usable and feasible. The three forewords represent that by having representatives from UX - Alan Cooper, development - Martin Fowler and finally product itself - Marty Cagan. That trinity is called a Core Team and is still widely used. 43:10 How to teach Story Maps Two good ways:  Simply mapping something live and lead discussions, conversations. Mapping a morning from waking up to getting to work, then let a group mix the individual morning stories and change it, because some strange event happened, like: Getting up too late.  These are ways that lets people focus on writing down activities rather than things or functionalities. Also, it makes obvious that different people behave differently. Further it teaches how to slice and cut things away, e.g. because there is less time than usual. some things can not be sliced out (morning hygiene) but need to be thinned out. Maps are useful for still seeing the whole while we flesh out the small things. "We need details when we go into the next sprint, but we still need to be able to see the whole. Because it’s the whole that has value. That’s the real value of a map." An application in a workshop: Planning the first release of a wine shop. 55:34 Struggling with the backlog as a prioritised list "There’s a lot of things I disagree with on how Agile gets taught and used and abused. One of the things I struggle with is the way it is taught that a backlog needs to be a prioritised list." "If you think of a new product … it would be completely impossible to understand what it is … based on a prioritised list of features." "It is so valuable to see the whole. And you don’t get that in a flat backlog." "When you talk about parts of a thing, you normally need all of them." 57:54 Products we like: A BMW 335 convertible, Netflix and Spotify, an EV 320 Microphone and a Sonos speaker Trying to find out why we like them. For starters, the BMW is super impractible for where Jeff lives, as they have lots of snow. He still loves it. Netflix now works for Jeff as a traveler, because downloads are possible. "Why we encourage people to talk about why they like a product is because why you like a product has a lot to do with who you are." "The toughest choices are not what features your product has, the toughest choice is who your product is for and the really hard choice is who your product is not for." "If people really love a product, I always ask: "What did you use before?"." "When you’re using a good product, you can sorta smell the thought and care that went into creating the product." "That’s what I really worry about when we talk all about Agile and breaking things into little pieces … that we lose sight of who its for and that we lose sight of all the little things that matter so much … and start working about acceptance criteria." 1:04:34 Why have (Agile) things gotta be so complicated? While teaching discovery (e.g. in 5 day immersion workshops), Jeff realises that people no longer know, see and have empathy with their clients, users, etc. "We have to come with a lot of process junk and waste to help us manage what we’re doing when a little bit of empathy and understanding of who you’re building for goes a long way." "In a lot of contexts it’s not easy to get to the customers. And to what you say, even if we could get to them, we don’t want to. It’s not comfortable talking to those people - and it’s unnerving sometimes." 1:11:44 Is software harder than software and: First off, no process is going to help you When Apple had a problem with a new carrier, it was normal for a developer to linger around at the carrier. "At Apple it was not not unusual, no one was asking: why aren’t you at your desk? Why aren’t you writing code? It was absolutely rational to do that." At a different spot: Q: "If you think of Apple, on a range from 1 to 10 where would you put the quality they ship at Apple?" A: "I’d put it at 9." Q: "Where would you put what you ship here?" A: "About a six." Q: "If you were at Apple and you would ship a six, what do you think would happen to you? You ship 6 here all the time." A: "We celebrate that we ship all the time." Conclusion: "Something has to change around here that is not process" "Everything is becoming more blurred all the time." "The hardware isn’t even the hardware. It’s the software that’s changing it." "More and more you buy a piece of hardware and it’s not like it’s in the box and the partnership with the manufacturer is done. There’s an ownership lifecycle that supports it." "I was at a conference in Australia and the speaker right before was a designer at Lego. and he came up with that idea that they came up with that perfect Lego model that was really testing well but it was too expensive to build. And he said „you know how it is when the perfect solution is too expensive to build and we have to figure out something different.