Food for Agile Thought #365: Fixing Toxic Cultures, From Mission to Strategy to Tasks, Difficult Stakeholders

Welcome to the 365th edition of the ‘Food for Agile Thought’ newsletter, shared with 36,117 peers. My name is Stefan Wolpers.

This week, we dive into the research on toxicity in the workplace and point to three means of fixing toxic cultures, from leadership to social norms to work design. Also, we detail how to collaborate with challenging people you need to include in your work and argue that principally ruling out discussions on productivity leads in the wrong direction. Additionally, we reflect on critical techniques for any transformation: learning, unlearning, and changing the habits of participants and stakeholders.

Then, we appreciate Lenny Rachitsky’s visualization of the hierarchy of goals in product management, and we share tips & tricks to start or grow your Product CoP, from starting at a minimum viable level to formalizing the CoP to expanding the community management team. Moreover, Janna Bastow shares how the unsuitedness of timeline roadmaps—based on deadlines—helped her design her approach to outcome-based planning.

Finally, we check out a new tool to “help facilitate your thinking when taking new products or ideas to market.” Also, we share a free ebook on identifying what is worth building, from involving your team members to communicating your research results with stakeholders, and we point to six critical elements of successful user journey mapping, from the business goal to mapping a specific user’s experience.

PS: 🗞 Did you miss past issues? No worries, here we go: 363, 364.

👉 📈 Join 750-plus peers: The Anonymous Scrum Master and Agile Coach Salary Report 2023.

🏆 Tip of the Week

MIT Sloan Management Review: In this essay, Donald Sull and Charles Sull dive into the research on toxicity in the workplace and point to three means of change, from leadership to social norms to work design: "How to Fix a Toxic Culture."

➿ Agile & Scrum

• Medium: Neil Turner details how to collaborate with challenging people you need to include in your work, from the power-interest matrix to RACI to sharing your work: "How to work with difficult stakeholders."
  
  

• Dan Luu argues that principally ruling out discussions on productivity leads in the wrong direction: "Some reasons to work on productivity and velocity."

• John Cutler, inspired by the book ‘Design for How People Learn,’ reflects on critical techniques for any transformation: learning, unlearning, and changing habits of participants and stakeholders: "Making Optional Product Practices Stick."

🎓 🖥 💯 🇬🇧 Hands-on Agile #47: How much Product Discovery Is Enough? W/ Itamar Gilad on November 3, 2022

How much product discovery is enough?

Figuring out what is worth building often feels valuable in and of itself. The problem is that becoming stuck in an endless discovery cycle neither solves your customers’ issues nor contributes to your organization’s sustainability.

Don’t worry; help is on the way in the form of Itamar Gilad’s Confidence Meter! During the 47th Hands-on Agile session, you will learn how to calculate your confidence level in a product idea with the Confidence Meter by adding evidence. The Confidence Meter tool will then return a number in the range of 0-10, answering a simple question: Will we deliver the expected impact?

RSVP 125-plus peers now: 🖥 💯 🇬🇧 Hands-on Agile #47: Evidence-guided Development Using the Confidence Meter w/ Itamar Gilad on November 3, 2022.

👉 From time to time, we can offer last-minute seats for training classes at cost to individuals who do not have access to a corporate training budget. If you like to be notified about these opportunities, please register here.

🎯 Product

• Lenny Rachitsky visualizes his approach to the hierarchy of goals in product management: "Mission → Vision → Strategy → Goals → Roadmap → Task."
  
  

• ProdPad: Janna Bastow shares how the unsuitedness of timeline roadmaps—based on deadlines—helped her design her approach to outcome-based planning: "Why I Invented the Now/Next/Later Roadmap."
  
  👉 Pair with Lean Roadmapping and OKRs—Janna Bastow.

• Petra Wille shares tips & tricks to start or grow your Product CoP, from starting at a minimum viable level to formalizing the CoP to expanding the community management team: "Want to Launch or Mature Your Product Community of Practice? Start Here!"

🛠 Concepts, Tools & Measuring

• Product Coalition: Anthony Murphy shares a new tool to “help facilitate your thinking when taking new products or ideas to market:” "Product Go-to-Market (GTM) Canvas: Define How You Take New Ideas to Market."

• 📖 Jan Dittrich shares a free ebook on identifying what is worth building, from involving your team members to communicating your research results with stakeholders: "A Beginner’s Guide to Finding User Needs."

• 📺 UX Planet: Nick Babich points to six critical elements of successful user journey mapping, from the business goal to mapping a specific user's experience: "User journey map: 6 things to remember when doing user journey mapping."

🎶 Encore

• 📺 In this video, Yves Hanoulle and Jutta Eckstein discuss various topics, from picking our battles to being independent of a framework. "Hidden expectations in the words ‘We are agile’."

📅 Training Classes, Meetups & Events

Upcoming classes and events:

• 🖥 💯 🇬🇧 Oct 31-Nov 3 — Live Virtual Class: Professional Scrum Product Owner Training (PSPO I; English)
• 🖥 💯 🇬🇧 Nov 3 — Live Virtual Meetup: Hands-on Agile 47: Evidence-guided Development Using the Confidence Meter w/ Itamar Gilad (English)
• 🖥 💯 🇩🇪 Nov 15-18 — Live Virtual Class: Professional Scrum Product Owner Training (PSPO I; German)
• 🖥 💯 🇬🇧 Dec 7 — Live Virtual Meetup: Hands-on Agile 48: How Elon Musk Would Run YOUR Business w/ Joe Justice (English)
• 🖥 💯 🇬🇧 Dec 12-13 — Live Virtual Class: Professional Scrum Master Training (PSM II; German)
• 🖥 🇩🇪 Dec 14-15 — Live Virtual Class: Professional Scrum Product Owner Training (PSPO I; German)
• 🖥 🇩🇪 Dec 19-20 — Live Virtual Class: Professional Scrum Master Training (PSM I; German)

See all upcoming classes here.

📺 Youtube Channel

• James Shore: FAST Scaling: An Innovative Way to Scale Agile.

Your Opinion Matters

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Best,