 Hello to you, our lovely patrons, and welcome to the next episode in our prestigious pint series, where Paul and I have gathered together some of our heroes and inspirations from our career in agile. This episode we chatted to the retrospective lady, what we call her, not what she calls herself, Esther Derby, and that was actually the first portal conversation. How does she feel about being known for just a fraction of her suite of works over the many years that she's been inspiring all of us. We've got some really exclusive insights into how she got into the world of retrospectives, but also her interests in other areas, her inspirations herself, how she's been learning and developing and growing over the years, and her hopes for the future. It was for us absolutely fascinating a whole hour that just absolutely flew by. We hope you find it as interesting as we did. Cheers! I'm good. And Esther? I'm happy to be here. Yes, welcome to the bar. Thank you. We'd offer to get you something, but it's a little early in the day for me. Yeah, so you have to imagine that we're going to go and get you a drink, but we are having a drink. Great. What are you drinking? I'm drinking, well this is a very good question to ask, I'm drinking a hobgoblin. Oh, that comes from near me somewhere. Isn't that a local witchwood? Is that near you? No, it's not near me at all. I forget I mentioned it. It's a sort of fruity IPA with a devilish twist. It's a nice colour. How about you, Paul? I'm trying to be good. Again, my wife's reminding me of the fact I shouldn't drink too much. So I'm drinking Thatcher's Zero, which is cider, but it's non-alcoholic cider. So I think she's dropping me hints quite often now. Is it tasty? This is the first time I've tried it. I'm about to try it for the first time, and I will let you know. Sure, it's just apple juice. Exactly. I don't really have a great or most discerning palate. It generally just takes expensive apple juice for the apple juice. But I'll give it a try. All right. Well, I've never heard the phrase hard cider until I went to America. Is that the only kind of cider you have in your country? Yeah. Very nice, but it is essentially apple cider. And I'm drinking water. And how is that? Municipal tap water. It's just fine. Yeah. It's always good to stay hydrated. Cheers to you, Esther. Yeah, cheers, Esther. It's nice to see you and hear from you again. Cheers. Yeah, very nice to see you. So it hasn't been, I was going to say recently, but it's probably not that recent, but you have moved relatively recently. Eight years ago. Not that recent at all, Jeff. Really, eight years ago. Yeah. Yeah, it time flies. Yeah, I moved from the largest metropolitan area in the state, which is a significant city, Minneapolis, to a town of 110,000. And the town I live in is on the tip of Lake Superior. So I don't know how much you know about U.S. geography, but if you think over to this big box, my state is right in the middle of the shares border with Canada. And Lake Superior connects to Lake Michigan, which connects to a whole bunch of other lakes, and eventually to the Atlantic Ocean. So we get ocean-going ships in the port in my town. Brilliant. Which I think is just astonishing turning off my notifications so we don't get any dings in the background. So yeah, 17th, 17th busiest port in the country. See a bit of a ship spotter? No, not at all. It's just happened to... Well, I mean, I do, I do, I do notice the ships when they're in harbor and when they're sitting waiting to go into the docks. My wife's a bit of a ship geek now. She's got a little app that she can see what ship it is and what's on it and you thought it's route and find out where it's going and she loves that. Amazing. I don't know if you can do that here. I suppose you can. You're not really into ships, are you, Paul? No, not really. Don't get many ships in where I live, Land Blocks County that is Wiltshire in the UK, but no. Well, I am 1,200 miles from the coast, so... That must be bizarre, yeah, to get proper shipping containers and container ships just in your backyard. Very strange. So what have you been up to? What have I been up to? Well, like many people, I am trying to work while at from home during a pandemic. So I've been, you know, I've been figuring out how to take some of my workshops online that are able to go online and doing some writing and... How do you found the whole online thing? I am grateful that I am able to connect with friends of mine all over the world. I am enormously grateful for that. And I find that certain conversations work very well over Zoom. You know, I can still have really great consulting conversations and coaching conversations with people, but there are other things that just aren't the same, like conferences. It's not the same. Yeah, it's those kind of side corridor conversations, which you just, you can't manufacture those really, can you? It's the opportunity meetings that, yeah, for coffee or whatever. I haven't run across any software that does that well. And it's also, you know, it's just not the same, you know, if you're giving a talk, you can relate to the people in the room, and you can ask them questions, and you can bounce off what their concerns are, and that's much harder to do. So that's how I'm finding that. Have you had to turn stuff down, Esther, because I certainly have in terms of conferences, my workshops, I know it just won't work. The stuff that I do won't work. And have you had to turn many gigs down just because online conferences won't work for you? Well, I find a way to make them work. I mean, I think that's one of the things that's been really interesting, because I see a lot of people taking their regular workshop and putting together a mural board and saying, okay, it's the same workshop. We're just going to do all our stickies on a mural board. But I found that that actually doesn't work for everything. So I've been looking at how what can you do asynchronously and what do you need to do in a synchronous conversation, which I think is the challenge that we're facing in all sorts of work right now. What can we do asynchronously, and where do we save our energy for being on Zoom calls? Because being on a Zoom call for three hours or all day is just deadly. And we apologise now for putting you on another Zoom call now. It was my choice. You obviously won't need any