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Adam Hawkins discuss Jeffrey Fredrick & Douglas Squirrel's book "Agile Conversations". They get into the concept of "TDD for People" and leading change through better human interactions.
Show Notes
Level up your soft skills with this episode on "Agile Conversations". The episode begins with a short introduction to the book then dives into the content with the authors.
Topics include: "TDD for People", The four R's, The trust conversation, the fear conversation, the why conversation, the commitment conversation, and the accountability conversation.
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What is Software Delivery in Small Batches?
Adam Hawkins presents the theory and practices behind software delivery excellence. Topics include DevOps, lean, software architecture, continuous delivery, and interviews with industry leaders.
[00:00:00] Hello and welcome. I'm your host, Adam Hawkins. In each episode I present a small batch with theory and practices behind building a high velocity software organization. Topics include dev ops, lean software architecture, continuous delivery, and conversations with industry leaders. Now let's begin today's episode.
[00:00:26] Well, hello. Hello. Welcome again to another episode of small batches today, I am speaking with Jeffrey Frederick and Douglas squirrel both co-authors of the book, agile conversations. let me tell you a bit about this book and my experience with it before we dive into the interview. So I like to read everything produced by it revolution. Press. There are book also published by The revolution, press flew under the radar for me really, because I was just skeptical of it. I saw the title and thought like agile conversations, talking to people, transforming your organization through conversation. What this just doesn't really seem relevant, but I decided to give it a go anyway.
[00:01:16] And I'm very glad that I did. So the premise of the book really is focusing on some of the soft skills required to align, work and collaborate effectively with people. One of the things that I've said on this podcast, Is that one big change? In my opinion, from kind of when I started working in this field was I had assumed that the tech was the problem or the challenge, you know, like, oh, if we could just code better or have better technology than all these things wouldn't happen.
[00:01:49] Well, it turns out that that's not true, the hard problem. And all of the systems that we work with in my opinion, is the human beings. The humans are the ones who are actually creating the systems are the ones who are choosing the tech, but they're the ones who were, you know, throwing things into the backlog.
[00:02:05] They're all the ones who are actually making the decisions that tech is much easier to work with than a human, you know, you can debug a machine or you can debug a program, but debugging, a human being is infinitely more complicated. Definitely not gonna yield the same result. So, what they try to do in this book is provide a framework for aligning and transforming your organization through conversations.
[00:02:37] And now this is a point where I cover some of the topics discussed in the book, because I don't think you can really participate in the conversation without having some understanding of the book. So what they have is called the four R's. Sort of a process for thinking about analyzing your conversation.
[00:02:58] So first record your conversation. They have something called a two column analysis, reflect revise and role-play and of course repeat. So the two column analysis is one column, what one person said, and then another one, like what they thought or felt sort of how they, how the other party received the message.
[00:03:23] And by going through this, you can effectively analyze the conversations you're having and make sure that you're being, you're communicating clearly with other people. And then you can see where things went off the rails. You know, if you ever had a conversation with somebody, you realize you're talking about two different things.
[00:03:42] Well then, you know, you're misaligned and they have, which is the coolest thing, from this book. Is what they call TDD for people. And you can imagine this as a ladder. So at the bottom of a ladder is observable data and experiences. As video might capture it on top of that, a person says I select data from what I observe on top of that.
[00:04:10] I add meanings, you know, cultural and personal on top of that, I make assumptions based on the meanings I added. On top of that, I draw conclusions from that. I adopt beliefs about the world, and finally, I take actions based on my beliefs. So with this TDD for people letter and the tools for effective conversation, you can track your conversation with somebody, making sure that you're aligned.
[00:04:40] Each step of this ladder, right? You can't, both people can't draw the same conclusions from a conversation if they don't agree on what the observation data is or what the meanings are, there's a sort of hierarchy, debugging hierarchy, and how to think about the conversations that you're having with people.
[00:04:58] So now that you're armed with this understanding of conversation, you're ready to begin what they call the five conversations. I'm just going to read you off this patient. book. The first is a trust conversation. We hold a belief that those we work with inside and outside the team share our goals and values that leads to the fear conversation, where we openly discuss problems in our team and its environment and courageously attack those obstacles, which in turn leads to the why conversation.
[00:05:31] We share a common, explicit purpose that inspires us. What follows is the commitment conversation? We regularly and reliably announced what we will do. And when, and lastly, the accountability conversation, we radiate our intent to all interested parties and explain publicly how our results stack up against commitments.
[00:05:54] So I think that's enough context to jump into the interview, Jeffrey and Douglas, and I kinda just go through the high level topics and the book why it's important and some of their experiences. And they asked me about my own personal experience with the book. And I recall a point in the conversation where Jeffrey is explaining something.
[00:06:16] And I felt like this guy is just in my head. He knows what I'm thinking. He knows what I'm feeling, and he knows sort of where I'm going wrong. So. After I completed the book, I tried to put some of the practices and action and just become more cognizant of how I was talking to other people, the assumptions I was making and trying to make sure that we were aligned, not really able to practice the TDD for people yet, but given time, I think it will happen.
[00:06:51] Now I want to give you some background on both of these guys. All right. Let me read off Jeffrey's bio Jeffrey is an internationally recognized expert in software development and has over 25 years experience covering both sides of the business. Technological divide, an early adopter of XP and agile practices, a conference speaker in the US Europe, India, and Japan, and a co-organizer of the continuous integration and testing conference.
[00:07:21] He has had a global impact on software development. Jeffrey is currently a managing director in London, at Tim, an accurate company. He also runs the London organizational learning meetup and is an executive coach and executive team facilitator. Plus he also had a really good interview on gene Kim's ideal cast.
[00:07:42] So I recommend that you check that out. Now, his co author Douglas squirrel has been coding for 40 years and has led software teams for. 20. He uses the power of conversations to create dramatic productivity gains and digital technological organizations of all sizes. Squirrel's experience includes growing software teams as a CTO in startups, from FinTech to e-commerce consulting our product improvement at over 60 organizations in the UK, us and Europe, and coaching a wide variety of leaders in improving their conversations, aligning to business goals and creating a productive company.
