Born to Learn
We naturally crave learning. It is an innate ability that has allowed us to survive, evolve and thrive. Science has also shown us that our brain is quite flexible and can allow us to continue to learn at any point in our lives. Moreover, the Agile community keeps spreading the mindset of continuous improvement and continuous learning. It should therefore be logical to see most organisations using this to their competitive advantage.
However, are we putting enough emphasis on growing people's ability to learn? Do we really understand how learning works? And if we don't how can we possibly tailor our organizations to foster learning?
To explore these questions, I want to look at what scientific research tells us about learning but also explore the concept of having a fixed / growth mindset and help you reflect on how you can use these concepts to create the learning organisations of tomorrow.
Outline/Structure of the Talk
- Introduction (3 min)
- Dreyfus model of skill acquisition (12 min)
Present the Dreyfus model of skill acquisition, what it means for us in Agile software development and which insight this model give us on how we learn. - Do we learn from our mistakes? (8 min)
Look at the idea that "failing is learning" and see if there is any scientific evidence to back up that claim. - Carol Dweck's Growth mindset (12 min)
Present Carol Dweck's research, the two mindsets she calls fixed and growth and the insight this give us on how to foster learning. - Systemic issues and the two mindsets (5 min)
Reflect on which mindset is most widely promoted in our organizations and what that means for our learning. - Q&A (5 min)
The session also contains a few interactive questions for the audience to reflect on: the material presented, the way they can promote learning in their organizations, and in general enhance their learning experience :)
Learning Outcome
- Understand that learning is a skill and that we can get better at it.
- Get a better understanding of what are the key ingredients to effective learning.
- Get familiar with Carol Dweck's research on the growth mindset.
- Recognize that we often have a fixed mindset and that our organizations unknowingly tend to foster it.
- Hopefully a lot of new questions and thoughts :)
Target Audience
Anyone interested in the science around learning.
Prerequisites for Attendees
None
Video
Links
https://youtu.be/0TcOB2JXWZY
schedule Submitted 5 years ago
People who liked this proposal, also liked:
-
keyboard_arrow_down
Michele Playfair - Cards Against Agility Game
45 Mins
Interactive
Beginner
The Agile version of Cards Against Humanity. You may have seen versions of this on the internet, but rest assured this version has been enhanced to yield a minimum of 156% more awesomeness. Relatively fresh from its stellar debut at the 2017 Xero Unconference!
-
keyboard_arrow_down
Alex Sloley - The Product Owner and Scrum Master Brain Transplant! Mwuhahahaha!!!
45 Mins
Talk
Intermediate
Imagine you are a Mad Agile Scientist and have a diabolical experiment to conduct - what would happen if you exchanged the brains of a Product Owner and Scrum Master? Mwuhahahaha!!! How would the body of a Product Owner with the brain of a Scrum Master act? And vice versa?
Perhaps the Scrum Master would now treat the team like a backlog? This Scrum Master would be focused on value and maintaining a coaching backlog of team and person improvements. This Scrum Master is refining the team, crafting a group that delivers value.
And perhaps the Product Owner might treat the backlog like a team? Rather than backlog refining, they coach the backlog. They would be focused on nurturing, protecting, and empowering the backlog. The backlog might transform from an irritation into a labor of love.
Although this experiment sounds terrible, this change of perspective might be what you need to reanimate your dead team or backlog.
Join the fun and come learn what horrifying results await!
-
keyboard_arrow_down
Mark Barber - Trust through transparency - Radiating information to build trust
45 Mins
Talk
Intermediate
Autonomous and empowered teams are a key building block of agile organisations but require a great deal of trust to work. Management and leadership must trust people and teams to do the right thing, and teams need to trust that management will support them when needed.
Transparency is a low-cost means of building trust. Transparency gained through the open sharing of information, particularly visual information, has played a large part in agile and lean thinking - from lean's visual controls, to XP's "big visible charts" and beyond.
We will explore how transparency, and the radiation of information, can build trust and cultures where "safe to fail" is more than a theoretical concept.