“ And the audience was quiet and the audience was „no, I don’t know what you’re talking about." "I see so many people in the software world arguing for what’s best and not for what’s feasible and not understanding that it’s not about best …" We have to learn again to prototype. "And at times a prototype is more expensive than the real thing." "What’s interesting is that Agile Development has gotten totally effed up when it comes to this prototyping thing. There is all this emphasis on potentially shippable software, there is this emphasis on software being built and tested, but look: we’ve lost our ability to use code to build rough stuff to see if we’re building the right thing." "More and more I talk about learning velocity vs. building velocity." "If you’re trying to learn something the most expensive way is to build production quality software." "Building the wrong thing at high quality is waste." „If there is gonna be a contemporary agile way of building things t’s gonna be this mix of product thinking and customer centric thinking and Agile thinking and I’ll be honest: It’ll break the Agile Manifesto." Great final words "What makes a product better is not more stuff, it’s good stuff." Links  Jeff Patton Associates Jeff Patton: User Story Mapping  Kent Beck: Extreme Programming Explained Pivotal Tracker Pivotal CEO Rob Mee Alistair Cockburn 

Episode 7 - Jeff Patton - User Story Maps and the discovery of great products Another one of the greats. I follow his work since years, I integrate lots of what he does in my work. Everyone knowing me or having had a training with me, knows what he does with Story Maps. But having come up with Story Maps and having written the first book around is „this little thing“ to <a href="https://twitter.com/jeffpatton" rel="noopener nofollow" target="_blank">Jeff Patton</a>. Jeff is really deep into product work and he has lots of thoughts to offer on Agile and especially on everything around stories and story thinking. And one of the reasons he knows all about that is because he was already there when it happened. He was in the same building with Kent Beck when Extreme Programming happened and Stories came up. He was coached by Rob Mee of Pivotal Tracker fame. So, this is not just a deep dive on stories and the Story Mapping technique that emerged form it but also some oral history on how and where it all started to happen. Nowadays, Jeff more and more dives into the discovery phase and at the end of the podcast we will hear lots about this and where this might clash with Agile or how it is taught in most cases. But what is so relaxing is that we really don’t talk much process. And I think the reason is that product is much less process than it is orthogonal to process and it is about thinking of quality, what quality means to whom, for whom we’re building things and having empathy for them. Speaking of empathy: Enjoy a nice conversation with a humble, humorous and relaxed Jeff Patton! Chapters <ol> <li>0:02:04 (User) Stories - the base of all</li> <li>0:13:19 Documents are like vacation stories</li> <li>0:31:43 Story Maps - what it is, how i emerged</li> <li>0:43:10 How to teach Story Maps</li> <li>0:55:34 Struggling with the backlog as a prioritised list</li> <li>0:57:54 Products we like: A BMW 335 convertible, Netflix and Spotify, an EV 320 Microphone and a Sonos speaker</li> <li>1:04:34 Why have (Agile) things gotta be so complicated?</li> <li>1:11:44 Is software harder than software and: First off, no process is going to help you</li> </ol> Chapter Notes 2:04 (User) Stories - the base of it all Going down memory lane, meeting lots of now famous people, e.g. Kent Beck "People have gotten User Stories wrong from the beginning" "When I first heard the term "Stories" I thought it was stupid - what we’re doing is important stuff. Stories  … that sounds like fantasy or fiction … it doesn’t sound serious at all" "What Kent meant with stories was really stories. We should be talking with each other and telling stories about the products" "The goal is building shared understanding" "What we are talking about isn’t what to build. What we’re talking about with each other is: who’s using this product and why and what benefit they get. and understanding that we can then talk about together about what to build." "Where things go horribly wrong is when people use stories and try to do what they used to do." "So, people try to use stories as an alternative to other specification algorithms, when that’s not what they were meant to be" How stories are not precise and complete 8:22 Comparing stories and UML The promise with UML was that you had to learn UML and then you had to talk to someone who knew UML. Stories fix all this. "Stories fix all kind of crappy documentation. Because know we have humans to talk to to explain things" "I keep telling people that if you’re using stories, you have to change your process"  "The problem stories don’t solve is the way you specify. … If you’re using stories, you still have to figure out ways to specify." "I think people write documents because they don’t like to talk to each other." 