If you wish to Empower me talk to me with question marks!?

“I want you to end every sentence with a question mark, do you think you can do that?  Why? Maybe because it’s a small and easy step towards empowerment and it’s also fun?”

In this post I would like to present a magnificent technique I frequently use with scrum teams and with managers as part of an agile coaching towards developing an agile mindset. Whenever I feel the need to emphasize the experience of empowerment while at the same time add some fun and value to the team without dealing with too much ego risks and project risk, I turn to this fun technique.

Well, like many other techniques we use in agile coaching, this one, I believe can also be used with our kids at home or with anyone else. You’ll be amazed how fun and creative it becomes.

First thing first, What is empowerment ?

In one sentence, we can define empowerment as a process where the one with power (that’ll be you, the manager or a parent) gives up some of his power for another (your employee or your children), and at the same time he also maintains his limits and authority. This way BOTH sides grow and gain in strength. In fact, we change from a position of no control, to a position of relative control. The empowerment process strengthens the self-confidence of the one being empowered, in his ability to function, make decisions and complete tasks. (From the Wikipedia article)

Frequently when we start implement agile we talk about empowerment. This concept is not that easy to comprehend, or to act upon. It demands practice, understanding, techniques, coaching, confrontation with verity of challenges and it takes time. It often comes to my attention that a day workshop and some games may only introduce some tools that may be later use for empowerment, but it does not mean that the students will know how to use it in a verity of challenges that their day to day supply them.

Well, you may say , this is why you are there. Isn’t it?

Right again I answer; I see my duty as an agile coach to supply tools fits to the stage of learning, organization and atmosphere. Those tools should also be easy to use. But my main goal is to be able to supply the scrum master, team and mangers with such tools that allow ongoing and a true firsthand experience according to subjective challenges.

This is exactly what talking with question marks does.

And what if there is no coach around? This is one of those tools you can easily use by yourself J

So how do we do it?

1.    Usually I use this game during daily sessions of a scrum team. A team that I already have a fierily good buy-in with , but still  are in the early stages of the agile mindset where empowered is not yet understood.

2.    I will ask the Team leader or the scrum master to start talking with question marks.

(It depends on my insight as a coach whether we will have the entire team talking with question marks or will it be just the scrum master assignment)

3.    Then, obviously I give some examples at first. (Remember the “I do , we do , you do” learning technique ? This is the “I do” - step )

·         “I think this and that, what do you think?”

·         “I it will be good for our goal that you start working on this task… what do you thin?.”

·         “Who’s next? Do we have any impediments?”

·         “And so on..

4.    During the meeting I will guide the scrum master/ manger or the team and encourage them to use the technique, sometimes even correct a sentence to a question form. (Remember the “I do , we do , you do” learning technique ? This is the “We do” - step )

5.    I will even write a big question mark on the team white board. So it will remind them the assignment at hand.  (Remember the “I do , we do , you do” learning technique ?  This is a preparation to the  “you do” - step )

6.    The team next assignment is to use this technique when they communicate, first during the daily session and next in other forms of communication. (Remember the “I do , we do , you do” learning technique ? This is the “You do” - step )

I will usually asked, how was it for them? What did they learn from this drill?

I will check upon them again in few days and see if they had a chance to “play the game “again.

If not, why? If yes, why?

***We may elaborate this session asking the entire team to talk with question marks. We may also ask them to return a question to a question for 2-3 times. The options are endless.

Using this fun technique I learned that:

·         The team likes it. It’s light, easy, productive and fun. I got very good feedbacks from managers and scrum masters that used it, that it improves their ability to learn more, its easy and doesn’t demand any special “psychology craft” skills.

·         It’s so easy to use that it holds almost no resistance.

·         As a team member you don’t lose the sense of control when someone makes decision over matters that affect your performance and goals.  In fact you gain the sense of power,  when you require to answer and to bring your opinion over matters that should affect your performance.

·         The feedback is immediate. The person who asks the questions sees the feedback right away and the information starts to flow better and with better cooperation.

·         The team leader, that needs to answer everything with a question mark, is denied from giving a direct order as a reaction to a team member issue. This teaches him to think first, then to listen, then to get the feedback. This teaches the importance of listening and gives him firsthand experience of the first step of empowerment.

·         Since the assignment is part of a team session, and introduced as a game and Team members are aware of it, it’s easier to the team leader to go along. After all it’s just a game.