[00:08:19] He lives in frog called England in a timber frame cottage built in the year 14, 50 hope he has fiber internet. All right, one last thing to mention before we get into the conversation, if you're still skeptical about this book, one thing that hit me straight away was the first chapter, which is a great history on agile dev ops lean, and they connect it directly back to.
[00:08:46] Conversation and culture. So this really is a book for tech people, software developers, kind of focusing on the soft skills, the human side of our profession. So if you enjoy this conversation, then check the book out. I think it will be worth it. Now I give you Jeffrey Federick and Douglas squirrel.
[00:09:11] Jeff and squirrel, welcome to small batches. How are you both today?
[00:09:15] I'm great. Thanks for having us, Adam.
[00:09:17] Glad to be here. My pleasure.
[00:09:19] So today we will be talking about your book, agile conversations and, having read the book. I was really surprised by it, you know, initially. I wrote it off because I didn't really see how this would be applicable to me.
[00:09:34] But then when I read it, I found myself nodding along and almost like had there had been written a book just for me. So I, in one of the first chapters, the whole point about like having conversations and maybe we can start by the first thing that really connected with me, which was. The false consensus effect and like how that was impacting me and my job as an SRA, trying to, you know, coach and improve behaviors. of people got me thinking like, oh, maybe I'm actually like frustrated in my day-to-day work because I'm operating under the false consensus that people already understand or know all this stuff that I think they do. But I had never actually put my finger on that. So by reading the book, it allowed me to actually name this thing that's happening. to me And then the rest of the book, just sort of like, Aw, I kept like opening my eyes up more and more. So maybe we can start there. I mean, at the beginning, like this, this issue that, that I'm having, how does this relate to the challenge that we face in software development?
[00:10:36] what comes to mind you're describing a cognitive bias that affects humans. And I think one of the, the elements that we really focus on. In the book is truly trying to make it blameless in a way to say you have these conversational difficulties. Not because you're a bad person because you're a person and these are it. These things can come up because of the way our minds work and, our lack of access to what other people know, what they believe, what they're feeling internally and yet a real. sense very often that we feel like we can read them. And, the problem is that began...
[00:11:20] And I should, I should add an important, disclaimer here, which is that if any of your listeners are, Adam, if any of your listeners are telepaths, then they're probably not going to get a lot from this book or this podcast.
[00:11:31] So they should probably get in touch with us and we can talk to them about like some stock market ideas we have and some clever things to use the telepathy. But, if they're not telepaths, Which I think will take in most, if not all of your audience, then we probably have something to say to them. Oh, goodie.
[00:11:51] So we, we, we have, we have a problem because we, we have a level of confidence in the stories we generate, that is really gonna unfounded fundamentally. And the problem is that we generate stories all the time. And we're accurate actually most of the time. So this is really, really useful to generate stories.
[00:12:10] It's a really good adaptive practice. It helped our ancestors survive. Like they didn't have to like check and say, Jeffrey, you know, are you running away from a lion or just cause he wants some exercise. Like if you're running away from the mine, I'm going to run away to. That that really worked well. And it works well in a lot of circumstances.
[00:12:26] So it's actually a very good characteristic. It's just that it's, very hard to, distinguish between the assumption that you have, that you can read somebody else's mind and the reality of what they're actually thinking, because it's such a strong bias.
[00:12:40] Yeah, that's right. And, and I think it was, you know, I really liked the example. You mentioned squirrel because we, we are, selection criteria for what we've, this evolutionary psychology was really shaped mostly by the life or death situations, the ones where you had the luxury to sit around and talk things through, which is our normal environment today. Like. that's not Really? What, what was the deciding factor?
[00:13:04] It was did you know, did you, did you start running soon enough? Did you, did you, did you hide, did you react probably to the life and death danger? And so we're really miscalibrated in that sense for modern life, for the sort of collaborative work we do together. Is different. And it would, if it benefits in sort of this more thoughtful overriding of those instincts that we, that, that are the ones that are triggered quickly.
[00:13:31] I think this is also one of the points you make in the book, which is how the transition to more collaborative software development. As we know it, in terms of like lean agile and dev ops has made the simple act of communicating far more. Important, but perhaps also challenging that it was in the past and now you used the example of Taylorism and the fact that like, okay, maybe we can all be treated as individual little robot swing our part we don't think we don't have to collaborate. We just, you know, pull the levers and that's it. But that's not the sphere that we operate in. Now we have to talk, we have to communicate, we have to do all of these things.
[00:14:07] So for me, and for other people who have these biases, What do we do to identify those biases and then figure out some way to move beyond them so that we can more effectively collaborate and communicate with our coworkers or, you know, our managers, or, whoever. Where do we start with that?
[00:14:29] Oh, so what's really important is that you follow every line of your favorite agile book and you do every single ceremony precisely the way it says it says on page 70.
[00:14:39] No, this isn't the case. That's not the secret. And that's one of the challenges. That, that we're trying to overcome in the book is the idea that if you just follow the practices more carefully, you will somehow get good results is just not true. And that doesn't matter, whichever practice you're going to be follow, whether that's safer, scrum or something somebody invented yesterday or, or, or any other one. The secret is not in following a certain set of practices really carefully and getting everything exactly right. The secret is in having better conversations and causing that and making that a first-class element of your work in the same way. At some point in the past, a lot of us at least started to make tests of first-class part of our work.
[00:15:20] We'd kind of say, oh, it used to be. And I remember this time when there was kind of the, and some people still exist in this world, of course. Where there's this kind of separate thing where the tests were happening. And then there was this other place where the real work was happening, and those were quite diverse, quite separated worlds.
[00:15:37] And we didn't study tests. We just said, no, there's some testing thing out is not important. We're going to test this code and we're going to really work on this code and we're going to code really wonderful. It turns out that if you work on the tests as a first-class element of your coding, You will get better code.
