 So, hello everybody. Hello. Long day. Long week. Over half way through there. Jeff and I are teaching two classes together this week in Manchester. Yep, we're in Manchester. We've done an advanced CSM and we're halfway through an advanced product course. And then you're off to the cookie again. Back to the fifth test. When does it start? Dead rubber test. Friday, Thursday, tomorrow. Tomorrow, yeah. We are, we're in a quirky pub. Quirky pub that was suggested by one of our Twitter followers. Yep, who was it? I can't remember now. Burns, Burns. I don't know. They suggested Heveral of the Peak and it was an intriguing name. So we're here. And it's quirky. It's got a couple of little side-bugs. It's got a really old-fashioned table football table. Really old-fashioned. It's a layout, isn't it? It's got a character. We don't know its story yet. We're trying to find out its story. All it says here is it's been run by the city's longest-serving landlady. Union? City's oldest serving, longest serving. How long has she been landlady? 40 years. 40 years. Apparently. Well, what's the name? Doesn't say. They serve a decent point. This is a Mancunian school. It's called Hoppy Blond. Is that the one you chose? Yeah, Hoppy Blond. You like a poppy ale, don't you? It's not particularly strong. A bit floral. A bit citrusy. And taste-wise. Slightly tangy. Very drinkable. If you disappear after a long day, that can disappear. Is it strong? It doesn't taste very strong. I'd say four and a half. I don't know. How about you? I've got you a Rebela. Which isn't from these parts. Rebela's. I didn't really make much cider, I do. But I've had Rebela in my local pub. That's one of my local pubs. It's nice. It's quite strong, I think, actually. I think it's like a 4.8. That's not strong for a cider, is it? No, it's strong enough for me after a day's work. But it's nice. It's cold. So who have we got online? Can you tell me who's online there? So for the benefit of the, if you're not watching this live, we are streaming this live on the Jeff's YouTube channel. Of course you should explain that. More people will watch it recorded. You can watch this back on YouTube. And you can see and say hello to us. We've got a couple of people on. Any topics you want us to discuss today? Any questions? Who is it? Do you know who it is? They've revealed themselves. They've said hi. But they didn't quite catch the name. It's quite small on this phone. Who are they typing frantically? Can you do anything to mine? I'll just sit by, I think. We'll let you in a sec, shall we? Sorry, just moving upstairs. We're Jeff looking particularly sharp because we've just had our, not just our hair, but our, my beard has had a bit of a trim. And I must say in my reflection. I'm quite pleased. Hi, Huzy. How are you doing, mate? You're looking particularly... It's like, and it was almost like the guy was measuring it to get the shape right. A bit of a perfection, is it? Oh, I must say. Do you normally get your beard done with a barber? Never. I think I've had it. No, I don't think I've ever had it professionally trimmed. I do like a much wet shave now. But for me, it was an expensive, it was £30, which for me is an expensive haircut. Is it expensive, really? Well, for me, it is. It shows. Mike the barman normally charges 12. It's worth it, mate. £12. It's worth it, you look good. No questions then, no questions on top of anybody. We'll just make it all up. No, we'll make it up. What can we see around here? Oh, here we go. We've not joined you for one of these yet before. Anything off the limit? Well, test us and we'll tell you if it's off the limit. It's not, kind of, an ask-we-ask-us-anything. It's a spark of conversation. We'll have a discussion. There are, kind of, rules of sorts. I've just come back on holiday. Have we done a pubcast this holiday? I'm not sure when this one will go out. Well, this one's good ain't it? You had a holiday moment in the course. You've got something that you really should remember. What was that? It was the Sea of Organic. Oh, yeah. Yeah, explaining an acronym that I helped create. You just lost yourself at sea. Completely forgot it. Yeah. Happens. After a good holiday, my first piece of work back, I'd forgotten the Agile Manifesto. I've been hard. Can't tell you myself so much. Kind of an essential part of the role. What was it? What was it? Something to do with people. Documentation. Something like that. Yeah. I think I've covered it. I don't think anybody noticed. I find that I've got a really good, incredible long-term memory. We might have existed before. I really should know if I've got a good long-term memory. You've got a long-term memory. I've got a short-term memory. I've got a terrible short-term memory. Yeah. I'm your way around. I lost my keys before I came out. Couldn't remember where I put them. What was the question? Most effective way... A group or a group of coaches align on a specific practice. It's gone. Got a team day on Friday. How can I get that back? It's the way I can watch it from my phone. Oh, hold on. There's a chat thing here. Let's