introduction to our listeners, but you are part of our Procedures Point series, where we've been rounding up some of our heroes and inspirations. So one thing I'm really interested in, and Paul and I are both guilty of this to begin with, is that a lot of people, I think we saw you as the retrospective person to begin with, because that's where we first came across you in our direction. The retrospective waiting. But you were a lot more before then and a lot more after then as well, and we've worked together on different things like conflict facilitation and so on, the different organisations. But I think, do you still find people refer to you as, maybe not to your face, but the retrospective lady? Yeah, I think there are people who know me for that, and that's okay. I think it was doing retrospectives in a thoughtful way as a contribution to the field. So I don't reject that title, but you're right, it's this much of what I do. I mean, I started as a programmer, and I was a dev manager, and I've been a consultant for many years, so it certainly does not indicate the breadth of my experience. You were doing, you were writing about leadership before retrospectives. The retrospectives thing came along at exactly the right time when everybody was crying out for, how do we do this really difficult but important ceremony when we don't have a huge amount of soft skills within the organisation and emotional intelligence within the organisation. Or facilitation skills. And you gave the community such an easy way of doing that, that it really resonated. But we were talking to Roman Pichlow the other day about how he's sort of referred to as the product owner guy, and he doesn't really like that in a way because it's kind of a label that appreciates how much people invest in that part of his character. But we kind of do that, don't we? We do tend to sort of reduction that reduction. Yeah. Well, it's easier for people to figure out. I mean, in a lot of ways, I'm in terms of leadership and management, I'm a generalist. But that's hard for people to figure out. Oh, how can she help me? She said, you know, whatever your problem is, I can probably figure out something that will be helpful, as long as it's not deeply technical because I haven't written code in a long time. But that's hard for people to kind of latch on to. So I think it is easier for people to latch on to one thing. Do you have a particular thing that people come to you and you enjoy more than others? That's an interesting question. I don't think it's a thing. I think it's the interactions. Okay. So I really like working in partnership with people where we're, you know, I'm a sounding board, but I may have some advice based on my experience. So, yeah, that kind of working in partnership, helping people figure things out, I think is great. That's what I really like. And sometimes that's in whole organizations and sometimes it's one on one. Since pre, if you go back pre pandemic, how are you over the last since particularly, because I was inspired heavily by your work around retrospectives, and I know you mentioned that's only a fraction of what you do. Do you think you've changed over the last kind of 15 to 20 years in terms of what you, how you work or what you enjoy? Well, I, I certainly know different things than I did 15 or 20 years ago. I think I'm, you know, I, I didn't, you know, I didn't stop learning when I turned 40. 450. We won't go any further. So, you know, I'm certainly Dave Snowden's complexity work has informed the way I think about things. So I've incorporated more of that complexity awareness into the way I work. Yeah, you know, I just, I've learned a lot of things along the way. I've learned much more about the importance of empathy. That's an interesting one, because I would, empathy is something that I would, one of the words that I would almost instantly attach to you. So it strikes me as, as, as almost strange that that's something that you've almost grown in. Because it's almost, I just assumed that something that you were naturally born with a superpower almost. Do you know what I mean? No, somebody, it's interesting, somebody was said on Twitter, you know, I was trying to talk somebody into, you know, going across the street to hear Esther Burby talk about something. And they, and they said, oh no, she's, she's too, you know, she's too fluffy, she's too soft skills. And I find that really ironic, because that's not where I started out. Okay. I mean, I started out, you know, in programming, because it was so much easier than talking to people, which it really isn't. But, but yeah, I was described as maxi analytical. And I came from a family, I grew up in a family that was extremely critical. So you get very analytical and very critical and empathy doesn't necessarily find much ground to grow in there. So I made a conscious effort to develop my capacity for empathy. And I guess I succeeded. Yeah, it's not, it's not something I grew up with, which makes me aware that when I, you know, when I run into people who, who seem to be lacking in empathy, or don't see the value in empathy, that they can change. I mean, it is possible to develop that as a, as a characteristic. Are there any, that makes sense? Are there any characteristics that you don't think we're capable of developing? That people aren't capable of developing? Well, I think people can develop almost anything. It's, it's what's the, what's the effort involved and what's the payoff? I mean, I'm not, I'm not sure I will ever be good at chess. Just not how my mind works. I mean, I could probably train it to work that way. But, but it's not, it's not what I'm interested in. So I think that, you know, I think people can develop all sorts of traits. And, and, you know, our brains, our plastic, we can, we can develop new neural pathways. And if we attend to them, they will eventually carry more weight than what our original habits were. So you still, as did you still get involved in facilitation? Are you still doing active facilitation now for larger groups? Not in this, not in this time. No. No. Um, and I think remote facilitation is its own thing. Okay. I think it's, I think it's, you know, it's, it's its own skill. So I was at a, I was at a conference in South Africa a couple years ago. And, you know, how it is when you go to dozens and dozens of conferences, I was, at a