Mindful Agility

In this thought-provoking episode of Mindful Agility, learn how to transform confrontational encounters into productive dialogues. Ankur Shah Delight and Dan Greening share a transformational technique to handle triggering comments, guiding listeners to notice their physical reactions, pause, seek the core of the statement, rephrase it, and share with the other party. Hear an engaging case study where a potentially volatile workplace scenario is skillfully diffused. It's an essential guide for anyone seeking to enhance their communication skills, foster healthier relationships, and maintain a calm mental space amid conflict. Lean in, breathe deep, and transform your conversations. Resources Elephant in the Room ChallengeNonviolent CommunicationCredits Swing beat 120 xylophone side-chainedCasonikaStaff Daniel GreeningMirela PetalliDan Dickson Links Mindful Agility Substack ("The Mindful Sprint" weekly brief)Mindful Agility web siteMindful Agility Community Facebook groupMindful Agility Youtube channel

In this Mindful Agility podcast episode on procrastination, hosts Mirela Petalli and Dan Greening delve into the hidden costs of procrastination. Have you wondered how procrastination could impact not just your work, but also your mental and physical health? This episode uncovers shocking research findings from Sweden that link procrastination to poor health outcomes. Tune in to discover an innovative tool developed by productivity guru Tim Ferriss to help overcome his fear of failure. You'll also hear compelling personal stories of overcoming procrastination through mindfulness techniques. Are you ready to turn your procrastination habit around and boost your success and wellbeing? Don't delay; listen to this enlightening episode today. Resources Procrastination is linked to poor health – new studyThe ConversationAssociations Between Procrastination and Subsequent Health Outcomes Among University Students in SwedenWhy you should define your fears instead of your goalsTED2017Tools of Titans: The Tactics, Routines, and Habits of Billionaires, Icons, and World-Class PerformersCredits Swing beat 120 xylophone side-chainedCasonikaStaff Daniel GreeningMirela PetalliDan Dickson Links Mindful Agility Substack ("The Mindful Sprint" weekly brief)Mindful Agility web siteMindful Agility Community Facebook groupMindful Agility Youtube channel

Want to learn the secret behind Warren Buffett's success? Curious about how SpaceX rockets are built? This episode of Mindful Agility podcast uncovers the power of low-cost experiments and how they can propel your success. Hosts Dan Greening and Dan Dickson discuss how to use low-cost experiments to reduce risk and increase reward, and suggest practical steps to apply this concept in your own life. Learn how to turn your significant projects into a series of small, manageable experiments. By embracing failure and learning from it, you can fast-track your road to success. Tune in to find out how! References Pattern: Experiment to Improve"1: Low-Cost Experiments," The Mindful Sprint,"Credits Stephen TryonEve RubellAmelia HambrechtDivya MaezSwing beat 120 xylophone side-chainedCasonikaStaff Daniel GreeningMirela PetalliDan Dickson Links Mindful Agility Substack ("The Mindful Sprint" weekly brief)Mindful Agility web siteMindful Agility Community Facebook groupMindful Agility Youtube channel

Toxic work and home environments are all around us: intimidation, humiliation, secret discussions, manipulation. Those environments are psychologically unsafe. When we and those around us feel unsafe, we become fearful, stop learning, and fail to improve. Discover the power of psychological safety in fostering high-performing teams, as we dive into techniques to cultivate trust and open communication. Learn from Google's Project Aristotle case study, Mirela Petalli’s experiences in hospitals, and Dan Greening’s experiences in tech companies, which reveal the transformative impact of psychological safety on productivity and collaboration. Join us as we challenge norms with mindfulness and agile practices to elevate team performance. Listen to this episode and transform your understanding of what it takes to create a successful, innovative, and cohesive team. Don't miss this chance to unlock your team's potential – tune in now! This episode parallels our 2-minute newsletter (click to subscribe) The Mindful Sprint. Mirela Petalli and Dan Greening use the Psychological Safety brief as a jumping off point for more details and stories around Psychological Safety. References Duhigg, C. (2016). What Google Learned From Its Quest to Build the Perfect Team. The New York TimesAmy Gallo (February 15, 2023) “What Is Psychological Safety?,” Harvard Business ReviewCredits Swing beat 120 xylophone side-chainedCasonikaStaff Daniel GreeningMirela PetalliDan Dickson Links Mindful Agility Substack ("The Mindful Sprint" weekly brief)Mindful Agility web siteMindful Agility Community Facebook groupMindful Agility Youtube channel