[00:15:51] And that's an amazing, wonderful result. Similarly, if you treat your conversations as a first-class element of your development process and alongside doing good practices and having good ceremonies and the other things, we're not saying those things are useless, but if you do that alongside it, you will suddenly get much better processes, much better collaboration, much better results from your agile earlier devils.
[00:16:14] And the reason is because the conversations are how we experiment is how we gain knowledge about what other people think and believe. So in one way to describe it, he said, well, how do we proceed in this new world is what we should proceed by experimentation. We should experiment with the knowledge with the certainty that there's unknowns to overcome.
[00:16:35] So, which is why we described the need to do probe sense to respond in framework. sense. you know, we're dealing in a complex environment where there will be immersion behavior that we can't always predict because we can't fundamentally predict humans and their behavior. Instead, we have to proceed experimentally.
[00:16:58] And that's true about individual humans. And it's true about clusters of humans and teams and clusters of clusters and organizations. You have these immersion properties and we have a mental model in our head, but it's imperfect. And so we need to be developing and refining that model. The way that you experiment with humans, the way you process response is through conversations.
[00:17:18] That's, that's your, that's your way of being scientific with. eachother. Through running these experiments conversationally.
[00:17:26] So you mentioned this model you have in your head with regards to conversations, interact with other people. And in the book you introduce an app named model, which I just love so much, which is TDD for people.
[00:17:40] So, Can you explain what that is and how we can leverage that to have more effective communication?
[00:17:48] Sure. So TDD for people is a name for something that existed before, but it's, it's kind of a customization, in a way of explaining it to, to us techie folks, that really helps us understand this idea of the underlying ideas called the ladder of inference.
[00:18:03] And, the idea is the following. it would be really helpful given that we're not telepaths again, you're telepaths I hope have switched off and gone somewhere else because this isn't going to help them. But for all of us who aren't telepaths one of the biggest challenges is the reasoning that happens inside our heads.
[00:18:21] It stays in our heads. So that means, for example, if Jeffrey is, not, answering this question, but I am, I might form all kinds of opinions about why he's not answering it. and I might have all kinds of ideas about it, but I have not found out what Jeffrey actually thinks. All I can see is Jeffrey waited for me to answer this questions. And if I have negative views, then I might form all kinds of negative opinions. If I have positive views, I might form all kinds of positive opinions. None of them are validated other than by observing Jeffrey's. behavio. But there's all kinds of reasoning that might be going on there. So what I could do instead is something that, has a feeling to it that is similar to the feeling you get in test driven development.
[00:19:02] So I'm going to assume that your listeners have tried if they haven't, they should cause test driven development is wonderful, and really teaches you a lot, whether or not you use it in your day to day work, which I certainly do When you do test driven development, the signal, most noticeable, most significant thing.
[00:19:16] At least for me. Is that the change, the thing you notice is the, suddenly things are slower and more in control. So you feel like you're taking small steps that help you to understand exactly where you are and you can test at every single moment. So every line of code you feel, you have confidence and it feels, it feels slower.
[00:19:35] Now, eventually you can go faster and you don't feel like you're going that slow. but at first, when you're doing test driven development, you feel like you're taking every step carefully, but with confidence. So instead of running along and tripping, you're, you're walking carefully and placing your feet in the right places.
[00:19:51] Similarly, walking up to the ladder of inference to find out what someone else is thinking feels that way, because you can test it every moment. So, Jeffrey, I noticed that you that I answered this question and you, and you did, is that right? Did I notice that correct? Oh, yeah, absolutely. Yep. And something that's important about that for me is that I noticed you, you were, we can see each other here on for listeners.
[00:20:14] Can't I'm sure. But, but, I can see you and I noticed you were, you were looking down, is that right? That seemed like an important part of not answering the question. Is that, was that important to you that you were looking down? Not at the camera?
[00:20:25] No, not, not particularly.
[00:20:27] Oh, okay. I've just sort of look, you know, it's a, that's, it's primarily an audio audio thing.
[00:20:32] And, I was, I was, if anything, it helped me focus on what you were saying. So I was just listening closely.
[00:20:39] Oh. So, so I might adjust the story I have in my head at this point and say, well, wait a minute, there may be something else that's happening. Then I could check that with Jeffrey. So, so one assumption I have about that Jeffrey is that you were trying to concentrate on what we were saying. Is that right? You were, you were listening carefully when, because I want to hear what you're saying in case there's something I want to elaborate on when you finished the part of it that you were covering.
[00:21:01] Got it. And the conclusion I draw is to that you think this podcast is important and listening is important. And that, that I might have something useful to say that you'd like to listen to.
[00:21:08] Yes, absolutely. And also. You used TDD for people much more than I do. If one of us is going to answer that, be the lead person answering, it was certainly going to be you. I'm not that I don't use it, but I think you're, you've been a much more proactive in introducing it to people that I have
[00:21:23] Got it makes sense. And so what I could have done now, as certain, I didn't have any negative view of. He used this as a, as an immediate example, but I could easily, if I were nervous about this have felt that Jeffrey by looking down and being disengaged with suddenly respecting what I had to say, and I might have this very negative story that I built up in my mind.
[00:21:41] And that might lead me to take different actions as a result, which Jeffrey would in turn, not understand. So I'm not going to go through it, but I can similarly share that story.
[00:21:49] In, in your, in your example, school, I think the one element in the, this idea that TD for people in furniture, you're testing your observations and assumptions, and you say that then the equivalent of a red test, like when something fails, like what you're testing comes back negative.
[00:22:05] Then that you're like, oh, okay. Now I have a chance to learn something new. And I think that happened. Yeah. We call it at the time, but maybe for the listeners, but I think it was the second question you asked.
[00:22:14] Exactly. So the second question I had had a bit of kind of assumption that looking down was important.
[00:22:18] Geoffrey thought about that a bit differently in my imagined situation course I did not actually have this, this theory, but. that that was a shift that was a red test, which then allowed me to, to check, the, the, that I had understood and that, understood correctly now that Jeffrey's view was different than I had assumed it was, and that his reasoning was different from mine.
[00:22:39] And that's a really useful thing to get green tests and then red tests that tell you to change and then continue to test that you're aligned on your stories.
