Agile Podcast: Agile Coaches' Corner

Ep. 217

Podcast Ep 217. Goal Setting for the Beginning of a New Cycle with Adam Ulery

Description:

This week, Dan Neumann is joined by Adam Ulery for the first episode of 2023.

In this episode, they are talking about new beginnings and how they are the perfect opportunity to plan forward and set intentions for the future. Adam and Dan dive deep into the importance of goal setting and how to do it in the most effective way possible.

Key Takeaways

  • Goal setting:

    • It is important to set and reset goals when one cycle ends and another begins.

    • Sometimes New Year’s resolutions don’t last long.

    • A key element to achieving goals and being happy with your performance is just being intentional.

    • Even if you don’t achieve the goal, the benefit is the learning opportunities you found through the process.

    • Most of the time, preparing for goal setting is about taking the time to reflect and process your thoughts about what it is that you are trying to achieve.

    • Take action!

    • SMART goals: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound.

  • When does a goal need to be reset?

    • Reassess your goals at the end of each cycle.

    • Measure along the way so you know where you are. These metrics are fundamental to knowing where your performance is around the goal.

  • How Teams and Individuals can be more effective in reaching their goals:

    • Allocate capacities for each goal.

    • Remember to be intentional about your goals.

    • Team members have to hold each other mutually accountable.

    • Surround yourself with high performers and your performance will elevate as well.

Mentioned in this Episode:

The Way of a Pilgrim and A Pilgrim Continues His Way, Olga Savin

“How agile software development methods reduce work exhaustion: Insights on role perceptions and organizational skills”, Viswanath Venkatesh, James Y. L. Thong, Frank K. Y. Chan, Hartmut Hoehle, and Kai Spohrer

Want to Learn More or Get in Touch?

Visit the website and catch up with all the episodes on AgileThought.com!

Email your thoughts or suggestions to Podcast@AgileThought.com or Tweet @AgileThought using #AgileThoughtPodcast!

Trainings & Courses

AgileThought’s team of experienced practitioners and certified trainers teach classes on a variety of topics related to agility, scaling, and technology.  We offer both introductory and advanced classes onsite or remote, many of which help participants obtain a certification. These classes introduce participants to new mindsets, tools, and practices that can be used immediately.

Transcript [This transcript is auto-generated and may not be completely accurate in its depiction of the English language or rules of grammar.]

Narrator [00:03]:Welcome to Agile Coach’s Corner by Agile thought. The podcast for practitioners and leaders seeking advice to refine the way they work. Van pave the path to better outcomes. Now here’s your host, coach band, agile expert, Dan Neumann.

Dan Neumann [00:17]:elcome to this episode of the Agile Corner Podcast. I’m your host, Dan Neumann, and welcome to 2023, our first episode of a brand new calendar year. And I have the pleasure of having Adam Ulery be the guest for this first episode of 2023. Adam, thank you for joining and welcome to the new year.

Adam Ulery [00:37]:Happy New Year. I’m glad to be here. Thanks for having me on, Dan.

Dan Neumann [00:42]:Happy to. Yeah, I think a lot of people are maybe coming back from some Christmas and New Year break, hopefully coming back, refresh. Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>, I don’t, is that you?

Adam Ulery [00:51]:Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. had a nice Christmas with the family and a little bit of time off and I’m happy to be back. 2023 is gonna be an awesome year, so I’m really looking forward to it.

Dan Neumann [01:05]:I love it. Yeah, we’ve had some pretty interesting years here, especially since, you know, the Covid thing came in towards the end of 2019. Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>, and every year just seems to be different. Makes it a little bit of a challenge to kind of forecast where, where things are going to be and, and really even think ahead. And that’s a little bit about what we’re going to pull the thread on here today is, is looking forward into 2023.

