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There’s a lot of togetherness in today’s agile organizations. Working together does bring results. Did you know, though, that seeking social connections are things we humans do naturally? Our brains are wired to connect. Take advantage of this and you’ll more easily delight your coworkers, customers and stakeholders every day.

Social connections are complicated. Not only are we keeping track of ourselves (what we’re doing and thinking), we’re also trying to keep track of what others are thinking and doing. It requires high-level thought engaging the brain’s neocortex. Why do we do it? Because humans have evolved over thousands of years to be social.

It is one of our fundamental needs, just like food and water – and is just as critical to our survival.
Our brains send pain signals to the body when our fundamental needs are not met. And like hunger or thirst, being disconnected socially also activates the brain’s pain circuitry – pushing us to get that need for closeness met.

When we have social support, our brains decrease levels of the stress hormone cortisol and increase release of the feel-good hormones oxytocin and serotonin.
While we’re born seeking connection, our social development becomes more sophisticated as we mature. By the time we are teenagers, we are able to connect, mentalize, and harmonize with others – figure 1.

Connecting is the need for attachment between parents and children, lovers, friends. Social support, a mother’s voice or hug helps us as individuals to grow and thrive. (1) This is a basic need and oxytocin (the trust or love hormone) is released when we touch, giving us the feeling that all is right in the world.

Oxytocin lowers blood pressure, decreases stress hormones, and increases our sense of trust. And when we are spending nearly one quarter of our time at work, this feeling of attachment in organizations matters, too. It helps keep us engaged and motivated.

Mentalizing comes next, beginning around age 2 or 3 years old. This is where we are making sense of the thoughts, feelings and intentions of others. We are trying to figure out how to avoid social pain and move toward social pleasure. We do this without thinking about it.

Neuroscience research shows that 75% of the time we are not concentrating on solving a particular task or something we have to do, we are thinking about our social relationships or mentalizing. (This has been shown in fMRI studies that reveal the social thinking area of the brain is turned on.)(2)

Mentalizing is the brain’s default network – thinking about others is what we do when we stop thinking about the things we need to do. We are social thinkers naturally.

Finally, harmonizing begins in the pre-teen years. This is when we have self-knowledge, and the ability to set aside our own thoughts and actions and see things from others’ perspectives. What the neuroscience shows is that we are shaped by others’ beliefs and values and we shape others around us.(3)

According to Matthew D. Lieberman, Professor at UCLA Department of Psychology, Psychiatry & Biobehavioral Sciences, “Having our beliefs and values injected in us from the outside (without us realizing it) yields greater harmonizing among people in groups and leads to an improved balance of social pains and pleasures.“ It also allows us to work better together and have deeper, richer relationships, and more collaborative teams and organizations.

Yes, humans are wired to connect with others, but what does this mean in terms of our ability to deliver value faster? How can team members and leaders at every level capitalize on what we do naturally?

Think about social well-being to get to high performance

In order to get to high-performance where people in organizations delight customers every day, leaders need to think about the social well-being of their people. Studies show that not paying attention to people’s social well-being is likely to harm team performance and individual team member’s health.(4)

Encouraging strong relationships via faceto-face meetings is the fastest way to build trust. We need to hear people’s voices, see their expressions, read their body language, and have the ability to touch – okay, here I mean, just a pat on the back or a high five, or perhaps a friendly hug. Even just a simple touch releases oxytocin.

Keeping teams together so that the team members are not constantly trying to figure out “friend or foe“ (is this person going to help me or hurt me?) is another way we can increase trust and motivation. When we know where other people are at and we see them as a friend, we can stop mentalizing about them, work across the organization together as one trusted team, and focus on delivering results.

We also know that leaders and team members need to feel valued and express that they value others. When we feel what we do is important – understanding how we benefit others – the neurotransmitter dopamine is released signaling reward or pleasure in the brain. Studies show this also increases our ability to get to better solutions faster.(5)

Create the environment to support success

As social animals, even the most introverted of us need to feel we belong and build relationships that help us get things done. We can do a lot in the workplace to support this by creating the environment to support it. Making sure we have the opportunity to talk with each other – share ideas, ask questions.