[00:22:47] That's right. And conversationally. One of things that happens is it's a nice combination of transparency and curiosity, which is in asking your tests, you know, you're also sharing your own internal state.
[00:22:58] You're sharing. Like, you know, I noticed this, so this is the data I have, and this is the kind of high I had. We put importance on it. How about you? you know, and I, no. Okay. So you both, you both been transparent and shared your own mental workings and inquired into the other persons. And so you have the opportunity for both people to learn.
[00:23:19] So for example, I learned what squirrel was observing. I learned what story, what weight he was putting on it. And, you know, this is a bit of a trivial example, but in the future, if this was important that I might think, oh, okay, well, Squirrel prefers it. When there's eye contact in, you know, in the zoom meeting during recording, or he gets nervous if I'm looking away.
[00:23:36] Cause he wants to feel the signal me like, Hey, come in here. Or, you know, there could be some or moral...
[00:23:41] Or more importantly, it could be change or changing, change to our relationship because you would understand that I felt less important or not listened to, or, that, you didn't respect what I was thinking.
[00:23:53] None of this is actually true. I had sent that, but if we had that relationship, if we had that difficulty in our relationship, that might be poisoning a whole bunch of ways that we collaborate and things that we do together. And that could have a massive effect on the way we collaborate in the future.
[00:24:07] So that's a long answer to Adam's question, but that's the basics of, of test-driven development for people. Jeffrey has more.
[00:24:14] I think it seems to trigger, but I, I learned how many times you have teams where there. retrospectives are, you know, lifeless, or, or their standup is, is dreary. And, you know, there's just like the dynamics just aren't working.
[00:24:32] and, and you don't like, like, can be all kinds of things behind this. I, I was talking to someone last week while I work with. And, she was describing that when she worked in Germany, she had a problem there because the way that she would say good morning was with the wrong tone and, and people, it was interpreted as a brusquelike, I don't want to talk to you that wasn't her intent. She just is not a native German speaker. But the people had the reputation of her. She had developed a reputation of being, unapproachable and, and rude. And when she learned it, she was like, oh, I I'll say good morning differently. And suddenly the her relationship with people was different and it can be, you know, small.
[00:25:16] And it, it it's, it's really been this issue of stories, the stories that people. And invented were not something that they were testing with her. So the, the dynamics that resulting were, out of line with reality. and that's the, that's the value of, of TD is we're taking it here as those just personal reactions, but the same thing could be, you know, on process issues.
[00:25:38] It could be on technical issues and, really getting ideas out there. because the alternative is that people, most typically my experience is there's sort of two failure modes and conversations, which is either unproductive conflict between people. And that certainly happens. And it's what people, when they think about bad conversations, they, they focus on that like negative toxic interactions.
[00:26:00] And they're so afraid of that, that the actual more common failure mode of conversations is that people see the potential for threat or embarrassment in a conversation. And so they shy away from it and they don't discuss the elements that really need to be discussed. And so that's where you end up with a sort of called false consensus in this group thing where, you know, essentially there's a session coming up.
[00:26:25] Someone has an opinion and it cause like, oh, okay. Yeah, sure. Let's do that. And meanwhile, they're thinking internally, that's a terrible idea that will never work. How can we always do these dumb things at one against the reason is because you don't share your actual opinion, you don't have. The discussion where everyone puts forward their view and actually come to real consensus as opposed to the false one.
[00:26:49] Yeah. So. Just to, we haven't really actually talked about what all the steps on the ladder of inference so It's probably good for listener. We have at the bottom here, observable data and experiences, as you might imagine, as video might capture it.
[00:27:04] And you noticed that's what I started with with Jeffrey.
[00:27:06] So I said, I noticed that you, weren't, weren't answering. And so you can fall off the ladder. You can get that red test as early as that stage, because. I was trying to speak, but my new button was on. I learn something new that would change my whole point of view. Anyway, keep going.
[00:27:21] You were talking over me the whole time.
[00:27:23] I was telling you, like, why weren't you listening well, because your mute button was on. Maybe your phones are broken. You could learn a lot of things. Mechanically that might change the whole deal.
[00:27:31] So on top of the servable data you have, then the next step, which is I select data or I select data from what I observe.
[00:27:39] And then on top of that, so I add meaning cultural and personal, and then above that, this is where the false consensus effect comes in. I make assumptions based on the meetings that I add and then, or maybe one layer above that. I draw the conclusion that maybe that's where some of these assumptions come in and then Above that I adopted beliefs about the world. And then the very top I take actions based on my belief. So in the book, you mentioned these different conversations, so you can have nails for, to build upon each other, but let's say that, you know, you have one of these false assumptions. What conversation do you start with it?
[00:28:18] Like, is this an internal thing? Is this a sort of which, how did you describe it Jeffery? Like I'm honest curiosity or what did you, what did you say?
[00:28:27] Maybe if you can give us an example, cause you, you know, you, you, you're talking about having these false consensus. Do you have one in mind or, you know,
[00:28:32] okay, well, I'll give you one of my least favorite, but most common false consensus, which is, let's say that I'm a member of a development teamvshould take the full responsibility of building and deploying the application to production. You know, IE like you build it, you run it. If we are all under the assumption that, Hey, we're operating in sort of like a dev ops lean sort of agile software culture, then it may be safe to assume that all the participants in this exercise will adopt that or share that view.
[00:29:06] At least that's sort of assumed, but in practice, Perhaps, that's not the case for X, Y, and Z, but you know, how do you actually come to realize that assumption and what do you do about it?
[00:29:18] Yeah. Well, I think this is, this is a great example. And so, is that the, the ladder there is, is a, a model of how we go from the things from stimulus to our response.
[00:29:31] So if you ever heard the Viktor Frankl quote, it says between stimulus and response is a pause. And in that pause is our ability to choose that, you know, that that pause is where you're going through this process and you have the ability to sort of examine. your own thought processes. When we, when we don't allow us that space, what tends to happen is we take our conclusions as reality.