-
keyboard_arrow_down
Ruma Dak - Agile Dojo at MYOB: 6 weeks of Accelerated Learning
30 Mins
Talk
Beginner
Starting in November 2017, a crew at MYOB embarked on an exciting 6 weeks journey of an Agile Dojo! Guided by an Agile Coach, it was an intensive learning experience which gave us opportunities to challenge the status quo, carry out various experiments, introduced them to new tools, techniques & practices to foster collaboration, refine team dynamics, bring structure to their approaches and improve the way they worked in general.We used 'Improvement Kata' and 'Coaching Kata' from Lean Management for learning, adapting, experimenting and coaching. It was a time to pause, observe and ponder over things.In a nutshell, it was a time-boxed immersive accelerated learning opportunity which resulted in productivity improvements ranging from 10%-90%. MYOB ran this Dojo as an investment in their knowledge workers! It was an experiment run at both Auckland and Melbourne and was successful. This talk will give you glimpses of our 'dojo' adventure, learnings, challenges, interesting surprises and lots of 'aha' moments! -
keyboard_arrow_down
Leoren Tanyag - Mentoring: A Newcomer's Perspective
30 Mins
Talk
Beginner
How do we make an impact to the starters in our field regardless of your position in the industry? Let’s put ourselves in the shoes of a newcomer and explore mentoring from a different perspective.
Coming from being a part of an 18 month Graduate Program position at REA Group, my peers and I have been fortunate enough to find ourselves in an environment where mentoring and pairing is a big part of the culture. This talk is designed to give the attendees an insight on what a diverse range of mentees actually wish and crave for, to empower people to mentor and help shape the future of tech.
-
keyboard_arrow_down
Colin Panisset - System Mapping: Discover, Communicate and Explore the Real Complexity of Your Systems
45 Mins
Talk
Intermediate
Every organisation has legacy systems, and people who know "where the bodies are buried" -- hidden aspects of dependency, communication, process flow and whatnot which every system relies on to function. These are the dirty secrets swept beneath the rug of "business as usual", and they represent risk and friction alike.
As Peter Drucker is famously quoted, "if you can't measure it, you can't manage it", and the first step towards measuring it is to be able to describe it. How can you do this with gigantic, complex, intertwined systems whose origins are buried in mystery and legend, whose very operation and continued existence is dependent, frequently, on specific people, high priests who may not want to share their arcane knowledge?
This session provides evidence-based techniques for uncovering this complexity, visualising it in a machine-friendly but fundamentally human-centric manner, and using the results to drive real organisational awareness that facilitates conversations and change.
-
keyboard_arrow_down
Jochy Reyes - IDEO Mashup method: Creative ideation process & the Medici Effect
45 Mins
Workshop
Beginner
The Medici Effect was a coined term by Frans Johansson to describe innovation that happens when disciplines and ideas intersect. Take for example the idea of using something very technically challenging such as blockchain, and an internet favourite such as cats and you have the CryptoCats and the Crypto Kitties! Indeed the most interesting ideas are borne out of collaboration & diverse thinking.
This hands-on workshop will provide an introduction to the Medici effect using the Mashup ideation method by IDEO.
The workshop aims to guide the participants on the steps detailed on the Mashup ideation method of IDEO.
Participants will work in groups and will be guided on IDEO's 4 step Mashup process and will end with a Cereal Box design activity and sharing of the created ideas.
-
keyboard_arrow_down
Julia Birks / Dave Calleja - Getting to Value Atoll: how you can deliver value from insights by creating a culture of experimentation
45 Mins
Talk
Intermediate
Most organisations now understand why they need insights on customers’ needs and behaviours to drive customer-centred outcomes within agile teams. But many organisations struggle to convert insights from their quantitative and qualitative research into value that actually gets delivered to customers.
And whilst many organisations are employing researchers, and building agile teams, organisational behaviours—at a team level, and also at a leadership level—often get in the way of those teams converting insights into value, leaving teams feeling lost at sea.
But there are behaviours and principles that teams and leaders can put into practice to create an culture of effective experimentation based on insights. By being more human, we can enable our teams to deliver efficient value to customers, and even within the organisation itself.
Come on a swashbuckling journey with us, as we show you how to navigate the oft-treacherous waters of organisational culture, to help your teams reach the mystical location we call Value Atoll.
-
keyboard_arrow_down
Shripad Taralkar - Adaptive Coaching @ scale
30 Mins
Interactive
Advanced
While we talk about rapid change and disruptions, to which we expect todays organisations shall be equipped to respond and adapt to sustain, to me there shouldn't be a second thought in applying the same principles in our professions. As an agility coach, you know there is no one approach that fits for all..
