EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
S02 – E03
Brad Nelson: [00:00:00] All right. Welcome to this episode of the Agile for Agilists podcast. I am your host with the most Brad Nelson. And with me is your co-host, Drew Podwal.
Drew Podwal: Uh, the host with, uh, something I love that today, by the way. You sw you, you got me with that one
Brad Nelson: Good, good. and today we are joined, by Patty Aluskewicz, who is, uh, the founder of Agile Mindset Consulting. She is a Scrum master career coach, Agile consultant and professional educator. , she’s got over 15 years of experience. Uh, she assists businesses and their employees in building Agile and scrum skills, which is what this podcast is about, and successfully implementing them into their teams.
And that’s kind of what we’re gonna talk about today. I’m very excited about today’s topic. It’s about, learning organizations and the growth [00:01:00] mindset and the ownership that we have within building our own learning organizations. And one of the things that I always like to start with when we talk about organizational change is that organizations are made of people.
And so we’re not trying to change in organization, we’re trying to change people. And so on that note, hi Patty.
Patty Aluskewicz: Hello. I’m sitting, I know people can’t see me, but I’m sitting there nodding along right with you. I’m so excited to talk about this topic,
Brad Nelson: Awesome. Yeah. So right before this call, you were mentioning how you used to be in the academic field or industry, I’m not sure the right word for it. Uh, So I, I’d love to have you give our listeners just a little bit about your history and that.
Patty Aluskewicz: Yeah. Well that’s an incredible way to put it because a lot of times, public school teachers and former public school teachers don’t consider themselves that, but it is academic. Very much so. so, you know, cats outta the bag. I am. And again, this was, you [00:02:00] know, a while ago, my first career was a public school teacher.
I was a science teacher. I went into the, middle school classroom, very excited and passionate about sharing my love for science with 13 and 14 year olds. I was bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, right out of my, bachelor’s degree in geology. And I found that they were not that excited about being there.
So, um, it was an interesting wake up call for me, but in a lot of ways it. , mirrored so much of what I’ve experienced going into companies. Sometimes people are not excited about Agile coaches showing up or scrub bas showing up there. because there’s this nervousness that people are gonna tell us, uh, people meaning us.
Um, agiles are gonna tell, everybody in front of them what they’re doing wrong. And, um, it was the same thing with, with my students. They’re, they’re, you know, always afraid of that. But anyways,[00:03:00] so I taught science for nine years. Um, after about a year or so, I realized that the command and control environment, , that I was creating in my classroom was not something that I was too excited about anymore.
And I could tell it wasn’t working. So I was re researching other methods of teaching and. At the time, I didn’t know what I was doing with Scrum and Agile because again, this was 20 years ago who was doing it right except for Silicon Valley. Um, but you know, I I, I took myself out of the front of the classroom and I created a learning environment and they took, or I helped coax them, take charge of their own learning, and they relished in it.
They loved it because I was no longer standing up at the front telling them what to do. They took ownership of what they were doing in my room. you know, and I pushed it as far as I could, but obviously it [00:04:00] is a very con command and control environment. And I, I’m sure we’ll get into this later in the podcast, but I ultimately, as I said, kicked myself out of the public school system,
Um, and I went into business for myself and I learned a lot about growing and scaling that business. Um, and eventually, many years later ended up using all of these skills to become a scrum master and Agile coach. So all of that has served me well. but it’s taken me some time to own that path because it’s a, it’s been a very different one than a lot of people that I come in contact with in the, um, the software development world.
Brad Nelson: I love that so much. There’s so much of it that I love, that you just kind of talked through Drew and I love hearing where people come from because Agile coaches don’t spring out of the ground from nothing. There’s no Agile coach degree. Uh, we all started somewhere and that’s something that I think we always have to remember.
You know, I definitely have had, uh, confidence issues because my background is more in lean manufacturing than coming from the factory. Uh, and I was [00:05:00] raised to believe that wasn’t a desirable thing to be a factory worker. And I, I think a lot of people still feel that way. Uh, so I definitely know what it, it feels like to have some of that imposter syndrome, because I, I don’t have like comp side degree or anything like that.
Uh, but, but I love the, the recognition as well of like the education industry and the command and control. I’m currently reading this book, better Value Sooner, safer, happier, and they talk about, um, Dan Pink’s autonomy, mastery, and purpose.
Patty Aluskewicz: One of my favorite authors in the world,
Brad Nelson: and, and the other thing that I love about our field and the business world is that we always steal stuff from other industries.
So it almost makes sense to start somewhere else. So like Dan Pink’s work is really Edward DCI’s work, which is, uh, autonomy, competency, and relatedness. Uh, but the point they make in the book is that when we as Agile coaches go into organizations to, uh, implement Agile or to install this change, [00:06:00] uh, we’re taking away people’s autonomy.
We’re telling them, Hey, this is what you have to do. Now they’re working in a new way than they’ve never worked before. So we’ve mo removed that mastery. And then usually the purpose is the company wants to make more money, which is not a motivator for people. So we’ve taken away all three of, of their motivators.
And now we expect them to wanna engage.
Patty Aluskewicz: Right. And what’s so interesting that you just said was about we’ve taken away their autonomy. I never even thought of it that way, but the intent and purpose of the Scrum framework, is to give teams more autonomy
Brad Nelson: Mm-hmm.
Patty Aluskewicz: and self-management.
Brad Nelson: Yeah.
Patty Aluskewicz: reputation precedes us.
that we’re gonna come in there and tell them what to do.
oh dear
Brad Nelson: Yeah.
Drew Podwal: know, right? I, I, I, you know, I was on a, uh, a webinar the other day where, um, Adam Weiss, Bart was doing a, a build your own scrum activity that he [00:07:00] does where, um, he’s got mu a mural board template and on it, or the different icons of, the aspects of Scrum. and the activity is for your teams to self determine their workflow by putting those objects onto, the, uh, the board.
And, you know, at first everybody tries to make it look like the, the scrum loop, right? But then people start to realize like, okay, well wait a minute, backlog, refine. Doesn’t happen outside of a sprint. It happens in the sprint. And so everybody winds up with these like monsters. But it’s a great way of allowing teams to kind of self explore and, and have some self-determination.
The other thing I was thinking about though as you were talking Patty, is I remember, and it’s been a while, but um, When I took my C S P O, from Dave Pryor, uh, with leading Agile, he had, all of the learning modules for the C S P O, on a Kanban board, right. And he allowed us [00:08:00] to, to vote. On which ones we wanted to, and some of the things were movable, right?