[00:29:55] Right? And the value of this model is to, is to say, look you yourself. Didn't the things that you believe about the world are derived you didn't, you're not observing the nature of the world. So in your case, I'm gonna say like, if you can say. You have a belief that a dev ops model or agile model or whatever even means you build it.
[00:30:18] You. run it. Right. And, and therefore we have the label. We've said that we're a DevOps company. Ergo, you build it, you run, it is a shared value. Well, when I say that out loud, it's easy to take that as a fact about the world, but the, this model says, well, wait a minute, that's a belief that I have. Let's go back and test.
[00:30:39] How did I get there? Will I, I observe, I've read. Something somewhere that said you build it, you run it. I watched a video. It made sense to me. I've adopted that as a good idea. And I think that's the way things should be
[00:30:53] Sounds like you are in my head, Jeff.
[00:30:56] Well, I think, I think it's what you came up with is very reasonable.
[00:31:00] And then, so once you understand your own ladder, and this is the first insight that your ladder exists. Once you understand your own ladder and that it exists. You can then imagine a world where someone else has a different ladder. And it could be separated as gross or done any wrong. Maybe they didn't read that book.
[00:31:21] Maybe they didn't watch that video. You know? maybe it didn't seem like a good idea to them.
[00:31:28] It'd be someone told them to humor this guy, Adam, he has some crazy ideas, but you know, don't, don't actually do anything that he says. So then, then your conversation is with them. It's with somebody else. So, so there's all kinds of ways to fall off the ladder.
[00:31:43] So, this is the, this is the idea is that you, once you have this idea of a ladder first, you can apply it to yourself. And then you can say, maybe we will have a different letter, and then you can start being curious. And this is the key idea, rather than thinking, how do I go make them adopt my ladder, instead of going to say, I want to understand their ladder. And maybe we can find common ground, maybe not. And in, in general, just say this as we go forth, it's really important to cultivate curiosity. There is nothing in the world that would say, take two people and a topic. And in the end, they'll come to an agreement on it. There's no methodology. There's no way to say that in the end to humans on a given topic, we'll come to real consensus.
[00:32:26] But what is possible as a two people of Goodwill will be able to come to a mutual understanding. You can come to understand someone else's point of view, even if you disagree. Right. So at the end you can say, okay, I know what their letter is. I know what they believe. I know why they believe it. I don't agree.
[00:32:44] I, I have different assumptions or I have different values. It turns out we're different humans and never in humans are allowed to like, and dislike different things. And that's okay. But what I can always do is say, I can always understand. And that's the mind for same that we put out there, which is at least go and understand each other.
[00:33:04] And what often happens is in those steps towards mutual understanding more often than not almost always, you will find common ground.
[00:33:14] I can give a concrete example of that in some situations, not at all dissimilar to yours, Adam. So just the other day, this week, earlier this week I was meeting with a group and I was training them in something new that they had not seen before. concreteness, it's a technique called elephant carpaccio. That kinda let you have every developer delivers something valuable every day, but it doesn't really matter. What the technique was. so I was, I was encouraging them while I was teaching them about this thing, but I had a specific mindset. I had that curious mindset.
[00:33:44] the, that, Jeffrey was just describing because I knew there were probably things I didn't know about the team's situation. So I taught them all about it and we did some exercises and we discussed it. And then the crucial part of the meeting. Where I said, okay. So, so how might this apply to you? And I really want to know how this works.
[00:34:00] I'm a genuinely, I'm interested cause this may or may not work for you when I'd see did that all the way through. I said, I want you to understand it and see how it could work, but what, what does this mean for you? And I learned two things which really changed what I did. The first thing is I learned from a couple of them that they really felt under pressure for a deadline that was coming the next, this coming.
[00:34:19] monday. And, the adopting anything new adopting any new technique, adopting a new logo color for their logo or anything would have changed them from off completely. So they were feeling under this pressure and didn't want to shift right now, which I could completely understand and had not known at all. I did not know that was their context or their situation.
[00:34:38] So it's really made sense to say, well, wait until Tuesday to try this new thing. And the other thing I learned, because there was one person who has some, some more testing responsibilities in the team. And she said, you know, this is going to mean that I'm going to have to do five times as many tests.
[00:34:53] Cause we were releasing kind of. once a week and now we're going to do it every day. And, and like, that's multiplying by five and I dunno what I'm going to sleep. And that was really useful to understand, because I hadn't emphasized the testing element. I hadn't understood that's the way the team worked.
[00:35:07] I hadn't put that all together. And her feedback was very helpful. I can now work with her while we wait for Tuesday to tell her, have a, an approach to testing that will scale. ladder. And that will not have that effect. But if I had known that it would have been very, if I hadn't inquired, if I hadn't sought the opposing views, then I would not known any of this and I would have said, great.
[00:35:28] So let's start this tomorrow. Aren't we all, you know, let's go. And they would have probably missed their Monday deadline and this word person probably would have quit or not slept or something because she would be trying to do five times as many tests, which is not what the technique entails, but she didn't know.
[00:35:41] that. So in both cases, I didn't necessarily change my mind completely. I didn't say, oh, yes. I definitely agree with you. This can't work for you. but what I did do is I learned, important barriers that could help me to help them in one case to say, don't do it yet. And then another case to say, do it differently.
[00:35:59] And that's really helpful in the process of adopting a new technique, such as, the dev ops methods. You were just referring to.
[00:36:06] All right, let's take a quick break from today's episode so I can tell you about my other software delivery resources. First I'm opening up my own software delivery dojo. My dojo is a four week program designed to level up your skills, building, deploying, and operating and production systems.
[00:36:22] Each week, participants will go through theoretical and practical exercises led by me designed to hone the skills needed for continuous delivery. I'm offering this dojo at an amazingly affordable price to small badges. Listeners spots are limited though. So apply now as software deliverydojo.com.
[00:36:41] Well,if you want something free, instead got you to there to find links to my free email courses and eBooks on any show notes, page my courses and eBooks cover topics in much more depth than I can cover on the podcast.
