It is human to be sad,

And get depressed,

And to cry all day.

It is human to be hurt,

And be angry,

And to want revenge.

It is human to be confused,

And feel anxious.

And feel distressed.

It is human to be afraid,

And to get frozen,

Or to try to escape.

It is human to want to be perfect,

And to try to improve,

And to try to change.

It is human to make mistakes,

And feel ashamed,

And do it again.

It is human to need others,

And to feel lonely,

And to feel despair.

But also it’s human:

To smile for something dumb

To dance when there’s no song

To love with all your heart

To thrive when there’s some sun,

To laugh when others do,

To run because you want,

To help because you can,

To give because you have

It’s human to forget that we are humans.

Give yourself a break,

Let yourself be human,

At least just for today.

:-)

We have been reflecting and focusing on people and we have seen amazing results in the last years. Today, we decided to start sharing some of our learnings hoping that others can benefit from it and perhaps, create a new way of working.

Maybe the best way to start is by describing the SM for the People’s responsibilities.

• To make it easier we created the following diagram showing the main areas involved (you can call if a framework if you wish but we won’t, there are too many already ;) )

At the top you can find the goal of a SM for the People:

• To help create high performance teams.

Defining what a high performance team is, is a nice activity and took us some time. Let’s not spend so much time in this and move to the next part which is the core of everything: “Acknowledge Humanity”. This is the part that reminds everyone:

“Hey, we are humans, we have virtues and flaws, we can’t be perfect. We are humans and yet, there is a risk of losing part of our humanity if we don’t take care of it”

This is for us the hardest part: to realise that it is possible to lose our humanity. That it is possible to live with a feeling of incompleteness, to have a life in which something is missing and we can’t fill that hole. That we can have a life without harmony, a life in constant conflict with who or what we are.

How can we create a great team if each individual feels incomplete? It seems really hard. But just think the other way, imagine how amazing your team will be if each one of us feels complete; in harmony. Imagine the things we could achieve, the innovation we could create.

In our experience we saw that just by helping a little bit a person to be a little bit more complete, it creates a huge difference.

But what things can remove or add “humanity” on each of us? We had to start asking ourselves: What makes a human a human? is it freedom? is it the ability to reflect based on our past? is it the ability to transform your reality? This is another nice activity to do with your group.

If your definition becomes for example the ability to transform your reality, then you can find those things preventing you from doing that. Maybe too many meetings are not letting you think? maybe a manager that doesn’t take into consideration your opinion? Once we find them we work on them.

In parallel, we work on creating activities that help people regain humanity based on your definition. In our example since the definition is the ability to transform reality we could create opportunities for people to talk, think and decide together or support someone’s idea until it becomes “real".

The next three components

Acknowledging Humanity is the core element of a SM for the People, it is vital to consider it in everything we do. But what are other things that the SM for the People do? To make it easier for us, we divided it in 3 areas.

The first area is about transparency in the process and time for reflection or in short: inspecting and adapting. For doing this, we need to be aware of what is happening around us and second, we should have time to reflect and decide on what to change. We found out that the Scrum Framework is great for this. It even provides the values needed to create this transparency. You could, of course, find another framework or other ways for achieving the same.

The second area that we have is the Team Basic Needs, there are also many frameworks that provide you with ideas of what can go inside. The ones I’ve heard the most are Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and Pink’s motivation theory In our case we decided to focus on five categories: Purpose, Trust, Alignment, Growth and Work Enablement. We could explain them in a different post but at the end you could define your own categories. The important part is that the SM for the People is also responsible for supporting these areas at the individual level as well as the team level. Is this a lot of work? yes it is. And this bring me to an important point of a SM for the People: know your limits. A SM for the People should be careful on the amount of people and the number of teams you work with or you won’t be able to really do your job. Just imagine that you will need to think on how to build trust inside your team, alignment, purpose, growth. It gets really difficult.

The third and final area is in my opinion the most exciting one: Organic Mindset. It is exciting because it is new but at the same time it is old. We have been researching for centuries about Nature, about human beings, there are plenty of books about how humans behave and tons of information about complexity. Even if we have never read a book about those topics we can just go out and see all the living things around us.

Is in this area in which we research about humans and Nature and every time we discover something we try to apply it to our work. We try to understand how humans and nature are and we embrace it, we create processes to support people and NOT to change them. Let me give you an example: Imagine that your colleague always forgets certain information, instead of blaming her, arranging meetings to tell her that she should learn those things and expect her to be “professional”, we accept that people forget things. What we do is simply writing that information at the wall so that every time we meet we can see that information. It is a simple and maybe funny example but it represents the idea.

Another part of the Organic Mindset is that in order to deal with a difficult problem we try first to see how Nature deals with it. For example a typical problem in each company is Scaling. Our answer for this is to look at Nature. How does a forrest scale? How does an ecosystem evolve? And how does Nature organically grow? We research and from our findings we start experimenting. But this is not efficient! you might say. Yes, exactly we are not searching for efficiency, Nature is not designed to be efficient and neither do we. But Nature is still there and it is still a beautiful place to be.

One last point in our area of Organic Mindset: In order for us to remember what we discovered we created internal principles and values. We are constantly defining them and improving them. We have for example “Connection before collaboration”. We have more but we hope that you can create your own based on your needs and who you are.

Final words

As you could read, all these areas are areas in which a SM for the People works. The job is not only about knowing a framework, it is about being curious about people, it is about the desire to learn about People and Nature and the will to support others and everyone as possible. It is not only a job, it is more than that. Is the commitment to search for answers, to be curious, to challenge the status quo and search for helping each person regain their humanity. It is about identifying oppression and liberating it via reflection and action. It is hard but also extremely rewarding. And this is why we want to share with others and hope that you can enjoy it as much as we are doing. And if you feel that your current role as SM is not exactly what you were looking for, instead of changing the role why not trying to become a SM for the people?

