June 10th – All’s Fair in Love and War
- The Four Agreements. This is a book – we covered the first two agreements: “Speak honestly and deliberately”, which is taken to mean that words have power, so choose your words carefully, and “Don’t take things personally”, which is to say that people speak from their own reality, informed by their own history – its not about you, its about them. These are not only great principles to apply to your own life to avoid the negativity projected by others, they are also great for any situation where you are giving or receiving feedback, such as (Agile) teams. However, we appear hard-wired to receive other’s opinions’ about us as personal attacks – so these lessons need to be consciously worked on.
- Perceived Inefficiency. People (working on Agile teams) can be perceived as being inefficient by managers, when they are in reality not. This is either because the manager’s don’t understand the work enough to be able to tell, or because of the principle-agency problem of trust and judgment of ‘unfairness’
- Business Lessons from Maneuver Warfare. Brian is an ex-Marine, so we revisited this Book Club topic. His insights about teamwork in the Marines were: By knowing everyone’s weakness and strengths, you lose your own sense of identity for the group. Your own weaknesses are disguised behind the strength of the team, and great leaders can identify which traits to emphasize in order to bond a team together. In the Marines, immediately after returning from a deployment, team members will be replaced for the next deployment (they don’t have the old teammates hang about, but start the new team members bonding right away.
- Why We Choose Fear Over Love. Out of time, but briefly discussed principle of removing everything that there is to be fearful of, and the dimensions of love & empathy have room. This is a great management lesson.
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