 somewhere else. You had a lot of choices. You could have mingled around or been waiting for lunch now after this or could have attended one of these sessions. You also had a choice to go to either track 1, track 2 or track 3 but you decided to come here. So you made a choice. All our life we are making choices. So the session is about why do we make certain choices over others, what drives it and why do we need to even try to improve and can we improve at the last comment or do we need to prepare. So it is all tied up. This is a wow framework which I have been building for last year or so. First I practice it myself. Then I work with impetus. So we have a large number of project teams and our product teams. So try that with them. It seems to be working. So I thought this may be a good forum to come and share whatever I have found and our teams have found useful. Give me a minute. Thank you. Does it make sense? 4 hours out of 6 hours just sharpening the axe. But it matters because once we are sharpened the axe then the cuts will be very smooth. We will be able to do it faster and get more output. So quality, agility and productivity everything goes up with good preparation. Now prepare for what? Lot of things we need to prepare for. Life is uncertain. Things go as expected. They also go quite often not expected. So today's session is not about how to prepare for what is expected. Let me take an example. You come to office from home, driving on the way. You found starting at a particular time is good enough for you to reach office in time. On a particular day it might happen that there is some traffic on the road more than expected and time is running out. You have to reach in time. You find it important to be there on time and it is slipping up. So it was something we had not expected. Now is not the time to start preparing for it. Lot of things we could have done earlier. So what are those kind of things? And there can be variety of ways things can go wrong. All of you must have heard about Marcy's law. If things can go wrong they will go wrong and at the worst possible time. So there are hundreds of ways things can go wrong. If there is one way it will go right. So we will focus on things, more generic things, what we can do to prepare ourselves much better to handle any kind of such uncertainties. Now, how is the framework which I have been building as I said and rest of the session I will be going over those details. How is really for a short form for way of working. So what does it involve? It has front end and back end. Front end is what we can observe. Like for example what are the actions we are taking. We start at a particular time to leave for office. Now today suppose the meeting was very important and we have got to be there. If you are late by even a minute it will be noticed. We will feel awkward walking into a room where meeting has already started. So lot of things can happen. In spite of that as a habit we left the home at the same time as earlier. Things prior to that whatever time what we got up, had breakfast or prepare children for school or whatever we kept on doing the same thing. So we get so habituated to doing things because they normally work. But on a particular day it is important to reach in office. We could have probably started thinking of other things. Actions are what we take ourselves. Interactions are how we interact with each other. So all the visible part of it is mostly made up out of actions and interactions. Emotions are also very important. They are visible definitely to us. If I feel bad I will know about it. If you feel bad probably it will show up on your face. I can see it. So all actions, interactions and emotions are the three visible building blocks of the VAUK framework. But why do we act or why do we interact in a particular way? Because at some point in the past we made a decision that that seems to be a good way of working based upon the situation we are in. And it kept on working. So it was like a master decision which kept on printing out copies of our actions and interactions. And we get habituated to it. It becomes our second nature. It is not so easy to change. And more than the decisions, what is driving the decisions is really the opinions. That is the crux of VAUK framework. That our opinions are values are beliefs and our assumptions are at the back of everything else. So let us see how these five pieces fit together. We start with understanding our actions and interactions. What is driving them are our decisions. I have already said that either explicitly or implicitly we have taken some decisions in the past. And those are resulting into the actions or interactions that we take today in a similar situation. Now behind that are as I said the opinions which consist of the assumptions, beliefs and values. Let me take the earlier example of driving from home to office. Suppose if I have a value that I always respect reaching on time absolutely on the dot. So that value will drive lot of other things. There may be other person. I have seen people who walk into a meeting five minutes late. They think that others are waiting. That is okay for them. It does not matter to them. They are important unless they come their meeting will not start. So for them they do not value as much reaching on time. So values are driving rest of it. I may believe that I will reach there on time because I have always reached on time. But that belief may not come out to be true. Now what could be the assumption? The traffic on the road would be as normal. It may not be. Now I need to check that assumption if it is an important