There was, I think there were probably a couple of swim lanes or something. but for the ones that weren’t specifically part of the class or a required part of the class, we could sequence them through voting from a priority perspective. And we as a class determined our own curriculum in that way. And, uh, and I remember thinking like, oh man, the other people in this class, if they don’t pick the things that I want, but, you know, we, we got all the interesting topics. , but I love, I love what you’re talking about, right? allowing our, our clients to step in and choose their own path. So when you’re thinking about it in that approach, like where do you get started, right?
So if you’re coming into a company and, and you want them to have. Autonomy over their own curriculum, domain transformation, whatever you wanna call it. Where, where do you get started at that.
Patty Aluskewicz: Yeah, I think that, and I’m gonna say something so cliche here cause I feel like everybody says this [00:09:00] and it makes me wonder like, why is anybody do they really do this? You, you go into the organization and you just listen and ask questions. And I think there’s, you know, going back to the way we’ve trained people in school, it’s like you have to produce something to be valuable.
So it’s so hard to go into an organization and just observe. And pay attention and talk to people and ask people questions. Can you tell me about this? How is this working for you? And I mean, I don’t sit by all these, the other Agile coaches in the world, but like, are they, are they actually doing that or are they going in and, and telling people what to do?
Drew Podwal: Yeah, that’s a tough one to, to sit with. I, I, I was on an interview probably about a month ago at this point, and everything about the interview up until like the third round was really all about that, like patience and coaching, active listening, right? partnering with your clients. but then in the end what it turned out was what they really wanted was [00:10:00] somebody to go in and, and be a consultant and tell, and it’s, that’s a hard spot to sit at times.
So, but Brad, I cut you off. What, what were you gonna say?
Brad Nelson: No, no, I love that. Yeah. Uh, yeah, I was gonna say, that’s why at my company we, we’ve been calling it a discovery based approach and that we’re going to discover as we go what it is we need to do. And that all comes from, uh, one of our thought leaders in my company, Ken Rickard. He is a lean change management, trainer.
And so that’s really the approach we’ve been taking is we’ve been trying to use. to help organizations become more Agile. And I, and I think that’s what it, what it boils down to when we think about traditional ocm, uh, like Prosci, uh, it’s definitely much more, uh, waterfall approach to it. We have our starting point, we have our endpoint, let’s, let’s move towards it.
And that’s not to say they aren’t taking feedback throughout the way, but they’re, they’re [00:11:00] still, you know, that feedback goes into how can we get back on track for the plan, right? And, and so that’s really the difference. and so the thing that we definitely try to do is we do go in and we listen and we talk.
We also believe in, co-creation of solutions. If you’re co-creating it, you’re bought in. If I’m telling you what you’re gonna do, you’re gonna be resistant. It doesn’t matter what it is. I’m resistant. If you tell me I have to do something, even if it’s something I believe in, and that’s just how humans are. But the other thing is like, what are the problems we’re trying to solve? What are the problems you have? And then what are the things that we’re doing to, to resolve those problems? And if I just take, uh, a shotgun approach of install this framework, not all the practices might be beneficial or resonate with you today.
And so making it relevant, I, I think is just like, hu humanizing the whole process is, is the trick in my mind.
Patty Aluskewicz: right. And understanding that change. makes people feel like [00:12:00] they’re losing control.
Brad Nelson: Mm-hmm.
Patty Aluskewicz: And we’ve all experienced that so many times in our life. Like what that feels like to feel like you’re not in control. And imagine if you are in charge of a p and l or you know, you’re in charge of a lot of money because like the, the success or failure of your portfolio is depending on you to make sure this software gets in the customer’s hands.
Like that’s a lot of pressure and like humanizing the fact that people are under that pressure. So it’s not just about the team, right? It’s not just about the developers, it’s understanding the leaders are under this pressure too. So being able to have those human conversations with them as well, and not being intimidated by them.
Drew Podwal: and it’s also while delivery is happening, right? And like, so essentially what we’re asking our customers to do is akin to, you know, we go into the kitchen of one of the finest dining establishments in the United States, and we’re trying. Convert [00:13:00] the entire kitchen from gas to electric, right. While we’re right in the middle of dinner service and we’re gonna go gluten free at the same time.
And, we’re gonna change out everybody’s knives and, and all of that while dinner is being served. All the guests throughout, you know, and, the kitchen crew knows that they’re being judged on the quality of their deliverable while this is happening. And so, how do you work with, with stakeholders to help reset the expectations to recognize that, you know, in order to go fast, you gotta go slow A little bit.
Patty Aluskewicz: That’s a million dollar question. Right, because they, they, they want the, the problems fixed. But the challenge is that you have to peel back all these layers of the onion to figure out what the root cause is. And some people don’t wanna look at that root cause. Cause it’s super disruptive to change that. And I don’t know. Like I [00:14:00] said, you just, it’s, I just feel like you have to have a lot of compassion for every single person in the organization. And the only way you can is if you get to know people on a human level.
Drew Podwal: Well, that’s absolutely the truth, I really believe that to be good at what we do is to know people on the human level. We gotta understand what their fears are. We gotta understand what their wants and desires are, what they’re motivated by. you know, I was just thinking though, like, one of the games that I love to play with, with teams early phase is have you ever done the paper airplane game?
Patty Aluskewicz: I don’t think.
Drew Podwal: Have you done a.
Brad Nelson: I’ve done, an icebreaker with a paper airplane, but I don’t think we called it that, so I’m not sure.
Drew Podwal: Okay, so this is a cool one, right? So you split your class into like two or three teams of five, right? then you demonstrate the folding of a paper airplane, right? Um, so the paper airplane is folded much like any other paper airplane. And then you take a sharpie marker and you put a serial number on one [00:15:00] wing, and then you put the, the team logo on the other wing, which could literally be like the team’s initials or whatever that is, right?
And the acceptance criteria is that they, the paper airplane has to fly 12 feet across the room and, pass between two chairs that are stacked on, on top of a table. and then you tell the teams that they can organize any way they want, and. Let’s see how many quality paper airplanes each team can make.