11:15 Documents are like vacation photos  „The minute you write stories and hand them over without having a conversation, that’s the moment when things start to go wrong.“ 17:14 How Kent Beck never called "stories" "user stories" Rumors and misconceptions on stories and sizes and templates  How somehow people and many Scrum Master are spreading the rumor of „we have to use (User) Stories all the way   "The way Agile works is we build little things, and we work in short cycles. … But the problem is that when we build a product that is supposed to go to the market and create value it is not something we build in days." "Those things we can build in a few days hardly have value and it becomes hard to tell a story about those things" "I learned these things around 2000 and we called them stories and not user stories, and we didn’t use the term epic and you know, the user story template - we certainly didn’t use that." 23:14 How the founder of Pivotal Tracker, Rob Mee, was Jeff’s XP coach, refused using the template in his tool and now it does anyway: "I’m never gonna put that stupid template inside of Tracker … well, it’s in there now. And I’m sure not because Rob thinks it’s a good idea." "But the template falls apart super easy. … The conversations we need to have are far more sophisticated than that." "As a user I want just dumbs down all the rich conversations we need to have …" The three (or five?) C’s of stories Ron Jeffries 3 C’s: Card Conversation, Confirmation "The conversation is not about the acceptance criteria but about Who, What and Why! … It’s meant to be a bit of a back and forth." "What I see people doing these days is: Card -&gt; Conformation" Documents are contracts and with stories "we finally recognise that documents are never gonna be good enough, they’re never gonna be precise enough and what matters is understanding and the only way we get it is by talking to each other." "Shared documents aren’t shared understanding" and that will make a lot of people uncomfortable. 31:43 Story Maps - what it is, how it emerged A solution for breaking big things down that take weeks and weeks to build into little things we can build in days. The metaphor of rocks that when you break them, remain rocks … just: little rocks. Just like big stories (no matter if you call them epics or not) that when you break them down just remain … stories. "Story mapping is the thing that I used to do to get from a big idea to break it down into small parts." How story maps emerged from the technique called "User Task Model" over "Span Plan" (influenced by the Poppendiecks) to Story Maps (which name came up in a discussion with Alistair Cockbourn). How Jeff wanted to write a huge book on everything outside of Agile, but then Story Maps took off and then the small book on story Maps got bigger and bigger. A next book is planned. Jeff is not afraid, and still has lots to say. It’ll be easy. Ha! Jeff’s book has three forewords. It reflects the mantra of product work, being credited to Marty Cagan, that it’s all about the intersection between valuable, usable and feasible. The three forewords represent that by having representatives from UX - Alan Cooper, development - Martin Fowler and finally product itself - Marty Cagan. That trinity is called a Core Team and is still widely used. 43:10 How to teach Story Maps Two good ways: <ol> <li>Simply mapping something live and lead discussions, conversations.</li> <li>Mapping a morning from waking up to getting to work, then let a group mix the individual morning stories and change it, because some strange event happened, like: Getting up too late.</li> </ol> These are ways that lets people focus on writing down activities rather than things or functionalities. Also, it makes obvious that different people behave differently. Further it teaches how to slice and cut things away, e.g. because there is less time than usual. some things can not be sliced out (morning hygiene) but need to be thinned out. Maps are useful for still seeing the whole while we flesh out the small things. "We need details when we go into the next sprint, but we still need to be able to see the whole. Because it’s the whole that has value. That’s the real value of a map." An application in a workshop: Planning the first release of a wine shop. 55:34 Struggling with the backlog as a prioritised list "There’s a lot of things I disagree with on how Agile gets taught and used and abused. One of the things I struggle with is the way it is taught that a backlog needs to be a prioritised list." "If you think of a new product … it would be completely impossible to understand what it is … based on a prioritised list of features." "It is so valuable to see the whole. And you don’t get that in a flat backlog." "When you talk about parts of a thing, you normally need all of them." 57:54 Products we like: A BMW 335 convertible, Netflix and Spotify, an EV 320 Microphone and a Sonos speaker Trying to find out why we like them. For starters, the BMW is super impractible for where Jeff lives, as they have lots of snow. He still loves it. Netflix now works for Jeff as a traveler, because downloads are possible. "Why we encourage people to talk about why they like a product is because why you like a product has a lot to do with who you are." "The toughest choices are not what features your product has, the toughest choice is who your product is for and the really hard choice is who your product is not for." "If people really love a product, I always ask: "What did you use before?"