Discover the secret behind successful partnerships in this episode on incremental reciprocity. Start with a small task without expecting anything in return, and ask your partner to match your effort. As you both grow, this technique helps measure reliability and build trust. Famous duos like Lennon-McCartney and Oprah Winfrey-Gayle King used this method to achieve greatness. Enhance your teamwork and friendships by trying this approach yourself. Give it a shot and transform your connections! One more example of how mindfulness and agile skills help you succeed, from the Mindful Agility podcast. Credits Amelia HambrechtStephen TryonNationaal ArchiefSpaarnestad PhotoSwing beat 120 xylophone side-chainedCasonikaStaff Daniel GreeningMirela PetalliDan Dickson Links Mindful Agility Substack ("The Mindful Sprint" weekly brief)Mindful Agility web siteMindful Agility Community Facebook groupMindful Agility Youtube channel

Staff Daniel GreeningMirela PetalliDan Dickson Links Mindful Agility Substack ("The Mindful Sprint" weekly brief)Mindful Agility web siteMindful Agility Community Facebook groupMindful Agility Youtube channel

Unlock the mindful power of the Five Whys technique in this intriguing episode, with agile coach Dan Greening and corporate fixer Dan Dickson. The Five Whys method has transformed businesses and personal lives, revealing hidden causes of problems, and promoting safer, more lasting improvements. Hear intriguing stories, like how Toyota fixed a recurring production line issue for good, and how Dan Greening hosted a Five Whys "party" that possibly saved an employee's job! Learn how this simple, effective approach can help you tackle challenges in your own life. Listen now, to transform your approach to problem-solving forever! Resources https://senexrex.com/cause-mapping/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7FcK8jV2yAThe Mindful Sprint: Five Whys for Lasting BreakthroughsCredits Swing beat 120 xylophone side-chainedCasonikaStaff Daniel GreeningMirela PetalliDan Dickson Links Mindful Agility Substack ("The Mindful Sprint" weekly brief)Mindful Agility web siteMindful Agility Community Facebook groupMindful Agility Youtube channel

By developing two uncommon skills, mindfulness and agility, you can achieve true success in most fields of life and work. You must define success on your own terms, rather than rely on others' metrics or recipes. Imitating others who have been successful works fine to get your feet wet, but it won't make you successful, because the world has new competitors, and you are a different person. Mindfulness practices develop skills in seeing the world more clearly, along with its opportunities and dangers. With mindfulness, we can discover hidden causes more readily, and we can fix problems and exploit opportunities more easily. In a word, mindfulness gives us insight. Agile practices develop skills in low-cost, low-risk experimentation. Insight is great, but to blaze new paths you have to take risks. There are lots of dangers in that unexplored jungle, so we need to learn how to explore safely. In a word, agile gives us innovation. We discuss the challenges of developing mindfulness and agile skills, including the distractions of modern life and the need for ongoing study and practice. We show how mindfulness and agile practices can be applied in different fields and situations, from healthcare to career development to family life. Mindful agility is a practical philosophy—i.e., it is composed of practices and principles. These principles of success encourage you to first think critically about your own goals, then imitate others to get the basics of a field, then use mindfulness to build competence and insight, then use agility to innovate. This episode is chapter 1.1 of the Mindful Agility book under development. Credits The GraduateSwing beat 120 xylophone side-chainedCasonikaStaff Daniel GreeningMirela PetalliDan Dickson Links Mindful Agility Substack ("The Mindful Sprint" weekly brief)Mindful Agility web siteMindful Agility Community Facebook groupMindful Agility Youtube channel

