Michael Sahota - Agile, Scrum & Lean Coach - Toronto » MindMap

Fearless Change – Patterns for introducing new ideas

Michael Sahota — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 12:16:46 +0000

I first read Fearless Change: Patterns for Introducing New Ideas by Mary Lynn Manns and Linda Rising when it first came out many years ago as part of Scrum Toronto book reading club. It has been an important source of ideas that have allowed me to successfully adopt Agile at many companies. This is an essential part of any change agent’s toolkit.

Mihai Iancu has a wonderful mindmap to show the patterns in a visual an approachable manner. Thanks to Mihai for allowing me to share this with you.

Here are some of my favourite patterns:

Do food – Create a relaxed setting and leverage cultural bonding that happens when people eat together
Tailor made – Find the right solution for the people you are working with; every situation is unique
Step by step – Take things one step at a time and build on successes

Please comment on yours.

Approaches to Organizational Change Mary Poppendieck gave her usual well-researched and convincing tour-de-force presenation...
How we do things around here in order to succeed I attended Israel Gat’s session with this title at Agile...
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Visual Notes and MindMapping Supplies

Michael Sahota — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 23:29:57 +0000

Someone was asking what tools I use to create the visual notes and mind maps. Perhaps the most important is to trust myself that whatever I am drawing is OK and will communicate ideas better than plain text.

I use the following supplies from DeSerres art store:

I like the Manga markers since they have really nice flow and give sense of grace.
The Staedtler fineline is good for adding lots of details and little pictures.
You can’t see it here, but the 8.5″ by 11″ sketch pad is perforated so I can tear off the sheets and scan them in.
I also sometimes use 11″ by 17″ sheets of paper with a Sharpie FinePoint for big picture thinking.

Visual note taking is a handy skill that I learned in a series of webinars: I only saw parts of this one and most of this one. This is a good thing to do as a team/group activity.

How to Read a Book A friend and fellow Agile coach – Jason Cheong-Kee-You –...
Shopping List for Sticky Notes and Markers The purpose of this post is to provide a shopping...

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Agile 2009 Mind Maps and Visual Note Taking

Michael Sahota — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 19:13:55 +0000

I have some really cool mind maps and visual notes from Agile 2009. These will take a while to get posted since I need to scan them when I’m back home (Still in Chicago to attend Lean training with Mary P) and then some time to upload and comment. There’s an RSS feed for this blog, so stay tuned.

Visual note taking is a handy skill that i learned in a series of webinars: I only saw parts of this one and most of this one. This is a good thing to do as a team/group activity.

Visual Notes and MindMapping Supplies Someone was asking what tools I use to create the...
Taking Responsibility to Learn and Grow Christopher Avery gave a very interesting talk at Agile 2009...
Agile Tour Toronto 2009 Blasts off! Agile Tour Toronto 2009 is over and it was an...

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“Crucial Converations” helps in tough situations

Michael Sahota — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 02:20:42 +0000

“Crucial Conversations” was my book of the year a few years ago for a good reason. It helped me with some very difficult conversations at work and at home.

I was reminded of this resource when someone I work with was suggested that this was an area of growth for her. She was kind of annoyed, and then I reminded her that this is a great skill to develop. I have been working on this for years and I still can do with more improvement. So in my estimation, take any chance to develop communication skills since it pays off. Bigtime.

I am not going to summarize the book here. Instead you can check out a mind map I made up to summarize: Crucial Conversations – Summary map – shared on www.biggerplate.com I made the mindmap up to help the team I am working with. Feel free to share it with yours. Anyway, a few days later, I had an opportunity to use these techniques on my own crucial conversation and turned a very sticky situation into opportunity. Not sure if it’s a happy ending yet…

If you are in Toronto/GTA, and interested in improving your communicatino, then you might even want to consider a workshop with Innergize Training on Workplace Conflicts And Handling Sensitive Issues.

Crucial Conversations One important book that has been in my communication toolkit...
Improve your communication through non-verbal rapport At Scrum Gathering Orlando, I ran an experiential workshop titled...
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