And then, you know, you give them five minutes and they do that. Then you count how many paper airplanes have passed qa, and then each team gets another five minutes to. Do a retrospective, what ideas do we have to improve the quality and the output of the paper airplanes that we’re making, right?
then you impose some rules upon them to mimic, like work in progress restrictions and whatnot, and ask them to then qualify how did having work in progress limits impact your ability [00:16:00] to achieve high quality and, and high output. And the reason why I bring that up is, well, one that’s like just an awesome game and I, I love playing that with teams.
and I still have not figured out how to play that virtually. but um, which is why I brought up the, the game over overcooked the other day, Brad, because if only overcooked were like open source and could be played on, the cloud, uh, that would be a great way to do that. But, um, nonetheless, like in thinking about like the question of how do we convince or influence stakeholders that they’ve gotta accept that in order to go fast, they first have to go a little slow.
what games or activities could we play with stakeholders to help them to kind of realize that point, right? Like, well, no, seriously, we have lots of games that we play at the team level, right? And the product owner level. but what are the stakeholder games that, you know, I haven’t seen too many of them.
You know, I mean, I know there’s like the lean budgeting game where you, you put out buckets that have like the name [00:17:00] of features on them, and you give them a wallet with fake money and they can, you know, fund in that way. But there’s gotta be a, an activity that you, you could think of, right?
Certainly the three of us could think of something where, where we could use it as a way for stakeholders to realize that, you know, sure you’re accepting a little bit of a hit in delivery right now, but you know you’re gonna get it back later.
Patty Aluskewicz: I guess my first thought is can we get them to play the games in the first place,
Brad Nelson: Mm-hmm. . That’s where my thought
Patty Aluskewicz: Because I’m like, they’re, it’s hard to get them to even show up to a meeting. Right. So how, how does coming to you an event like that, how, how do you sell that to them, so to speak? That it’s valuable
Drew Podwal: You know, okay, I’m gonna go deep on this one. This might be a little bit uncomfortable, but I’m gonna throw it out there, right. Is that, you know, I came up from the bottom, right? I was in the Navy for five [00:18:00] years. I worked my way up from the bottom to where I am now. And, and I, like you just said, I wanna have a greater ability and efficiency in influencing stakeholders and getting time with them is, is a challenge. And my current paradigm and my current hypothesis, and a little bit of the gremlin on my shoulder that might be telling me I’m not good enough, a little bit, I is saying to me, well, Drew, you’ve never been in an executive before, so why are they gonna trust you?
Right? Why are right? They, they have no problem trusting me with their portfolio managers, with their program managers, with their developers, their testers, but how can we. we know what’s really going on, right? We see the metrics. We, like you said, we’re, we’re very people focused. We, we get to know what makes people tick, right?
We know what’s really going on, but yet we can’t get stakeholders to, open up their, their minds for a [00:19:00] moment and give us the time and space to really illustrate how that’s actually impacting them. and yeah, my current paradigm is a little bit of the, I’m not good enough gremlin because I’ve never been that executive before, and that might just be why I’m not presenting myself in a way that that helps them to figure that out.
so that’s a deep cut, deep admission that I just put on air.
Brad Nelson: Yeah. Yeah. I, I have a lot of thoughts on that. So, I mean, really what we’re talking about is the difference between team level coaching and enterprise level coaching, and a lot of people really don’t have experience with enterprise coaching. I would say I have a little, I definitely wouldn’t say I have a lot.
I have more than I think a lot of team coaches do. Uh, but that’s a conversation we have a lot because we treat things differently. you know, one of the things that I also believe in is I don’t believe in a top down or grassroots approach to change. I believe in both. I think you need both. I think you need a strong sponsor [00:20:00] at the top saying this is important.
And that’s how, uh, you get stakeholders more engaged, uh, and sometimes forced, just like the teams are sometimes forced to take training, right? That’s the reality of things. But I also think there’s the same approach that you take with the teams, with stakeholders is what are your problems? What are your complaints?
And like, let me explain to you how we’re going to address those.
Drew Podwal: Yeah, I might be done enterprise coaching. Actually I had an interesting call today with, with my performance coach, who, who I speak to on a regular basis, who’s, uh, really wonderful and you know, she challenged me like, cuz I, you know, I have been an enterprise coach and what you just said really was intriguing and it made me think for a second, Brad.
there are times where I’ve walked into the room at the executive level and everyone’s been like, Drew, we’re so glad you’re here.
Brad Nelson: Mm-hmm.
Drew Podwal: tell us what we should do, right? And then there’ve been times where it’s like, you know, I’m knocking on that door and nobody’s opening [00:21:00] up. And, you know, what I’m realizing almost live on this call right now is like, the thing is we get to pick and choose, I, I am at a point in my career, right, where I can pick and choose who I wanna work with. I’m not at a point in my career financially where that’s always an easy decision to make. But, you know, maybe it’s just I want to partner with people who are, you know, I know that I should be trying to help people to step into the, the learning mindset.
and I’m gonna throw this question out to you guys. Do you believe that there are just people out there who just cannot step into that kind of mindset?
Patty Aluskewicz: Um, there’s a famous book, right? Um, that talks about growth mindset versus fixed mindset. as a coach, right? You, you never wanna say, well, I think there are people that I just can’t help . Or I think there are people that I, you know, that just, that can’t learn, but it’s their [00:22:00] choice.
Brad Nelson: Mm-hmm.
Patty Aluskewicz: gremlin you, you know, we talk about gremlin’s, whatever gremlin’s going on in their head, whatever conditioning that’s happened over the course of their life, that in influences what they do and say on a daily basis.
So they have to be aware that they’re making the choice not to change, not to grow, to think, I’m, this is it. This is all I can do.
Brad Nelson: Yeah. I mean, we talk about a lot like with the Agile Manifesto, highly motivated people. That, that comes up a lot. It says, right. I’m, I’m gonna paraphrase so don’t slaughter me people. Uh, but basically we need to organize teams around highly motivated individuals. It doesn’t say your average person, it doesn’t say casually motivated individuals.
It doesn’t say resistant individuals. Right. There.
Patty Aluskewicz: are just there to have a job cause they need money.
Brad Nelson: Yeah. And, and that’s where I think some of the, the, some of us struggle is because the people that wrote these books and the people that wrote the manifesto and these sorts of things, they come from an environment that is [00:23:00] very mature. Right? And, and when we think about it, like the Agile Manifesto describes a culture, but it doesn’t tell you how to get there. and it’s the same thing with like the scrum guide as well, right? It’s, it’s very open to interpretation, minimally defined. , scripture type thing where everybody kind of implements it their own way and the hard part is getting there.
And so I think that there is, I mean, I agree there is ownership on yourself to want cha to want help, to want the change. However, that’s very, uh, that makes me feel very helpless to just end the discussion there. And so I always look at it as well, I can always do more to be influential, to explain things in a different way, to, to get more buy-in to, I dunno, be more charismatic.