Learning from failure ought to be easy. Good experiments should fail, about half the time, especially if they aren't costly. And agile experiments are designed to be low cost. But failure, it turns out, freaks us out, especially when we are new to a field. That might explain why agile transformations fail at a very high rate, even though the benefits of agile are well studied. Folks in an agile transformation are new to agile, and little failures at the beginning can lead them to run away. In this episode, Dan Dickson and Dan Greening talk about a recently published paper, "You Think Failure is Hard? So is Learning from It." We discuss the insights in the paper, and how those insights translate into agile practice. Here's the problem And so, not only do we not learn from our own failures, our friends don't discuss their failures with us. So we don't learn from our own failures or our friends' failures. Bummer. We talk about the implications for agile: it's a problem we have to address head on. We provide some ways to make learning from failure much easier. References Root Cause Mapping Partyhttps://senexrex.com/cause-mapping/Business on Fire Part I: Steve Jobs protege Ron Johnson burns JC Penney cash fast as CEOhttps://sr.link/ma1-1Perspectives on Psychological Science17https://doi.org/10.1177/17456916211059817Credits Swing beat 120 xylophone side-chainedCasonikaStaff Daniel GreeningMirela PetalliDan Dickson Links Mindful Agility Substack ("The Mindful Sprint" weekly brief)Mindful Agility web siteMindful Agility Community Facebook groupMindful Agility Youtube channel

Our clumsiness in life creates most of our suffering. We haven't practiced the skills we need to be happy. We don’t see what’s going on around us. We don’t see the causes early enough to prevent a train-wreck in work or life. And when we don’t know how to distinguish truth from delusion, well that leads to a world of hurt. But if we don't have a purpose, should we or anyone else care that we mess up? Mindfulness skills help us reduce the dumb stuff we do to ourselves. When we get more comfortable and skillful just living in our existing situation, then we can contemplate why we are here and how to actively live. Knowing where we're going, means agile skills can get us there, finding creative solutions to the tough stuff. So, here's one way to think of our journey to higher purpose and fulfillment: A couple of months ago, Dan Greening was interviewed for another podcast, called 10,000 Heroes, by his pal Ankur Shah Delight. If you’ve wondered what the hell those Mindful Agility people were trying to do, Ankur asked the right questions. Here’s that 10,000 Heroes episode, in its entirety. If you like the idea of exploring purpose, 10,000 Heroes is a nice thing to check out. Credits Ankur Shah Delight10,000 Heroes podcast #00039 The curious offspring of Agile and Mindfulness with Dan Greening Nate signs up for Yet Another Challenge – this time applying Dan Greening’s Mindful Agility to his professional life.Tom LooyRon LussierAmelia HambrechtDivya MaezSwing beat 120 xylophone side-chainedCasonikaStaff Daniel GreeningMirela PetalliDan Dickson Links Mindful Agility Substack ("The Mindful Sprint" weekly brief)Mindful Agility web siteMindful Agility Community Facebook groupMindful Agility Youtube channel