Adam Ulery [01:30]:Yeah. It’s a perfect time to do it right with the, the, if you think about years business work occurring in cycles and here we are at the beginning of one, right? We’re at the beginning of a year, a yearly cycle, if you think of it that way. Or if you, if you think of it in shorter cycles, quarterly, maybe, you know, at the beginning of something, it’s a really good time to look forward and think about what you’d like to accomplish or what outcomes you might like to see at the end of it. And and then be intentional about making some things happen.

Dan Neumann [02:09]:Realizing that this episode is coming out after January 1st, we’ve missed the New Year’s resolution time. Are you a resolution maker type of person?

Adam Ulery [02:19]:I’m really not. I , I’m a big time goal setter and so I’ve always got three major goals in my life going on, and and I work through them. And so the, my cycles don’t always line up with the business, quarterly business cycles at least personally. But I’m always continuously working. In fact, I just met a goal and I’m in the process of resetting one to replace that one now, but then I’ve got two others that are still going on. So it’s not really an a new Year’s resolution thing for me. It’s just continuous. How about yourself?

Dan Neumann [03:05]:I have stuck my toes in the resolution waters in the past, but like most people who set New Year’s resolutions, they don’t last very long. I have found it. When I’ve made changes, they’ve been more successful and they haven’t been tied to something arbitrary, like the calendar year. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> I dunno, I think of an example from, from when I was running more, okay, I’m gonna do a marathon. I don’t, I mean that just, yeah, that probably happened to me on a Tuesday at three in the afternoon. There was no like, okay, I’m gonna do this thing. And then went off and did it right. Put together enough of a plan, suffered enough, got to the goal, , and that’s, that’s how I did that. But it wasn’t a, a new Year’s resolution per se. I’ve, I know I’ve had some, some wonky ones in the past that I thought, well, maybe that would be fun to try, but having not really thought them through all the way and then not built a habit or some kind of routine that I was willing to commit to sticking to, or they fell by the wayside.

Adam Ulery [04:03]:Yeah. Yeah. They say it happens to a lot of ’em. And I, you know, I mean, I think some of it is because that’s the only time some people are focused on it is right then and creating it, and it’s all new and exciting, but then it’s sort of where thin over the course of the year. But if you get into like this perpetual cycle of setting goals and, and you get into a kind of a, a process of working through them and then when they’re done, you know, you evaluate and then you reset a new one. And if you just keep that going, you, you don’t really wear out.

Dan Neumann [04:39]:I was listening to a podcast, and we will not put this one in the show notes cuz the, the title was really exciting, but then there was really no content behind it. And it was something to the effect of how to do the things that you don’t want to do, the drudgery, et cetera. Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>, and, and I was think I was looking for more in that. And, and short of joining the armed services, they didn’t really have a good, a good,path to, to do that. Uthey did make the point when you joined the army, the navy, the Air Force, the Marines or whatever in the us and I’m sure in other countries, they make you do the drudgery and, and doing the unpleasant tasks that are necessary to achieve the goal is something you get really good at or you don’t last in, in there. Yeah. So I, I was a little disappointed that there wasn’t,better, I don’t know, self-help for lack of a better word in, in that, that episode. But,I think your point of things get new and they’re exciting and then,the drudgery of following through is usually where I think people lose interest.

Adam Ulery [05:52]:Yeah, yeah, I agree. And, and you know, I mean there are definitely techniques to, to avoid that. But one thing that we’re sort of touching on that I think is interesting to, to possibly unpack a little bit, I is a key element to realizing good outcomes to achieving goals, to being happy with your performance over the year is just being intentional about what you’d like to accomplish. You know, and that’s sort of what we’re beginning to talk about a little bit. What, you know, when you take time to think about it, when you take time to actually set a goal and then you put a plan around how you’re gonna achieve it, you you’re being intentional about what you’d like to accomplish. And this is a great time of year to do that because you’re sort of wrapping up the former cycle and stepping into the new one.