I’ve studied so many different areas than just Agile when it comes to like, body language. And I’ve done vocal lessons and I’ve, you know, looked at psychology and mirroring and how to get people to like you and all of these [00:24:00] other things that aren’t, you know, just Agile techs to try to be a better consultant at the end of the day.
Patty Aluskewicz: Right. But you’re only half of the relationship though, right?
Brad Nelson: for sure.
Patty Aluskewicz: other party, whether it’s one person, a team, a, an organization, they have to meet you halfway. You can’t do all the work. And I think that’s something that there’s some level of acceptance there. At least that’s my personal belief.
Like I wanna do as much as I possibly can, but I cannot force people to change
Brad Nelson: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Uh, I, I’m also stoic, so, uh, I definitely relate there and I think you have to come to the, come to those terms to remain sane as an Agile coach.
Patty Aluskewicz: I can’t save everybody.
Brad Nelson: Right.
Drew Podwal: Let’s go back to when you were teaching in classrooms, right? And when there was a student that, and like it was probably me, right? I was that student, that didn’t wanna learn, That wasn’t interested [00:25:00] in, in the subject or the topic or the lesson or whatever that is. Like, I know for me there was stuff going on at home.
Um, there was stuff going on in my head that I didn’t feel good about and, you know, I felt better about getting attention from acting out than I did from, cuz I didn’t think I could compete as an academic performer, but I could be the class clown and whatnot. So what approaches did you take when you were a.
With those kinds of people, to help that. Like, other than playing, was it Bob Dylan with Jodi Foster, right. Or dangerous Minds or, what are the, what are the, the tricks, tips and tricks that you used back then?
Patty Aluskewicz: Yeah. You know, this is all like such a loaded topic because there’s so many pieces to this. I think that understanding that, to your point, when kids act out, there’s something going on, [00:26:00] right? It’s not personal. against me, right? , it has to do with what’s going on in their head or what’s going on outside of the classroom and not taking that into account. I’m not treating this person across from me as a human being.
And this is the same thing that happens at companies. They the same things. People, they’re not doing well or you know, they’re not delivering on time or their work quality suffering. And this is where you like get down with people and develop a personal relationship with them so they can feel they trust you.
And then once you can break through that and you can have some honest conversations, then they start to see that you care and you wanna help them. And then they start looking at you, the teacher, in a different way. And then they. Trying. But the other piece of this Drew, and one of the reasons why I ultimately had to leave public education, and this is something that, you [00:27:00] know, like I, I work with a lot of transitioning teachers.
Um, I, I coach a lot of them. And, uh, you know, when people ask teachers, why do you leave the profession, the, they, they always give the sur same surface level reasons, like the pay is bad, the parents are a pain in the butt, like all discipline problems, all of these things. But I’m like, this is surface level.
What is the real problem? Because these occur in companies too, these problems. So what is the real reason? I laughed and I, I, I really had to sit and think about it and it was, I was trying to box students into the same, conformist way, everybody’s different. And I realized that we treat students as if they’re products.
That they have to be built to these exact specifications. And if I don’t do it as a teacher, I get held accountable. I get in trouble, so to speak, and I’m just like, that’s something [00:28:00] that I can’t control. Because to your point, there’s all these other things and all these other factors that determine what a student can or cannot learn, what they’re willing to learn, what they’re interested in. And it’s like, I can’t control these things and it’s too much pressure on me to expect because by the time they get to me in eighth grade, every single student has all of these gaps in their learning things that they missed along the way. And it’s like I’m supposed to pile more on top of that. I’m supposed to teach them like how to balance chemical equations when they don’t know their multiplication table.
Drew Podwal: Tech
Patty Aluskewicz: How do they, this is what I’m saying, like when I talk to teachers, I’m like, you don’t understand, like everything you dealt in in within the public school system is exactly what goes on in corporate America on software development teams. Identical to the exact t and i.it is [00:29:00] wild. So it is tech debt. So what am I supposed to do with that?
Everybody has all this different tech debt and I have 125 people sitting in front of me. That becomes an impossible task on me as one person. And this is why teachers are leaving.
because people are not products, but we treat them like products.
Drew Podwal: So that, you said that before, that got my wheels spitting in my head. I don’t know if you guys heard it or not, but um,
Brad Nelson: that’s a little squeaky. Yeah.
Drew Podwal: Yeah, a little squeaky. So I was thinking about, all right, if students, like, if students are, aren’t the products, then are they the product owner? Right? And if they’re not, then who’s the cust?
I feel like this is, it’s an interesting conundrum where they’re both the, maybe the product owner and the product, and maybe at that age, the end user is, are the parents, you know? Um, and that at a very specific point in maturity, it flip flops where, um, but I, I, do you feel like. In a [00:30:00] healthy education system where, cause I always describe, I always describe an organization’s ability to, to pass value through their value streams, right?
As a product, and that the Agile coach is the product owner for that product, right? It’s their, their job to look at where the needs are to continue to improve the Agile capabilities of that as a product, right? And so, in a healthy education system, students are crafting a product and that product is their life, and that, you know, much like in Dave Pryor’s classroom, there are things that are Mandatory and things that are optional from a learning perspective. There’s lots of pathways to learn all of that stuff, that are optional. but that we’ve gotta put students and our clients, right? more [00:31:00] in control of their own learning path. but then it gets back to this idea of like, how do you get them to step into that growth mindset,
Patty Aluskewicz: but it starts when, when kids are very young, by the time they get to five or six or seven, They’re forced to sit in a classroom and listen to somebody talk. you know, and it only goes downhill from there. But I think we are, we’re at this point, and I felt like 20 years ago, I was at this point, what is the purpose? What is the intent of purpose and purpose of education? because it used to be to memorize facts and tape tests cuz we needed people to have knowledge. But at this point we need people to solve complex problems, not memorize facts. You can look up facts on the internet. So yes, there is some like reading, writing, arithmetic.
That’s very important, don’t get me wrong, but like we need, we need to focus on problem solving as opposed to sitting and listening to somebody talk and answering [00:32:00] questions and like taking a test and getting a hundred.
Drew Podwal: So this is why I was really intrigued by the, the Communities of practice aspect of what it is that you do. Because I feel like, setting up a community of practice or just a Friday Lunch and Learn, that’s optional for people to attend, right? There’s gonna be some people who will show up and will find value and we’ll begin to excel and begin to, you know, propagate those ideas and the things that they’ve learned in, in the community of practice and the lunch and learns elsewhere.