The faster and better we take action against impediments, the more successful we'll be, according to renowned military strategist John Boyd, developer of the OODA Loop. The OODA loop is observe, orient, decide and act. It’s how we take action in new situations and succeed. In this episode of the Mindful Agility podcast, Tom Looy explores how John Boyd used the OODA Loop to help fighter jet pilots, and ultimately whole military campaigns, succeed against enemies. You can use it in your own life, even to overcome your own “opponents,” the dysfunctions that hold you back. The most important things in the OODA loop are first to observe what you can and reorient your mental model to fit the data that you have. Sometimes that means you have to destroy your old mental model of how the world works, because it's not working anymore, and substitute something new that does work. There's feedback involved in this loop. When we observe something anomalous, we might need more information to understand what is happening. So that's feedback that brings us right back to the beginning of the ooda loop. Then when we stick data into our model, we may discover that the model generates something weird or it doesn't match what we expect. So we need to get more data. We need to adjust things in our model. We may go right back again to observe more stuff before we can even make a decision. So that's why there's feedback directly from observing back to the beginning of the OODA loop or from orienting back to the beginning of the OODA loop. What John Boyd discovered was that the faster we can operate through this loop, the more success we'll have in many areas, not just in military combat. Faster looping wins because if we're looping faster than our opponent, our opponent doesn't have time to reorient their own mental models. And so we just confuse them. And win. References For a book on John Boyd and the OODA Loop, see Science, Strategy and War: The Strategic Theory of John BoydFor an article examines the implications of the OODA loop on the Ukraine-Russia war, see The OODA Loop, Information Warfare, the Ukrainian Defense and the Collapse of the Russian Armyhttps://www.oodaloop.com/archive/2022/03/23/the-ooda-loop-information-warfare-the-ukrainian-defense-and-the-collapse-of-the-russian-army/For an article showing how leading indicators are essential for all agile methodologies, including OODA, see https://senexrex.com/pattern-measure-progress/ Staff Daniel GreeningMirela PetalliDan Dickson Links Mindful Agility Substack ("The Mindful Sprint" weekly brief)Mindful Agility web siteMindful Agility Community Facebook groupMindful Agility Youtube channel

When we fail, we can easily fall into anxiety, guilt, or depression. But failure can lead us toward success. A simple Google search reveals many famous people discuss their failures and subsequent successes. We can succeed through failure, too! In this episode of the Mindful Agility podcast, Mirela Petalli, Matthew Zimmerman, Dan Dickson and Dan Greening discuss an episode of Matt's life. He moved to Ireland, thinking it would solve all his problems, and discovered: Nope. But through that humiliating experience, Matt unexpectedly discovered folks he could count on, and years later, he realized his experiment gave him new powers. References Perspectives on Psychological Science17https://doi.org/10.1177/17456916211059817Credits Swing beat 120 xylophone side-chainedCasonikaStaff Daniel GreeningMirela PetalliDan Dickson Links Mindful Agility Substack ("The Mindful Sprint" weekly brief)Mindful Agility web siteMindful Agility Community Facebook groupMindful Agility Youtube channel

People around us need help. Our inclination is to rush in, fix the problem, and rush out. After all we have stuff we need to do, ourselves. But we can get stuck. And stay stuck. For months. Dan Dickson wanted his friend’s pet project, a wine store in Manhattan, to succeed. Dan had the skills to add online transactions to their web site. But, he didn’t want to get stuck doing all the work forever. Dan Dickson built the new site, and created the wine database structure. Because he didn’t want to create a dependency, he left the work to the store staff. They added a few new entries were made to the database, but they were incorrect. Through a couple of tries, and many months, it never went live. He set everything up not to get stuck. And there he was: stuck. He commiserated with Mirela Petalli MSN-ed RN, Dan R Greening, and Matt Zimmerman on the Mindful Agility team. Hidden challenges were the problem. Dan Dickson couldn't find a path forward, until he looked at the bigger picture from a mindful, agile lens. And then, things started improving. Call to Action The CAVU company sponsored Scrum training for Mirela Petalli and Dan Dickson a couple of months ago. CAVU is a benefit company that teaches Scrum to both commercial and underrepresented communities. Christopher Sims and Dan Greening were co-trainers. Mirela and Dan Dickson are now Registered Scrum Masters and Registered Product Owners. We have recently held live online meditations and classes. If you’d like to get notified about those, do one of three things: join the Facebook group called “Mindful Agility Community,” or like the LinkedIn showcase called “Mindful Agility.” We have an email list at mindfulagility.com, as well. You can help us out by giving us a written review on Apple Podcasts, or by sharing our episodes with friends. Credits Cover photo by DepositPhotosStaff Daniel GreeningMirela PetalliDan Dickson Links Mindful Agility Substack ("The Mindful Sprint" weekly brief)Mindful Agility web siteMindful Agility Community Facebook groupMindful Agility Youtube channel