for me to reach in office. So what kind of things I could have done? I could have probably looked at the newspaper or looked at on my mobile app. How is the traffic on that road or heard on the FM radio? There are a variety of ways I could have known if it is so important for me to reach in time. So far we have seen the other four parts but these opinions, assumptions, beliefs and values also lead to emotions. If I want to reach there on time but not able to reach on time. So anxiety will start. Probably the frustration will be there. I may call up somebody in the office has the meeting started. So I am getting worried. So all those emotions are starting because of the opinions I have. And those in turn affect my decisions. If I am in a bad mood, if I have negative emotions I will be kind of stuck in those and will not take good decisions, mature decisions. Whereas if I am in a positive frame of mind or emotions I will be able to do that. So all these five are correlated and what I will be taking couple of examples from, I have plenty of such examples where I can do walkthrough. But I have chosen two examples because of a short time today. But before that let us look at it whose way of working are we interested in. Is it just our way of working? No. Because we are all connected with each other. We have to understand about other persons way of working. All of us, most of us are from software industry using agile. Have some clients or have some customers to deal with. So unless we understand their way of working, in the same way we understand our way of working, it will be incomplete. It will be only inward focus. We need to understand others way of working. And more importantly we also need to understand the systems way of working because we and they are again part of a system. So it is very nice saying is there that we are prisoner of a system we do not understand. It is very true because what happens is unless we understand the system we do not know what options we have. And unless we know the options our choices are very limited. It is like a prisoner. It does not have any freedom except for probably the VIP prisoners they have a lot of freedom. But most of the others have hardly any freedom. That characterizes the prisoners. So we become the prisoners of the system. So we need to understand how systems work also. So as I said if you notice right from morning to night lot of things are going through our life. But we tend to get used to a certain way of working. Maybe work in a half days way. Not really look at what is happening. And if we then we are in problem then start thinking about it. So as I said I will take two examples. One from life at home and one from office and walk through these steps before applying VAO and after applying VAO does it change anything. And before we close I will provide you with couple of tips of how we can practice these things and get better and better. Can I have a bottle of water please? Thank you. Any questions so far? Are you with me? The first situation is I will not read out. We can have a look. And it is more of a pattern. It is a pattern of competitive comparison. We see that often even in office. Two team members, team leaders seems to be preferring one over the other because his performance is better. How does the other person feel? So it is not limited to only this context which I am talking but wherever there is a competitive comparison, same kind of pattern comes up. We could start anywhere out of these high building talks. Let us start with the emotions. Look at it from the person who is being always criticized or compared against his superior brother or sister. So he may start feeling hatred or he may get depressed or both. Now what was the decision that it results to? Do whatever it takes to just get out of this uncomfortable situation. Right? So the actions and interactions will be driven by this decision. So who is causing this? Their and relatives will keep on comparing, keep on criticizing you. Why are you not better? He is so good and so on. So avoid them. Get out of this situation. Or I have seen cases where a person has gone to the extent of causing physical harm to a sibling. It is not a good situation. And what is leading to all this? Our opinions. Bad luck? Can't do anything? Past life I might have done something bad. Therefore now I am getting all this. So I should do something now so that next life will be better. What about here today? Or it could be everybody wants to look good to others. But now it is become so overpowering that you can't think of anything else. So you need to now get out of this. So start applying way of working approach. So emotions was the main challenging part. So we start from there. What kind of emotions we want to have? We desire to be loved. We want to feel worthy. We mean the person who is feeling inferior. Now if we start from there, then what needs to be done? Nature has created diversity. It is not that everybody has all, I mean one person has all these strengths and other person has nothing. Everybody has his own strengths. So rather than worrying about what the person doesn't have or has not been able to develop, why not start looking at these strengths and focus on them. Once that decision is taken, it is good to understand any opinions need to change. So it means that I must first understand what are my real needs. Is looking good to others is my real need or feeling happy, feeling worthy, feeling loved is my real need. So if that is my real need, then I need to act differently. So maybe I focus on my strengths. Naturally there will be better results. I start