And more people will start to show up, and that’s when it really starts to get strength. but, uh, I also like, have you heard of Path to Agility yet?
Brad, you’ve, I know I’ve brought it up, but I think you’ve heard of this, right?
Brad Nelson: Uh, yeah. Yep.
Drew Podwal: Path to agility. It, it feels a lot like what we’re talking about here, right? So what path to agility is, is you go into a company with, um, they’ve got these cards that basically map to, um, outcomes that [00:33:00] they’re looking to achieve.
And then on the other side of those cards are the capabilities that they need to develop to be able to achieve that set of outcomes , right? And you work with your customer to then say, all right, you’ve identified that these are the top three, you know, outcomes that you’re trying to achieve with this Agile transformation.
And I wish I knew what the better thing to call it was, cuz
Patty Aluskewicz: Right. I’m with you on that one.
Drew Podwal: the term tojo anymore. But, you know, and then they sequence those cards and that’s what determines their, general lesson plan, their learning plan from a a capabilities perspective and. . and it also shows the dependencies, right?
Because there are certain prerequisites and dependencies that, all right, well if you want to get this outcome right, you also have gotta do this capability that’ll build this outcome, you know, first, right? To really, and we don’t have to do it that way, but if we don’t do it that way, you’re not gonna get the full [00:34:00] benefit of it.
And then they make that determination on their own. We don’t make that for them. And I know I’m probably butchering the explanation of it. It’s a methodology that I’ve wanted to learn more about. I keep on saying that, and I’m gonna learn more about it. Um, and, uh, and I promise you I will, um, just a matter of when, but I, I do like that approach.
And I, and I like, the idea of establishing Scrum Masters, communities of practice, product owner, communities of practice, Qa, communities of practice. and just create these learning opportunities that have the, the potential to intersect with somebody’s, day-to-day activities and growth. and maybe someday somebody shows up and is like, Hey, you know, I’ve been having this problem and I felt like this might be a great place to talk about it.
And, it’s a great way to win hearts and minds.
Brad Nelson: Yeah, I, I think one of the, the maturity aspects, , uh, or one of [00:35:00] the, the things that builds into being a senior scrum master or Agile coach is understanding that you can’t just replicate what you’ve done before. Like I, I was fortunate to have an incredibly high performing successful team as my first team I was a scrum master for, and I learned so much, and I referenced that that one team over and over and over again, because they did so much great.
Uh, and, and they were doing DevOps for, DevOps was a word like just phenomenal, perfect, high performing team. Well, not perfect, but, uh, for my development and, and having, not having to rely on faith, right? I don’t believe this stuff works. I know this stuff works, which unfortunately, a lot of other Scrum masters and Agile coaches can’t say as well.
With that said though, when I first left that company, I was like, Hey, I can just do the same things. I can just reinstall the same behaviors and every team will end up being just like this team. [00:36:00] And that’s not the case. And I think that goes back to your comment, Patty, about the individuals, like each student is an individual, and I think you hit the nail on the head Drew.
It’s not necessarily mapping them the roles, it’s what is the outcome? What is the thing that we are trying to accomplish, whether it’s in school, whether it’s in a company, every company has their own outcomes, so, so that variable alone creates the potential for different approaches. And we all have different people, different history, different backgrounds, different clients, different customers.
There’s so many variables that we can’t just say every single time you have to do this.
Patty Aluskewicz: Sounds like a classroom to me,
Brad Nelson: yeah.
Patty Aluskewicz: you have to teach this curriculum to 30 completely different humans in front of you and, and they all have to do extremely well , right? And it’s like, it’s unrealistic and every single class has a different personality. Um, some classes are very quiet, some are very boisterous, right?
And the teams are like that too. [00:37:00] And that’s why you have to come in with a different energy and a different approach and different techniques, and pull out different tools from your toolkit. And you have to be willing to be flexible. and realize that you’re gonna, you, you have to make these decisions on the spot, and that’s something you have to get comfortable with.
And I learned that from being an eighth grade teacher. You show up and all this stuff happens, and you have to stay calm and you have to just orchestrate the whole thing,
Brad Nelson: and I mentioned highly motivated individuals earlier. Uh, I, I think that’s a little bit of a cop out because most organizations aren’t, aren’t Google, they aren’t Apple, they aren’t Amazon one. They don’t need to move as fast as those companies. Uh, but they’re not paying for those sorts of people.
And that’s not to say you, you can’t have people that are Amazon, apple, whatever level at your companies. You definitely can, and they’re, I’ve definitely seen them. But uh, when we say let’s meet our clients where they’re at, that’s part of it.
Drew Podwal: You know, I’ve always said that I’ve never met a developer, right? You don’t become a developer because you wanna [00:38:00] like, Developers in order to become a developer, it takes a lot of hard work and dedication, right? Developers just wanna see that their code is getting pushed to production and, being used by end users.
Um, so I, I don’t totally agree with that statement, Brad. I think that, yes, I’ve definitely seen, and at the management level, usually, where there are managers who, who want to be able to just armchair, the work with their teams that don’t specifically wanna roll up their sleeves, but I, I yet to really meet developers who show up to work, with the goal of, of hiding, you know, under the table and. Going home at the end of the day and collecting a paycheck. but I also like, Reid Hastings, the way that he, he describes it is, um, talent density in his book. Uh, uh, I’m looking behind me, but I’m not home right now. uh, no [00:39:00] Rules, rules by Reid Hastings. All right. He talks about, the, the number one, you know, metric that leadership should be looking at is building talent density within their teams, And that, you know, when they see, people with low talent density, that, and, and I, this is the part that I take a little issue with. I don’t believe in just, cutting off the, whatever the, the phrase is, right? Tr trimming the fat. Um, I, I.
Brad Nelson: link. Goodbye.
Drew Podwal: I, I, I don’t believe in, I do like, you know, what Reid would say is you don’t have time to take on the responsibility of, of trying to convince somebody to, step into the role of, a learning mindset, growth mindset, and that it’s better to just get rid of them.
And, and he talks about how, um, you know, the first time he did that at Netflix, he was worried that. That the people who stayed were gonna be upset because now they had to do double the work or triple the work. And the reality was, was that what might’ve happening was by, by [00:40:00] letting go everybody who didn’t fit the persona for a high performer, it allowed the, the people with high talent density who remained to create these new neural pathways in the way that they work, that they couldn’t for because these other people were the dead weight.