." "When you’re using a good product, you can sorta smell the thought and care that went into creating the product." "That’s what I really worry about when we talk all about Agile and breaking things into little pieces … that we lose sight of who its for and that we lose sight of all the little things that matter so much … and start working about acceptance criteria." 1:04:34 Why have (Agile) things gotta be so complicated? While teaching discovery (e.g. in 5 day immersion workshops), Jeff realises that people no longer know, see and have empathy with their clients, users, etc. "We have to come with a lot of process junk and waste to help us manage what we’re doing when a little bit of empathy and understanding of who you’re building for goes a long way." "In a lot of contexts it’s not easy to get to the customers. And to what you say, even if we could get to them, we don’t want to. It’s not comfortable talking to those people - and it’s unnerving sometimes." 1:11:44 Is software harder than software and: First off, no process is going to help you When Apple had a problem with a new carrier, it was normal for a developer to linger around at the carrier. "At Apple it was not not unusual, no one was asking: why aren’t you at your desk? Why aren’t you writing code? It was absolutely rational to do that." At a different spot: Q: "If you think of Apple, on a range from 1 to 10 where would you put the quality they ship at Apple?" A: "I’d put it at 9." Q: "Where would you put what you ship here?" A: "About a six." Q: "If you were at Apple and you would ship a six, what do you think would happen to you? You ship 6 here all the time." A: "We celebrate that we ship all the time." Conclusion: "Something has to change around here that is not process" "Everything is becoming more blurred all the time." "The hardware isn’t even the hardware. It’s the software that’s changing it." "More and more you buy a piece of hardware and it’s not like it’s in the box and the partnership with the manufacturer is done. There’s an ownership lifecycle that supports it." "I was at a conference in Australia and the speaker right before was a designer at Lego. and he came up with that idea that they came up with that perfect Lego model that was really testing well but it was too expensive to build. And he said „you know how it is when the perfect solution is too expensive to build and we have to figure out something different.“ And the audience was quiet and the audience was „no, I don’t know what you’re talking about." "I see so many people in the software world arguing for what’s best and not for what’s feasible and not understanding that it’s not about best …" We have to learn again to prototype. "And at times a prototype is more expensive than the real thing." "What’s interesting is that Agile Development has gotten totally effed up when it comes to this prototyping thing. There is all this emphasis on potentially shippable software, there is this emphasis on software being built and tested, but look: we’ve lost our ability to use code to build rough stuff to see if we’re building the right thing." "More and more I talk about learning velocity vs. building velocity." "If you’re trying to learn something the most expensive way is to build production quality software." "Building the wrong thing at high quality is waste." „If there is gonna be a contemporary agile way of building things t’s gonna be this mix of product thinking and customer centric thinking and Agile thinking and I’ll be honest: It’ll break the Agile Manifesto." Great final words "What makes a product better is not more stuff, it’s good stuff." Links <ul> <li><a href="http://jpattonassociates.com" rel="noopener nofollow" target="_blank">Jeff Patton Associates</a></li> <li>Jeff Patton: <a href="https://www.amazon.com/User-Story-Mapping-Discover-Product/dp/1491904909/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1492296403&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=jeff+patton+user+story+mapping" rel="noopener nofollow" target="_blank">User Story Mapping</a> </li> <li>Kent Beck: <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Extreme-Programming-Explained-Embrace-Change/dp/0321278658/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1492296432&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=kent+beck+extreme+programming" rel="noopener nofollow" target="_blank">Extreme Programming Explained</a></li> <li><a href="https://www.pivotaltracker.com" rel="noopener nofollow" target="_blank">Pivotal Tracker</a></li> <li>Pivotal CEO <a href="https://pivotal.io/de/team/mee" rel="noopener nofollow" target="_blank">Rob Mee</a></li> <li><a href="http://alistair.cockburn.us" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Alistair Cockburn</a></li> </ul>