showcasing them. I will feel more confident and then in my interactions I also become more open to others. Be open to parents, try and understand their needs. Even the person who is considered superior has his own challenges. He has certain inhibitions. So I must take care of those also. If I can do that, I will develop a good relationship with them. If I am able to understand parents need, maybe they want to see their children grow up better, all of them. So they are after that. But once we understand that, we can do something about it. What we can do may change from situation to situation. Now come to office. This is a second situation. Have you come across these cases earlier anytime? I have actually seen it in couple of all projects. So I thought I will include this here. So we do not have to necessarily start from the same point. Now we can start from this here. So what was the decision probably that was there which resulted in our behavior? So given that there was a protective person, we are comfortable. Even if our performance was not that good or we made some mistakes, he was there to protect us from others. He was taking care of us. So we continue to be comfortable. As a result, we totally depended on that person. We did not cultivate others channels. Because after he has run, we have to deal with others. But we did not do that. We did not anticipate the risk. That was action on our part, lack of action. And what was at the back of all that? Our assumption that the person will be always there. It cannot be. And other possible belief is that others are responsible to take care of us. So he is there. He will take care of us. We do not have to worry. So we need to change. So where do we change? Start asking us is what if? Because there are two kinds of reasons why we are successful today. It is because of our capabilities or it is because of external factors. In this case, it is clearly an external factor. He could change. So once we understand or once we decide that hereafter, we will start asking questions. Even if today seems to be going well, is it because of us or is it because of things which we are not under control? So we will look at the impact. We will start building alternate channels. And the driving force, driving change which has happened is we accept that we are responsible to take care of us. And once that happens, we will be more confident and feel in control. So if you look at both these situations, they are just patterns. So we need to start looking at finding certain patterns of things. And it could happen same kind of situation could happen at home, at office, in our social circles anywhere. But once we do this, then there is a possibility of change. Changing our way of working. But that again is not easy just by saying it does not happen because our existing way of working has become a habit. So first we need to break that habit and form a new habit. So for which we have to start acting in new way. And once that becomes successful, automatically our way of working will change. So as I mentioned couple of things I have found very useful, our teams have found useful are, before that what should we be prepared with? Because we need some frame of reference. So we need to be prepared with information, know-how, skills, resources and lot of stamina, physical and mental stamina to be prepared. So why I am mentioning this is the next two tips are very generic. But if we find that there is a need to change, what do we need to change? What do we need to get prepared? We can look back here and refer to this as a frame of reference. So for any success because small as I said, why we are successful? Normally what is our tendency? We feel good, we pat ourselves on the back or pat our colleagues on the back, celebrate and move on. But is it because of our capabilities or external factors? And if it is because of external, what needs to change within us? Even for failures, why did we fail? If there is a bug we always do an RCA. But it is always focused outside. Was there a problem with the server? Something wrong with our test or our practice is bad, processes are bad or what? But are we lacking somewhere internally? Are our assumptions creating some of the problems? Are our beliefs creating problems? Is it resulting in wrong kind of decisions? So that is where we can start thinking. And one very useful practice I have found is call out whether we know something or we assume something. Because a very large number of times we tend to mix up facts and assumptions. So the moment you start saying I know this to yourself as well as to others and encourage others to do the same. Automatically followed by what is the basis on which we know this. So it turns out that what we thought as a fact is actually an assumption. And the moment it is an assumption we need to verify. Other two I will just skip right now because I can see we are already behind time. So I just wanted to share with you that the VAU framework which I am building has the VAU core what we talked today. There is lot of guidance material. There are 7 universal principles and number of useful patterns are there. So I have put up a site called wayofworking.org. You can go there and see there is a good FAQ. So if you are more interested in this you could send me a mail. I am actually working for impetus a software company. I have been there for last 16 years, last one year as a external consultant now focusing on Agile and VAU. So I do all the trainings as well as course the teams to do their assessment, find where are the gaps and I have started now using the VAU also within that. Thank you.