Have a great day. Thanks for reading.

John was facing his first big challenge at his job, a challenge so big that he wasn’t able to sleep. Let’s call it “Problem X” for the sake of this story. He knew he wasn’t going to be able to find a solution but he knew who could: Martha. They grew up together since high school but grew apart after graduating from University. Rose studied philosophy and developed a career as an advisor for big tech companies. She was extremely passionate about people and nature. She was always ready to help. If someone could help John, it would be Rose. She was his last hope.

Monday

John spent the whole weekend packing, he was nervous. Martha lived in a private residence in the middle of a well-known forest. He took his car and drove for around eight hours. It was an exhausting trip but finally he made it.

It was an old house, painted in blue. It was the typical house of small-town tranquility where one could enjoy a warm meal and forget about their problems. Martha was waiting in front of it. She had the biggest smile possible.

“John, I ‘m so happy to see you, it’s been a while,” said Martha.

“Hi Martha, It is so nice to see you. I missed you so much.” replied John.

Martha and John hugged, they went inside the house and talked for many hours about their past, their experiences and things they had missed for years. When finally the night came. John decided to tell her about his problem.

“Martha, I need your help, I have a big problem at my company and I know you can help me.”

“Could you tell me a little bit about the environment surrounding your problem?” asked Martha.

“What do you mean?” he said.

“Well, is this a problem in an environment that has so many connections and changing possibilities that made it impossible to understand? A problem that would be impossible to gather all data because it changes constantly?” asked Martha.

“Well, I don’t know.” John was confused. “ I think there are many possibilities and the data changes but why is this important? Shouldn’t I just tell you about the problem?”

“What you should know is that depending on the environment of your problem, you will need a different approach. It’s important to determine in which domain you currently are.”

“Ok, I trust that you know what you are talking about. Are there many types of domains?”

“There are a few, but to make it easier I would divide them in two domains: the ordered and the complex domain.”

“What is an ordered domain?” John was confused.

“An ordered domain is a domain in which you can be sure that something is caused by something else, and that it will always be like that. It’s a domain where there is predictability, where you can analyse and categorise things. There is repetition. It could be as simple as building something with legos or as difficult as building a car. If you have the instructions you can build the same car several times and you always know what you need and when you need it. Or think about programming, you need to have the right instructions for the program to compile: IF you write X THEN you can get Y. You get it?”

“Well yes, it sounds quite obvious. Ok, then. How do I approach problems in an ordered domain?”

“When you encounter a problem in an ordered domain you can search for experts to help you. You can analyse, investigate, draw conclusions. You can try to predict and measure things. It’s a domain in which you know you can obtain the same result if you apply the same initial conditions.”

“What about the complex domain, what can you tell me about it?”

“There is a lot to tell you about the complex domain, but in general it’s an environment that has so many agents, connections and interactions changing constantly, that is impossible to understand completely. Prediction, Forecast, Cause and Effect relationship are of not use in this domain.”

“Interesting, ok so I need to know first where my problem is, in which domain it is, in order to work on it right? Do you have any tips? I’m new in this.”

“Sure! Let’s see if the problem fits in the complex domain. You can start by asking yourself if the actors interacting in the system change constantly, if the environment is also changing constantly, or if they both change each other.”

“How can an actor and the environment change each other?” he said.

“Think about bringing a baby in a room full of people that love babies. The baby will change the people inside the room, they might feel joy and excitement when they see the baby and this reaction of the people will also modify the baby. If the baby changes (by crying for example after seeing so many people) the people will change again. It’s a circle in which everything is changing continuously.”

“Mmm ok, I get it so I think this is the case for my problem, the external factors are changing everyday and people are involved and I guess they also change based on it. So Yes, I can say my problem is in the complex domain.”

“Great, then we can start thinking about how to deal with problems in a complex domain”

“Ok, do you think we can find a solution to my problem?”

“It will be a challenge, since working in a complex domain needs you to think differently.”

“How different?” John asked.

“Well, first of all, in a complex domain you can not analyse all the information. There are so many interactions and changing things, that there is no central point of information. So you need to work with incomplete data.”

“Ok, I’m kind of a perfectionist but I think i can work with that, is that all?” John said while smiling.

“The second thing is that the system is constantly influenced by many external factors as well. This means there are no identical systems, and therefore you can not apply a solution used in another system into it and expect it to work.”

“Ouch that seems hard, but it makes sense, I have been applying several solutions from other companies and nothing seems to work.”

“Exactly! And then the third thing. This is that once you apply something new, the system will change and you will not be able to rollback. You will need to find new ideas in a system that has changed.”

“It will be like starting over, after I try something? I might never be able to find a solution to my problem. You just found the way to make me super depressed.”

“It’s true, it’s changing constantly but don’t get discouraged. It’s difficult and it’s different, but it’s possible to do something about it! Let’s use the analogy of a boat. See the system like a boat; it moves and follows a direction but it can change anytime. It can not stay in one place in the sea. And it can not roll back to the same situation because the water changed. The water and the boat are constantly moving. But even in those conditions we learned to navigate right?”

“That’s true. What is the secret then?” he said.

“It’s funny, but actually the main secret is to let it go! To listen, trust nature and trust yourself.”

“That’s crazy, how is that possible” John paused. “Wait don’t tell me I think it’s too much for today, let’s talk about this tomorrow. I still need to reflect a lot about these two domains.”

“All right, see you tomorrow” said Martha while heading towards her room.

Tuesday

Tuesday was a windy day. There was some sort of music coming from the dance between leaves and the cold air which created a wonderful atmosphere for thinking and reflexion. John was excited.

“Hi Martha, good morning. let’s continue our conversation from yesterday please.”

“Hi John, you look fresh and ready. Do you mind following me? I have something special for you.”