Find meeting space; prioritize time for face-to-face meetings and workshops, and encourage each other to get up and walk over and TALK to people rather than relying on email for communication. How we talk about others in our organization also makes a difference between feeling connected to them or not. Try getting rid of the words “they” and “them”.

L. David Marquet, leadership expert and author of Turn the Ship Around! says, “How people talk about their colleagues in their organization has a profound effect on their feeling of togetherness. Simply saying ‘we’ and ‘us’ changes how we think.” Indeed, the research supports this.

In his book Social, Matthew D. Lieberman writes: “Efforts to make the group actually feel like a group will be rewarded, as team members start to better identify with the team. This will facilitate the kind of harmonizing that will promote individuals thinking about how they can best serve the team, rather than themselves. As social animals, we are wired to do this, as long as we really identify with the team.”(6)

The success of our projects, and delivering value to delight our customers, can be enhanced when we think of our co-workers across all areas of the organization as part of our team.

5 tips to take advantage of our wiring

1. Take time to build relationships across the organization – when we feel we are “in this together” we get better results.
2. Thank people and praise good work – the brain reacts just as well to social rewards as it does to monetary rewards.
3. Make sure people understand the value they will get personally from cooperating with others – cooperation increases the release of dopamine, the brain’s reward neurotransmitter helping us think better.
4. Tell stories about people and the work – stories engage and encourage the release of oxytocin increasing feelings of trust and well-being.
5. Find ways to be more positive – positivity shifts your core view of people and relationships, bringing them closer to you.

Noter
1 “Social vocalizations can release oxytocin in humans“, Leslie J. Seltzer, Toni E. Ziegler, Seth D. Pollak, Proceedings of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences, 12 May 2010.
2 “Counterfactual thinking: an fMRI study on changing the past for a better future“, Van Hoeck, Ma, Ampe, Baetens, Vandekerckhove, Van Overwalle, Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, June 2013, 556-564.
3 “Values, Beliefs, and Proenvironmental Action: Attitude Formation Toward Emergent Attitude Objects“, Stern, Kalof, Dietz, Guagnano, Journal of Applied Social Psychology, September 1995.
4 “Work, psychological wellbeing and performance“, Daniels and Harris, Occupational Medicine, vol.50. No. 5, 304-309, 2000.
5 Give and Take: A Revolutionary Approach to Success, Grant, 2013; “Catecholamine modulation of prefrontal cortex function“, Arnsten, Trends in Cognitive Science, Vol. 2, 11, November 1998.
6 Social – Why Our Brains Are Wired to Connect, Lieberman, 2013.

You know the drill. We get a lot of requirements from stakeholders, ideas from people all around us and suddenly our backlog is so large there is no way we can keep the overview let alone get everything done. Why do we always seem to add things to our products and plans?

Turns out we are biologically wired to add things.

When we can move backlog items into done or check items off our TO DO lists, we feel accomplished. Getting things done signals reward in our brains. And the more that we can get done, the more competent we feel.

Doesn’t even make sense to do all these things?

Doesn’t even make sense to do everything?

In SUBTRACT, a great book by Leidy Klotz, the main message is “try less before more.” But as he writes, the trouble with subtracting is that it we don’t feel as competent or look as competent if we don’t get everything done.

Create a safe space to say “no”

As leaders, we need to create the environment where it is safe to remove items from products and from plans, and to say “no” or “not now” to new items when it makes sense. Not only does it make doing the work more sustainable, experience and research show that we often get more creative solutions when we remove things.

How to support people in achieving less before more:

Watch Jenni’s Leadership Nudge here.

For more, read Subtract: The Untapped Science of Less, by Leidy Klotz

You are always welcome to write a direct message to jenni@goagile.dk

Getting better at what we do not only makes our daily life easier, it increases our motivation. Simply put, we feel a rush when we improve.