·         It becomes a fun session.

·         The issues raised are a true day to day challenges with the real actors and the real need to solve real problems. It’s not just another workshop simulation.

·         No one listen to us? They listen now.  We ask, and we listen, and most of all, as team member, someone is asking us and listening to what we have to say. The one, who is asked, gets a proper attention. We want to hear what he thinks. It brings our opinion out to the air where in other circumstance team members will not be able to say nothing till it accumulate into a  burst of anger.

·         When opinions are out to the air, it enhanced decisions making and makes it easy to solve problems. Especially when we add the rule to answer a question with another question.

Trying this at home with our kids has almost the same effect.

With kids, it’s even more fun. I will usually start first to get into a fun mood by having a good laugh on that technique using variation of questions.

The parent learns to listen, the kids learns to answer and the same advantages happens here as in the workplace. Just replace the words “team members” with “our children” and the words “manager, team leader or scrum master” with “a parent” in the section above. J

So try it, you’d be amazed how fun and easy it is.

The difference between developing software in Agile and implementing Agile at home

Agile@Home :

Talking to a fried made me realize that many software engineers struggle with the same questions.

“OK, so we know Agile and Kanban get things done at work. But is it really a good idea to do this at home?”

“It might work, but it feels too much like turning the family into a company - and we’re the management”.

Kelly Waters, from All About Agile, reviewed the Agile Kids book, and had a similar issue with bringing Kanban home.

According to him, although the concept is interesting, he “think(s) it feels a little awkward applying a management methodology with your kids (although my kids certainly need managing!).  So I couldn’t quite decide what I thought in the end.  I think it might be one of those things you either love or hate.”

You may be surprised, but I completely agree with him.

Our kids are NOT a project (although some parents will disagree with me ☺). We should NOT manage our home using a rigid “software project management methodology”. Just saying that makes it feel that the family is just a collection of resources, that have to give quality delivery results, and make sure we get a nice profit.

Doesn’t sound much fun now, does it?

Now, although a family does live within certain rules and boundaries, I think most of you will agree that there’s more psychology involved than project management.

(and there are many interesting psychology theories that compare families and organization managements, showing how management techniques are strangely similar to parenting techniques, and vice versa).

In a family, managerial skills like creating a healthy dialogue, self motivation, the ability to communicate, share ideas or act as a group are valuable, and of course, far more important than ‘delivering a project’.
But even a family needs to get things done, such as chores or tasks, that if not completed, will cause problems down the road.

Come back with me to the Agile software development world for a minute.

Here , our statement is: We aim to deliver something that can go live, in a relatively short period of time with the highest quality while answering customer expectation.

The short short version (and keep in mind, guys, that Agile software development is a long road with lots of engineering practices, tools and principles) is that we coach the teams to collaborate, to work as a team, to be self motivated. We coach the managers to empower their employees, to think about motivation and communication as a key to success and delivering a quality product. We use scrum and Kanban as tools. We coach to visualization and communication above all as powerful tool of getting things done.

Or, in a more simple form: We use the task board, which helps us visualize the project tasks, as a tool. We use the backlog to manage the release components. We use the daily stand-up meeting as tool of communication and collaboration and as a mean for self organization; we use the retrospective as a mean to improve.... and many more Scrum and Kanban mindset tools. Because we want to improve our delivery and quality.

But the bottom line of software development with agile  is that the mindset and tools are just the means to a better delivery (in this case, money)! It’s not the goal.

We teach all those soft skills because we believe they are key to delivering something that can go live, in a relatively short period of time with the highest quality answering customer expectation. 

At home, it’s exactly the opposite

The mindset and the agile attitude ARE the goal. The means are the project management tools. The Agile mindset is used to improve the family dialogue, and the tools get things done along the way.

We just use the Agile project management tools (task board, daily, retrospective) as means to reach empowerment, to elevate self motivation, to teach healthy communication and to elevate improvement culture. 

It’s a modern family; we have tons of tasks to complete, parents working all hours of the day, and we don’t have as much time to talk to one another as we used to. And along comes Agile, and offers an amazing tool to get things done AND improve communication in such a simple way. So why not use it?!

Of course we use the task board as a way of managing the family tasks (which need to be done) , but the real purpose is to start talking over those tasks. We use the daily gathering when we talk about tasks to create a period of quality time, where we can talk and be heard.