In this talk, I would like to share some of the insights on the coaching moments and how I applied the non purist approach to embed the learnings of the new ways of working. Whilst it is very contextual, I believe it is applicable to many, and share my perspective to adaptive coaching based on the context and dynamics to make it stick.
-
keyboard_arrow_down
Liam Brobst - Improv games to prime divergent and convergent mindsets
60 Mins
Interactive
Beginner
Design Council's 'Double Diamond' model requires teams to shift between divergent thinking and convergent thinking with regular cadence. But what does that actually feel like and how do we do it?
In this session we'll play some Improv games together that prime divergent thinking (creating options), convergent thinking (making decisions) and the pivot point between the two.
This is a participatory session with a pinch of theory and whole lot of game playing.
-
keyboard_arrow_down
Justin Holland - From Apathy to Intent: A story of making meaningful change
30 Mins
Talk
Beginner
I've been on a journey, and I've come to know that apathy and ambivalence are an awful place to be.
I want to talk about big life changes and the uncertainty that comes with them.
We will look at navigating this kind of journey in your own life. How curiosity and self-awareness can lead to meaningful change that will better equip you for new and exciting things in your life.
We will also discuss the importance of healthy company culture as the undercurrent that enables all of this.
-
keyboard_arrow_down
Suzanne Nottage - GO WITH THE FLOW: your Scrum teams are interrupted 2,000 times per sprint. Let's talk about flow
45 Mins
Interactive
Advanced
Scrum is a great framework but there are many ways to do it poorly. The average IT worker is interrupted every 15 minutes, which equates to 2000+ interruptions for a Scrum team every sprint. Unthinkable on a production line, yet too often the norm in offices.
I conducted original research with Scrum teams in Australia last year as part of my Master of Management thesis (and achieved an A), to understand the causes, patterns and impacts of these interruptions on the team's effectiveness and their happiness. And, how mature teams control interruptions rather than let themselves be controlled by interruptions.
Attendees will play a short game to demonstrate how destructive the context switching from handling frequent interruptions is.
My talks are always highly practical and I provide 3 takeaway actions for teams to improve their 'flow' and reduce interruptions.
-
keyboard_arrow_down
Alexandra Stokes - The Future of Work - HR disrupted
45 Mins
Workshop
Intermediate
It’s 2018 and Agile working has become the new Way of Working. Once considered the territory of the reckless and sloppy, now most of the free world is considering how they can implement these better ways of working into their teams and orgs.
We've spent many years helping teams move with agility and learn to adapt, to lose low value processes and amplify their performance through these ways of working.
A constant thorn in the side of teams transitioning to these ways of working, is the baggage of OLD ways of working, in particular in Traditional HR processes that plague many teams. Through frustration, we started blogging about the Future of Work where we could ditch concepts like Performance Management Reviews and boxing people into rigid Job Descriptions. We wanted to see if we could spark some interest in trying different approaches that were more aligned to our 'Agile mindset'. For organisational agility can only really be achieved if we truly value individuals and interactions over HR processes and tools.
Our blogs garnered much interest and had companies like REA Group and MYOB reaching out to get involved in How Might We reinvent traditional HR approaches for a workplace of the Future. We even inspired the formation of a Meet-Up in the Netherlands!
Join with us at LAST conf where together we will design a new experiment to Unbox people from the Job Descriptions, and to Free People from the inhumanity of Performance Management reviews.
-
keyboard_arrow_down
Aurelien Beraud - Continuous improvement: beyond retros
45 Mins
Talk
Beginner
We seem to try to foster a mindset of continuously and relentlessly striving for improvement with mainly one practice: retrospectives have been our default and often only continuous improvement tool for years. I certainly used to think that retrospectives were the most important ceremony and as a coach I used to consider them as my main tool to drive improvement.
However, retrospectives are often disjointed from each other. The insights of one retrospective might be lost right after the end of it or until they are rediscovered in a future one. In addition, if we need to wait for the end of an iteration to look at improving, then can we really talk about continuous improvement?
In this talk, I want to look beyond retrospectives and explore which other tools (Toyota Kata, Improvement Boards, etc.) and other concepts we can inject and explore to foster a continuous improvement mindset. I will present my own journey by sharing experiments I conducted and am planning to carry out, what has worked for me but more importantly what hasn't and where I failed.
