HelpingImprove

“Leadership is not about titles, positions, or flowcharts. It is about one life influencing another.” – John C. Maxwell

"The goal of all of this groundwork – working through your anxieties, planning what and how you want to communicate, and preparing to recover when you’re thrown off-balance – is to be fully present in the conversation with your people." helpingimprove.com/communicating-…

"Leaders must either invest a reasonable amount of time attending to fears and feelings, or squander an unreasonable amount of time trying to manage ineffective and unproductive behavior." – Brené Brown, Dare to Lead

"If you think this news will upset people, you may be right. Trust that your people can handle it. The more often you do that, the more true it becomes." helpingimprove.com/share-informat…

"An essential part of communicating change effectively is making space to work with whatever emotions arise. It’s often this part of the conversation that managers try to avoid." helpingimprove.com/communicating-…

“Then, the turn happens — when an organization, team, or individual goes from believing agile can work to believing it’s a farce. It happens quickly. And, it also happens quietly.” helpingimprove.com/how-agile-goes…

“What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make.” – Jane Goodall

""Great managers help people focus and gain clarity, even when there seems to be none. They don’t do this by shielding their people from what’s happening and keeping them in the dark." helpingimprove.com/share-informat…

"Focus on improving the entire system, not just parts." Learn more about Optimize the Whole and six other Lean principles in our live, online Certified ScrumMaster (CSM) Training, May 31 – June 1, 2023, with Jake Calabrese. helpingimprove.com/certified-scru…

"Whatever else it produces, an organization is a factory that manufactures judgments and decisions." –Daniel Kahneman; Thinking, Fast and Slow

Ultimately agile teams are determining if backlog items are small enough to fit within a sprint, too big, or un-estimable due to unknowns. They may use numbers to do this or not. buff.ly/3MqhS5T

“What if we used accidentally shippable instead of potentially shippable? Would that help us aim higher?” helpingimprove.com/is-aiming-for-…

"You can be known as the person who helps articulate the critical issue or as the person who provides hasty answers to solve the wrong problem. Which would you prefer?" –Michael Bungay Stanier, The Advice Trap

If you’ve tried to buy women’s clothing for someone, you may have struggled to make sense of the sizes. Navigating the world of clothing sizes got Allison reflecting on three principles from estimation and sizing practices by agile teams. helpingimprove.com/agile-estimate…

"A Scrum Master who also doing the jobs of a Product Owner may find..." Discover the answer to this and other Scrum puzzles in our live, online Certified ScrumMaster (CSM) Training, May 31 – June 1, 2023, with Jake Calabrese. helpingimprove.com/certified-scru…

"Communicating change effectively is more than just passing along information. It involves adding context and clarity. Being clear, curious, and connected as you do acknowledges and works with the human experience of change." helpingimprove.com/communicating-…

"We fail more often because we solve the wrong problem than because we get the wrong solution to the right problem." –Russell Ackoff, "Redesigning the Future"

"It’s easy to fall into the trap of either doing not enough refinement or doing too much – or both simultaneously!" helpingimprove.com/secret-to-refi…

“Teams often go astray because it’s easy to focus solely on the 'How?' instead of the 'What?' and the 'Why?'” helpingimprove.com/what-customer-…

"As a manager, one of your jobs is to provide a high-quality information conduit between the larger organization and your people or teams. Connect people to the larger organization in a way that creates helpful transparency, not anxiety." helpingimprove.com/share-informat…