put the chat up. All messages are visible. I don't even see it before. I had to get a group of coaches aligned on a topic. That's what I saw. How do you get a group of coaches aligned on a topic? Why would we want that? We need to ask a bit more context, really. While they're typing, imagine a bunch of internal coaches who, if you put your heads together, could make headway on a... How do we do it in BT? This is a bit of a callback. We have regular... But we focused on one program. Wow, that's not true. Wow. Four of us focused on one program. Two on and over. So that's a piece of work. We need to speak to a single voice through the organizational internal coach. Okay, so you want a more compelling, cohesive story. I think... So we had a conversation today, which was to do with stakeholder inferencing. And they were trying to... The actual context doesn't matter, but they were trying to pitch a product. And the instinct is to try and come up with all the reasons. All the benefits that product has. Because part of our human logic, if you like, says that the more arguments you have, the more convincing you are. If you can come up with 10 benefits, then it's better than having only eight benefits. But actually, what you tend to find is that people focus on the weakest argument. And that's what they remember. So by adding extra information, you could be undermining yourself and actually detracting away from the strength. To make one clear case, tell one clear story with one clear benefit. If you can tie that in to some specific personal pain point, that when you say the organisation, whoever it is that you're talking to that's representing the organisation, is aware of and actually cares about, then repetition is going to be your friend there. If you've got the same story being retold and retold by multiple people, it's more chance of sticking. That's not necessarily answering the question, though. What was the question? How do you get a group of coaches aligned on a single topic? I think you need to... My instinct there is, why wouldn't we be? Is it because we are not clear on what the most important pressing thing is? Do we all have our own opinions as to what's most important? We had a problem in BT. We're spreading ourselves too thin. In the early days, maybe six, seven coaches. But we were making no headway by being across six or seven programmes. Yeah, we were sort of chipping away at little bits rather than making any. So a lot of us, four of us, went on to one, the 1D programme. Why was that chosen? What was the message behind that? What was the... How did we know we were making headway with that? It was pulled. And our help was pulled. It was by Greg, who was a friend. It was kind of a favour, wasn't it? It was kind of a Sean's level. I think he just made it clear that he was receptive. So that's a good point for Manus to come to that in a second. The summary from the first thing was, can you agree on something that's important? It doesn't have to be the most important. It's about whether it's priority one, two, three, most important. That's probably wasted effort because any of the top three, four, five items that you could agree on is probably worth focusing on. You're going to get significant value from. So picking one of them that you can all agree is worth focusing on is probably the most important thing rather than picking the most important. And then... Yeah, that's something you've got to come together on, isn't it, really? Actually physically come together, in the virtual world or in the same physical room and have that discussion about. There was another comment there from formalisators. Is there any benefit in trying multiple options? Yeah, there is. So Paul, you were saying there about the programme that we decided to focus on. We got a very clear signal that I wouldn't say leadership as a senior management, but there was appetite for it. That our help was sought. Yes. We weren't pushing against the front door. No, we weren't. We were welcomed in. And you might not know where those open doors are. So pushing on a few of them to see which ones give might give you the opportunity to find a few quick wins. I think there was an appetite to make a big splash, wasn't there? It wasn't a particularly easy programme. We chose a COTS package. It's got to be something worthwhile, right? It's difficult enough for it to be meaningful. Because we pushed back that we got as well. All that's all very well, but it won't work here. It won't work there. So we had to choose something that could answer a lot of those questions. But no, there was several small... There was lots of contacts. It was all about networks, wasn't it? There were internal coaches that had a lot of internal contacts. How would you go out and find people that he was working with well-connected in the Ipswich area? There was a supplementary point, which I think is a bit different to our situation. So it flashed up there that there were lots of strong opinions and egos. Amongst the coaches. Amongst the coaches. No, we didn't have that at all. It's something