Dan Neumann [06:49]:You touched on something there that was was interesting. Oh, having the goals, setting goals, having, having a plan to work towards those. And I think as, as we get into it, there’s some benefit to knowing that you tried, you, you did the steps that were necessary to try to achieve that goal. You might not hit it necessarily, you can’t necessarily control outcomes, but you can control effort in, in the process towards that outcome.

Adam Ulery [07:21]:Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And if you’re a lifelong learner, like most of our listeners probably are, there’s the benefit of learning as you go. So even if you don’t achieve the goal itself what are you learning along the way that helps you, in some cases it’s okay not to achieve it. You may decide it wasn’t quite the right goal or something along those lines. In other cases you will achieve it, but either way you’re gonna learn a ton of stuff along the way and then you can use that to advance your team, advance your organization, whatever it is you’re trying to move forward with. So I think it’s important not to lose sight of that and just think about it while you’re forming this. Like, what will I learn along the way? How is that gonna benefit us as we go?

Dan Neumann [08:12]:Right. So you mentioned taking some time to prepare for planning or for goal setting. You know, it sounded to me it’s not, okay, let’s, like, we’ve got 60 minutes, let’s hop in here and we’re going to set our goals for the next 12 months or three months , right. What does that, what does that preparing to goal set look like from your perspective?

Adam Ulery [08:39]:Yeah, it’s, I think it’s an important exercise and it, it’s also not always very tangible. You know, a lot of times it’s, it’s mental thought. You know, it’s just taking the time to reflect, to think forward to just sort of process your own thoughts about what it is you’d like to achieve. You know, whether this is for your team or for your organization, or maybe it’s a product or a service that you’re responsible for whatever the context, just taking the time to think through it, giving yourself the time. Because like you said, Dan, if you get into a room and it’s time to actually set the goal I, if you haven’t thought deeply about it, then your chances of coming up with something that’s not as impactful or greater. Right. But if you’ve, if you’ve given yourself some time to really think deeply and not rush yourself, you could come up with some goals that are really impactful and then the ultimate outcome will be greater.

Dan Neumann [09:52]:Yeah. I think it’s easy to fall into a trap of you have to go the man on the mountain where, you know, you go and, and eat locusts for a while and come up with a, a grand vision of something else. And that can be a, a hurdle to some of the reflection that you’re describing. Whereas it can be as simple as maybe you just put the phone, undo not disturb for an hour, or turn the car radio off while you’re cruising around and, you know, don’t , don’t close your eyes cuz you gotta stay on the road. But just finding those moments in normal life to think about, you know, what your, what your goals might be as opposed to having a grand gesture of some kind where you have the, the trek to go be reflective.

Adam Ulery [10:42]:Yeah. And slowing down is probably one of the biggest things we can focus on in our current culture and society. Especially here in North America. I know there’s a lot of pressure, busyness activity stimulation there. It, it’s like impossible to get away from it if you don’t just turn things off, you know, turn those devices off or move them out of the, out of the room, you know, get into a silent place and then, and slow down. And then that’s when those, those better thoughts can come to you. And then the net result of that is gonna be a more powerful goal. And it doesn’t necessarily need to be a, a big hairy, intimidating goal, but it could be a quality one. I know from what I’ve experienced, if I don’t take the time to do that, the goal may seem good until I get started and then along the way I may realize this isn’t so great after all, there’s something better. And if I had slowed down taking the time to do what we’re talking about, I feel like I would’ve come out with that sooner. ,

Dan Neumann [11:50]:Maybe it makes me think. And I, I’m trying hard to use, not use the terms, the waterfall and, and agile as much. So that’ll be it’s not a resolution per se, but I think at times they’re not very effective. One of the facets of doing things is you learn through doing so you could sit and reflect mm-hmm. <Affirmative> infinitely and, and never do something. You could start with no plan. And that’s also usually not a recipe for success. And then there’s realizing that you learn by taking action and then no matter how long you sat there and thought you wouldn’t have the learnings that you do if you don’t just start at some point. And, and mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, I don’t believe you’re advocating for thinking indefinitely. A and coming up with the perfect plan for the next 12 months, not knowing if we’re gonna have triple demos, recessions, interest rates through the roof, job changes, you know, et cetera, et cetera. You just, it’s unknowable. And so in the meantime, what do you do in the face of uncertainty to move forward and, and take action towards some goals that may need to be reevaluated?