The Intent-Based Leadership principle: Don’t be good, get better brings our focus, as leaders, to improving. We can get better at things we don’t think we’re very good at, yet. And, we can get EVEN better at things we are good at already.

By taking advantage of how our brains work using the process of MENTAL CONTRASTING, we can more strategically move from our current state by comparing and contrasting the positive and negative aspects of our future state — and what it will take to get there.

With mental contrasting we use in our brains to make the steps around becoming even better tangible.

When we make our improvement process more tangible via mental contrasting, we increase the likelihood that we will do what it takes to reach our “get even better” goals.

In this video Jenni shares:

Let us know how it goes.

You are always welcome to write a direct message to jenni@goagile.dk

Meet Mads Jæger. Partner KPMG, the fastest growing professional services firm in Denmark. Across their service lines, KPMG works with more than 75% of companies in C20 and 15 of the largest companies in Denmark.

In our latest Conversations with Leaders video, Mads shares his take on what TOGETHER means for him and the people he works with.

“Conversations with Leaders” is special series from goAgile and was created when we published our first book TOGETHER — how leaders involve and engage people to get great things done.

Collaboration, learning and improving, and making the space to gain differing perspectives and ideas are what drives Mads as a leader.

Watch the video and hear Mads Jæger’s answers to these questions:

See all the videos in our series Conversations with Leaders here.

Download a free chapter of TOGETHER here.

Many of the leaders we work with are frustrated that their people don’t speak up and share their ideas or issues that they see.

“Why do I always find out later?” and “Why are our team members so passive in meetings and workshops?” are questions we often hear.

The problem is two-fold:

Watch this Leadership Nudge® based on the research of leading psychological safety expert Amy C. Edmondson to understand what happens in our brains that keeps us from speaking up, and get some quick tips on what you can do about it.

In case you’re interested in more on how to involve and engage your people, check out our book: TOGETHER – How leaders involve & engage people to get great things done.

As always, we’re curious about how our Leadership Nudges work for you. Get in touch and let us know how it’s going.

Write to Jenni at jenni@goagile.dk

The impact of our words on our thinking is clear. When we talk about the great people working with us in our organizations as “resources,” it turns people into objects.

Objects that can be moved around or discarded at will. Over the long term, our language choices change the wiring in our brains, so that we lose empathy for people because we stop thinking about them as human beings.

I feel quite strongly about this.

One of the reasons I enjoy my work so much (and in full disclosure, why it can also be frustrating), is that I care deeply about the people in organizations.

I want every person to feel valued, to be involved and engaged in the work and appreciated for the solutions they bring to the table every day.

In this video I talk about:

The language we use does affect how we think and act. It may seem subtle, and you may think that you know the difference and people know what you mean when you refer to people as “resources” or “FTEs.”

However, by continuing to use that language over time, our brains hardwire to a place where we stop thinking about people as people — creating by itself a major lack of engagement by employees who do not feel valued for who they are or for what they do.

Watch this LeadershipNudge to understand more about why we need to always refer to our people as people, not as numbers on a spread sheet.

It’s not easy to make this happen, and I know I am not alone in this quest! So, please let’s use language as a tool to make people feel valued. We are humans. Not resources.

For more on the effects of dehumanizing language, I recommend: Caste: The Origins of Our Discontent, by Isabel Wilkerson.

To go deeper into how leadership is tied to language, I recommend: Leadership Is Language, by L. David Marquet.

Let me know your experiences and thoughts.

Write to me directly at jenni@goagile.dk

Organizational challenges in the 21st century require more than pure fact in order to get to successful strategies. We no longer live in a world where analysis alone provides the best solutions.

But the bias still exists to solve problems with analysis. Why?

What I’ve seen over the years, is that leaders who make decisions in this very analytical way often believe they are doing so from a position of higher intelligence.

After all, we must be logical, process and analyze the data sequentially, and then make decisions based on facts.