I've been talking about with a company that I'm coaching at the moment. Now, in order to become part of a team, so if these agile coaches are going to consider themselves a team, anyone who becomes part of a team sacrifices a certain amount of their individuality. In return for that acceptance into the team, you get the protection of the team, you get the support of the team, you get that collaboration. But you have to give up a little bit of your own selfishness. I wonder if there's more of an effort you have to do, especially with maybe external coaches, the contract coaches, to have to work harder to bring them together under that united banner. Whereas we were all internal employees. So the great of good was already at the forefront of our mind, whereas we had a few externals in me that came in. I mean, they told the lump to a degree, but I don't think they were as invested as we were. No, they had their own ulterior motive, they had their own agenda for proving their work. For furthering their career, not necessarily for furthering a team. There's another question that just popped up there, which I think is related, I don't think it was intended to be related, but I think it could be, which is what are some of the powerful questions that you can ask to motivate people towards continuous improvement. And for me, I think that... Well, there's an interesting phrase there, which is motivate people towards continuous improvement. Whereas I have the theory that most people have an intrinsic motivation for continuous development as long as they feel capable and safe to do so. Most people don't want to stay static. They would like the ability to develop things, which is why people have hobbies in their spare time and so on. So it's not necessarily a question to help people want to improve. My powerful questions would be more around what you think is stopping you from improving and what would allow you to... What do you need to feel more able? It feels like we should mention the change equation for people. Okay. All right. So I don't know what that is. So we believe that people go through either consciously or unconsciously with a kind of mental calculation when it comes to change. So this could be around continuous improvement. And the benefits of continuous improvement have to outweigh the costs of that continuous improvement in this case. So if the benefits didn't outweigh the costs, why would they do it? It just doesn't make any kind of sense. And the costs don't have to be financial costs. They could be emotional costs. They could be energy costs. They could be opportunity costs. They could be all sorts of fear of failure. They could be fear of judgment. All sorts of things. All different things that come into cost. So that's the basic equation. Benefit must outweigh costs. But because nothing is certain, apart from death and taxes, there's always a chance that you decide to give something a go when it doesn't work. So there is a chance that it will fail. So when you include the probability of success, which is always going to be less than a hundred percent, you are discounting the benefit. Therefore, the benefit side must significantly outweigh the cost of side. So if you're coaching somebody and they're thinking about doing something, whether it's continuous improvement or they're thinking about taking on a new role, giving a talk, whatever it is they're thinking about doing, then helping them explore both what are the potential benefits to you doing this now and in the future. And also, what costs do you see and how could you potentially reduce some of those costs? Will help make it a little bit easier for people to do that. Sounds a bit sadistic, but we talked a lot about this today, but it's pain. It's just the word. It's trying to associate where as you're. If you can associate a lack of change or a lack of improvement with pain, something you can't do right now or something you struggle with right now, something which frustrates you right now, what are the painful words, negative emotions? Well, that's probably highlighting the potential lack of benefit, isn't it? The lack of the ability to do something. And that can create some kind of desire. One of the most powerful tools that I've found is visualising future. So if you can create a mental picture of a future where whatever it is that's under consideration has actually happened. So you have gone through a process of continuous improvement. Or a future you. Yeah. Or you have come together as a group of coaches and you have delivered a strong message to the organisation and the organisation has responded as a result. Actually describe that situation as if you are there. Describe coming into work that day after the organisation has taken that message on board and made whatever change. Describe what it's like to do your day job now. Describe the relationships that you have. Describe the atmosphere in the office. All those things, making it a little bit more real and attaching yourself to that reduces the desire to make it happen. It makes it more real rather than just