Adam Ulery [13:01]:Yeah, that’s a good point. I think there’s a balance in everything, right? You could absolutely take too long to think about it. I I really believe what you’re saying that you have to act, you know, you have to then turn it into action. You can’t indefinitely sit and think about it. You can’t allow yourself to slide into analysis paralysis and have to know every detail or even be comfortable with every single aspect of it before you move forward. But I think taking a little time to just slow down and think deeply can be helpful to, to set a more impactful goal.

Dan Neumann [13:41]:Yeah, yeah. No, for sure. I was just, yeah, thinking I got, thinking about the goals, I was thinking of what an example might be, but I guess we’ll leave that as an exercise to the reader about their, what an impactful goal I is for them.

Adam Ulery [13:55]:Yeah. And it, it could be in several different areas, right? I mean, we’re sort of talking broadly about this. You could apply this to a personal thing, right? I feel like you could apply this to a team to an organization. So, you know, multiple teams as, as I said earlier, even to something you’re working on, like maybe a product or a, a suite of services or something like that. I just feel like we’re talking pretty broadly and then you could apply this to multiple areas.

Dan Neumann [14:28]:Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, do you tend to proactively think about when the goal might need to be reset? Or do you find that as you’re going through maybe the, the goal has become irrelevant or unattainable for, for some reason that you can’t address or remove? Or do you just kind of wait until it becomes self-evident, you’re like, oh no, that goal is not gonna happen. Right. I, I will not be a professional footballer, whether it’s soccer or American football. Like that ship has was probably never in the harbor. And if it was, it sailed a long time ago. Right.

Adam Ulery [15:06]:Yeah. Well, without going too much into the technical about goal setting, I, I personally like smart goals and I like tracking my goals, so that helps me, that sort of answers the question. Like, I, in tracking I understand kind of where I am and where I should be or where I would like to be based on achieving it. And then I can make little course corrections. Or at some point I could say, you know, this goal doesn’t feel relevant anymore for whatever reason, it’s just not the right one. What would I like to do about that? If you’re not tracking it, it, it’s gonna be a, a lot harder to do that. And then there’s gonna be a lot more of a what subjectivity involved mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, you know, or, or a lack of, of I guess a lack of concrete evidence to help you make the decision about what you’d like to do.

Narrator [16:06]:Have a topic you want us to tackle, send an email to podcast@agilethought.com or tweet it with a hashtag agile thought podcast.

Dan Neumann [16:17]:I like the process of tracking. I find it to be helpful as well. And a simple example of that, I’m, I’m doing some exercises or, or trying to follow a program basically that to, to help with a little back issue that’s kept me from running here for, I think going on 18 months now. And without tracking, there’s no way of knowing, am I just wishfully hoping that this thing will go away, or am I actually doing the steps that have been prescribed that in theory could lead to a better outcome? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And when you look at the piece of paper and, and you have the accountability of, have I done this thing every day this week? At least once, it’s easy to go. Yeah. I’m trying, well, what’d you do? Well, nothing today, but I’m trying What’d you do the day before that? ? Well, nothing but I’m try, I’m really trying. No, you’re not trying, you’re just using wishing.

Adam Ulery [17:09]:Yeah, exactly. And then if you’re tracking it, you can look at your, at your metrics there and see the results of that. And then it, you know, in the corporate setting, I, if you can align to kind of that quarterly cycle then there’s the time component, right? And along the way you can sort of see where you are compared to when you want to be done with it. I mean, I personally like setting goals corporately that align to that cycle. And, and then what that sort of allows you to do is set an appropriate goal that doesn’t try to carry you past that or take too o you could reassess it at the end of the cycle and decide to continue on or say, Hey, let’s set it to coincide with the ending of this so we can then set another one. And then mm-hmm. <Affirmative> again, if you’re measuring along the way, those, those key results that tell you where am I, you know, that that metric helps you know what your performance is against that goal.