Martha took John to the backyard where she had prepared breakfast for him: bread, eggs, fruits, juice. Everything looked delicious.

“This is amazing,” said John. “I can’t believe you did this. Thank you.”

“Don’t worry about it John, let’s continue our talk from yesterday, what do you remember from then?”

“All right, as far as I remember, I need first to understand my current domain in order to deal with my problems. Depending on the domain I should proceed in different ways. You showed me some properties of two of them and I found out that my current problem might be in the complex domain. Today you were going to tell me how to deal with it. You mentioned that the secret is to let go, listen, trust nature and myself.”

“That is a really detailed overview of what we talked about!” said Martha while smiling. “Indeed, dealing with complexity is something that we as humans have learned in our history. It’s in our nature, it’s part of us. It’s just that we stop listening to ourselves, we stop listening to nature (some people call it ‘life’) and we start trying to control things.”

“It sounds interesting but I don’t get it, do you have an example?” John asked.

“Sure, let’s think of one together. Can you remember a situation in which you had a big problem and you were really worried about it?”

“Mmm a couple of months ago my dog escaped from my home. I was really worried and I wanted to find him. Is this a good example?”

“Yes it is. So what was the question that you wanted to answer at that moment?”

“Question? You mean the problem?”

“Yes it’s about the problem, but it’s good if you formulate it as a question.”

“Mmm, the question would be: How to get my dog back?”

“Ok, and what did you do?”

“I told my family, I shared it on Facebook, I went outside and went to the places we usually go to see if he was there.”

“So, is it ok to say that you didn’t know exactly what the answer to your question was?”

“You could say that, I was desperate.”

“And could we also say that you were focusing on your question?”

“Yes, I was really focused on finding my dog and I was trying everything possible to make it happen.”

“Did you try one option after the other?”

“Obviously not, I did everything in parallel. As I told you I was desperate and wanted to find him.”

“And what happened then?”

“Apparently someone saw the dog in the street and they picked it up and took it home. After that, they saw the picture of my dog in a group called “lost dogs” which is weird because I didn’t post it there. I guess one of my contacts put it there.”

“Would you say it was pure luck?”

“I think it was luck but also if I had not posted it then maybe I would have never found it.”

“So, could we agree that what you did worked this time, but it might not work next time?”

“Yes, there are so many conditions that had to happen for this case to go like this. Nevertheless if it happens again I will post it in that group just in case.”

“All right. Now let’s try to use this example to understand things better. Let’s assume that instead of following your instincts and using your desperation to search for alternatives you would have spent time trying to search for the best solution.”

“What do you mean?” asked John.

“Let’s imagine that you would have had to sit down, analyse, categorise and evaluate the best way to find your dog. Imagine you had called people that are experts in searching for dogs, maybe read some articles about the best way to do it. Maybe spent time thinking about efficient ways to search your dog. Or to create a perfect message on Facebook.”

“That would have taken a lot of time. And I was feeling pressured, I was not able to keep calm to spend time reading. Also by doing that maybe I would have lost my window of opportunity.”

“Would you say that analysing, evaluating possible solutions and then finding the best one would have brought a huge cost to pay?”

“You could say that. Timing was really important.”

“And, how did you come up with your ideas to find your dog?”

“First by myself and then I asked my family and one person recommended me to put it on Facebook and another one told me to go and search for it around the corner. The more I asked this question to myself or others the more options I found.”

“Exactly, you were not focusing on finding the best option. You were focusing on bringing as many options as possible and you didn’t spend too much time analysing them. Your mind was open and you were constantly AWARE. If you had only focused on only one possibility not only could you have wasted valuable time, but you would have lost focus on other possibilities or, in other words, focus on the evolutionary potential of the present.”

“This is pretty interesting. I was really focused and aware of what was happening, I was sharing my problem or as you said my question with other people and trying a lot of solutions.”

“That’s true but i wouldn’t call them solutions. I would call them experiments, since you were not sure which one will work, or even if any of them would work. Without noticing you created experiments with two properties: coherent and safe-to-fail.”

“What is the meaning of coherent?”

“You could say experiments that made sense. You heard stories from other people, you used your own logic, etcetera.”

“Ok, what about safe-to-fail?”

“By having several experiments and making them independent, it didn’t matter if one didn’t work. You only needed one of them to work. So each one was safe to fail. Just imagine if you had put all your money in one experiment I guess that wouldn’t be really safe to fail.”

“Ok, so you are saying that by staying in the question and by doing independent coherent and safe-to-fail experiments I was able to solve my problem? And I did this without noticing?”

“Yes, I believe that human beings are really good at managing complexity, we have it in us already. But something happens during our education, or maybe due to the media, and we get separated from our nature and we start doing weird things such as trying to control and predict everything.”

“Yes, I understand. Ok but this problem was kind of easy to understand. It was about finding my dog but the problem in my current company is harder even to describe it. How should I approach it?”

“Let’s talk about this tomorrow. I think we still have time and a fresh night of sleep will help us to see things clearer.”

“All right, see you tomorrow” said John. He was not happy to have to wait until tomorrow but he thought a good night of sleep could help him digest everything.”

Wednesday

A beautiful morning, the sun shining and a wonderful sound of the river close to the cabin. John and Marta meet outside in a big wooden table. The coffee is ready to be served.

“Hi John, how did you sleep?”

“Hi Martha, it was fine I guess but I couldn’t really relax. I really need a solution for my problem.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.” said Martha while pouring two cups of coffee. “Well, if finding a solution for your problem will help you then let’s get right on it!” Martha smiled at him. “Yesterday you told me that you are sure that you are in a complex environment.”

“Yes.” said John. He smiled back.

“We also talked about your experience with your dog and how you were able to manage your problem.”

“True.” John took a sip of his coffee.