[00:36:53] They're great on their own, or even as a useful compliment to topics covered on the show. Find all of my free resources at smallbatches.fm.
[00:37:02] All right. Let's get back into the episode. Well, it sounds like that example is a great segue into the next thing I wanted to talk to you about, which is the conversations that you mentioned For the listener, they are at the trust conversation, the fear conversation, the why conversation, commitment, conversation, and accountability compensation. So it sounded like this tester, she had a fear that she will not be able to sleep or that it was caused, you know, Extraordinary amount of work on her that without voicing that fear, then insert any number of negative outcomes that could happen.
[00:37:35] So earlier we were discussing the ladder of the ladder of inference. So depending on where you are on that ladder of inference and where you find, Hey, maybe you're misaligned with whoever you're talking with. Does that influence which one of these conversations that you have, or how do you know which one of these conversations to have like in the right context.
[00:37:58] Well, great question. We don't get that one often. So I really like hearing that question. my favorite answer to that one is if you're not sure start with trust because they, they, they build on each other. And so if you're not seeing yourself, look, we have really good trust. We really understand each other. We really set, do trust. And, and that's where the ladder of inference TDD for people comes in. That's one of the techniques you can use to build trust. So if you're not sure you're start there. But what you might encounter is a high degrees of trust, but, high degrees, also a fear and, and, no mitigation for those fears, seeing that you might want to go to the fear conversation.
[00:38:32] You might say, look, we've handled those things, but man, we just can't seem to make any good commitments and people don't understand what they're doing. And that might be why or a commitment, or it might be they're really committed in there. but the boy, they just keep missing everything. So that would be accountability.
[00:38:46] So it's usually not that difficult to kind of go from the symptom to their relevant conversation that it's easy to go to, to, to not deep enough, not to go to trust and fear, which are the ones that are most difficult. So my recommendation would be if you're not sure, try, try trust, because it can't hurt to build some more trust and you'll rapidly figure out I've got that one and then see where, where else you can move up to.
[00:39:06] Yeah. So, I mean, here, we're talking about conversations. We're not necessarily talking about, like trust falls or things like this.
[00:39:15] That's very different. So for us, trust is aligned stories. It's where you, you have worked through the ladder of inference together and you say, yep, I may not agree, but at least I understand whereyour story is. It makes sense to me. I can see what your reasoning is, the guy from what you observed to what you're doing.
[00:39:30] Right. So like, if you're looking at this ladder of inference and you're coming to, Hey, Observing different data we'll then it's really hard.
[00:39:37] We're never going to get to the same answer. Exactly. We're not going to trust each other because you're seeing it from one point of view on me. The other Jeffrey's example of good morning in German. Perfect one. I'm observing me being friendly and nice by saying good morning, you're observing a rude person. Who's using the wrong, in the wrong case for the data, for something, you know, I'm speaking the right language wrong. We're going to observe different data. We're never going to draw the same conclusions and we can't build trust.
[00:40:01] Yeah. I mean, it seems one of the things I remember from reading the book, when we talk about conversations with regard to trying to build trust, it's more about being open, transparent, and curious so that you can expose your inner state, your inner logic and your inner mental model about whatever The topic at hand is to the other people so that they can look at you and say, thanks, you say, I may not agree, but at least I know where this person is coming from. And like, with that, without that, then you're not going to get to anywhere else.
[00:40:32] So we're missing an important element here. So this part we haven't talked about, which is where we're saying to do all these wonderful things and, you know, I gave an illustration of how you could use the ladder of inference and build trust, and improve their relationship with Jeffrey and.I said nothing about how to actually do that. Because you, you could like write down all the words from the transcript and try to say them to your friend, but you probably are not interrupting each other while you're being interviewed in a podcast. You're probably discussing some other important topic.
[00:40:59] So you can't just copy the words from somebody else. It won't work. So that's one of the most important things that people miss in the. book. And I'll ask you this, this, challenging question, Adam, when you read the book, did you get out a piece of paper and write on it, a conversation on one side of the paper and your thoughts and feelings on the other side of the paper, did you do that?
[00:41:18] I must scare myself as a sinner and say that I have not actually done that.
[00:41:23] you got something from the book, which is fantastic. We're interested enough to have us on, so we're never going to object, but, you didn't get as much as you could. And, and you, I predict, I don't know this, that you could be one of the very few exceptions who can read the book and then apply the techniques and get a lot of value from them.
[00:41:38] But most people find it very difficult to actually produce the kind of interactions that Jeffrey and I have been modeling and describing. It's actually quite hard to get yourself. to say that.
[00:41:48] Can you explain that technique to listeners? Who's not familiar with it.
[00:41:51] Yeah. Jeffrey, would you like to do that or should
[00:41:53] I I'll I'll let you describe the, the paper, but I'll, I'm going to put a bit of frame of credit just because one of the key things here is, the reason why you can't produce what we're describing is because it's actually a scale. and all skills require practice. the challenge is with conversations is that we don't think of them as a skilled activity, right? If, if this was a, if this is a book on piano plane, and we, we talked about piano techniques, you wouldn't finish and go, wow. I really enjoyed that book and I think I can play piano. now. You you, you would say, okay, I really like that. I want to apply it. I guess I'd better practice what's in the book. Maybe that I should get a piano if maybe...
[00:42:33] It didn't have a piano and you read the book, you would not feel that you were a concert pianist. You would only feel that way. If you would actually move your fingers on a board and the keyboard in that, that is the same thing.
[00:42:43] That's right. And, and the thing is that conversations do require skill. They require deliberate practice in the same way that you require practice and piano or. Snow skiing or, you know, kite surfing, any kind of skill you wanna develop is going to require practice. And so one of the things we introduced in the book, and actually before we get to these five conversations that you mentioned, all right, we have a framework called the four R's of how you will practice the conversational skills for each of the conversations. And so that there's the, the sort of important message of the book is these are skills you need to practice. Here's a framework for practicing. And by the way, you can apply these a framework for any conversational tool, both the ones in the book and the ones not in the book.