It’s not the delivery of the house chores and kids tasks that matter (well, OK, they do, but they are not the goal), it is the ability of the child and family to understand the goals, to be heard, to get feedback, to communicate with the parents, to make mistakes and correct them and to be able to see the way using visualization tools. Completing the tasks is a by product (a very important one!).  It’s the same mindset tools we use for software development, but here they become the goal.

We believe that Agile self motivation and communication tools will help our kids get things done in the future, and they will also make us a better family and those happier. And most of all, they will lead to a self and family growth!

Spoiler: it really works. Using Agile techniques at home, at school, with our kids just works. And the reason it works is that it is not at all project management, it’s all about soft skills.

What is it about Agile and Kanban that teaches us and our children how to succeed?

Everything we need to succeed is here: 

1. Agile creates visibility. Visibility in turn creates security and control.

When I see where I’m supposed to go, I feel safe. Imagine you’re driving in the rain, at night. Now imagine you’re driving on a clear sunny day. Which one makes you feel safer?

2. Agile Kids enables you to clearly set challenges.

Our children put up everything on the board. They see what they are up against. It isn’t a vague in their heads. It is there, and belongs to them. They can see what is more and less important, it gives them a sense of control, reduces the confusion and leads them to success. They can also see their progress.

I will really ask my children, what do they intend to do tomorrow, next week or next month. And if you are planning a month in advance, what are you going to do? These tasks will go on the board, and we’ll see progress.

Prioritize your tasks:

This doesn’t mean that we’ll need a board every time we want to challenge ourselves - not at all. In the future, we won’t need the board at all.

3. Challenges according to age and ability

Each child chooses their own tasks, and moves forwards at their own pace. The board belongs to the family, and we each have our own tasks. Danny has tasks that are suitable for a first grader, and 12 year old Lisa already has tasks such as babysitting her brother when Mom is late from work. This way, the success is relative and suitable for each age. On the other hand, we can also see where we can move forwards. We see others’ successes and failures, and the children talk to the parents during the daily or weekly meetings, and they learn from their experiences.

4. The key word here is trust

I am training myself and my children to see what lies ahead. We are training to divide our tasks into doable actions. I am showing them the way. How a task is created, what happens during the progression, and how it ends. The training will make the board obsolete, but the principle remains the same. I experience successes (because I completed tasks), I saw the way, and I learned how to accomplish this.

5. Success is key

I’ll say it again. Children aren’t born with the ability to manage projects. They have to learn how to. They don’t always know how to divide their assignments into tasks, and some learn slower and some learn faster. What’s important is the feeling of success. They don’t need large rewards to feel they were successful - all they need is a smile and to succeed at their homework. That’s enough for them.

6. Listening

Listening to the children and listening to ourselves. It’s vital to succeed. Listening to what they have to say about their tasks during the daily meetings, giving them a place to be heard and to express themselves. When I speak, I’m learning and developing. When people listen to me and react to what I say, that strengthens the learning a thousand fold.

7. Empowerment

Setting these small goals, even from a young age, and enabling the child to choose their own tasks, is the basis for empowerment (we’ve written more about it here). And empowerment is one of the best ways to succeed.

8. The daily family pulse

The daily meetings and the order they bring to the house, send out a message. A message of doing, of support from others when I get stuck. I personally believe, that without these values, luck will be a major factor in our future successes, not our own actions or initiatives.

9. Initiative as a state of mind

Initiative is part of empowerment. The children are encouraged to take the initiative. Think of tasks, ask for help from others, and make things move when they get stuck. This isn’t just encouraged - it becomes a state of mind.

10. The state of mind and messages that come from the family and the house affect your children outside as well

For example, a singer’s son can become a singer with less effort than others. It’s not just the voice - you have to think like an artist as well, to know how to express your feelings, create, and so on, which is something that the child is immersed in at home every day. The same goes for doctors, or business people.

Now, just imagine that you immerse your children in empowerment. Every day, things that come naturally to them, will affect them in the future. Everyone agrees that it doesn’t matter HOW you raise your kids, it affects them a whole lot more than any courses they might take in the future. So isn’t it in our best interests to make sure they get confidence, empowerment, and the ability to follow tasks through?