Dan Neumann [18:16]:Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> and, and you said key results, and that’s an indicator of, of one of the questions I was going to ask, which is, are you thinking specifically about the objective and key result framework that there have been a couple episodes in the past on, or mm-hmm. <Affirmative> generally thinking of, of key results?

Adam Ulery [18:34]:I love that framework. I mean, it, I think it works so well to have the, the big objective what you want to achieve and that’s, that’s inspirational and it’s qualitative and, and then having some number of ways to measure that you’re achieving that. So a key result is just a metric. It’s, it’s, you know, quantitative to tell you if you’re hitting the mark there and that combination, and then package that up in a, say a quarterly cycle and then just be disciplined about tracking that along the way. It’s such an effective, simple way to, to goal set and to achieve goals.

Dan Neumann [19:22]:So let’s so if we’ve taken some time then and thought through what a meaningful goal might look like, and then either individually or with a team created an objective, that aspirational goal that you’re looking for, maybe some key results to track the, the degree to which you are actually, you know, achieving that objective, something measurable and you’re doing something to keep it front of mind. How have you seen teams or individuals be more effective in kind of following through on that? Because it’s easy to go, oh shoot, it’s the end of March again, we need to set the second quarters goals for April through June. Or oh gosh, you know, it’s been a couple weeks or a month, or, you know, and I haven’t really thought about continuous learning process improvement, whatever that outlook, I’m sorry. Whatever that objective is that you are striving for.

Adam Ulery [20:20]:I think one of the biggest success factors there would be allocating capacity towards it. You know, again, being intentional about achieving the goal. So if it’s important to you, reserve some energy for it, set aside some capacity that will be used to execute and that would, that would include managing it along the way. So a small amount of time for the right people to get together, sync up, stay aligned sort of understand where they are, and then plan what they’d like to do to continue making progress. So, you know, it doesn’t have to be a lot of time, but if, if a team can carve that out and protect that and preserve it and just sort of slice off a, a piece of capacity for that in their regular week, then they can achieve their goals. And then depending on how impactful the goals are, that can be a really big return on your investment of time.

Dan Neumann [21:32]:You touched on Yes, and you touched on a couple factors there. At least one factor that maybe wasn’t completely explicit. One was, you definitely were explicit about, hey, reserve the time. And then I feel like the other facet that you nodded to was making sure that the people you’re collaborating with are holding each other mutually accountable. So different than, we took 30 minutes every Friday to check in and go, oh, shoot, I had no time to work on that this week, but next week I’m going to, and then next week. And you still don’t I think the behavior you were kind of referencing or hinting at was, no, we’re actually holding each other account, Adam, it’s unacceptable. Like, coming in here and doing this group check in and saying, I didn’t do anything this week is not the behavior that’s helpful for us. What do you need? What can you do? What can we help with to really move towards the subjective that we’ve all said? Cuz you can’t just come in and go, whoa is me. I didn’t have time again. That’s that. No, everybody has seven days, 24 hours in the day. We all have the same clock.

Adam Ulery [22:42]:Right. And reserving some time, some capacity for working on that is important. Otherwise, I, if it just sort of falls to the bottom of the list and it’s always the thing that gets dropped, it won’t continue to move forward. And that accountability piece is, is crucial. You, you have to have that. If you’re not accountable, then it can slide and that will be okay. And then you’re not going to perform. Right. So that, I think you’re right, that accountability piece is huge. And, you know, getting together on some regular basis with the right people, with the people who are involved with achieving the goal or are affected by it, right? That helps, that helps with that accountability piece we’re answering for it to each other, right? We’re taking ownership of it in front of each other.