[00:43:30] So with that, we'll all let squirrel say, introduce, the four RS of a conversational skill practice and that, why, why does it keep talking about a piece of paper? Like how does a piece of paper relate to the, to the four rs.
[00:43:44] Exactly. Yes. So, and this is a good role reversal because you normally Jeffrey does it.
[00:43:48] So you may have to remind me what the four RS are. Here's, here's a spoiler. There are more than four of them. So, the, the first thing to do is to get this very complicated Material, which is a single sheet of paper. It's important that you stick to just one sheet of paper. People sometimes try to write down an entire conversation.
[00:44:04] They'll copy it out of slack. And they'll come to me with like this thick sheaf that it looks like it's the Bible or something. And they've said, I've looked, I've analyzed my conversation. No, no, no. You got the wrong idea. The idea is that you take a single sheet of. paper. Write down the key part of the conversation, the part where you really felt it went off the rails, Nan, this doesn't make any sense or the part that you dread, so it can be a future conversation.
[00:44:25] And on the right-hand side of that paper, you write down what people actually said, or in the case of a future conversation, what you think they might say based on your previous experience or your. fears. And, those are what a video cam would record. So you're just recording. you know, Jeffrey, you might say Jeffrey, you looked down, that's kind of a stage direction.
[00:44:43] And, it was silent. That would be a valid thing to put on there. It would not, Jeffrey, scowled at the floor angrily because that would involve telepathy, which again, as I pointed out, it's not applied to, anybody's still listening to the podcast. And then on the left hand side, you write what you thought and felt.
[00:45:02] See previous comments about telepathy. You can't write what the other person thought or felt, but you might say, oh gosh, Jeffrey, isn't interested in what I'm saying. here, he's still being quiet. He still hasn't said anything and he's still looking out the window, man. he just doesn't listen or care.
[00:45:16] What do I think those would be the kinds of things he might write on left-hand. side. And so that's the recording part. I've got the right. The first are correct. So let's just start first star as far as good. The second one is. Reflect got it right. Okay. Good. Not good at this. It is late at night here. so the second one is reflect.
[00:45:36] So you might go through and we have a whole set of things in the book for scoring a conversation for circling certain things and underlining others. And so on, you could also just do your own reflection on, on what is important. You might look for a particular technique. So to do the ladder of inference, you might label each one with which rung you're on.
[00:45:53] So what you know was I acting Or asking about or talking about my beliefs or my observations was I on conclusions or assumptions. And so various things can help you in the book has all these different techniques. But what fundamentally happens is you look at it and you say, where did I screw up? And you're, you're focused on your behavior.
[00:46:10] You're looking for the things that you can change, because it's not the analysis of the other person. And has your thoughts and feelings. For example, I might analyze that pretend dialogue that I was imagining. And I might say, gosh, I never told Jeffrey that I was feeling left out or that he didn't care what I was thinking.
[00:46:25] I wasn't transparent. So that would be my reflection. I would notice that, behavior, third one is revised. So now I get out my red pen and I start actually changing what's, in the, in the conversation. And, I, I look at that and I figure out that there's something that I could change. For instance, I could say at some point, Hey Jeffrey, I noticed you're looking down.
[00:46:45] Can you tell,me more about why. and that would be a possible revision. and then I role play it. So I go and, get, get a friend, ideally, but I could do this in the mirror and actually try saying the words and surprisingly, or unsurprisingly, often the words you write don't match the natural way that you might speak, or they might sound very different to how you expect.
[00:47:05] Right? So then this is the skill part. This is the playing of the piano, the playing the scales to say, alright, Did this actually sound good? Well, it seemed good in my head to play the keys this way, but man, I I'm missing one there. That, that, that was a jarring transition. I didn't do it. Right. So then you can go back and repeat.
[00:47:22] I think we're up to five now, so you can repeat the, the process and re reflect further, revise further and place more. And then the final are of the six of the four RS is, to, reverse the role-play. So you try having the other person be you and you be the other person. And when you hear your words said to you, then it can often change what you thing. So if you go through all those steps and sounds like a lot is actually something you can do very briefly. It takes, you know, 10 or 15 minutes of most to do a basic version of this. If you can do all those steps, then suddenly you've got a revised action that can help you in the next conversation or for a conversation you're in the future.
[00:48:00] You can have that conversation better. You can avoid the outcome. You're worried about.
[00:48:04] So in this exercise, you know, reading the book and I'm like, okay, all of this, I start on the right hand side of the page and read right to left and I can't hel, but think that this was a conscious decision given that, you know, we're reading English and read left to.
[00:48:21] Right. So what was the logic there from putting the, what was said on the right and what was interpreted, or like the internal monologue on the. left.
[00:48:31] We had an endless debate with the publisher on this one. Oh really? Okay. No, a very simple answer, which is the, the, the, the, all these ideas are a lot of these ideas are based on, tons of social science research.
[00:48:45] So there's a, in-depth, set of references in the book to all these different social scientists, the chief, one being, Chris Argyris, who, was a very prominent Yale and a Harvard professor studying organizations and talk to, you know, tens of thousands of people and tested these ideas out on them and discovered how well they work. And, he, for reasons that he's not around to tell us anymore decided when he first wrote it down to put the thoughts and feelings on the left and the what actually happened. on the right. And, we've had some questions about that, especially from our publisher who really wanted to switch it around. And we said, you're going to go back to the literature and you're going to read it.
[00:49:24] And you're going that they're going to talk about the left-hand column. You're going to have it backwards. We can't do that. So I'm sorry if it's slightly confusing to English, it's probably easier for people to read Hebrew for example, but, that we're, we're stuck with the history and I don't think it's a bad practice after you, after you read a bunch of them, you can kind of read the two columns together. And, it does actually help you to understand the context while you are reading the words. But I agree it's a little confusing and jarring at first.
[00:49:51] Yeah, I did not. It was just one of those things that, you know, it stands out like, Hey, this is different.