I, I definitely am more of a, I wanna roll up my sleeves and sit with the bear, the bad news bears, just to make sure that, they’re, they’re not gonna make it to the championship if they have better leadership and better support and better psychological safety. So,
Brad Nelson: Yeah. Well, I, I will say I have seen people who I believe are just punching the clock as developers, and maybe they didn’t start that way right. Like, that’s probably fair. But, you know, I, I have a story. So with my very high performing team, we had this developer within our department when we, when we went to a more rigid, safe approach to Agile.
And a part of that is working within teams, right? [00:41:00] Cross-functional teams. Now, I had this one gentleman on my, on my team in my department who was. A phenomenal developer guy was like a genius. He built the connections, uh, from the store to the main servers before there was T C P I P, like before that existed, which is insane if you know anything about networking.
and, and they still called on him constantly to help with different things that he had programmed 10, 20, 30 years ago. The guy was amazing. However, he was not really good at collaborating. He needed to think through stuff like he was the type of guy that completely like re-engineered a computer down to assembly to better understand how it worked before he started programming.
Like that’s the type of person he is. And he got a lot of flack and people judged him a lot because he was not meeting this Agile norm that we were trying to force him into. . Now, what I did, I, I [00:42:00] had the, the fortune of working for a company with enough psychological safety where I gave him special, special assignments, right?
Like, Hey, here’s this proof of concept that we need to look into before we can pitch it to the business and, and make it a reality. Or here’s this defect that nobody can seem to solve. Like go off and fix it. He was great at that sort of stuff. He was a very hard worker. He’d work overtime even because he was obsessed with solving the problems. Now, would you get rid of that guy because he’s not, uh, a quote unquote Agilists,
Drew Podwal: No, I would find some people, or I would ask that person to hand select or hand hire whoever he wanted to be his team. Right. And
Brad Nelson: but he doesn’t wanna work in a team, and you’re for, you’re forcing the team construct.
Drew Podwal: Right. But if so, he didn’t wanna work on a team. He doesn’t wanna le like, even if he had self-determination [00:43:00] and full autonomy of shaping that team any way that, that they wanted to, that was still off the.
Brad Nelson: I mean, he, he wasn’t unsociable, he was a very sociable guy. But when he worked, he had noise canceling headphones that he put on over earplugs cuz he needed complete silence. And he often worked before the shift and after the shift so that he wasn’t disturbed.
Drew Podwal: So then I would use spikes, right? I would ask that a person like that to as a failure experiment, to maybe instead of doing some of the research himself, right, to create a couple of spikes and give it to the team that’s well over on the other side of the building, right? And at the end of the sprint, that team’s response, like the acceptance criteria for those spikes is that they’ve gotta do a demonstration of what they found, for that guy.[00:44:00]
And, maybe those spikes are. For things that he’s gonna be working on in the future, right? I want to know how this database is set up, or I want to know, you know, whatever it is, right? But, I definitely don’t think that you would fire a guy like that, right? Cuz the, the amount of knowledge that leaves the company when you fire somebody like that is tremendous.
But I also think that you’ve gotta figure out creative and constructive ways to, because that person’s not gonna beat the company forever, right? Like, even if they could be, they’re gonna die at some point, right? Like, and you know, maybe the, the gamble that you’re running on a person like that is that the company’s gonna go out of business before this person dies, right?
Um, but you’ve gotta come up with some sort of creative and constructive ways to, Help other people get the knowledge from that person, right? Not, not so that we could fire them, but so that [00:45:00] we can create some cross functionality, Maybe the, the process of creating those kinds of spikes might help that person to realize that they can trust other developers, more.
and maybe after a quarter of, of working in that way, that person maybe is open to the idea of, hey, those people who I’ve been assigning spikes to, let’s just make them be a part of my team.
Brad Nelson: Yeah, we can hypothesize all day. I’ll throw a wrench in there. So all of his, all of his legacy experience was in different departments and teams. He moved to a new team and started when everyone else did because he wanted to work on something new. And he’s this great talent. Yeah, we’re gonna let him do what he wants to do.
So he didn’t have legacy knowledge that the rest of the team didn’t.
Drew Podwal: He didn’t have legacy knowledge that the rest of the team didn’t have. That, that, so then what did he have that the rest of the team didn’t have?
Brad Nelson: Just a different way of looking at work [00:46:00] and the intelligence, I would say, to solve incredibly, incredibly complex, convoluted, complicated problems.
Drew Podwal: Okay. I mean, you still don’t get rid of somebody like that, but I still think that there’s ways to try to, get them to lean in in some regard. Maybe you, maybe, you know, you host a hackathon and you know, they’re the ones that creates the problems that. looking to be solved or something like that?
once a quarter or something. I don’t know. I mean, I’ve talked a lot. Patty, what do you think? You’re over there
Patty Aluskewicz: No, I mean, it’s, it’s tough. I, I, I hear what you’re saying, Brad, because this person is a wealth of knowledge for the company and the team and the product, but they, they don’t wanna participate in Agile and all these Agile things that we’re asking them to do because it’s not their personality.
So what do you do about that? , um, everybody, it’s Agile is just for everybody else. And this person can just sit in the corner and do whatever they want. And I [00:47:00] think that that’s a tough spot for a scrub master to be in as well. As a coach, what do you do? But the idea is that we’re a team, so somehow you have to kind of pull things together slowly.
because if the person is working, regardless of how amazing they are, if they’re working in the corner by themselves, they’re a team of one. And like we’ve gotta work together and solve the problems together.
Drew Podwal: are there dependencies that other teams had on this person solving problems or was it just completely in a bubble?
Brad Nelson: in this instance, I mean, there were, there were teams that this team didn’t work with that he had that legacy knowledge for, and so sometimes he would be, offer a day or two solving something for another department across the company. But as far as like his current team and the teams that they interacted with, no.
Drew Podwal: Okay, so he was on a team even though he wasn’t in the team, is what you’re saying.
Brad Nelson: Yes.
Drew Podwal: Okay. Yeah. I would take him out of the team first, you [00:48:00] know, and, uh, give him the space to do what he wants. And I would look for, Documenting the dependencies, I would still document like, um, the metrics from a flow perspective for things that you did, even if it was only at the epic level or something like that, or at the feature level.
Um, so you can create some sort of flow based metric for how many boulders and rocks this person can work on. And, but uh, you know, if you’ve got somebody who’s, I don’t know, I mean, there’s, there’s a lot of ways to skin this cat.