some abstract concept. Well, things might be better if we do this. Something we do in our advanced strong masses. Good question. Any other questions? Any other questions? Change the subject. Change it up. Glad that helped. Good. It's nice to get some thanks isn't it? Yeah, you're welcome. Eden and Robin, do you have any suggested techniques or practices to help stop an organisation firefighting, for example, a project when it's running late and over budget so they're pulled from other projects? Hmm, stop firefighting. Yeah, so basically knee-jerk reactions. I suppose putting into, I mean, the change equation kind of comes into play there. Perhaps the benefits of, and I'll bring a phrase in, temporal discounting. It sounds quite clever, but the only thing about it is not really. Temporal meaning time, discounting and sort of reduction of value. Generally speaking, as human beings, we're pretty bad at placing an objective value on the future. We tend to value overvalue the present at the expense of the future. This is why a lot of people find it hard to put money aside for savings and pensioners and invest in their development of things. The short-term hedonism, if you like, of immediate gratification generally takes precedence. And that comes to mind here. As an organisation, we can see the immediate threat. We can see the immediate benefit of moving people from one project to another to fix that fire. But we don't necessarily think about the actual consequences of the downside of doing that. If we do, we tend to apply a discount because it's in the future. But for most of you in the agile space, you'll be familiar with the concept of technical debt, which means, actually, there's going to be a compound problem to that. That you're sacrificing the future by the time you realise it, that sacrifice would have compounded, multiplied. So, imagining visualising the future for that project, or that product that's being compromised, I think would be a good technique for that. I think a lot is to be said for the word, firefighting as well. I'm not blaming you, Robin, but I think that's the metaphor that goes a long way. I mean, because it's not the first time I've heard... It's quite cool, isn't it? It sounds dramatic, doesn't it? It probably increases stress. It probably creates the... It's designed to create urgency. But I imagine... I mean, there are obviously some things when things do go wrong that need to be sorted out. But it's probably... We talked about that just a little bit this week. If your instinct, as a scrum master especially, if your instinct is to... react, solve, sometimes there might be value, even though it might be quite... And I got told off with this a lot in Nokia, not so much BT, in doing nothing. Not through ignorance, or through carelessness, but just trying to process and de-dramatise it. Because our boss used to... I mean, our boss, Den, bless him, lovely guy, but the phrase he used was firefighting or what fires have I got to put out today to create this sense of when a constant state of emergency. And that just raises stress level, shouldn't it? It feels good. Yeah. So I'll relate that. So I'll ask just a real question out there. Is it possible to identify earlier on in the process to see if smaller changes can be made before it becomes a fire? And I think that's, for me, the question that I would ask leadership in this situation is what kind of organisation do we want to be? What kind of behaviours do we want to be encouraging? Because if our instinctive response is to sacrifice or compromise the stable for the benefit of what's on fire and we're almost de-fying the firefighters, that's what we value, people who can put out fires, then you might see a lot more fires because that's how people in your organisation see leadership valuing. And also, leaders are always the one that spot the fires or that raise the emergency. They'll constantly be expected. They'll see a lack of ownership from the development teams. I kind of relate it to this is probably very bad and patronising, but the idea of, you don't really want to reward dysfunctional behaviour. Heroism. Right, so if a child's throwing attention because they want attention, the worst thing you can do is give them attention. This is just going to learn that throwing attention gets attention. And letting something get to a state where there's a fire means you get extra people, you get extra budget, you get extra resource, but then my incentive is to manufacture a fireman. Yeah. And I think when, I mean certainly from my experience, when you have a conversation with leaders about the kind of messages these things send out or they kind of realise actually, yeah, it's probably not the kind of behaviour you want to encourage. And maybe it's just me, maybe it's just my experience, but actually when you look at the real consequences of not putting out that fire immediately, they aren't as drastic as we imagine them to be. There might be an opportunity, so look at this in a situation that those leaders or whoever's creating that sense of panic isn't necessarily