“And then you told me that even though in that example it was easy to understand why your approach worked, in your company it seems not so clear right?”

“Exactly. I would not even know how to start.”

“Right. So you may remember that we talked about formulating the problems as a question.”

“Yes, I didn’t know why but I guess you will explain it to me now.”

“Well, identifying the main question is extremely difficult and it creates a lot of confusion. The main difficulty is that we jump directly to solutions and we forget to think even about the main question.”

“Could you give me another example please?” asked John.

“Don’t worry, let me think of a good example. Actually one story comes to my mind that will help. There was a team in a small company, where some people were complaining about their manager. Apparently this man would scream at everyone and would force them to work extra time. He was always blaming others and never admitting his mistakes. Well, all of this according to some people in the team.”

“That is really bad, people usually can’t be productive in that kind of environment. Did someone talk to him?”

“Yes they did. They asked him to be nice, to be transparent and honest. But it didn’t work. I think they even complained to his boss, but he did absolutely nothing about it.”

“Wow that is really bad.”

“Every day the team tried to improve the situation. Which questions do you think the team was trying to solve?”

“Mmm I would say: How to stop him from yelling? How to convince him that being nice will improve the team? How to convince him to be more transparent and honest?”

“Yes, some of those were the questions that they would ask. But if you look at the questions closely, you would see that all of them are actually solutions in the form of questions.”

“Are you sure?”

“In each question there is an assumption: if he yells less then I will be more productive. If he is nice we will be a better team. If he is transparent we will have a better atmosphere.”

“But those are not assumptions, those are facts. Those have been demonstrated.”

“If those were facts then you would not be in a complex environment. Remember that in this environment there are many possible results: maybe the manager will not scream but he might decide to fire people, or because he is not screaming at the team, another person will. Or maybe he will lose his interest in the project. Just keep thinking and imagining and all those results are possible.”

“I see. I would like to believe that if he stops screaming our job will be better. But you are right. There are so many things connected that many different things could actually happen.”

“Exactly. It’s understandable that his behaviour is really bothering everyone, and the team wants to stop it. But the real issue here is that by focusing on the question: “How to stop him from yelling”, they are losing focus or AWARENESS of the potential of the present.”

“And what could that potential be?”

“In this case It could be to have a team that can reach their goal.”

“You mean the question could be: “How can our team reach our goal?”

“Yes, or, “How to create a high performance team?” Or any other global goal with a bigger scope.”

“Ok, but the behaviour of the boss is actually disturbing the team.”

“That is true, and one of the experiments could be to work with him so that he becomes nicer. However, it will be part of a series of experiments and not the focus of everything. It could happen that another experiment unrelated to the manager makes him change his behaviour. Like in the example of your dog.”

“So what you are saying is that we usually get distracted with other “questions” and therefore we lose awareness of what is really important?”

“Exactly. I had a cousin whose parents were obsessed with him eating too much candy, and they focused on that the whole time. They completely forgot about their main question or goal: How to have a healthy life for their son? There are many ways to work on that: exercise, mediation, games, reducing anxiety, etc. But they forgot about the main question and focused on the question that is actually an experiment: How to stop our son from eating candy?”

“But that is a good experiment, eating candies is terrible.”

“Sure it’s not healthy, but then your world becomes extremely small. Now all that the parents do revolves around the candies. They lose the awareness of other things about their child. Instead of one hour of spending time with him playing, learning or discovering, they use that hour for telling him why candies are bad, for example.”

“I think I got your point. By focusing on the candies, they are forgetting about other possibilities for their son.”

“Yes, that is why the question that you choose to focus on is really important.”

“Ok, I think I got it, I need to be really careful on the question that I decide to focus on. I have to be careful that I do not focus on a question that will make me blind to the possibilities that can emerge. And if I understood you correctly most of the time unconsciously I might do it and I will focus on a solution instead of a more generic question like how do I help my kid have a good quality life?”

“Yes. The question will determine your focus. This will help you create experiments and know if what is currently happening is what you want or not. You are being AWARE and you might be able to intervene.”

“Interesting. Ok, too much for today Martha, do you want me to help you with something for dinner?”

“Yes, let’s go out and find some wood. Some nice fire under the stars will be nice for us to relax.”

“Let’s do it!”

Thursday

On the next day, Martha and John woke up early and decided to go for a walk. The flower’s fragrance filled the whole field making a wonderful morning. The air was cool, gently stroking their faces and hair. It was another perfect day for relaxing and talking.

“So John, How is your week so far? is this what you were imagining before you came?”

“It is amazing. The nature, the animals, everything here is so nice and calm. I now understand why you decided to move her.”

“It is indeed a wonderful place to be, you are welcome to come any time.”

“Well don’t mind if I do. So shall we?”

“Do you want to continue while we have our breakfast?”

“Yes please, I checked my notes and I have been trying to use what I learned so far to see how I can use it in my company.”

“That is nice to hear! So what do you have so far?”

“Sure, this is what I got, please tell me if this makes sense: Could we say that the problem at my company is a behaviour that came from the interactions in the system?”

“Mmm yes, I think you could say that.”

“Ok, so I just need to change the interactions and this behaviour might disappear?”

“You could also say that.”

“Then, how do I find the interactions that are causing this pattern?”

“That is a tough question. And I have some bad news and some good news here. The bad news is that there are so many interactions and factors, that I would say it’s impossible to find the interactions causing this pattern.”

“Oh that is bad, what is the good news?”

“Well, the good news is that you don’t really need to find them! As you are in a complex environment, you know that there are so many interactions that it’s impossible to find which one of them is causing it. So what you can do is forget about that entirely and focus on the direction that you want to go. Or in other words: the question that you want to navigate.”

“Could you elaborate a little bit more. It’s hard to grasp.”