Patty Aluskewicz: I guess my big question is, is that okay? What message is that saying to the rest of the team? It is a quandary.
Drew Podwal: Well, but if you could build high talent, if you could take him out of the team, right? Um, that’s kind of like, you’re not firing him like, uh, Reed Hastings would suggest you’re taking him outta the equation, right? you’re creating a walled garden around him where he can [00:49:00] do the high value things, for a period of time at least.
and you work with the other teams and you focus on, on getting them, up to high performance and, and, you make a decision after a few more lunar cycles at least, you know, to figure out there’s, there’s gonna be some impact, right?
There’s definitely gonna be some impact. And so you quantify the impact and you write it up as an impediment and you let the customer say, here’s how, here’s how this guy is impeding your teams, here’s how he’s been providing value. What do you wanna do about this? You
Brad Nelson: Yeah. Yeah. So I will tell you, the other developers did resent
Patty Aluskewicz: that that’s
Brad Nelson: he didn’t wanna work in the team, uh, and that he kind of got special treatment because of the way he worked. Uh, and, and I just wanna say Drew, are you taking an individual out that’s not Scrum, it’s cross-functional team of at least three people?
Patty Aluskewicz: But it does, it does breed resent. Like going back to the people aspect of this, [00:50:00] forget about the work, right? We’re trying to get people to interact with each other. Like that’s the whole intent and purpose. It does make people resentful and it does cause other problems. It like
Drew Podwal: so, but what’s the value? You’ve gotta be able to measure the value, right? So the value of having a guy who makes other people resentful, who disrupts the, the, the total flow of the organization against the value of having somebody who can solve complex problems, and doesn’t have legacy knowledge that can’t be duplicated, right?
He’s got, he’s got nothing other than his unique way of, of working on things that can EAs it seems to me those things can easily be replicated by creating high performing teams, you know? you know,
but again, it’s not my decision, it’s, it’s the customer’s decision to.
Patty Aluskewicz: Right,
Brad Nelson: Yeah. So, so it sounds like you’re coming back around to [00:51:00] kind of how we started this, this podcast. I’m not sure if we talked about it a lot, but ultimately the individual has to own their, their growth mindset.
Patty Aluskewicz: right.
Brad Nelson: They have to wanna learn, they want to have to grow, they want to have to adapt.
And, and this is something that I know Drew and I we’ve touched on in the past, is like soft skills are so much more important than technical skills in today’s age. You, you have to be able to work in a team. You have to be able to work with people, you have to be able to talk to customers and users. And, and that’s more important than being able to, to code at the end of the day.
Patty Aluskewicz: yeah. And it’s, it’s interesting cause I, you know, I posted about some of these things on LinkedIn and there’s a lot, I obviously get a lot of support, but I will get some pushback saying, you know, cause I always bring back like, we don’t learn this stuff in school.
Brad Nelson: Mm.
Patty Aluskewicz: learn, we learn facts in school, we learned how to reproduce those facts.
We learned how to take [00:52:00] tests. We learned how to sit in our chairs. . Um, and then people come into companies and we expect them to behave completely differently and they’ve never learned, um, especially in those formative years where your behaviors are solidifying. So anyway, the, the point is, I’ve gotten some pushback.
It’s like, well, soft skills is not really the, the schools, it’s the parents. It’s the parents’ responsibility to teach their kids all of these things. And it’s like, well, a, is that true? Is that still true? Was it ever true? But b, so so what if they’re not
Brad Nelson: so I, I don’t typically, I feel like I don’t share as much as Drew does about my family. Uh, . So my son is incredibly gifted. Actually, both my kids are very gifted. They test, very gifted. My son’s the oldest, so we’re going through it with him first.
And so I’ve had these conversations. What’s the outcome of school? Is it to learn? Is it education? Because he tests gifted, he tests well above his grade, and he was recently diagnosed with adhd, which I know Drew can [00:53:00] relate to.
And so you, you’re taking this very intelligent kid, putting him in a very boring situation, and you throw neuro divergence on top of it, and it’s a recipe for failure.
Now, we’ve homeschooled him most of his life and the, the argument that public schools always give us is, well, he’s not gonna get those social interactions. He’s not gonna learn how to interact with people, which to me is the soft skills. So like I hear like they’re talking on both sides of their mouth, I guess is my, my complaint or my prom, or my challenge.
Drew Podwal: this is something I thought about many years ago when, when, when cell phones became smartphones and you go into a restaurant and you would see fa full families in a restaurant where the kids were on their smartphones texting with one another. And I remember the older crowd was like very put off by that.
That’s so obnoxious to see kids at some other table, not at your table, right? Like, you know, [00:54:00] clutching their pearls like that, that kid over, how dare that kid over there be on their cell phone, and it bothered me a little bit at first, right? but what I started to think about is evolutional change in the way that we communicate, right?
and you know, it dawned on me. These kids are learning to communicate these days in far different ways than we are, like the shorthand that they’ve got from a digital communication perspective. there is some toxicity in the messages that are being put out there on TikTok and, what makes a person popular and whatever.
but your, and I’m just gonna ask you, Brad, your, your, your sons, uh, they, they game, they like, they’re on the internet. They’re, do they create videos? Do they,
Brad Nelson: uh, I mean, he has, he’s not as big into it, but yeah, he’s done some of that.
Drew Podwal: okay. you know, like that is a, like, that’s a form of, of, social growth, right? Socialization [00:55:00] that just can’t be taught in school. It doesn’t get taught in school. Right. Um, it, it probably, Won’t ever get taught in school. Right. Like how to, and it probably should, right? Like, there probably should be classes about like, you know, how do you, create content for the internet in a way that’s that’s safe and effective?
And um, like if only we were to give kids like a marketing, like a branding and marketing class in middle school, right? Could you imagine like what they’d be able to build by the time they got in in high school from a, a brand perspective or whatever. And, and so, Yeah, I mean, they might be lacking on some of the face-to-face social skills, but, you know, and I’m gonna say it like, I haven’t really left my house in three years, right? Like, um, I get in the car, I’m out in Montauk Long Island right now at a family house, and, you know, I’m probably gonna go back in a couple of weeks and get into my apartment building. And we’re gonna continue to have this amazing [00:56:00] podcast where I get to speak with really smart people on a regular basis.