doing it deliberately to create panic, but they want adaptability. They want flexible, some kind of degree of flexibility. They're not doing it hopefully to deliberately piss people off. No. So what's the genuine reason? It's probably because that person in some way is going to suffer. I'm going to so in general I try and find a positive motive for anyone doing anything. But I also know that human beings are animals really and they do respond to quite blatant stimulus. And if we have the opportunity to be lazy, there's a good chance that we will. And so if I know either consciously or unconsciously that I've always got the back-up plan of a firefighter, then I might avoid some of the more difficult decisions. Whereas Alice is saying, can we not find this out earlier in the process? Then I might avoid that because I know I've always got that fallback opportunity of, well I can just save as a fire and I get some extra resource, I get some extra help. Yeah, it's a cultural thing. I think it's something that leadership needs to establish quite clearly and people pay attention to what gets rewarded and what gets attention, the plaudits. There's something around job titles then. What's our experience of job titles from the Scrum team? Junior and senior from Andrew. Yeah, you're right, it is a long journey Robin. It might be a generational thing. A lot of these things take a phase of managers, leaders to move on before the next phase comes in. What was the question? Job titles. There wasn't really, it was quite an open question what's our experience of it? A junior and senior, regardless of the role. Wasn't it taking some of the stimulus away from the job title? I had one of my worst, looking back now, I don't know if I told this story my worst ever job title. I think you got me this job, it's yours to blame. It was from Mike Nicholson and I was brought in as a project planner. So my sole purpose was to ensure the Microsoft Gantt chart was right. What a soul destroying job that was. I know, I got told off. I did it once, I created it, sent it to the boss and I got a really shitty email back saying this is terrible. So that was my job role title that I think I wish I'd never had. Okay. I think there's more around how that has an impact on people's role. In principle I don't really have a problem with job titles. I don't really have a problem with junior and senior whatever people want to call themselves. Because I think in the great teams that I worked with, the team actually doesn't care. The team doesn't care about the job title. They only care whether they're actually pulling their weight for the team. Well I question that. In Nokia, when I joined Nokia we had management suggested a change that no longer are we all developers and testers. We are now engineers. And there was a bit of a revolt in terms of a pushback that some of those developers and some of those testers felt that their talent was being diminished. Which I think is a fair point. I know I can see you're trying to create this sense of T-Shapes well rounded engineers. I get that. But I think if you've always been but if you believe and your interest in your work you feel your value is in the skill. Having that skill removed from your role. Harry Kane, right? Not removing it from his role. Removing it from the title. Harry Kane, yes. Would Harry Kane enjoy being called a striker or would he enjoy being called a footballer? I think he's a footballer. I know he was the first person to volunteer to go in goal when the keeper got sent off. Maybe the position of the role isn't as important. I remember when I first joined Nokia there was a bit of a murmuring of we're all bloody engineers now to try and make us all the same. I do get that. I think being aware that we all I think there's got to be a recognition of what we bring to the team. I think Andrew's question was also about junior senior. I think junior senior does have an impact because that implies status. Sometimes there is though, right? But that can also create false communication lines. How on earth, how dare a junior question of senior decision? So that's an assumption, an assumption of change of command. Whereas you could have junior and senior, which is genuinely representing their level of experience but actually valuing the inexperience. E.g. as a junior person feels that they need to defer to senior in a sense of what they actually know that they have senior knowledge. I think that's what Paul's saying there in terms of status. I've seen many, many highly functioning Scrum teams with senior and junior in there where juniors they can challenge, they can say whatever they want and they can come up with ideas and seniors will back them. It's just purely reflecting the years of experience. I think as well, a good Scrum master is really disrupting them. Deliberately So again, it was on a TED talk or something about Japanese companies policies that in a meeting the most junior member of the team has to speak first. It's like a kind of etiquette. So you're removing the anchoring regardless of whether they're