-
keyboard_arrow_down
Jatin Bhasin - Go Lean or Go Bust: Be Ruthless to Survive
45 Mins
Talk
Intermediate
Over the years REA has mastered the art of delivering products following the lean startup principles, however, working with a bank to create a home loans product was a different ballgame. Functioning in the Build-Measure-Learn cycles requires a fundamental change in the way people (or organizations) think and work.
In spring of 2017, REA made a big leap from being purely a media organization to venturing into financial services. As a result, there is now an innovative product offering in the Australian home loans market that allows consumers to sort out their home finance needs while they are still in the market looking for their dream home, all from the comfort of their living room couch.
This talk is about how to shape up your products with decisions based on data, metrics, and evidence over personal opinion.
-
keyboard_arrow_down
Johnny Sammon / Steve Mactaggart - Are you a leadership group or a leadership team?
Johnny SammonDelivery ConsultantCevoSteve MactaggartApplication Delivery EvangineerCevo Australiaschedule 5 years ago
30 Mins
Talk
Beginner
We spend a lot of time talking about our delivery team mix and structure, we put time into reviewing their progress looking for room to improve and we scrutinize their backlog and metrics. But what about the other team. The one regularly forgotten. In most places the team that doesn’t practice what they preach.
The leadership team.
In this session we look at the function of IT leadership and how it can benefit from the processes and approaches we strive to achieve in our delivery teams.
-
keyboard_arrow_down
John Contad - Hearts and Minds through DevOps - Making Meaningful Work
45 Mins
Case Study
Beginner
DevOps engineers fly from job to job doing the same things - the systems differ, but the problems (technical and otherwise) remain the same. Eventually, we ask questions not about implementation or technology, but meaning: what am I doing all of this for?
In this talk, we'll cover how we provided a converged solution (Docker cluster, monitoring, alerting, and security) from 0 to 70% of the company in three months. We'll cover how we did it - the approaches, the workflows, and the rules - but more importantly, the why: to provide an environment where the things that we produce change whole organizations and make people's lives a little better.
But most of all, how it made us a little bit kinder.
-
keyboard_arrow_down
Bob Martin - Are you stuck in a WTF loop? Your choice of words may have something to do with it.
45 Mins
Interactive
Advanced
Language sets the tone for change, but we continue to use the same tired language that we have been for years. You know the language, that dialog, those words that fill the pages of Linked In, airline magazines, and 'modern' management speak. Meaningful change continues to eludes us; and in the end, if we don't change our language, our dialog, our words, we're just waiting to fail (and not the good kind of fail!).
Join me for an interactive discussion of my top ~five words / phrases that I believe cause more harm than good. We'll discuss why they're an issue, and I'll suggest alternatives that may help guide you onto a better path.
-
keyboard_arrow_down
Viktoria Komornik - We have a problem… Can we solve it together?
45 Mins
Workshop
Beginner
Being a member of a cross-functional team – such as Front End, Back End, API, UX, Product Owners, Scrum Masters, BA – comes with problems. In this workshop we will gather our problems relating to cross functional teams and form groups to complete simplified A3 Improvement Themes (lean improvement canvas). Our purpose is to clearly identify our problems and the steps which will assist us in tackling these problems.
We will share our experiences and walk away with a set of A3 Improvement Themes complete with the first steps ready to implement at your own workplace the very next day. Personally, I will walk away with a whole lot of Improvement Themes. It’s a win-win
-
keyboard_arrow_down
Rajesh Mathur - Mapping your thinking
45 Mins
Talk
Intermediate
Diagramming and mapping our thoughts changes the way we think. It makes our thoughts and ideas broader and helps us to see patterns. These approaches are great for both individual problem-solving and team collaboration and co-creation.
By learning and applying these visual techniques we follow in the foot-steps of great thinkers such as Leonardo, Edison, and Feynman who used visualisation as a major guide, more so than language and equations, which came later.
Many of us have tried our hand at mind-mapping, which is an excellent tool for expanding our ideas and solving problems by breaking away from linear thinking. In this talk, I will demonstrate other powerful ways we can map our ideas and thoughts to solve problems, both as individuals and as teams.
Techniques include:
- Lotus blossom technique
- Systems mapping
My objective is to offer you options so that you can choose the technique that best suits you.