Ep. 7: Jeff Patton - User Story Maps and discovering great products

Dave Gray

Dave Gray - Liminal Thinking  To be honest, doing this podcast is the treat of all treats I am giving away to myself. Already in the small, tiny history of this podcast – this has been an opportunity for me to connect and re-connect to all these people who’s ideas and work are so important to me, mean a lot to me and really changed the way I think and work. And now, for this episode, I’ll talk to Dave, Dave Gray. And there’s a funny story that connects me with Dave and I mean that literally. Years ago, I already read - and applied - Dave’s earliest book  Gamestorming. And to an even wider degree I sucked in his book „The Connected Company“ - which I think is one of the most brilliant descriptions of the change that companies will have to face when they want to keep up in the … I don’t know how to call it … maybe, digital era. But really, while I loved these books, I did not know at all who Dave is. One day, though, Jabe Bloom, now working with Praxis Flow, introduced me to Dave and suggested we’d have to talk. At the time, Dave was interviewing people for his new book. And so we met on Skype and talked. At the end, I asked Dave what the book will be all about and Dave said, he wouldn’t yet know. And then, roughly mid last year, his new book came out and it stunned me: The book is called “Liminal Thinking”. And from my perspective it is the distilled and abstracted learning of all these interviews that Dave took. Rather than explaining how people and companies have to change, what this book explains is how each one of us has to change and work on himself to have an impact on our environments. At least if we want to be happy at work, keep people happy at work, want to have the right direction of impact or … just want to be happy. While being not the thickest of books, it is a read that I would recommend to take in small steps and really enjoy - and also take all the challenging exercises. Dave is a guy of many facets. At the core, it seems to me, he is driven by finding ways to influence the world of work to be a better place. Since early on he was driven by looking for tools that help people to get a better understanding of what is going o around him. Since being a kid he is working on visualization of context and he treated this as an art form. Along the way, he discovered games as a meaningful form of understanding. In 1993, he founded XPlane, a company that helps companies to understand and, well explane, you guess it, mainly by ways of visualizing. Chapters 00:00:00 Intro 00:03:08 What Is Liminal Thinking Punk &amp; Rap &amp; R&amp;B Thresholds; Transitions 00:08:28 Changing yourself to impact your environment rather than changing others The dog story - The way you look at the situation influences the outcome; „We underestimate how much our beliefs about another individual tend to create the behavior we expect“ 00:19:23 How Dave’s latest book „Liminal Thinking“ was conceived and written It started as a missing book on Agile and become something different. The process of extending and abstracting the message (by extending the research) 00:30.13 The structure of „Liminal Thinking“ and why it works 00:34:32 How things that are good for you don’t always feel good on the example of „Liminal Thinking“ being on the brink of nearly not being written at one time and the catharsis of re-re-revising the book again and again. 00:41:13 How Dave Gray discovered and developed the art form of visualization and how that helps him and even drives and carries his own company. “What we can draw is always ahead of what we can make. We have to be able to draw it before we can make it. Not everything that can be drawn can be created or done. But: If it can’t be drawn it can definitely not be done.“ „To me that (visualization) is my art.“ „The polite way to say NO is „sorry, I don’t understand that“ 0:48:30 How visualization can help communication and overcome the effects of the telephone game in companies and thus align companies over strategy and other concepts. The journey to visualize is even more important than the effect of having the visualization. Visualization helps communicate and come up with the right questions. Links  Dave Gray’s profile at his company XPLANE Dave’s first book ”Gamestorming” Dave’s book „The Connected Company“ Dave’s latest book „Liminal Thinking“ Dave’s videos of  interviews he did for the book  If you liked this issue, please make sure you give this podcast a five star rating or any other form of appreciation. Also, I am always happy for any comments sent to me on any of the available channels. Thanks for listening in and I hope to have you as my guest again for my next show. Good bye!