intellectually advanced or not, whether they're more knowledgeable or not, they just have, even if it's no comment just deliberately disrupting that high-rise. I think that can be a really powerful ritual. I think having that conversation, getting those team working agreements in place is important because job titles I think if you put the years in then you shouldn't really detract from that. I think that person shouldn't be penalised or I don't know, had to nose-thumb for it. Robin had a supplementary question there which just popped up, which is what about if you've got senior because of experience but then you change roles. So you were, for example, a senior developer but then you move into another role like Scrum Master where you have no experience. My gut instinct is to expect that person to be called a senior Scrum Master. Interesting, isn't it? I think so. I won't name the company but we had a Scrum Master selection meeting and wrote on bits of paper so that we just introduced the idea, the notion of a Scrum Master, someone there to facilitate and bring people together and we all voted one of we. I'll carry on talking, I'll get another drink. You just won't disappear, are you? I'll be able to hear you. I'll be able to be back. I'm going to tell my story and then I'll just talk to myself of an ex-Scrum Master. So, this company we all selected a the team selected, wrote down a name that they thought would be the best Scrum Master and it turned out to be the most I'm juniors as strong word, inexperienced. So, the most inexperienced team member the team gave permission for that relatively inexperienced team member to basically keep the rest of the team in order and that's kind of the ultimate permission you need whether you're the most experienced Scrum Master or Scrum Expert in the room or just someone who's read about it the day before then you've got permission from the team to do whatever you like. What do you think? Yeah, text in send us a tweet send us a comment I'm just going to how's the weather with you today? Quite no one to talk to. Jeff's disappeared. He's at the bar Is your name Jeff? If you are, text in What's your star sign? Anyone got any good juice? Star sign? I'm passing the time If anyone's got a different question I'll try and talk about it while Jeff is at the bar getting another drink Did you hear anything I said? Yeah, did you ask somebody's star sign? No, I was making small talk and then permission Before we do that Have you changed your drink? No, I've got the same thing. What are the tips you can give to a new Scrum Master? Scrum Master We could be here a long time to do this Yeah, we can do it I think we've done this before but we can revisit it maybe it's a new viewer Go on then First thing, first tip Slow down at the pace you may be expecting The reaction will be We talked about this a little bit this week is a good instinct is not how can I react, solve smooth the process but in fact, how could I be a little bit awkward about this or how could I slow it down make it actually more inefficient because it might allow us to disrupt I think a disruptor or something read Jeff's book is a tip from Alistair Is he on commission? No, but that would be my first one Slow down But Andrew must have missed the introduction so I'm drinking a pint of Mancunian so we're in Manchester and this is called a Hopi Blonde Mancunian Hopi Blonde calls on the reveler something else pig orchard tastes like apples apparently My number one tip would be observe and play back what you see so if you can visualize what you're seeing to the team that can be a huge benefit without you actually doing anything without you actually having to make any suggestions or any advice just observe and play back what you're seeing as neutrally as possible and not just the team but the system that they're operating in you'll learn a lot and the team will learn a lot without feeling like you've come in to change them would be my number one tip but yeah, read my book I hate to quote you but didn't you also say out of the team? That's not just for a new Scrum Master that's for any Scrum Master but it's also about don't be afraid to admit you don't know you're going to be asked some really really complex problems that no one can solve on their own so ask for help try and find a mentor ask this tip, try and find a mentor ask for feedback if you're willing to learn what we're talking about in a taxi on the way on the way here somebody asked us about a Scrum Master who's who's not who doesn't get it somebody has a I wasn't going to drop him in wasn't Garrett someone called Garrett has a Scrum Master or had a Scrum Master working for him years ago that didn't in his words didn't get Scrum so couldn't avoid falling into command and control and he as this person's line manager had to set some objectives for him and to encourage a change of behaviour and was asking for advice my first instinct was well is this person clear about what other people the team management, the rest of the organisation are expecting from them have they actually been part of that