04. Moonshots and Uncomfortable Silences

Mike Cottmeyer on Leading Agile, Daniel Goleman on Coaching For Leaders, Christina Wodtke on Build by Drift, Joe Vallone on Agile Amped, and Cindy Alvarez on Product Love. I'd love for you to email me with any comments about the show or any suggestions for podcasts I might want to feature. Email [email protected]. This episode covers the five podcast episodes I found most interesting and wanted to share links to during the two week period starting February 4, 2019. These podcast episodes may have been released much earlier, but this was the week when I started sharing links to them to my social network followers. MIKE COTTMEYER ON LEADING AGILE The Leading Agile podcast featured Mike Cottmeyer with host Dave Prior. To kickoff 2019, Dave and Mike got together to talk about the year ahead. What I liked most about this conversation is how it got into a discussion of how to introduce Agile to an organization that is just beginning to move away from traditional waterfall methods. Mike talked about how meal prep services got his wife interested in cooking for the first time and contrasted this with the way Agile is often introduced to enterprises: exclusively showing the end state and leaving out details about what Agile looks like when you’re just starting. Just as the meal prep services show more respect for people beginning to take up cooking, Mike says that the Agile community needs to show more respect for people beginning their Agile journey. iTunes link: https://itunes.apple.com/ca/podcast/kicking-off-2019-w-mike-cottmeyer/id995790407?i=1000427423678&mt=2 Website link: https://www.leadingagile.com/podcast/kicking-off-2019-with-mike-cottmeyer/ DANIEL GOLEMAN ON COACHING FOR LEADERS The Coaching For Leaders podcast featured Daniel Goleman with host Dave Stachowiak. As a fan of Daniel’s work on Emotional Intelligence, I was eager to hear this interview. Daniel talked about three different kinds of empathy: cognitive empathy, emotional empathy, and empathic concern and compared and contrasted them. I loved what Daniel had to say about distinguishing between a healthy and an unhealthy showing of vulnerability, especially since I read so much advice telling leaders they need to be vulnerable. iTunes link: https://itunes.apple.com/ca/podcast/391-getting-better-at-empathy-with-daniel-goleman/id458827716?i=1000428075330&mt=2 Website link: https://coachingforleaders.com/podcast/391/ CHRISTINA WODTKE ON BUILD BY DRIFT The Build by Drift podcast featured Christina Wodtke with host Maggie Crowley. Christina’s book, Radical Focus, has been showing up on the recommended lists of most of the people I follow, with some saying that it was the first book they read that really showed how to apply Objectives and Key Results or OKRs, so I was quick to hit play on this new-to-me podcast. What I heard was a great conversation on high-performing teams, avoiding traps in setting OKRs, and most importantly, the fact that OKRs are supposed to be stretch goals. iTunes link: https://itunes.apple.com/ca/podcast/build-15-christina-wodtke-on-radical-focus-living-your/id1445050691?i=1000426996091&mt=2 Website link: https://www.drift.com/blog/christina-wodtke-okrs/ JOE VALLONE ON AGILE AMPED The Agile Amped podcast featured Joe Vallone with host Adam Mattis. While there was a lot of talk about the Scaled Agile Framework in this conversation and I’m still working out how I feel about that, there was also a great conversation about lean startup ideas, particularly innovation accounting and Joe provided concrete examples from the SR21 Blackbird to self-driving cars to make his point. iTunes link: https://itunes.apple.com/ca/podcast/innovation-accounting/id992128516?i=1000427846817&mt=2 Website link: https://solutionsiq.podbean.com/e/innovation-accounting/ CINDY ALVAREZ ON PRODUCT LOVE The Product Love podcast featured Cindy Alvarez with host Eric Boduch. Cindy Alvarez is the author of a book in Eric Ries’ Lean series: Lean Customer Development. I loved how Cindy took the old saw about Henry Ford and the faster horse and talked about how maybe Ford should have rephrased the question to get the customers to talk about problems instead of solutions. I also loved her emphasis on good listening techniques and how this can mean having to tolerate an uncomfortable amount of silence. iTunes link: https://itunes.apple.com/ca/podcast/cindy-alvarez-joins-product-love-to-talk-about-customer/id1343610309?i=1000428744289&mt=2 Website link: https://productcraft.com/podcast/product-love-podcast-cindy-alvarez-product-manager-at-microsoft-and-author-of-lean-customer-development/ FEEDBACK Ask questions, make comments, and let your voice be heard by emailing [email protected]. Twitter: https://twitter.com/thekguy LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/keithmmcdonald/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thekguypage Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/the_k_guy/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCysPayr8nXwJJ8-hqnzMFjw Website: https://www.thekguy.com/ Intro/outro music: "waste time" by Vincent Augustus