Bias to solve problems with analysis

Don’t get me wrong, some problems should be solved using analysis. Mathematical problems such as multiplying 877 x 45 (answer 39,465, by the way), or calculating what your percentage increases in customer satisfaction measures are in order to keep offering the product or service tied to that performance indicator.

However, most of the challenges leaders face in organizations today are not simply solved using analysis. And leaders who use step-by-step processes to get to a solution for problems, risk making bad decisions.

Instead of relying on analysis, rely on insight in your decision-making process

Insight is a solution that recombines knowledge that you have stored in your brain in an entirely new way.

For many, it is that feeling you have when you ”suddenly” have a brilliant idea. When you absolutely know you have the right answer. What the research on the brain shows, is that making decisions using insight leads us to better solutions.

Though insight is often thought of as a ”gut feeling,” it is actually a process that can be tracked and studied – and not random intuition about what is the right thing to do and what is not.

Insight involves processing and understanding the data and drawing on previous experience, future expectations, conversations stored in memory about similar problems, etc. All this rich information, that if you are given the chance to get at, come together in the brain – leading to the proverbial ”aha moment.”

How insight happens

Research shows that the brain needs rest in order to come to insightful answers to problems. In this resting stage, the brain filters out visual input in order to eliminate distractions to a solution.

This is why many people close their eyes when trying to remember something or when trying to solve a problem. We are reducing visual distractions so the brain can focus on finding the answer.

Positivity affects insight

What the research also shows is that people in a positive mood are better able to solve problems using insight because a positive mood alters the preparatory activity in the brain.

This enhances our detection of competing alternatives to a problem, enhances our ability to switch between various strategies, and helps us to select the answer that will best solve the challenge at hand.

In today’s world, we have to make smarter decisions that rely on a depth of information – not just on pure analysis.

For the many leaders out there who are in analysis paralysis, I say: ”Go home and rest. The answers are in you. Give them a chance to come out!” And even, better yet, ”Go home and have some fun (then rest).”

Positivity is proven to broaden attention and expand the scope of possibilities, leading to finding more creative and better solutions.

There is a common misperception in many organizations transforming to Agile ways of working that Agile is yet one more way to do project management.

And to make it worse, there are many funny sounding names for the frameworks: Scrum, Kanban and SAFe, with corresponding development tools like TDD, DevOps; and then, backlogs with epics, features and user stories. 

The terminology reinforces the misperceptions about Agile as people scramble to understand the new way of working, and to perhaps change roles from “team lead” to “Scrum Master” or “project manager” to “Product Owner.” Don’t even get me started on “RTEs,” “Product Managers” and “Epic Owners.” No wonder it is often difficult to move to Agile.

4 key Involve & Engage principles

The thing is, Agile ways of working focus on four key Involve & Engage principles:

  1. Understand together
  2. Plan together
  3. Validate together
  4. Reflect together 

All to follow the value so that we can deliver that value to customers faster!

When you do those four things, you ARE working in an Agile way. The frameworks are simply techniques to support us as we understand and plan together, demo results and get feedback, and reflect together to learn and improve.

The reality is that transforming to Agile is more about changing our culture and mindsets than about changing to a new methodology.

The culture of “together”

Together does not mean the managers together. Together does not mean the IT teams together. Together does not mean the business together. Together means the key people who have influence, an interest, or a role in the development and delivery of a product TOGETHER. 

Getting to the “together” requires working across the organization, breaking down silos, bringing business and IT functions together, setting up persistent, cross-functional teams, and having managers whose primary role is to support teams by removing impediments, providing clear strategic direction, and helping increase the competencies of people.

When we work together, really together, we also create ownership of the work, ownership of the value we deliver, and ownership of the entire transformation process.

Over time, it is this “together-ness” that creates a “WE” culture – and that is one of the biggest benefits of working in an Agile way.