“Sure. Let’s make it easier. Prepare for an adventure. Your mission is to discover a new direction for your company. Just to help us visualise it, let’s say it will be a mission at sea!”

“Mission at the sea?”

“Yes, the question that you choose will set the direction of your adventure. To keep with the idea of the sea let’s imagine your question will be: “What is out there, is there a better place to live, are there new plants or animals to discover?” You will send several boats in different directions to try to find out what is out there. You don’t know what will be discovered and you don’t even know what is the correct direction to go.”

“Similar to what I did to find my dog?”

“Exactly. But this time you are doing it consciously.”

“Alright, so if I understand correctly those little boats represent experiments, right?”

“Exactly!”

“And each one has to be coherent and safe-to-fail right?”

“Yes, I think you got it pretty good.”

“Ok, ok this is getting interesting. What do I do now? Do I just need to wait?”

“Well you didn’t wait when you searched for your dog right?. You kept focusing on the question and you got a lot of new ideas. At the same time you were monitoring what was happening with your experiments.”

“Do I really need to monitor all experiments?”

“During each of your boat’s quests, they might have problems. They might face storms, sickness or technical problems with the boat. But they might also find interesting things that seem to go in the direction that you would like. If the boats are in that direction, then you can tell them to move forward (maybe you could send even more resources) and if not you can tell them to come back or go into another direction.”

“This sounds pretty promising. Please let me think about it. I think this will help me a lot to solve my problems.”

“Al right, let’s talk tomorrow.”

Friday

Friday finally arrived. Two more days to go and John would need to leave. He was excited, in four days he had learned so much. His hand was hurting from all the notes he took the night before. But it was worth it. He saw Martha in the kitchen, he decided to approach her.

“Hi Martha, good morning”

“Good morning John, are you ready to continue?”

“Yes, I was thinking about your idea of experiments, staying in the question and trying things in parallel but I now think that is actually not possible. I can not send several boats, my company will not experiment things. If I justify it correctly I might send one boat so It has to be the best one.”

“You’re right. So let’s be realistic. It could be that the company allows only one boat and let’s assume this is an incoherent one. Now, only if you remain in the question and do not assume that this boat will find the answer (or you might lose awareness) you will be able to find other ways to deal with the issue. Just think about some policies in your company. I’m sure you can find some restricting ones. But if you go deep and ask around, you will certainly find people who have found ways to deal with them and navigate into the direction they wanted.”

“Are you then saying that I should ignore the company policy and do my own way of working? That would be chaotic and dangerous.”

“I don’t think you should go against the company’s policy or ignore it. On the contrary, you should accept it as part of your context. To continue with our metaphor, you could see it as weather: the policy could be a storm or a sunny day. In both cases you need to navigate and do some experimentation while paying attention to what is happening.”

“What if the policy is so strict that I can not navigate?”

“Let’s assume the company policy is so strong like a terrible storm. It’s so strong that you can not move your boat where you want. If we go back to your dog example, imagine you don’t have internet access and you don’t have family or friends to support you. The system is so restrictive that you can not find a lot of options and at some point it explodes. The system needed connections and ways to reorganise to be able to cope with the environment but it was not possible.”

“So this means that my problem could not be solved?”

“Yes, it is a possibility.”

“Is there something I can do to help?”

“Well, as you saw if you have a system that is too restrictive it will be difficult to find even experiments. What you could do is to help the system to become more resilient and flexible.”

“How do I do that?”

“You can create more connections and interactions between systems (colleagues, departments, etc.). You could also help facilitate and improve the quality of interactions and connection.”

“What do you mean with improving the quality of interactions and connections?”

“Think about your internet connection. Try to have a video conference with terrible internet. How do you imagine it will be the result of that meeting?”

“It will be terrible, It happened to me and I got really frustrated I could not even focus on the main topic.”

“Yes, the quality of the connection is extremely important. In general the communication channels are really important.”

“Ok, What else can I do?”

“Well I guess you could also modify the environment to allow these connections to emerge.”

“You mean by creating meetings from different departments for example?”

“That could be an example. But even things that seem not to be directly connected can create new connections. For example adding new people to your company or creating a time for drinking coffee together.”

“All right. That makes a lot of sense. I need time to digest it. Modifying the environment to make it more resilient and flexible is a concept that I need to think about.”

“I understand, Do you want to sleep over it?”

“Yes, let’s keep talking tomorrow please?”

“All right, have a nice evening.”

Saturday

For the first time in months John was able to sleep properly, he felt really relaxed. He had so many new ideas that wanted to try but he needed to order his thoughts.

“Hi Martha, I’m struggling a little bit with all the information that I got. I still think I don’t have time to do any of that. I don’t have time to make the system more flexible and resilient, it is what it is. I can not run several experiments because I don’t even know which question to follow. And there are so many questions I want to answer that I don’t think I will ever be able to decide which one. All what I heard from you was really nice but I think I can not do it.”

“Hm I’m sorry to hear that John! So let’s see what we can do. Do you remember how you felt when your dog was lost?”

“Yes, it was a little bit different but I was also desperate.”

“So a similar feeling as you are having right now. Then let’s start by taking a deep breath and tell me what your thoughts are right now.”

“Mmm ok, let me think. I know the problem and I want to stay in the question to continue being aware and open. So I will not focus on finding “the right solution” but to find different ways to move forward. In the dog example I called my family. So I guess I need to call people from my company and share my problem. There might be some crazy ideas but also good ideas to try. I should keep focus and monitor the ideas that come to see if the results are going in the direction that I would like. But also in the dog example it was not me who found the idea but someone posted the message of my dog in a group chat. So I guess that if I share the problem with other departments they might also find it for me. It’s really scary, what if we don’t find a way to move forward?”

“Well, it could happen, you could also not have found your dog.”