Dave Gray - Liminal Thinking To be honest, doing this podcast is the treat of all treats I am giving away to myself. Already in the small, tiny history of this podcast – this has been an opportunity for me to connect and re-connect to all these people who’s ideas and work are so important to me, mean a lot to me and really changed the way I think and work. And now, for this episode, I’ll talk to Dave, Dave Gray. And there’s a funny story that connects me with Dave and I mean that literally. Years ago, I already read - and applied - Dave’s earliest book <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Gamestorming-Playbook-Innovators-Rulebreakers-Changemakers/dp/0596804172/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1488657421&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=dave+gray+gamestorming" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> Gamestorming</a>. And to an even wider degree I sucked in his book „<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Connected-Company-Dave-Gray-ebook/dp/B00Q5KRCJQ/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1488657454&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=dave+Gray+connected+company" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">The Connected Company</a>“ - which I think is one of the most brilliant descriptions of the change that companies will have to face when they want to keep up in the … I don’t know how to call it … maybe, digital era. But really, while I loved these books, I did not know at all who Dave is. One day, though, <a href="http://twitter.com/cyetain" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Jabe Bloom</a>, now working with Praxis Flow, introduced me to Dave and suggested we’d have to talk. At the time, Dave was interviewing people for his new book. And so we met on Skype and talked. At the end, I asked Dave what the book will be all about and Dave said, he wouldn’t yet know. And then, roughly mid last year, his new book came out and it stunned me: The book is called “<a href="http://liminalthinking.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Liminal Thinking</a>”. And from my perspective it is the distilled and abstracted learning of all these interviews that Dave took. Rather than explaining how people and companies have to change, what this book explains is how each one of us has to change and work on himself to have an impact on our environments. At least if we want to be happy at work, keep people happy at work, want to have the right direction of impact or … just want to be happy. While being not the thickest of books, it is a read that I would recommend to take in small steps and really enjoy - and also take all the challenging exercises. Dave is a guy of many facets. At the core, it seems to me, he is driven by finding ways to influence the world of work to be a better place. Since early on he was driven by looking for tools that help people to get a better understanding of what is going o around him. Since being a kid he is working on visualization of context and he treated this as an art form. Along the way, he discovered games as a meaningful form of understanding. In 1993, he founded <a href="http://www.xplane.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">XPlane</a>, a company that helps companies to understand and, well explane, you guess it, mainly by ways of visualizing. Chapters 00:00:00 Intro 00:03:08 What Is Liminal Thinking Punk &amp; Rap &amp; R&amp;B Thresholds; Transitions 00:08:28 Changing yourself to impact your environment rather than changing others The dog story - The way you look at the situation influences the outcome; „We underestimate how much our beliefs about another individual tend to create the behavior we expect“ 00:19:23 How Dave’s latest book „Liminal Thinking“ was conceived and written It started as a missing book on Agile and become something different. The process of extending and abstracting the message (by extending the research) 00:30.13 The structure of „Liminal Thinking“ and why it works 00:34:32 How things that are good for you don’t always feel good on the example of „Liminal Thinking“ being on the brink of nearly not being written at one time and the catharsis of re-re-revising the book again and again. 00:41:13 How Dave Gray discovered and developed the art form of visualization and how that helps him and even drives and carries his own company. “What we can draw is always ahead of what we can make. We have to be able to draw it before we can make it. Not everything that can be drawn can be created or done. But: If it can’t be drawn it can definitely not be done.“ „To me that (visualization) is my art.“ „The polite way to say NO is „sorry, I don’t understand that“ 0:48:30 How visualization can help communication and overcome the effects of the telephone game in companies and thus align companies over strategy and other concepts. The journey to visualize is even more important than the effect of having the visualization. Visualization helps communicate and come up with the right questions. Links <ul> <li><a href="http://www.xplane.com/about" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Dave Gray’s profile</a> at his company XPLANE</li> <li>Dave’s first book ”<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Gamestorming-Playbook-Innovators-Rulebreakers-Changemakers/dp/0596804172/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1488657421&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=dave+gray+gamestorming" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Gamestorming</a>”</li> <li>Dave’s book „<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Connected-Company-Dave-Gray-ebook/dp/B00Q5KRCJQ/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1488657454&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=dave+Gray+connected+company" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">The Connected Company</a>“</li> <li>Dave’s latest book „<a href="http://liminalthinking.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Liminal Thinking</a>“</li> <li>Dave’s videos of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLGMNTwfMeIeu_nr-xTbKmYaP1nQLPhV-t" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> interviews he did for the book</a></li> </ul> If you liked this issue, please make sure you give this podcast a five star rating or any other form of appreciation. Also, I am always happy for any comments sent to me on any of the available channels. Thanks for listening in and I hope to have you as my guest again for my next show. Good bye!

Ep. 5: Dave Gray - Liminal Thinking

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