In this episode Christina Smith, a certified scrum master, shares how she started using scrum and mindfulness not only in her work, but also her parenting. Like most parents, Christina wants her children to lead happy and fulfilling lives, both now and when they are adults. She also needs them to take out the trash now and then too. Stressed with trying to be a perfect parent, Christina decided to experiment and apply the same techniques she uses as an agile scrum master at work to her parenting, and the results were surprising. Links Kanban for HomeContact Christina Smith via LinkedInCavuTrello.comRaising Your Spirited ChildCredits Swing beat 120 xylophone side-chainedCasonikaStaff Daniel GreeningMirela PetalliDan Dickson Links Mindful Agility Substack ("The Mindful Sprint" weekly brief)Mindful Agility web siteMindful Agility Community Facebook groupMindful Agility Youtube channel

In this third and final episode on fabled merchandiser, Ron Johnson, we discuss the startup Enjoy.com, which turned $500M of invested capital and goodwill into nothing. This was Johnson's second attempt as a CEO. What did he learn from that failure? How did it shape his new company? Your co-hosts, Dan Dickson and Dan Greening, bring perspectives of traditional and agile management, finance and technology, retail and service. We think our analysis demonstrates how you can make better choices in your own projects, big and small, for much greater levels of success. We examine this company from the lens of Mindful Agility: And finally, we armchair quarterback what we might have done as execs at Enjoy.com. References https://www.marketwatch.com/story/enjoy-technology-to-be-delisted-from-nasdaq-shares-fall-15-271657234123https://fortune.com/2015/05/06/ron-johnson-enjoy-jcpenny/Enjoy.comhttps://www.trustpilot.com/review/enjoy.com?page=2https://forums.att.com/conversations/wireless-account/enjoy-delivery-service-is-a-scam/6115bcdbebe45663333f880ehttps://www.retaildive.com/news/ron-johnsons-enjoy-technology-potential-bankruptcy/625705/https://www.fastcompany.com/3051611/he-made-target-and-apple-stores-cool-after-his-jcp-flop-the-redemption-of-rStaff Daniel GreeningMirela PetalliDan Dickson Links Mindful Agility Substack ("The Mindful Sprint" weekly brief)Mindful Agility web siteMindful Agility Community Facebook groupMindful Agility Youtube channel

This is the second episode of a three-part series on fabled merchandiser, Ron Johnson, and how he failed to restore JC Penney to its former leadership in retailing. In this episode we're going to be talking very explicitly about business mindfulness and how it applies. If you want to understand "business mindfulness," this is the episode for you. If you'd like some background on scaling mindfulness, you'll like Episode 2 on self-similarity (our first full episode). If you'd like to hear our detailed failure analysis of Ron Johnson and JCPenney, that's in Episode 11, the one just before this. Mindful businesses share a set of six characteristics, which we introduce at the beginning. Then we talk about different examples of each characteristic, from some mindful businesses we know about, such as Toyota and Trader Joe's, and with counterexamples from JCPenney. References The Wiley Blackwell Handbook of MindfulnessIhttps://doi.org/10.1002/9781118294895Research in Organizational Behaviour21https://twitter.com/greening/status/1554164846022823936This American Lifehttps://www.thisamericanlife.org/403/nummi-2010Credits https://www.flickr.com/photos/worldeconomicforum/8408308078Staff Daniel GreeningMirela PetalliDan Dickson Links Mindful Agility Substack ("The Mindful Sprint" weekly brief)Mindful Agility web siteMindful Agility Community Facebook groupMindful Agility Youtube channel

