A Long December

Hi Everyone, I hope you’re having a great December. I love this time of year because things slow down and I feel like it usually gives me permission to not work so much.  The truth is though, I’m writing daily, and working on a lot of materials for upcoming events and online Dynamic Reteaming endeavors like the online course I’m prepping (join the waitlist if you’d like to be notified about it). 

There is a kind of lifestyle blur for me between work and everything else.  Maybe it’s like that for others who write and create out of nothing.  I get inspired sometimes, and just need to get the thoughts on paper.

I’ve told some people before that I write using a google doc, and I do that mostly on my phone. Then I switch to the computer, and back to the phone. I find that I’m waiting a lot out there in the outside world, like in the parking lot next to the building where my daughter is taking a dance class, or I’m sitting in a large room for hours waiting to be called for Jury duty, like last week. In times like those, I write. I like that I can do that on the go.

I’m preparing to go to Japan and my slides are due this week. I’m doing a keynote at the Scrum Gathering in Tokyo. I’ve never been to Japan before. It’s been one of my dreams in life ever since I was an ESL teacher in my former career. The slides are going to be translated into Japanese before my talk, and there will be a live interpreter on the stage or somewhere near me. The keynote is 90 minutes long. This should be an interesting experience since there will be pauses for me speaking, and then the translator speaking.  Putting together the slides has felt different for me too, because since they will be translated, I’m adding more words to them. It feels like I’m creating a mini book. I like that feeling. I’m hoping that the resulting artifact can be spread around Japan and elsewhere for people to read. So it’s been refreshing to work on this. 

Part of my process is creating the slides and the narrative daily.  Each time I work on it until I feel “empty” or I don’t have anything else to say. When the work feels tiring or like I’d rather do something else, I stop and do something physical like clean my office or cook. On sunny days I’ll sit in my backyard, or will take a walk around the block. Then after a while in the same day, after I’m tired of the physical activity, I’ll go back to the slides, or the writing.  That’s pretty much how I operate.

The structure of this keynote is in three parts. First is some background on how it’s inevitable that our teams will change, and that it’s like the ecocycle of nature.  And then I go through what that creative destruction actually looks like. That is the next part, where I go over the five patterns of dynamic reteaming: one by one, grow and split, merging, isolation and switching.  For each pattern I talk about what it is, why it happens, and what you can do when you are facing it.  I give general guidance on things you can do proactively at your company now, before the changes happen later, because they will. (Although it would be highly convenient if we didn’t have to deal with team change. Wouldn’t it be great if “forming, storming, norming, performing were actually true?”)

I like to end my talks by giving advice that transcends the patterns and that amplifies the switching pattern.  This is the pattern where you switch to another team in your company.  Many people like to do this in order to learn something new or work with other people.  And, it can help our companies these days to spread around knowledge and encourage people to work together via pairing.  Then when someone leaves, maybe it’s less painful for the people still at the company.  Or maybe when the person is bored of maintaining “that system” they have more freedom to move to another team. It’s easier for them, like a weight is lifted off of their shoulders.

After this keynote is sent off to the interpreter I’ll get back to the Dynamic Reteaming online course I’ve been working on.  And after that back to Context Switch which is the name of my second book in software.  That name might change as it’s being misunderstood, however, I’m still stewing over it when I find myself waiting out in the world, and then looking at the book on my phone as I explained earlier.

This post feels like I’m writing a journal entry, and that’s about the best I can do right now. :)  I thought you might find it interesting to hear about the process of getting ready to do a keynote in Tokyo.  And you know what, if you’ve made it this far, and you have any recommendations for what to do in and around Tokyo, I’d love to hear your suggestions.  Michael (my partner) and I have some travel days reserved to explore.

Have a wonderful rest of your December. Thanks for supporting what I do! It means the world to me.

How I can help you:

• Join the waitlist for my upcoming course on Dynamic Reteaming. I’m iterating on its design, and if you go here, you can be notified when the course is ready, and if you’d answer some questions in the form, you can also help me shape the course so it’s valuable to you.

• If you’d like to invite me to your company to facilitate an onsite, and to normalize the concept that “team change is inevitable” and share practical tactics for dealing with team change, aka dynamic reteaming, please reach out! I’m booking into next year.

• I work with companies on a retainer basis - monthly hours. If that’s of interest to you, reach out. I’ll also consider joining a company. :)