Want to know how? Read the AgileKids book, and of course, get the latest updates from this blog.

Permanent task boards are nice, but they aren’t the point!

What do we do with all the permanent tasks? The ones that repeat themselves again and again? Those that we’ll be moving across the board every day?

One of the ways of creating Agile boards in the house is to reverse the columns.

What do I mean?

Well, instead of moving tasks through the columns, as we’ve shown in the book and previous posts, we put up a board with pre-defined tasks per family member, which are seen throughout the week, and add a ‘Doing’ note to the task in question.

I can see these boards posted everywhere. They are colorful, delightful, and some even have every possible task you can imagine that you would ever do around the house.

And that’s EXACTLY what bothers me.

People, don’t forget. The task board isn’t the point. The point is the way we treat tasks!

The point is communication, around the tasks at hand, with an emphasis on empowering the child, developing his responsibility and his commitment to the tasks, together with a healthy family dialogue, like I show in the Agile Kids book and in previous posts.

The family dialogue pulse is what matters. The task board is just an answer to a symptom, which can be disorganization, or not doing the chores around the house. The task board isn’t the goal.

We have to understand that setting up a board is just a means to more important goals.

And so:

1. Talk to your kids and build the list of permanent tasks together. This simple activity creates the initial understanding of tasks, and enables us to hear what our children think about the tasks, and you’ll be surprised at what they have to say. You might find that just from these conversations you can already agree on ground rules that will prevent arguments in the future.

Don’t force them. Don’t come with a pre-defined board and present it to them as a given. There can be some tasks that may cross some undetermined line (such as when to go to bed), but in an open discussion you’ll be able to present them as part of all the tasks.

2. Be prepared. Think in advance what you want to achieve. You can’t just pile a whole lot of tasks on the board, which makes it difficult to see who is doing what and when.

3. Focus is important. Choose the really important tasks first. With time, you’ll be adding more tasks anyway.

4. The children can create their own schedule from tasks that they are each interested in doing during the week. We’ll keep track of the schedule, and mark each task as done.

5. Put the tasks on the board together with your children. Visibility gives a sense of control, and is the first step towards taking responsibility for our tasks. This means that the children have to be part of creating the task list.

6. Put the board in an easily accessible part of the house, where everyone can see it. A task board that’s put in a drawer is useless. You can’t see it, and it doesn’t create any awareness of tasks and responsibility.

7. Meet once a day, and talk about the tasks. 

8. Make sure that the children are the ones that move the tasks on the board, not you. Let them choose and mark the tasks - not you.

9. Make sure that the tasks are more or less balanced, and that the brunt of the tasks fall on one family member.

10. You need to put your tasks on the board as well. This creates trust.

After we mapped out this week’s tasks, each task can be marked with a check-mark, a smiley, or any other mark that you choose. :)

And don't forget to have fun...

In agile, we teach our kids to Pull instead of get pushed

The ‘Pull’ system is a key principle in the Lean and Kanban world.

We’ll talk about it a bit more later, for those of you who are interested in Kanban and the Toyota assembly lines, but, in the simplest possible way, ‘Pull’ is when we actively choose and pull tasks instead of receiving them passively as instructions.

Just like everything else, ‘Pull’ in Agile at home is far simpler. And I’ll insist on keeping it that way, without over complicating matters.

So, if we follow this principle, I expect my child to be active, take tasks that belong to him, and not wait until I give him his tasks, or tell him what to do. That’s all. I want him to pull tasks, rather than wait for them to be pushed to him.

Excellent! We’re all happy!!

But hang on a second. How exactly do I do that?

I mean, it’s all simple and easy to write down (look above, I just did that), but many parents prefer to either do the tasks themselves, or worse, tell the kids what to do as they see fit. The children aren’t participants, just observers. I mean, I would rebel against that.

Being active is part of being empowered. When I control what I do, I develop my confidence, a sense of being able to do things.

For example, if you tie your six-year old son’s shoelaces, how would he learn to do it by himself?

You have to encourage him to do it by himself. Of course you need to be there for him, guide him and give him the tools he might need. I would also expect him to tie his shoes as part of putting them on, not wait for me to tell him.

Obviously, this doesn’t work for everything. I won’t do away with rules and limits completely. But within those limits, I will allow freedom of choice.

