Conversational Transformation Newsletter - No 6 of 2020

Hello Readers! Our activity following the launch of Agile Conversations continues. In addition to our writing and podcasting we will be speaking at two events next week! See all the updates on our various activities below—and of course don’t forget to get your own copy of the book!

Live with Jeffrey and Squirrel

June has been a busy month for us with two more events still to go. Next we are speaking at not one but two conferences. We are speaking at IT Pro Live on Monday June 22nd and at IT Revolution’s DevOps Enterprise Summit on Tuesday June 23rd.

If you’re interested in interactive practice and advice you also have options to talk to us separately. Tuesday night Jeffrey will be hosting a practice session at the London Organizational Learning Meetup while Squirrel will continue experimenting with weekly live “office hours” to show how to analyze conversations and make dramatic improvements in your culture (here’s an example). Reply to this email if you’re interested in joining Squirrel for free advice this weekend!

Are there other conferences and events we should consider? We’d love suggestions from you about other opportunities to meet and talk with readers.

New resources

Sneaking in at the end of May, IT Revolution published Gene Kim Interviews Agile Conversations Authors Douglas Squirrel And Jeffrey Fredrick. Read on to find out what questions Gene had for us about conversations.

June started quickly with Jeffrey contributing one of his experiences to the June 1st DZone article 8 DevOps Experiences to Take Into Account in Your Next Project. Read to learn how an earlier success lead to an unexpected challenge.

On June 3rd we spoke about Mining for Conflict at The Future of Work in Scotland, and the recording is available on YouTube.

June 8th saw the publication on TechBeacon of our article Why you should lead your digital transformation from the bottom. In this article we discuss why the common top-down transformation focusing on rituals, ceremonies, and other “cargo cult” practices doesn’t pay off.

From June 1st to June 10th we took part in the lively IT Revolution Book Club for Agile Conversations. If you missed out or you’ve got more to say you can join the distributed book club on the Agile Conversations Slack where we answer questions about the book or your challenges changing cultures and conversations. Join us!

On June 16th Training Industry published Agile Training Isn’t Enough: The Key Is Conversations, Not Rituals. “If your organization is like most, you’re spending more and more each year on agile training — ScrumMaster certifications; SAFe courses; LeSS assessments; or one of a dozen other flavors of coaching, coursework and exams designed to help your software developers learn to be agile, flexible and speedy. Sadly, you may be wasting your money…“

On June 17th Jeffrey appeared on DZone DevOps Chat with Justin Albano, James Head, Alireza Chegini, and Xavier Portilla Edo where we talked through some of the experiences described in the June 1st article. Watch the video.

On our own Troubleshooting Agile podcast we’ve been taking listeners through the book chapter by chapter, adding historical detail and additional techniques and stories. We’re almost done! Keep listening every Wednesday for more.

Transcript pending:

Transcripts available:

In case you missed it

On May 13th we appeared on the Mind the Product podcast where we had a great time talking with hosts Lily Smith and Randy Silver: Mind the Product podcast

And as we mentioned in our last newsletter, we had a host of articles appear last month highlighting some of the ideas from Agile Conversations:

Do get in touch anytime to discuss the book, your conversations, your transformation, or anything else.

Until next time, keep talking!

Jeffrey and Squirrel

Postscript for Launch Collective members

Hello Launch Collective—our fantastic friends and fans who helped us launch Agile Conversations with so many kind and effusive reviews and posts. We’re so grateful that you helped us with a very successful start to our mission to transform culture through conversation. Since the launch is over, we’ve merged you into our main newsletter feed, so you’ll get regular updates like this one on our talks, training, articles, and more. Of course, if for any reason you’d rather not receive those updates, hit unsubscribe below—but of course we’d love for you to stick around and be part of our conversational revolution!