certain point, you just was like, Oh, I hope I can find some session to go to. So I wandered into, I wandered into a session on remote facilitation by Kirsten Clacy and Jay Allen Morris. Do you know those two? Okay, so I don't know Jay. Well, anyway, I wandered into their session and it was the best, the best advice on the mechanics of remote facilitation that I had seen. Okay. And it is, it is, it is its own thing. You know, they've written a nice little book about it. This is pre COVID as well. So this is before the pandemic. Yeah. Oh, they rushed the publication of the book. Right. Okay. Yeah. So I actually introduced them to my publisher and I said, you should write a book. Yeah. You should publish it. What was that one piece of advice that stood out for you? I don't know if it was one piece. It was just the, you know, the whole, the whole thing. Okay. You know, I think maybe it was that, and this, this applies to moving workshops online also is that you just have to be a lot more explicit. Yeah. Right. You can't be hand wavy. No. You can, you know, when you're in person, you can kind of, you know, give a general instruction and then people will ask and and people will be okay kind of figuring it out on their own. But that's not the case in a remote setting. Right. So I think you just have to be a lot more explicit. I think you're right. I find my, I'm having to repeat myself maybe two, three times and then you get nothing back. It's like, is that, is that okay? Is that, does that make sense? And it's like, I find myself almost a semi patronizing way of thinking, should I have to say that? Or I think actually I do have to say that because you have to be, like you say, a lot more explicit online. Yeah. And, and, and I often have, you know, duplicate what I'm saying and writing so people have them in two places. And I chunk, I chunk information differently. So here's the first part, they do that. Here's the second part, because, you know, people's attention is pulled in so many more ways in, in a remote setting that I think it the ability to retain is different. Do you think it will bounce straight back? Let's, let's say everything's going to be fine. Everything will be rosy at the end of it. And there's a, there's a light at the end of the tunnel, all those nice cliches, but a year from now, let's say two years from now, do you think we'll be doing things differently with, with the back of what's happened? Yes. In what way? Well, I think that there were many, many workplaces that had taken the stance of saying, no, no, no remote work, everybody has to be in person. And so we've now realized that, oh, yeah, well, we can accomplish a lot when we're not together. So I think, I think that's going to have a lasting effect that people are going to be more open and more sophisticated in how they incorporate remote work. I'm kind of curious about, and concerned about what's going to happen to all of the, all of the mothers who have left the workforce. I think that's going to really have, have an effect on things. And whether they come back, right, because I mean, I, I occasionally run into organizations that expect people to maintain exactly the same level of productivity they had pre-lockdown now. And, you know, our context set collapsed. You know, we used to have a separate home and a separate work. And now, oh, look, you're in my living room. And that's true for everybody. You know, we're in, we're in their spare bedroom or the living room or the kitchen and the kids are there. And so I think it's, you know, completely unreasonable to expect that there will be no change in performance. Because, you know, as I already said, you know, we're at home during a pandemic trying to work. We're not actually just working from home. So I, I worry what's going to happen to all the mothers who, you know, something had to give and it was a job. Yeah. Yeah. I'm kind of hopeful that actually the greater flexibility will make it easier. So we're getting, we're seeing changes in stance over here. And this isn't just to do with work. It's to do with school as well. So having had a lockdown through the winter, my kids were being told, we stay normal school hours. But then they realized, well, actually, they were, they were not getting to see sunlight. And because by the time they finished school, it was dark. And so that, well, that's not a good idea. So maybe what do we have to have, you know, regular school hours, maybe we could be more flexible with that. And similarly, we're seeing workplaces saying, well, you know, you don't necessarily need to be online nine to five, because you can do things a lot more flexibly now. And so the flexibility could potentially make it easier. But equally, it can be abused as well. And people can get left behind. Well, that, and that gets back to, you know, what has to be synchronous and what can be asynchronous. Right. And there's a lot of things that kids do at school and that people and adults do at work, that, you know, they are actually able to do it on their own and then come back together to integrate or to discuss or to decide. Yeah. So that my kids, for example, they shifted to up until I think 1230 or one o'clock or something, they were in regular type, you know, together with teachers and things. And then the afternoons were very much sort of self-directed, you know, give them some problems to solve or go out and do some exercise or whatever. And they're learning, they're figuring it out. I wonder whether, this is a question I was going to ask the two of you and be unfair for me to ask it without really having thought it through myself. I'm kind of thinking as I ask it, but whether the kind of questions that people are asking you have changed now. I think where my mind was going with this is around sort of second-guessing people's thoughts. So, you know, I get a lot of scrum masters, for example, who say, I don't really know how people are doing when they're at home. And I don't really want to pry, but I don't want to ignore them. And I can't pick the signals up as much as I used to. So what do I do? Do I check in with them more often or less often? These kinds of questions are different to the ones that I was getting asked before. Are you seeing any kind of different questions? Do you want to go first, Esther, from you? No, I was going to let you go first while I thought about