[00:49:57] And then the question is, Hmm, I wonder why it's different. And it just sort of, it got me thinking like, well then maybe I really need, because I have to change the way that I read or think about this. Maybe I have. to Process like this thing first and then re then look at this thing. It just always remind me which the order to look at this, as opposed to maybe like, what was the internal versus the external.
[00:50:22] And it is good that you reflect on those, the differences between those, because it's very easy for your brain to conflate them and to say, well, of course, Jeffrey, who, that I was annoyed with him and that, that I thought he wasn't listening. Of course he, he could tell. I mean, it was so obvious to me. so of course he could tell, and of course, poor Jeffery has sat there thinking, oh gosh, I'm really concentrating and listening.
[00:50:41] This is really good stuff. And he has no idea that I have this negative opinion because he can't read my mind. So it is helpful to.Get yourself out of that assumption.
[00:50:50] Yeah. That's kinda what I, what I got from it was by the fact that it's different. It's a way to jolt yourself out of that frame of reference where, Hey, I'll read this first, which will give a one layer.
[00:51:01] I'll read the other layer and then read them all together to give this unified understanding. But since you ladder up through the different layers, you can see through this kind of ladder of inference, what fits and what doesn't fit, like where exactly it went wrong.
[00:51:17] That's the theory.
[00:51:19] Well, I guess we'll never know.
[00:51:22] I dunno why Argyris did it that way, but the experience you're describing is the one that you can develop over time, but it's, it's not always, it's not always natural to do.
[00:51:32] Of course there was even, what's even less natural is to actually reflect and revise in your conversations. So exactly. That's the thing. That's the, the, the, the, the, the thing that actually. people Do struggle to do. And the reason is it goes back to this kind of idea of a practice like practices, effortful.
[00:51:50] You know, if you have this idea of people looking to skill acquisition, that the importance of deliberate practice, and one of the elements of deliberate practice is that it does take effort. We actually recommended people to, if they can do on practicing groups. what we would call a conversational dojo and the advantage of the conversational dojo is twofold.
[00:52:11] One is you, you get more feedback because as you revising your own conversation, you still may have your own cognitive biases might be difficult to see some of your own performance. And, the thing is the other people aren't affected by your cognitive biases at all. They can say no, no, you're, you're, you're treating that as though it's a fact, Adam, but actually.
[00:52:32] You know, that's just your opinion, man. Exactly. That's just your opinion, man. And you might, you might try to figure out where that opinion came from and look, what would it take? What will you have to learn that would make you feel something different? Yeah. If the answer is nothing, maybe you're not actually open to learning here.
[00:52:53] Maybe you're lacking curiosity, but you can get that kind of feedback from other people, which is one of the things that makes a conversational dojo. So valuable. The other thing, and actually this is more subtle, but I think even stronger is that when you. hear people, the same thing is true, but in reverse and you can start spotting their mistakes and their cognitive biases.
[00:53:14] It's a lot easier to learn how to spot cognitive biases in someone else than it is in yourself. But it kind of acts like a bootstrapping mechanism. You start to start to recognize them, and once you get proficient mechanism and other people, now, when you come back to your own case, the thing that you've written out your own recording, Once it's out of your head.
[00:53:34] And by the way, this is the key thing it has to be recorded outside of your head. Then suddenly you can start treating that you on the paper has not, you, you can start bringing those skills, you develop in spotting mistakes and other people and apply them to your own case. And, that helps. So that, that conversational dojo practice really helps accelerate the learning process.
[00:53:57] If one thing that we found as, as we talked with people who were reading the book was exactly like you, Adam, they hadn't gone and got the paper and written on it. But then when they came to a dojo, they were kind of forced to do that. They kind of felt that they, they had some social pressure and they found that they were able to get a whole lot of benefit from analyzing their conversations. So we've, we've done a bunch of this. We want to do more. we even wrote a whole conversational dojo kit, which comes along, and kind of says, well, if you want to apply to the ideas in the book, here's how you do it. That's for free, and can find that on conversationaltransformation.com or just search the words, conversational dojo, you'll find it.
[00:54:33] So, so far, my takeaway from this conversation, Get the paper, fill out the paper, you know, put in the work, practice the skill without practicing the skill. It's just ideas and you know, it's theories, but like we talk about it on the podcast. Like there's a one thing, but you actually have to put them into practice to realize the results. So exactly. I will get a paper and I will analyze his conversation.
[00:54:57] Excellent. If we, if we've succeeded in convincing you we've, we've succeeded in our, in our. mission here.
[00:55:02] Well, mission accomplished well, Jeffrey and squirrel. Thank you so much for coming on the show and sharing a small batch of human language delivery education.
[00:55:11] I really appreciate it. Is there anything you'd like to leave the listeners with before we go?
[00:55:16] Well, I will say this if people, I like the sound of a conversational dojo when we'd like to be part a, we're going to be running some public dojos. And if you'd like to be notified, you can. conversationaltransformation.com send up for the newsletter and we'll be sending this out and asking for people if you're interested in what time zone and we plan on running them in multiple time zones, it might even work for, for someone several times in away from us.
[00:55:39] I'm sure we'll have ones that will work for basically everyone.
[00:55:42] I'm sure we will. And of course you can also, if you, if you like listening to us so you can come and if you like podcasts, you can come listen to ours, which is called troubleshooting agile. And, that's, we are on episode, I think 145. So a very welcome to listen. to that. And hear more of us discussing all of these topics in a lot more depth. So come on and find that that's also on conversationaltransformation.com.
[00:56:03] Oh yeah. And buy the book, it's good.
[00:56:05] It's fun when we say that. Yeah. So please buy the book, that it there's an audio version, which has a great narrator, as well as the Kindle and printed.
[00:56:16] All right. Well, thank you both for coming on the show. It was my pleasure to talk to you both and to hope I can speak to you again.
[00:56:22] Thanks Adam.
[00:56:25] You've just finished another episode of small batches podcast on building a high performance software delivery organization. For more information, and to subscribe to this podcast, go to smallbatches.fm. I hope to have you back again for the next episode. So until then happy shipping.
[00:56:45] Like the sound of small batches? This episode was produced by pods worth media. That's podsworth.com.