And I’m loving that. Like, I am really loving that. Um, I do miss like, you know, having sticky notes and whiteboards and dry erase stains on my finger and, you know, I miss Nerf gun fights and things like that. but, uh, I, I, I think that we’ve gotta open up our, our definitions a bit for. What we consider social behaviors and you know, just because one doesn’t fit the model for, you know, what our grandparents determined, you know, or Dale Carnegie determined was, you know, social behavior, right?
doesn’t mean it’s not valuable. I think what they’re doing is incredibly
Patty Aluskewicz: Right. And and the other thing I wanna add to that is, you know, we all go into organizations, how many people are struggling with social skills and soft skills, [00:57:00] and the majority of those people went through the public school system. So
like, I, I think there’s just a b big bunch of BS and just bec like, it’s not like you keep your kids in a closet and don’t let them like, interact with people, right.
I mean, I, I think that it’s very easy to, to judge that, but it’s like anyway.
Drew Podwal: information is a tribal currency, right? Like I have information that I choose to exchange for other information. maybe there’s something in that kind of way of looking at things like you’ve mentioned it before, Brad. Uh, I think it was, I forget exactly what you said it when I was talking about the idea of, um, of, uh, defects a tax on a team.
And I think you talked about, um, the currency, like coaching currency or something like that. but, but helping employees and managers and leaders and product [00:58:00] managers start to recognize what, what is the social currency in this company, as a way of, of moving a, an air quote transformation, um, through its stages.
Brad Nelson: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Definitely social currency, right? You have to make it in order to spend it.
Drew Podwal: Yeah.
Brad Nelson: Yeah. it was something else that’s kind of interesting and I don’t, I don’t remember all the details, it’s been a minute, but there’s research that’s done periodically that shows that generationally humans are getting better at abstract think. We are becoming smarter as a race at abstract thinking than generations before us. And that I think goes back to what you, how you were describing school Patty, is it’s more, I guess, I don’t know, defined right? Like this is the knowledge you need to know. We are just as smart in that area as a human race, but the abstract is just growing exponentially because it needs to, and it’s a new world and we live in a new world.
Patty Aluskewicz: right? [00:59:00] It’s like we’re still educating people for a world that doesn’t exist anymore.
Brad Nelson: Yeah.
Patty Aluskewicz: we
have all these needs to have all these problem solving skills and these abstract thinking, yet we’re still putting kids in the classroom and forcing ’em to sit there and listen to somebody talk or, you know, exercises in the book or whatever it is, it just doesn’t suit what, what our world needs anymore.
So why are we still doing it?
Drew Podwal: Well, and it’s also the, the same correlation with like Carlotta Perez’s work and uh, Frederick Lulu’s work right around societal change and organizational change and technical revolutions.
Patty Aluskewicz: on my coffee table.
Drew Podwal: Yeah. It’s a wonderful book. Right? But like we are still using antiquated models of organizing people and communication patterns that were necessary. Pre-digital, right? Like, um, the idea of silos and management and, uh, directors and [01:00:00] VPs and, and all of that. We needed that in the 19 hundreds because we didn’t have Slack or shared drives or, Google Docs or shared calendars and stuff like that, right? Like, you know, we, we needed this tiered, siloed way of organizing people.
And that’s slowing us down. It’s absolutely slowing us down. And, and you know, a lot of the customers, have you guys ever heard of the, the hot Frog theory?
Patty Aluskewicz: Is it the Boiling the frog?
Drew Podwal: Yeah. Yeah.
Brad Nelson: Oh
Patty Aluskewicz: up a degree.
Drew Podwal: Yeah, if you put a frog in a, in a cold pan and you put it on a stove and you, you, you heat it up slowly, the frog is gonna die blissfully without realizing it’s boiling. Right. But if you drop a frog in boiling water, it hops away. And, and I think a lot of like the, um, developers and project managers who are still like clinging to this way of working, right?
It, they’re a lot like that hot frog that they’re not realizing [01:01:00] the friction that’s going on around them. Um, by, by preventing the adoption of, you
Patty Aluskewicz: And it takes so much more time and energy and money, right? Because time is money to contr to keep that controlled because it’s like we’re busting out of it and it’s like
Drew Podwal: So that’s the game. That’s the game right there to play with the
Patty Aluskewicz: right?
Drew Podwal: As you come into work with a pot of boiling water and a frog,
Patty Aluskewicz: We solved that
Drew Podwal: you drop it in now. Now I’ve got their attention,
Brad Nelson: uhoh
Well,
Drew Podwal: I’ve got everybody’s attention.
Brad Nelson: Yes, you do.
Patty Aluskewicz: On that note,
Brad Nelson: on that note, yeah, we, we’ve been talking a, a good while. Uh, I could probably talk about this all night. So, uh, so, but we should probably wrap up for our listeners. Uh, Patty, are there, is there anything we, we didn’t discuss that you wanted to discuss or any last thoughts you wanna share with our [01:02:00] listeners?
Patty Aluskewicz: no, I think this was a great conversation to your point, we could like, we can keep going all night. Um, I know we kind of had some, some points to talk about, but this conversation just grew and changed so organically. Um, it was really cool. Great experience.
Drew Podwal: That’s how we roll
Brad Nelson: It
Patty Aluskewicz: awesome. We’re Agile.
Drew Podwal: You know what I’m thinking here, Brad, is, is we have a, it’s a challenge for us, right? To come up with the titles for episodes, and it’s a challenge for us to come up with the descriptions for each episode. I, I think this one is gonna be near impossible for us to
Patty Aluskewicz: I’m like, oh, are you putting that monkey on my back?
Brad Nelson: Yeah. And, and we always forget links. So we remembered links two episodes ago. We forgot it again, the last, so we’re have to go fix that. So yeah, we’re, we’re learning as we go.
Patty Aluskewicz: No problem. Well, you know, let me know what you come up with. Um, I always like to [01:03:00] think outside the box, so come up with something cool.
Drew Podwal: I think I,
Brad Nelson: I, I think that’s it. Thinking outside the box right there. Boom. Done. Sold. Oh,
Patty Aluskewicz: man, I’m a genius.
Drew Podwal: And the, the click bait title would, will be listened to this episode or Drew will boil a frog
Brad Nelson: There we go. All right. Well, thank you so much for joining us today, Patty. It’s been a pleasure. As always, thank you Drew. You’re, you’re a fantastic partner. And uh, next two episodes will probably just be Drew cause I’ll be out, I’ll be traveling. Uh, so I’ll be at Agile International Conference, which will already be done by the time people hear this episode, so can’t promote it.
But, uh, yeah. Thanks
everyone.
Drew Podwal: Thank you guys.
EPISODE LINKS
- List One