it. Good, yeah, good ploy. I think people, I do get a lot of people asking now in classes and workshops about how to deal with those situations. It came up just today, actually. And we were talking about team, I'm going to say, I think it was like a kind of a team building activity or a team building exercise. And we talked about the applications of it. And we said, there's the standard responses to a new team that needs to learn how to trust each other on that stuff. And someone said, well, actually, this is going to be essential when teams that have been online for a long time need to, they actually come back into an office, mainly with people that they've never actually met before, have only ever met via video camera. There's people that have been employed and taken on new jobs and they're being working with teams maybe for up to 12 months now that they've never actually met. So I think maybe a lot of the advice stroke techniques that we're using are going to be used in a very different way and people are going to expect to see maybe different responses from people doing these things because they just haven't had that physical working together connection before. Well, I mean, this isn't necessarily, well, it is a work context actually, but you know, there are lots of people that I met online long before I met them in person. And, you know, that was just fine. You know, it was just kind of an added and welcome dimension. It's really nice. But I think it's, you know, we lose all of those opportunistic opportunities to get to know people. So the questions I'm hearing are like, well, you know, like you mentioned, Jeff, how do I stay connected with people? You know, if I can't just walk around and have a casual conversation, how do I stay connected with people? So I think it's, I think, you know, having, particularly if you're a manager, having some kind of one-on-one time with people is really important. And it doesn't have to be an hour. It can be half an hour. I get people, occasionally, I hear people asking, you know, how do I know people are working? Well, you know, you look at the output. I mean, I frankly don't care if someone has been in half the day on the, on their plan video games on their couch. As long as they're getting the work done, I don't care. It goes back to that flexibility thing. But I think one thing that people don't ask me about, but I think is super important is how do you, how do you create networks now? How do you maintain all of those? You know, this is not someone I'm working with directly, but, you know, you know, I, I, I talked to them and I learned things about the organization or I run into them at lunch or I run into them at the coffee bar or wherever. So I think one of the things I'm talking to people about doing is having some sanctioned time for idle chatter. Yeah. You know, either before a meeting or having a, you know, if you're doing Slack or something like that, having the specific channel that's set aside for that, that's broader than just, just the immediate team. It can be for the immediate team, but, you know, having one that crosses boundaries is helpful. In person, I'm coaching at the moment actually mentioned something to me and I didn't delve more into it at the time because it wasn't really pertinent, but the seed was planted in my head and then it was sort of germinated by almost a cold call email I received on the similar kind of topic. And he said that he was having, I can't remember the term he used, but basically it's like a random coffee call. So in his company, you can sign up to be a part of this group where anybody in the organization gets paired with somebody else, somewhere else in the organization for a 15 minute chat. And it's their way of trying to just increase that connection across the company and an attempt at networking. That almost like you've actually just got stuck next to them in the queue in the canteen, that type of thing, you know. I love that. It's also institutionalized informal chats, if you like. Yeah. I think it would be helpful to give some people some primer questions on that though. That could be difficult for certain people. Yeah, almost like speed data, I suppose, isn't it? That kind of a few quick questions to icebreakers type questions. I think that, yeah. And he seemed to suggest that it was something that you were given a little bit of preparation for, if you like. Not training in, but, you know, and this is some of the things that you could be talking about and here's some examples of things that went well and so on. I thought it was an interesting idea. I think they're just going to see a lot more of those types of innovations to address those types of problems. So one of the companies I am familiar with, they have all sorts of, and they've been doing remote work for a long time, they have all sorts of little, I don't know what they call them, but, you know, little sanctioned groups. So it might be the people who have chips, like your wife, or it might be people who knit or it might be people who homebrew, you know, but they have all of these groups where, that cross-organizational boundaries and cross-organizational levels. And that's another way that they maintain networks in a remote distributed setting. But I think it's super important. Is there a risk with that, and this is a question for both Jeff and Esther here, but is there a risk that people get tooled out with this stuff though? And that's what I've seen now, particularly with this, we're in our third lockdown now, is that the notion of the novelty of tools and zoom and all these slack and everything, all we can use these tools and that was very exciting and that was quite innovative in the first few months. But now I think that's quite, there's an apathy to that. Another, the last thing I want to do when I finish work is to open another tool to talk to more people online. You know what I mean? Yeah, I think people are zoomed out for sure. They're completely... So I think it is, I agree, but I think there's a almost, it's going to sound a bit weird, to go back to mobile phones, you know, almost regressing to mobile phones. But the old voice call, that's where, that was the medium that this sort of coffee chat thing was over. It was not a zoom thing. It was, there's no video. And so people would, yeah, yeah, people would often be out for a walk. They