agreement explicitly saying this is what we're looking for because that person could well be interpreting the role of Scrum Master as problem solver to see the idea of removal of impediments as okay I'm the problem solver rather than I'm here to create a team that can manage themselves I'm here to facilitate team development team growth, team ownership so having that conversation well what is this role what is expected of this role knowing that are you happy to take that role on and then if you are then you can get some feedback on it that's what came to mind there so yeah we've got a thumbs up that's the first one ever isn't it yeah I've got a like I reckon we don't want to overcook this so we just do one more question anything else on anyone's mind I'm quite attached to the character he's made it sweet someone should have taken my retinal scan there no three likes three likes this is some kind of record oh we do a spoiler about what we talked about last night favourite ask of your generation what was that what we were planning last night maybe you're going to give a bit of a teaser I don't know where it was what was the question favourite ask of your generation article you've been reading about body language I've read two books recently I've been very good I read Ant Middleton's autobiography the guy from SAS who dares wins interesting I was expecting a bit more but the more interesting one which I'm halfway through is what every body is saying which is a body language how to read people's body language by FBI, former FBI investigator Joe Navarro very good read people from the feet up that's what he's saying what tells you most about people's emotions he categorizes it as uncomfortable or comfortable generally the feet is the best place to start what are my feet telling you now comfortable why you can't see this so your legs are apart your feet are just nice and stationary but generally for tucking feet while behind you would mean that you're desperate to leave or feet pointing towards the door which you're not doing at the moment but it's interesting and happy feet your feet are moving not nervous generally happiness I would say a book that I've read as well rather than an article it's Factfulness by Hans Rosling I really like that because it's arting with a quiz the book and it's a quiz that I did very badly on most quizzes though but I wasn't alone so it's a relatively simple quiz and across the world thousands and thousands of people have taken this quiz and have scored it's a multiple choice quiz and the average score I think is somewhere in like a 20% correct or something why because we have in general an overly negative view of the world right and it's fed by the media this isn't a political rant by the way we've generally told about negative scores yeah that's what makes the news right there's 40,000 flights that landed safely today did you get a notification about that no if one doesn't you get a notification about it anyway yes we notice more negative drastic events in one negative view of the world when actually the world has never been in a better state in so many metrics so he's a big fan of trying to get people to use data rather than their gut instinct because our gut instinct is informed by biased filters and cognitive biases and I just found it fascinating and the one phrase that took out of it the one phrase that really stuck for me and I related to an agile context is that things can be both bad and better so what I took from that was we do tend to over celebrate our successes and I said oh yeah that was amazing things are going really well well actually things are still pretty bad that's okay it's okay to still be bad even when things are bad they're probably still better than they were and getting it's almost a bit of cognitive dissonance because I did it that something can be better and bad Corey likes that phrase too and I think that's really really relevant to an agile context because change takes such a long time we often lose track of the bigger picture we focus on the latest frustration or the latest defeats rather than actually seeing how far we've come but also we should get hung up on the successes because there's still a long way to go because if you just focus on the bad everything's bad you'd probably give up yeah it's quite easy to take a really fatalistic view and just not bother and I think a lot of people have checked out of a lot of stuff because they see things overly negatively when they're not what's the book called? so the idea of trying to use objective data facts to inform your actions and judgments so the facts are four people like that and that's more likes than we've ever had on a live podcast so we must be going in the right direction verging on the most people we've ever had oh it's the best interaction that's great amazing Manchester or this time 730 on a Wednesday night I'd be playing rugby now so you wouldn't because you're injured you've got a bad achilles thank you to everybody for joining thank you for your comments, questions and suggestions until next time cheers cheers