“Yes, it’s true. But to be honest I would have continued searching and trying things for a long time. I guess this is the same case. Although in this case if It takes too much time I could lose my job. But if what you say is true and we are in a complex environment then It doesn’t really depend on me. The most I can do is keep trying things and hope that the solution will emerge.”

“Only if you are in a complex environment. Obviously if you build a car you want to build it right and find the right way to do it.”

“Yes, you don’t need to say that, I know.”

“There is still one more thing I would like to talk about before you leave tomorrow.”

“What is it?”

“It is about how you can actually get less stressed when you understand complexity, and perhaps even have less conflicts with other people.”

“That sounds interesting. I will be waiting for tomorrow.”

“Great, see you then!”

Sunday

John finished packing, he was a little bit upset about leaving but he was happy that he did. He really missed Martha, he told himself to keep visiting her in the future.

“Hi Martha, everything is ready.”

“How are you John? Are you leaving already?”

“Yes I want to go to the office to deal with my problem, but before I leave could you tell me about what you mentioned yesterday, how understanding complexity could lead to less stress, being more present and comfortable.”

“Yes of course, it’s quite easy actually. Do you remember any of the characteristics from complexity?”

“Yes, one was about there is no way to find what is causing something and the other was about mmm prediction. That you can not predict what will happen in the future.”

“Exactly, there are so many interactions that could be contributing to the present behaviour, that it’s practically impossible to find how each interaction contributes to the present behaviour. If you by miracle could understand them all, it would be too late because the system already changed.”

“Yes, I think I got it”

“Lets keep this in mind and let’s think about a problem you recently had”

“Mmm a personal problem?”

“Yes, please.”

“Ok, mmm i had a problem with my brother, he is always teasing me. I had enough. He is just too rude every time.”

“That’s a good example. What is the problem exactly?”

“That he is always teasing me.”

“And why is that a problem?

“It bothers me, I try to be nice sometimes but he wants to see me angry every time.”

“And when that happens, how does he react?”

“He seems to enjoy it. I don’t know why he is like that?”

“Ok, let’s stop here. Let’s try to gather all the questions that you have.”

“Mmm ok, let me think. One will be what is his problem? and why is he always teasing me?”

“Great, so now you have two questions and we know that we are in a complex environment. So what do we do from what we learned so far?”

“Mmm we find the general question, we try to keep awareness, and we try experiments”

“Exactly. So what would be the general question?” asked Martha.

“I guess: How to have a good relationship with my brother?”

“All right, I want you to compare the questions that you mentioned so far: What is his problem?, Why is he always teasing me? and How to have a good relationship with my brother? and now answer the following question: How do you feel when you are thinking about each question?”

“Mmm I think I know where you are going. In the first two questions I can feel a negative vibe, I feel I’m kind of blaming him, maybe I’m hurt and I want to punish him. I don’t know. But the last question is completely different, it kind of opens my perspective. Still I’m angry but it generates a more positive vibe in me.”

“Great! Now, what do you do next?”

“Mmm I think I need to keep awareness. So I should avoid answering the question right? I should send several boats to navigate with the idea of finding a solution. And with that I will start my experiments, trying to maintain myself open to whatever could happen.”

“Yes, I think you understood it pretty well”

“But wait, what if all experiments I can think about require him to change and he doesn’t want to change?”

“Ahh but that is the beauty of complex environments and people. The reality is that we can not control people. We can not even control ourselves. Everything happening around us modifies what we do and how we think. We are easily influenced. So when you ask someone to change, you are asking for something that is out of their control.”

“But if they can not change, what can I do?”

“Think about a little boy or even a dog if you want. You could talk with them but they won’t listen or they will forget. You wouldn’t say that the kid or the dog doesn’t want to change.”

“I guess, I wouldn’t.”

“But still you can teach them a lot of things, you can motivate them by offering them things or by changing the environment. If the kid is freezing then you close the window, if the dog is barking you give him a piece of bread. You do all of this naturally and you try a lot of things. You do it without blaming the kid or the dog since they can not really control his actions and behaviour completely.”

“Yes, true.”

“The problem is that when that little boy becomes older, we start thinking that they can control everything and can change everything if they want to to do it. And we get angry and frustrated with them for not being able to change. But human beings are complex. There are many things happening inside of us which we can not control and they just happen. But also external factors change our behaviour. Try not eating for one day, how would you feel?”

“Well usually I’m in a terrible mood. I love eating”

“Exactly, we are easily influenced and we don’t have so much control, so blaming a person for not being able to change into what we want will just bring frustration and stress in our lives.”

“Wow I never saw it like that. I’m usually frustrated about so many people in my life. Mostly at work, I wish they really could change and that makes me angry. So, what you are saying is that I should see my brother like a kid?”

“Haha, yes more or less and yourself also. People can not really voluntarily change, it’s not completely up to them. So, why waste your time on asking , demanding or pushing them. Focus instead in the environment where the people are, create some experiments. Maybe you would be able to build an environment that brings peace and harmony to everyone. And if it doesn’t work…”

“We keep trying of course! Thank you Martha this was really enlightening and I feel so dumb for not knowing this. It’s so obvious.”

“I think you do know it John. I think we all know it. But we forget. At some point we forget that we are humans and we are part of Nature. We do not control Nature but it’s the other way around. Nature wants us to do things but we keep pushing against it. I’m pretty sure you have heard about this saying: listen what life wants from you and what life is already giving you.”

“Yes, I heard it but usually those are monks or people that are a lot into meditation and mindfulness. And I’m not that kind of person.”

“Haha well I hope during this week you remembered your humanity and how well you are prepared for dealing with problems. Due to our daily activities we might lose awareness of the present, we are sometimes in the past or in the future or thinking about something. Due to media and social pressure we are trying to become robots, to be perfect and try to see everyone as perfect, we also try to understand everything and find the best solution. It’s exhausting and unnatural. The good news is that we are and always will remain humans, so we can always go back and start over.”