Dan Neumann [23:42]:Yeah. It makes me think of the positive peer pressure. And you can al , you can always hang out with knuckleheads and do nothing or you can find a, a more,impactful group of people to hang around with in a, in a, I guess knuckleheads can be impactful too, but you wanna hang around with people who are going to be impactful in a positive way.

Adam Ulery [24:03]:It elevates your performance, you know to surround yourself with other high performers. You will notice your performance elevating as well, right, ?

Dan Neumann [24:15]:Yes. Yes, indeed. Well, and actually, so I feel like now I’ve got a end of this podcast and go do some thinking.

Adam Ulery [24:21]:.

Dan Neumann [24:25]:Yeah. I’ve gotta resist the guilty pleasure of Clash of Clans, though. That’s, that’s one of my time sinks that, that, yeah. But I’m leader of my clan, so I do have that to put on my resume.

Adam Ulery [24:36]:. Nice.

Dan Neumann [24:40]:So if we were to summarize, and I’ll, I’ll ask you for a summary. I’ll kind of run through some of the things we talked about. We talked about taking some time to prepare for goal setting activities in the mechanic of goal setting. You mentioned smart goal specific, measurable, actionable, real actionable, realistic, and time bound. Yep.

Adam Ulery [25:03]:Yeah. Good job, man. And wow.

Dan Neumann [25:05]:Hey, thank you. And then potentially using the objectives and key results framework and finding some individuals as well as setting aside the time to, to be mutually accountable. And I’m curious what parting thoughts you’d wanna leave with us.

Adam Ulery [25:21]:I, you know, I think just that I would encourage listeners to take a little time over the next few days and think about what you might like to achieve in 2023. You know, it’s a, it’s gonna be a brand new year. It’s an exciting year. There’s a lot happening. There’s gonna be a ton of opportunity and what great things would you like to accomplish? You know, think about that. What could you do with your teams or your organizations that would really add value and taking the time right now to just think about some of the exciting possibilities we’ll set you up when you start to get into some of those goal setting meetings in your, in your teams and organizations in the next few weeks.

Dan Neumann [26:10]:That’s wonderful. Thank you for that. And I am a hundred percent certain you have something on your continuous learning journey, so I will I’ll ask you to go and then I’ll, I’ll share a little bit of what’s online too, if you’re, if you gimme the time.

Adam Ulery [26:24]:All right. Yeah. so I am deep in a journey exploring orthodox Christianity right now. And I’ve, I’ve just become an orthodox Christian, and I am doing a lot of study on some some of the, you know, history and, and very interesting things. And there’s a book I’m reading, or, well, I just finished last night actually. It’s called The Way of a Pilgrim. And the Pilgrim continues his way. And this book is so interesting because it, it sort of first of all was only recently translated into English. I don’t know how long the book’s been around, but I believe over a hundred years. And it takes some ancient texts and sort of tries to explain them through a story to help you grasp the concepts and the, the concept is on internal prayer. So saying a prayer in your heart and continuously praying even when you are like sleeping and stuff, it’s crazy. So trying to get my head around it. Yeah. Ujust a fascinating book to read different from any other book I’ve ever read, just in every way. So, pretty cool.

Dan Neumann [27:55]:That’s

Adam Ulery [27:55]:Awesome. Sorry if I went on too long about that sort of, you

Dan Neumann [27:59]:Did not go too long about that.

Adam Ulery [28:01]:Okay.

Dan Neumann [28:01]:Yeah, no, it’s yeah, there, it’s, it’s a, a different kind of text and mm-hmm. <Affirmative> it sounds like it’s, it’s deep and, and, and, you know,

Adam Ulery [28:12]:Provoking. It’s, it, it’s, it’s really deep and it’s, you know, bordering on philosophical in a, a lot of ways. And it, it’s weird because when you read it you could read it somewhat superficially and not quite realize that if you take time to deeply think about what’s being communicated and how it’s being communicated, it, it’s actually very, very heavy.

