Food for Agile Thought #183: Leadership Health Check, InfoQ’s State of Practices, Feedback Fails Us, Courageous Leader Myth

Food for Agile Thought’s issue #183—shared with 21,403 peers—covers a new leadership health check tool by Crisp, InfoQ’s State of Practices report 2019—Liberating Structures made it onto the list—, and we analyze what ‘executive sponsorship’ means for change in reality.

We also address how to move from an output-minded to outcome-minded organization; we attempt to figure out whether there is an end to customer development and we warm up to a coaching tool for product managers looking for excellence.

Lastly, we dive into the issue that providing feedback does not seem to have a real impact on other people. What does that mean for retrospectives and self-organizing teams?

Did you miss last week’s Food for Agile Thought’s issue #182?

Food for Agile Thought #183: Leadership Health Check, InfoQ’s State of Practices, Feedback Fails Us, Courageous Leader Myth

🏆 The Essential Read

Shane Hastie and Ben Linders (via InfoQ): Culture & Methods – the State of Practice in 2019

Shane Hastie and Ben Linders report on the state of practices adoption in 2019—from Liberating Structures to mobbing, to remote-only teams, to vanilla Agile.


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Agile & Scrum

Jimmy Janlén (via Crisp): Health checks for Teams and Leadership

Jimmy Janlén shares a powerful tool—the Leadership Health Check—to help you become stronger as a management team by revealing improvement opportunities.

Venkatesh Rao: What ‘Executive Sponsorship’ Actually Means

Venkatesh Rao busts the myth that a wise and courageous leader inspires change, pointing at the complexity of the situation given the incumbents’ opposing interests.

Marcus Buckingham (via Harvard Business Review): Why Feedback Rarely Does What It’s Meant To

There is more myth busting, this time by Marcus Buckingham who claims that feedback as a technique is regularly failing us at triggering change in other people.


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Product & Lean

Tristan Kromer: How Do I Know When I’m Done with Customer Discovery?

Tristan Kromer shares his thought on the question of whether the customer discovery process ever comes to an end.

Teresa Torres (via Product Talk): Adopting a Continuous Discovery Mindset Across the Organization

Teresa Torres shares insights from her Northwestern University classes on how to achieve the mindset shift within an organization that enables continuous discovery.

Marty Cagan: Coaching Tools—The Narrative

Marty Cagan discusses his single favorite coaching tool for product managers in search of professional excellence.

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🗞️ Last Week’s Food for Agile Thought Edition

Read more: Food for Agile Thought #182: Agile-Industrial Complex, Pro Scrum, Cynefin 2019, Marie Kondo Your Product Backlog.

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