When we set up a task board with plainly visible tasks, we are already half way towards setting expectations with our children. What are the limits, what are the tasks that need to be done, and what tasks the child can add by himself. (I’m not talking about when you first introduce the board, when it’s recommended that you only put tasks that are easily completed, of course, but after a week or so.)

The board will also include tasks that you, the parent believe should be completed. Brushing teeth, tidying up the room and so on.  The ‘Pull’ will show when your child goes up to the board by himself, takes a task from the ‘To do’ column, and moves it to the ‘In progress’ column. You’d be surprised at how quickly they start choosing tasks that we think are important (brushing teeth, reading a book), and it is completely different from when a parent goes to the board and chooses a task for the child.

It’s exactly like when I’m at work, when I complete a task, I go to ‘pull’ the next task myself from the board. No one tells me what to do. True, the tasks are limited in number, and I know my work boundaries, but I choose my own tasks. My manager is pleased, and I’m in a constant state of work.

Take the opposite situation - I complete a task and go to my manager, who then assigns me a new task. My manager owns all tasks, and he is the one who assigns them to the employees.

In this case, I’m not really committed to the task - as it isn’t mine,  I start feeling that I get all the crappy tasks, and of course, when the manager is away, there’s no one to assign the tasks. I’m not in control over what I do, and I’m completely dependant on another to guide me.

You may think this is an extreme example, but you’d be surprised at how many companies work like this.

 OK, back to our home. Now do you understand why your kid comes home from school, drops his bag on the floor and goes to watch TV in the living room? Because he has a secretary called Mum, who owns all the tasks, and she will remind him what he needs to do. This is ‘Push’, and this is exactly what we want to change.

Agile and the task board are an excellent way to do exactly that.

The tasks are visible to all, the task pool is in clear site, and every one knows what their tasks are. All we have to do is create a mindset of ‘Pull’ rather than ‘Push’.

When someone is in charge of their own tasks, they’ll probably do them better. It starts by asking our child what his tasks are. Don’t be surprised when he says exactly what we want to hear (like tidying his room), and he’ll probably add more. It continues by having him write his tasks on a note, and adding them to the task board himself.

We might want to add a few tasks of our own at this stage, as it’s important that we set an example and have some tasks of ourselves on the board.

We’ll continue, and have the child pick his own tasks (I have to insist on this), the ones that he can complete over the next day, or the next week. These are the tasks that we’ll talk about in our daily meetings.

It’s important that he moves his tasks around on the board according to what he did that day - we want them to be active participants, right?

Every day we’ll look at the board again, and ask our children to tell us what’s going on with them and their tasks. You’ll see that very soon they’ll be adding more tasks, and problems will start coming to the surface.

A lot depends on us parents. When something is important enough, then it happens. For instance, if you need your kid to take his medicine, he does, right? So you CAN insist when you have to.

 To put it simply:

●     ‘Pull’ is when we actively choose and pull tasks instead of receiving them passively as instructions. it means ,An active child is responsible for his own tasks.

●     The task board is an excellent visibility solution . it is where we put things that we expect to get done.

●     The child writes down his tasks, pulls them and moves them around - not the parents.

●     The children participate in deciding what the next is going to be.

●     A task is only pulled when the previous one is complete.

●     We don’t flood the child with tasks, but allow him to set his own pace.

●     We must provide the tools to complete tasks, and be there to guide our children.

●     As parents, we must be the role model. Be there, place tasks on the board, challenge them to complete their tasks, add goals and encourage them.

●     Determination.

Want to read more about Kanban and pull systems?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZIv2e61SH1A&feature=related

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Push%E2%80%93pull_strategy

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanban

The need to maintain a high rate of improvements led Toyota to devise the kanban system. Kanban became an effective tool to support the running of the production system as a whole. In addition, it proved to be an excellent way for promoting improvements because reducing the number of kanban in circulation highlighted problem areas.

http://www.imec.org/imec.nsf/All/Pull__Kanban_Systems?OpenDocument

Pull / Kanban is a method of controlling the flow of production through the factory based on a customer’s demand. Pull Systems control the flow of resources in a production process by replacing only what has been consumed. They are customer order-driven production schedules based on actual demand and consumption rather than forecasting. Implementing Pull Systems can help you eliminate waste in handling, storing, and getting your product to the customer. Pull Systems are an excellent tool to use in the areas where cellular or flow manufacturing can not be achieved.