wouldn't be in the office. They would be, you know, wandering around, wandering around the corridor, or even having their lunch, you know. So that kind of thing. Well, for many years, important conversations happened over the phone. And the golf course. We're over the phone. Yeah. And, you know, some people actually find that they can concentrate better. They're more attuned to nuances in tone and pacing and so forth than they are on Zoom. And Zoom, or, you know, whatever it is you're using, Teams or BlueJeans or whatever, it's highly, you know, these spaces are highly evaluative, you know, like we're always looking at other people and some of our empathy seems to be a little stripped away, but we're looking at their house. We're looking at ourselves. Yeah, of course we are. Yeah. Yeah. And this, so this came up with, we had a chat with, with Mike as well, Mike Conant about this, that, because Mike was saying that we talked about face to face. So obviously, Agile Manifesto principle about we valuing face to face. And I'm not necessarily sure, because we were talking about is Zoom face to face. And Mike was, Mike was on the side of saying, Well, yeah, I think it is. And I'm, I'm thinking, No, I don't think it is. So what's your view on, is this classed as face to face conversation, this conversation we're having now for you? I think it is different than if we were in, you know, if we were really in a pub together. And I think part of it is that, you know, people are more evaluative. And you can't read the cues as well. And it's more tiring, because your focal distance doesn't change. It's always the same unless you look out your window. So, yeah, you know, I don't, I don't, I don't have a dogmatic opinion on that. Mike was always also unsurprisingly very, that's the word, appreciative of you. And in particular, of being quite insistent that retrospectives were part of scrum. And grateful as well. He wasn't really pushing for that. And he's glad that you did. Do you remember that? I don't remember pushing. He probably didn't use the word push. And that's probably, yeah, my spin. But suggesting that it was a good idea. Well, I, you know, I think if you're going to say that your method is built around inspecting and adapting, you need a way to inspect and adapt your, you know, the way you're working, as well as your product. So it's a logical fit from that standpoint. You know, how else are you going to systematically improve? I mean, it's not, it's not the only way you can improve. I mean, people make improvements informally, but, but being a little mindful about what sort of improvement you want to make, it only made sense to have something like a retrospective. Was there anything in particular going on around that time that sort of led you down the route of writing our retrospectives with Diana? Is there a reason that that was there at that moment in time? Well, so Diana and I were introduced to each other by Norm Curth, who wrote the book on project retrospectives. So at the, you know, at the time he wrote that book, you know, projects could last a year or two or five. No, so, so we had the three of us had started the retrospective facilitators gathering and that's where we first started thinking about, you know, how can we do this in a more compressed instead of a year? What do you do if you've got, you're looking at two weeks a month. So that's where we first started really looking at it. So that would have been I don't know, 2002 or 2003, somewhere in there. Yeah. That we first started, started maybe even a little earlier than that. I'd have to look things up, but that was what the impetus was. And yeah, and so now it's been what, it's been 16 years since that book came out. Good Lord. And it's still topping the charts. Yeah, it's still selling really well. And I think it's time for a second. Is that a hint? Is that an exclusive? Nothing has been signed. I still use it now. Is there anything so without, without talking about a potential second edition, but is there anything that you think you would go back and adjust if you had? Oh yeah, absolutely. So one thing I would do is I'd put a lot more emphasis on using data. Okay. Someone actually said to me once, retrospectives are not for data, they are just for feelings. So I would be much more explicit about how to use data in retrospectives, where it fits, where you need objective data, where you can deal with subjective data, how that fits into problem solving and figuring out what to improve. So that's a big one. Obviously I would include much more on distributed or remote retrospectives. How to work with those. And there are some other things I would just, you know, I would just change. I think we, we talked about goals in the retrospective and I think that word confused people because we were talking about what topic are you going to focus on really. So I would change that. I'd probably switch out some of the activities, you know, that I, you know, some of them have turned out to be difficult for people to facilitate. You know, so different set of activities and probably much more about how to think about a focus and then how to put exercises or activities together in a way that has a flow to it. So, you know, what your focus is determines what the data is going to be and the data, you know, that determines what kind of thinking process is going to be useful for generating insights. You know, does it have to be something really analytical or are you looking for something more creative? And then how do you decide? I mean, you know, can you actually evaluate these things objectively or is it just how people feel about it? So those are some of the things that I would do differently or add to. Yeah. Nice. You've got, I can't hear you. Jeff, you're on mute. We'll edit that bit. Yep, that never happened. And hypothetically, how, how high towards the top of your product backlog might something like that be? So this is, this is like the, this is the, the curse of being a generalist is that I'm interested in a lot of things. Yes. And I'm, I'm always presented with interesting projects. So, yeah, where is it on my list? You know, it, it, once conversations are further along, the priority may very likely change. That's actually a kind of question that I was going to ask you, because not, not in a, what do you regret kind of way, but in a simply that you must