Dan Neumann [28:37]:And I think that in, in the spiritual side is, is true. And also when we think about what we’re doing at work, you know, we’re agile coaches, it’s easy to go, oh yeah, we, you know, we do, we are doing the mechanics of the Agile thing mm-hmm. <Affirmative> as opposed to have we really thought deeply about what embracing those values, those principles means, and what we might do to bring them more forward. And, and it could be something quite radical and it’s way easier just to be like, oh, well yeah, we met every couple weeks and we stood up for 15 minutes today. And then we all, you know, went back to our, our plan driven nothing that we had and, and complained about how Agile’s not working for us. And, and

Adam Ulery [29:21]:Yeah,

Dan Neumann [29:22]:There’s

Adam Ulery [29:23]:A lot of that. It’s a fantastic tie. I love that. Yeah. Yeah. Going deeper. I mean, I could riff on that. I’m not going to, but I, I could riff with you on that for quite a, that’s that’s really cool. Yeah. Like going below the superficial, right?

Dan Neumann [29:39]:Oh, man. It’s so easy to stay superficial though. It requires so much less energy.

Adam Ulery [29:43]:, I know. .

Dan Neumann [29:45]:Yeah. Well, and that’s somewhat related to a couple of the things that I have started looking at. Somewhere I heard the phrase, there’s not much thought leadership, there’s just a lot of thought repeater ship. And that phrase kind of stuck with me. And one of the learning journeys I’ve started here and will hope to continue throughout 2023, is looking for actual academic research about agility in teamwork in those types of things. And I found an interesting article, and I’m hoping the researcher, one of the researchers maybe comes on the podcast in the future. They explore what they call work exhaustion, which is kind of like burnout, but not really. But they explore how the use of agile methods either promotes or inhibits work exhaustion from coming forward, and they look specifically at developers and some factors involved there. And, and so I just feel like there’s a lot more research and, and actual evidence for whether agility works, where it works, where it doesn’t work, challenges, outcomes, et cetera, than I don’t know, reading somebody’s blog post about a particular activity, like opinions may differ, but the research wouldn’t done well, will, will give you actual data.

Dan Neumann [31:10]:So that’s my, that’s part of my journey right now.

Adam Ulery [31:13]:I like it. Yeah, that’s interesting. I can’t wait to hear what comes of that as you continue to unpack it and Yeah. And learn more.

Dan Neumann [31:21]:Yeah. And I’m hoping to politely invite some of these people onto the podcast. It’s really tough to get them because, you know, the academic cycle is getting ready for, then there’s finals and then they’re getting ready for the next, so I, I’m working on my pursuit strategy to get some of these fine folks to share their opinions. , I have a goal, Doug, on it. Yeah.

Adam Ulery [31:45]:Hey, it’s good exposure for him. So let’s do it. We’ll get ’em on here.

Dan Neumann [31:48]:Absolutely. I’ll we’ll crowdsource that. All right, Adam, thank you for starting off 2023 with the agile Coaches Corner podcast and wanna also appreciate the listeners for tuning in for another calendar year of podcasting.

Adam Ulery [32:02]:Thanks, Dan.

Narrator [32:04]:This has been the Agile Coaches Corner podcast, brought to you by Agile thought. The views, opinions, and information expressed in this podcast are solely those of the hosts and the guests, and do not necessarily represent those of Agile thought. Get the show notes and other helpful tips for this episode and other episodes@agilethought.com slash podcast.

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Speakers

Dan Neumann

Principal Enterprise Coach

Dan Neuman is the Director of the US Transformation and Coaching practice in the Agility guild. He coaches organizations to transform the way they work to achieve their desired business outcomes.

With more than 25 years of experience, Dan Neumann is an experienced Agile Coach with a deep knowledge of Agility at the team and organizational levels. He focuses on achieving business outcomes by shifting both mindset and practices, resulting in a disciplined, yet practical approach to solving problems.

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