“Thank you Martha, I don’t know if because of what you said or just being here with nature that I started feeling more connected with everything around me. I think we do lose perspective and I think stopping to think is extremely helpful. Thank you again it was a pleasure to talk with you.”

“The pleasure was mine John. Please come back soon. We still have lots of things to talk about.”

“I’d love that. See you soon Martha”

John went home with a smile on his face. It was a nice week after all. He knew he will face more problems in the future. But he felt more confident and calmed. The first thing he would do after arriving home would be to book his next holidays. He wanted to visit Martha as soon as possible.

THE END

I saw so many articles about working remote, that I feel people are desperate to hear about my tips. So here is my list of suggestions that I gathered during many years of experience:

1. Make sure you are not at the office. If you are there, go home, it doesn’t work if you are at the office
2. You will need a computer, internet and electricity, make sure they are available
3. Try to find a nice place to put your computer, if you have a table that would be fantastic. The floor can be hard and your bed might move too much
4. Make sure your job can actually be done with a computer
5. Buy a painting or portrait and place it at the wall, this will be your background for video calls
6. Have a pen and a notebook, you will need them to write and share your experience about working remote. It is never enough!
7. Remember to move, eat and of course breath or this will be a short experience
8. Distractions will be your worst enemy, try to reflect constantly during the day about how bad distractions are
9. Finally, remember that remote work could make you a better human being or It could make you a terrible person but also nothing could happen. Think about that

Please share with 1 million persons so that they can benefit from my advice

Enjoy remoting!

For those who didn’t hear it today at home, work or anywhere:

- You are special
- You are not alone
- Thank you
- It is ok
- I trust you
- Good job!
- You mean something to us
- We know you did your best, thank you
- We are happy to see you
- You make us better
- Even if you don’t believe it, you do matter

Sometimes is is hard for people to say it but it doesn’t mean you didn’t deserve one…

Thanks for reading,

Gil

One more day In which I didn’t do it,
I couldn’t reach my goals
I kept dreaming, doing nothing
Should I stop dreaming and accept I can’t do it?
But I did things today. Things that I wanted,
but not all my dreams.
Can you be happy like that? The time I use in something is time I can not use for another thing. I can’t enjoy it. There is stress, anxiety and no matter how much you do, there is a hole that can not be filled.

I believe now that some people are born dreamers. We travel in our minds, we imagine a new world. A world in which everything is possible, you could speak hundreds of languages or be a hero. A world of peace, a world where things just work, a world of magic, a beautiful world.

Dreaming is so important but sadly we forget. We keep thinking that only by “doing” we matter. But you don’t need to climb a mountain if you can imagine a house full of joy or a work environment you love.

Dreams are powerful and once we share them they make a difference, they can become actions and actions can transform the world.

Share your dreams, talk about them. Be active to dream and dream to be active. It is important, you are important. We can make a difference :)

Thank you for reading :-)

#believe

Today, I am ok.
For just this time, I want to share, without more guilt , I am ok.
I talked with friends, I worked from home. I was a parent, I am ok.
For just some minutes I went outside. Oh! it was freezing. I am ok.
I am not worried, I want to rest, the day is over, I am ok.
My house is quiet, the streets are too. My fridge is running. I am ok.
And so I try to just forget. I hear my breathing. I am ok.
This dream continues and so our life. The play moves forward. I am ok.
I wish all people around my life
could find a moment
to feel just fine
it doesn’t matter
how the world will change
just say today:
I am ok.

Thanks for reading,

Gil

Some time ago I reached my limit. I was tired of blaming myself: my flaws and defects. I got frustrated because nothing I did was working, I was not able to remove those defects and that was killing me. Until one day I decided to change my mindset: What if our defects actually make us better? What if they are actually important for us to develop?. As you can imagine it was easier as I though:

- I am selfish, and this let me create a family and have good friends
- I am egoist and this helped me not to give myself away
- I am full of hate, and this gave me courage to fight for what is right
- I am lazy and this helped me find ways to be more efficient
- I talk too much, and I’ve learn to tell wonderful stories
- I do not listen, and this helped me to start learning from my own mistakes
- I am a coward and this pushed me to find ways to avoid conflict and seek peace
- I worry to much, and I have created amazing plans and prevented big troubles
- I am always suffering and this let me understand other’s pain
- I am ugly, and I found other beautiful things in me
- I am not good enough and this made me reflect and grow and to keep trying

I have so many defects and within them I exist, they make me who I am, they brought happiness in me and now, in retrospective, I hope they don’t disappear. I am an imperfect human and I think maybe, and only maybe that is what makes me special. This is who I am. And that is everything I need.

Thanks for reading

Gil

While working as a Scrum Master you have moments that are amazing and beautiful, when you see people do things they didn’t believe they can, when they grow, develop and become what they wanted to be, it fills your heart, it makes you smile.

But there are moments when the pain is big, when your sacrifice seems worthless, when you realise you gave more than you should have, unappreciated, you feel empty and you want to give up.

I think it is fair because no matter how sad you could be, the memory of the eyes of the people you helped, how they smiled for even one second makes it go away.

If you chose to be a Scrum Master, you made, in my opinion, a good choice.

Thanks for reading,

Gil

During the years that I’ve been working as a Scrum Master, I’ve seen some typical mistakes that disrupt a Scrum team. They slow the team down and prevent them from reaching their best level of performance. Because mistakes don’t necessarily surface at the beginning of a Scrum implementation, they are difficult to prevent, and sometimes they are even difficult to detect. I keep this list written down so that I can come back to it occasionally to make sure that we aren’t making these mistakes.