have had so many opportunities and you wouldn't have been able to do them all. Is there anything that you wish you'd have had more time to have done at the same time? If you like, that doesn't make sense as a question, but do you know what I'm going with it? Well, I mean, we all make choices about where to spend our limited time and our limited life energy. Wish I bought more Apple stock 20 years ago. Well, yeah, there's things like that. But this year has been interesting for that, because I haven't been traveling. So, you know, I spent a lot more time thinking about the garden. I spent a lot more time, you know, making garments, specifically garments with pockets. Women's garments are often made without pockets. Not something I noticed. Well, notice your daughter's clothes. You have a daughter, right? Well, yeah, 18 years old now. Oh, wow. Might be a little different now, but particularly kids' clothes never has pockets. So. So you wish you'd made more clothes or? I've just, I've just spent my time on some different things. Since I haven't been traveling. And it sounds like there's an element of enjoyment out of that. You enjoyed that part of it? Oh, yes. I enjoyed making garments with pockets and then wearing them. I found it funny that I've actually missed some things that I never thought I would miss. Oh, like what? Well, I never thought I'd miss getting on a train. Is that just because you haven't done it? You think, oh, I wonder what it's like. Not that you would enjoy being on the train, would you? Right now, I would love to get on the train for a couple of hours. I haven't even driven a car. My car got taken away in summer last year. I haven't owned a car for almost a year. So there's no point. So now I haven't been on the plane like you. I still haven't been on the plane for a long time. And that's not something we're used to. And it's funny the things that I miss. And I'd speak to people who to begin with, there was a sense of, oh, it's brilliant. I don't have to do the commute. But actually, when they look back, the amount of processing they did, decompressing they did, and actually splitting work and home in that commute, there's an element of that that they do quite strongly in this. Well, that's where people listen to podcasts. That's where I read books on airplanes. That's almost exclusively where I read. So I listen to audio books now. Like you said, Jeff, there is that flexibility. But I think the downside is the down time, is that certainly I can probably speak for my own opinion. But I notice with you, Jeff, as well, emails or text messages I get on the weekends. I think, Jeff, it's like Sunday night and you're working now. And so there's more of a blurred line between now, what's down time and what isn't. Whereas those journeys home from work, that train journey home was a way to literally download it and then close the laptop, wasn't it? Whatever it might be. Yeah, I think both the processing time and the transition time was an important element that's that's gone because our context of collapse entirely. I'm a lot more appreciative though. So you say what you missed, Jeff, but there's things that I've noticed that I didn't realize that we're there during the last 12 months. So a good example is my local area. I think if anything, because I've been walking with my family a lot more than I ever have. And literally, I don't think I've ever walked as many miles in a calendar year. But there's this part of what's to where I live that I probably would never have visited by foot had this pandemic never happened. Is that a similar thing for you, Esther? Have you discovered anything new during the last 12 months that you didn't realize was there? Well, I mean, we haven't had a strict lockdown, but we have certainly been advised not to have unnecessary, unnecessary adventures outside of home. But yeah, I have gotten into the habit of walking two and a half miles a day with a couple of friends of mine. We stay far apart, but we walk on the same trail. I never thought I'd be walking when it was below zero Fahrenheit, but I do. And so that's that's been a habit that's really been lovely to cultivate. And you know, sometimes I just stick it out of the house. I just go for a drive. So I've seen parts of this area that I hadn't seen before. That's been kind of lovely. I think it certainly has put a spotlight on in this country and then certainly in my family, within these four walls of everyone's mental health and how important that is. And I'm noticing, maybe you just do notice it, notice it online and through our community a lot more, but a lot more people focused around mental health, mindfulness and well-being. And I think that's if anything positive is going to come out of this, then I'd be hoping that organizations pay a lot more attention to that as a result of this pandemic. One can help. Yeah. One can help. Do you see organizations that have completely regressed have gone the other way? So instead of that flexibility, that self-organizing nature of trusting people to get on with their work without you know, having to check up on them. Have you seen organizations that have regressed back to? Well, there was a huge run on tracking software. Oh, really? Yes. There was a huge run. No way. You know, companies scrambling to get software installed, keystroke trackers and web tracking what websites people were looking at. It's huge, which it is so destructive of trust. Yeah. And you know, yeah, I mean, just the whole idea of we have to know what you're doing and your productivity is in your keystrokes is so antithetical to the kind of work we actually do in developing software. And, you know, I mean, I don't care if people are, you know, taking a break and looking at some stupid website. You know, I don't really care as long as, you know, the work is getting done in a reasonable way. And we have reasonable standards recognizing that, you know, we're at home during the pandemic. There's one company, well, this is not just one company I spoke to, but I'm sure it's quite more widespread that was requiring if, you know, if your toddler needed some attention for, you know, two minutes, you were supposed to clock out. Really? It's crazy. Imagine the overhead, the cost of actually doing that. I know. It's like it would, it would be far more time than you would spend dealing with your kid. You