As an executive working for other CEOs, Ron Johnson succeeded wildly in redesigning Target stores and building Apple Stores from scratch. But then, as a CEO, Ron Johnson crashed and burned two later companies. Join Dan Dickson, a seasoned retail executive and Harvard Business School grad, and Dan Greening, co-host of Mindful Agility, as we talk about Ron Johnson's first failure, JC Penney. Major shifts in management practice arise in response to crises. Lean Manufacturing helped Toyota and Japan survive, after the Japanese industrial base had been destroyed in World War II. Lean Manufacturing now dominates the auto industry, and failure to adopt its principles bankrupted General Motors and others. Agile management practices arose in response to growingly spectacular software project failures. It is now dominates software teams and is expanding to other creative teams and whole businesses. "Business agility" is emerging as a trend in business management. This is the first of three episodes where we analyze business failures to discover whether agile and mindfulness philosophies could have averted disaster. Three take aways References Fast CompanyFortuneFortuneFortuneCredits Swing beat 120 xylophone side-chainedCasonika Ron JohnsonStaff Daniel GreeningMirela PetalliDan Dickson Links Mindful Agility Substack ("The Mindful Sprint" weekly brief)Mindful Agility web siteMindful Agility Community Facebook groupMindful Agility Youtube channel

If we want lasting change, emotions may be our strongest opponent. When forced to change, people feel fear, rage, anxiety, and other emotions. Emotions are designed to satisfy basic needs: defend, fight, flight, reproduce. But when they overwhelm us, they shut down logic. They’re great when we’re suddenly confronted by a lion in the African savanna, we don’t have to take time to think. We just feel fear and run. But when building a strong family, or tackling some other tough, long-term challenge, emotions can confuse and distract us. We often don’t even notice that we’re feeling fear, rage, lust, or love… we just feel and act, no thinking required. By training ourselves to notice and label emotions, we allow them to continue to exist. But can put them on the same playing field as other factors relevant to our goals. We have to start with ourselves. If we label the emotions of family members or teammates, we rob them of agency. But if we label our own emotions, we signal psychological safety, inviting others to do the same. Guests Links Mindful Agility Community (Facebook group)Mindful Agility web siteCredits Nenad StojkovicSwing beat 120 xylophone side-chainedCasonikaStaff Daniel GreeningMirela PetalliDan Dickson Links Mindful Agility Substack ("The Mindful Sprint" weekly brief)Mindful Agility web siteMindful Agility Community Facebook groupMindful Agility Youtube channel

Nurse Heather's four year old son, Jack, likes to put his fingers in his mouth. But this can lead to dental problems in the future. She heard the episode about Matt learning to keep track of his keys, by noticing that he was setting them down and saying "I'm putting my keys on the counter." Heather wondered whether it could help her son. We also discover that Heather has bigger plans, involving her husband, and this was just a practice run. These last two episodes explore "noticing and labeling." There's been a lot of recent psychological research on these techniques. Links https://mindfulagility.comTwitterFacebookLinkedInMindful Agility CommunityCredits Swing beat 120 xylophone side-chainedStaff Daniel GreeningMirela PetalliDan Dickson Links Mindful Agility Substack ("The Mindful Sprint" weekly brief)Mindful Agility web siteMindful Agility Community Facebook groupMindful Agility Youtube channel

We all have hapless friends who would lose their head if it wasn't attached. Maybe we are that friend! Matt recently moved in with his girlfriend, Mirela Petalli (our co-host), and Matt realized losing his keys kept making them late. Can mindful agility help? Matt and Mirela worked together. Matt is familiar with Scrum, an agile technique; Mirela is familiar with mindfulness. Together they take us on an exploration of how mindfulness alone can help us get more done. When we bring in agile, we raise the bar further. Does mindful agility help Matt keep track of his keys? This is the first episode where we get more specific with agile—weekly sprints, measuring outcomes, retrospectives—all in the context of home life. Do these practices bring knock-on effects? Let's see what happens with Matt's long-stalled exercise ambitions. Links https://mindfulagility.comTwitterFacebookLinkedInMindful Agility CommunityCredits Swing beat 120 xylophone side-chainedStaff Daniel GreeningMirela PetalliDan Dickson Links Mindful Agility Substack ("The Mindful Sprint" weekly brief)Mindful Agility web siteMindful Agility Community Facebook groupMindful Agility Youtube channel