Mistake №1: Too many tasks in progress

Imagine this scenario: Your team has just started working with Scrum, and the number of tasks is increasing exponentially because of the many different impediments (maybe your deployment system is not ready, or your stories are still not mature enough). Because a task cannot be completed, the developers start a new task or story. You are almost at the end of the sprint, you realise that most of the stories are in progress, and you have almost nothing done (according to your Definition of Done).

Now imagine that you continue with the next sprint and the same situation happens. The only problem is that you now have new stories and old stories. In my experience, it is at this moment that the stakeholders become nervous and start pressuring the team. As soon as the team feels pressure, one of the reactions is to start taking on more tasks and working in parallel, all the while thinking that this makes them faster or more productive.

It is a well-known principle from the Lean framework that working on many things at the same time brings waste into the process. In Scrum, we are looking to prevent waste by focusing on a constant flow and pace in our delivery. If your story is not done yet, you continue working on it before starting a new one. Sometimes, part of the task involves waiting. If this is the case, then you can use that time to help someone else, maybe by pair programming or by testing. One phrase that is useful to remember comes from the Lean philosophy: “Stop starting and start finishing.”

Mistake №2: Behaviour-oriented management

For many years, companies have used behaviour-oriented management to improve their processes. They tried to control the behaviour of their employees by attempting to measure it. They introduced work clocks to measure how many hours they dedicate for each task; they even tried to control how much time each person should spend on breaks.

This is still a challenge, even for Scrum Masters. I remember one developer who took a lot of breaks and who was not really open to talk with other people. At one point I was disappointed with him, but then I realised that we were reaching our goals, the customer was extremely happy, and the team was working at a constant pace. It took me some time to learn this, but now I try to concentrate on measuring things that are important, like customer satisfaction, quality, and, of course, the goal of the sprint.

Mistake №3: Not having a clear goal

This mistake still appears in some of my sprints. After each sprint, the team should have a main goal. The reason behind it is that it helps the team by setting a direction. It is really important, and it is not easy to do. I’ve seen some goals like “Fix all bugs,” “Finish all stories,” “Do five stories” — which might seem correct, but they are too general or too restrictive.

The goal should be clear, measurable, testable, and negotiable. Furthermore, there should be several ways to reach that goal, and it should give the developers the freedom to think about alternatives. An example would be: “The goal is to provide the user with an alternative method to pay for our products.”

Mistake №4: Making decisions for the team

Sometimes the stakeholders or managers want to speed things up, and they start making decisions without consulting the team (I’ve seen this also with Scrum Masters). The reason I have heard most often is that they think that the team will take too much time to decide, and they can’t afford it. The second reason I hear often is that they see that the team is not participating and not being proactive.

Any decision that you make on behalf of the team takes the responsibility away from them. This responsibility helps with motivation and makes good teams great. You will need to be patient; a team that makes decisions will need some time, even more time if they were never given the opportunity to exercise decision-making previously. Instead of making the decision, you can focus on helping them reach a consensus (for example, through workshops).

Mistake №5: Focusing only on efficiency

If we have learned anything about industry and machines, it is that searching for efficiency is important for things like reducing costs and making more profit. The problem is that in some environments we might need to sacrifice efficiency for resiliency. Consider a high-speed road. If we used the whole capacity of the road, then every single space would be filled with cars. This would not really deliver the desired results. You need some space between cars to let them manoeuvre and travel at higher speeds. You need to sacrifice what seems to be efficiency to allow the system to adapt to its needs.

This is also true for development. Your developers need time to relax, to think, and to learn. They don’t need to be busy 100 percent of their time. Give them a little bit of space so that they can adapt to whatever is happening.

Mistake №6: Trying to centralise control

I have seen this in big projects in which there are many teams that need to coordinate with each other. In those cases, some managers wanted to have control over everything. They asked for written reports, attended meetings to ask for status, asked for time estimation and plans, etc. This might not seem bad in a small project, but in complex projects it is almost impossible to know what is happening everywhere. Understanding the system as a whole is something that can’t be done in that way under a complex system.

Instead of trying to control the whole project, make sure to have diverse teams that can self-organise and work on improving the interaction and communication among themselves.

Mistake №7: Missing visualisation

There are several online tools on the market that provide nice visualisation of your projects. The mistake comes when we focus only on that. Having an online tool is good, but the physical visualisation is also important: Scrum boards, calendars, whiteboards, and diagrams. They let you have quick conversations with your team and with stakeholders but also remind you of your goals and past decisions. When I started as a Scrum Master I didn’t think it was important, but after some time, I discovered how useful it is to have visualisation in your room.

Mistake №8: No team-building activities

Do you remember when you first introduced Scrum or Agile inside the company? Maybe you gave some presentations, prepared a few games, and even prepared some team-building activities. As time passed, it looked like everything was going well, and the number of activities was reduced to the point that you just stopped doing them. It is true that you cannot give a presentation every day, but in my experience, you should continue with them. Holding team-building activities once in a while helps the team stay motivated and increases team spirit.

Mistake №9: No environment in which to fail

As you navigate through the sea of continuous improvement, your team will come up with ideas they never tried before. Some of those things will work and some will fail. Your team needs to know that it is OK to fail, because this is the way they learn. This can be done only if you prepare a safe environment in which to fail. For example, for one of my teams, we use to put our “experiments” on a board, and we tested them for one month. If there was a good result, we continued with it; if not, then we just took the next one and tried it. It was clear to everyone that this was the purpose of the meeting.

Mistake №10: Forgetting about quality

It happens sometimes that a team forgets about continuously improving the quality of their deliveries. The team relaxes and stops thinking about ways to improve. It is important for us to remind the team as frequently as possible about trying to reach a higher level of excellence. Practices such as pull requests, pair programming, unit testing, or integration testing can help the team to reach new levels of productivity.

I hope these mistakes can help others as they helped me in the past.

Thanks for reading!