know, and it's just unreasonable. It's unreasonable. It comes from a significant insecurity, doesn't it? There must be some very dysfunctional drivers behind that. Well, it comes from the idea that the whole job of management is to extract maximum labor, right? And that, you know, we have, we have purchased your time for eight hours a day, and you must be, you know, with your fingers on the keyboard. It's crazy that some companies still, still work that way, isn't it? Even today, 2021. Well, that whole mindset is deeply, deeply embedded in management thinking and management practices. Even now, you think that even, even now, that's not changed in, you know, do you think that will ever change? Do you think that's here to stay? Well, I think if people realize where it comes from, it might change. But, you know, I, you know, we aren't taught the history of management. We're taught management theory that is essentially based on observational studies, right? So like our management theories are based on how people manage, right, rather than, you know, actual motivation of humans and, and how people work best in groups. You know, a lot of the people are probably sick of hearing you say this, but a lot of the practices that have made their way into, into productivity thinking are directly tied to extraction of maximum labor. Because accounting practices, early accounting practices, emerged on plantations using enslaved labor. Yeah. That's where they really started doing, oh, we have to account for all of our expenditures and all of our outputs to our distant owner, right? So I think until people kind of, you know, realize that and say, huh, that's not what we want to do. Exactly. Yeah. Until they'd realize that. Yeah. Has there been anything do you think that's sort of significant event or person or something that's had a really significant impact on that shift in that, in the right direction that you, that that's had a really impact? Well, what comes to mind for me, this is a long, roundabout answer, is an interview I saw with Meg Wheatley. I could probably find again, if I, if I looked, but they were, they were talking about some study of coal mines in, I believe it was whales, where the conditions were so bad that the managers would no longer go down into the mines. So the miners organized themselves and productivity went up. So, I mean, we've known that for decades. We've known that self-organization works for decades. And what Meg Wheatley said in this interview was, we've known that for decades, and people will always choose control, but choose control over productivity. It's crazy, isn't it? It's crazy. When people ask me why that is, I don't know why, but my instinct is, is to do with safety and risk. And that it seems like the safest thing to do is to let somebody else make the decision or to pay somebody to make a decision. But it's a, to me, it's that, it's that false certainty. And in a way, you're selling off value for a certain level of certain lower effectiveness. Well, for the illusion of control. Yeah. Is there another main reason behind that? People go for control? Well, I think, you know, I think, you know, so I actually think it is much more informative to read the history of management than to read the theory of management. And the history of management is people who had wealth and education being the owners and people who had far less access to resources and far less wealth and far less education being the workers. And so there's a separation of head and hands. And it comes through very clearly. And if you look at Taylor, right? And that, that also feeds into our management practices, even though it's utterly, you know, particularly in the fields we work in, you know, it makes no sense. Because we, you know, we are all highly educated people and highly intelligent people doing knowledge work. So those traditions make no sense, but they are embedded that that thought is embedded in the practices. And so it comes out in how people practice management. So I perhaps, I'm not saying that I'm, but so Robert Greenleaf, I see as someone that inspired Scrum to a degree. I think there's a link there somehow, even if, even if Ken Shraib was particularly dismissive of it. The idea of servant leadership, underpinning the role of Scrum Master. And I went back and read his Greenleaf's work a year or two ago, just for the hell of it, I think, and was amazed at how relevant it was to what's going on in the world now, still 70 years later. And one of the things that stuck out for me is actually on this topic, because he said back in the fifties or whatever, the vast majority of people will choose some kind of order over disorder, even if that disorder is delivered by a brutal non-servant. And in the process they lose their freedom, the majority of people will choose it. Now, he didn't really explain why he thought that was the case. And it was 70 years ago. So maybe things are slightly different now. And maybe we're not quite as tolerant as we were then and subserving as we were then, I'm not quite sure. But I think it's an important factor, because I get a lot of people saying to me, well, yeah, self-organization, I can get it in theory. But when I give people the opportunity, they just don't take it. Well, I think there can be a number of reasons behind that. Part of it is that people are, because they're new to it, they are not necessarily adept at creating the conditions for healthy self-organization. Because there's always has to be a balance between where are you headed and what are your constraints? And if people don't have those, it can be overwhelming. So we have to figure out everything. And that means everybody is going to be arguing about what we're supposed to be doing and how we're supposed to be doing it. And that's not that fun. So I think people are not yet adept at, here's the North Star, here's the outcome we're headed to. Here's the boundaries. So the economic boundaries, the time boundaries, the tool set you can choose from. Here's an abhorrent solution, here's what we want to see more of, that would actually create a sort of container in which people can figure out how to work with that problem. So people, I think, are self-organized and people are just kind of left with nothing. It's like, so then what do you do? You either, you sit there and you wait because you're kind of paralyzed or you end up like a team, I got a call about which they had not delivered anything for two years. They've been arguing for two years about what to do. And I asked the manager, well, did you step in and talk to them about the girl? And she said, no, they are self-organizing. I didn't want to interfere with their self-organizing, which is absurd. Right? So that's the kind of reason that I think people have problems with it. And people who have been under control, management control for many years, and then suddenly it's like, oh no, now we want you to self-organize. Skeptical much? Yeah, I can see why people are skeptical. I can see why people who are given no boundaries and then make some kind of mistake and get slapped down further are hesitant. I get that. I think, so this pandemic is a good example of this, is that I still think that employees need, and it doesn't have to be heavy-handed kind of controlling management here, but there's an air of not certainty either, but safety, isn't it? That this is, yes, we acknowledge this is a scary time, but we've got, these are our strengths as a company. These are our constraints that we're working with. This is how we're going to provide that sense of safety for you as staff and employees. And I think you can still provide that without necessarily, I've seen the other way where CEOs have come down very hard to say, look, we need to take back control of what we're doing here. We need to keep an eye on you. And that's not safety. That's taken it too far the other way. I want to ask you a question. And I know I've asked you a lot of questions, but I want to ask you, I've said that you are one of our heroes, you're one of our inspirations. Who have been your inspirations in your career? Well, sorry, I simply have some congestion. The obvious one is Jerry Weinberg. I met Jerry in 1991, 90 or 91 somewhere in there. For those of you who don't know Jerry, he wrote one of the seminal books on computer programming, this is psychology of computer programming. He was really focused on the human aspects of developing software, even though he made significant technical contributions, he was on the Mercury project. So meeting him and then studying with him and then working with him. And I co-taught a workshop with him for the last 12 years, up until the time he retired at age 82. So that was... Yeah, that was one of my biggest regrets, not going on the PSL course when I had the chance with you two. Well, we'll do it again. He bequeathed it to me and Don Gray, so when we can get together again, we'll do another PSL. Yeah, so he had an enormous effect on my both my personal life and my professional life. Anyone else? Probably Jean McClendon, who is not in this field. She was actually a licensed clinical social worker, and I learned a lot about how human systems work from her, and I learned a lot about openness from her. Cool. Yeah, cool. So that's true. That's good. And I'm conscious we've already taken a lot of your time, but I'd like to end on a future-looking thing. So what are you hopeful for for the next few years, five years, time? That is a tough question. I mean, you know, in terms of the world, I hope that we have an opportunity here to get some deeper international cooperation on climate issues. So I feel I feel some hope about that right now. Yeah, yeah. I hope for our profession that we we continue to look at more ways to develop software effectively, and that we learn how to manage software development more effectively. And are you hopeful for that? Do you have hope? I have to have hope, or I would just give up. I mean, I don't, I don't, you know, what I really care about is making workplaces more human. That's what I really care about. That's what motivates me. And I don't think that that work will be done in my lifetime. But I think I'll do the work while I'm here. Absolutely. That's all we can do, right? That's all we can do. I'll keep doing the work while I'm here. And, you know, it's a it's a big systemic problem. You know, it's tied up with, you know, the history of management, it's tied up with how management is taught in in MBA schools. It's taught, you know, it's tied up in how what people see model. But we can create some different models. And, you know, like, you know, I know that there are people who are managing differently because of stuff that I've done and that other people who are working on these issues have done. So, you know, we'll see some change. Yeah, see some change. And it won't be done in my lifetime. And there are always going to be people who want to exploit. I can't, I can't stop that. I don't think you can stop that. But yeah, I have some hope. Partly I have hope because I think, you know, people, you know, when I started work, we had certain expectations that this is just how you did it. And you dressed a certain way and you stayed in, you know, you worked your way up. And, you know, you put up with some kind of grant work for a while. And I think, I think people coming into the workplace now aren't going to put up with that crap. They want responsibility. They want feedback. They want meaning. And, you know, some people talk about, oh, they're so entitled. There's, you know, there's nothing unreasonable in wanting, you know, meaning, responsibility and feedback. There's nothing unreasonable about that. So I think some companies may have to change if they want to have really, you know, the right stellar employees. So that gives me hope. Yeah, I like that. And that's the one thing, I think, that makes me, it's the one part of the Greenleaf work that I think maybe we've got passed, because I think that what some people call entitlement, what some people call rebellion, I think, is just a sense of knowing what you're worth. And I think that's what my children's generation is growing up with. And I think that's good. That's a good thing. That's what our organization, our workplace need. And that's why I think his statement there, the vast majority would choose disorder, even if it meant oppression, I don't think is necessarily true in now the next 20 years, I hope. And so that's a nice, nice way to end that. Thank you, Esther. Thank you for joining us. And a personal thank you for all that you've done and all that you continue to do and are going to continue to do. Yeah, thanks very much. Cheers to you. Great to see you. Yeah, cheers.