Act your way to new thinking

Thinking your way to new acting doesn’t work. The neuroscience proves the only way to shift mindsets is to act your way to new thinking.

And while I know the various Agile frameworks can be confusing at first, they all share methods to get us to act in new ways – nudging us to understand together, plan together, demonstrate results frequently and get feedback, and reflect together to learn and improve. 

Over time (sometimes a long time), we get into the habit of doing master planning, PI planning, sprint planning, refining, having demos, stand-up meetings, and retrospectives. We understand the benefits these techniques bring for our customers and for ourselves. And suddenly, we can never go back to our old ways of working. 

This is the mindset shift – and it’s the result of making changes to how we act in our work each day.

So don’t worry too much about the methodologies in Agile. Remember the “together” part – and not only will we deliver value to our customers faster, we’ll affect culture and mindsets in a truly remarkable way. 

For more on TOGETHER, check out: www.togetherthebook.com

The job of Product Owner is incredibly complex – it involves understanding the value that needs to be delivered (from your users’ or customers’ perspective) and figuring out how to work with all the product’s stakeholders to get that value delivered as quickly as possible. 

The following are some tips, questions to ask, as well as links to articles and videos as inspiration.

When it comes to working with stakeholders, you must: 

So how do you do that? Let’s take them one at a time.

Determine the “right” priorities on behalf of your customers

The only way to figure this out, is to really understand what it is that can help you make your customers’ lives better.

Ask yourself:

Help your stakeholders discover what they want

Learn and use facilitation to go from presenting your ideas to presenting your stakeholders’ ideas. Involve and engage them, and help them find out what they want.

If you can see that they are unsure about requirements or any part of the ”why” or ”what” of the product or service they are looking for, you will need to schedule and plan a workshop to help your stakeholders become more clear about their wishes (or ”desirements”). 

If or when your stakeholders don’t know or have a hard time agreeing on what they want – perhaps specific decisions and priorities, then be strong and make the final call yourself, when needed. (Make sure you do so at the last responsible moment.)

Sometimes you might not be 100% sure, and that is okay. Go ahead  and make the decision anyway, so that your team can move on. Oftentimes the quickest way to find out if you are on the right track is to try something, and then inspect and adapt, (rather than keep thinking and analyzing your way to certainty).

The only way you really know is to try and see.

Get input/feedback from stakeholders to guide your decision making

One of the best ways to get input and feedback on a regular basis is through the DEMO. If your team is not holding regular DEMOs, talk with your Scrum Master/team and get the DEMOs on the calendars!

DEMOs are a vital part of the feedback loop – without them it is guess work or requires many, many meetings between PO and various stakeholders to get input about what features/functionality the team is working on.

Not only is this inefficient, you miss the opportunity for stakeholders to understand and plan together – making your life as Product Owner a little easier in the long run. The DEMO provides a structured way to gain the feedback you need to make decisions about what to do next.

Communicate progress and decisions about priorities to stakeholders

Again, the DEMO provides a regular opportunity to show the progress of the work. 

Key stakeholders should also be part of your REFINING THE PRODUCT BACKLOG meetings. These refinement meetings should happen each week – where you look ahead at what is planned and make adjustments to the plan with your stakeholders.

It is also where you can ask more specific questions of your stakeholders to clarify what it is they want – adding ACCEPTANCE CRITERIA, for example, on the features the team will work on.

The Product Owner, of course, must also spend time in casual communications with stakeholders – stopping by where they work and “checking in” with them. Creating relationships that lead to getting richer exchanges of information that will help you in your role.

Manage stakeholder expectations

In addition to providing the opportunity to see the work done and give feedback, the DEMO is a fantastic way to give a sense of predictability. Stakeholders can see for themselves what has been done, and to understand when they will get their release.

Holding a DEMO at the end of each sprint, is a tool for you to help manage expectations as stakeholders see for themselves what they will get and when. 

Remember, you as a Product Owner are often between a “rock and a hard place.” You will not be able to please everyone all the time. Communicating the progress and the challenges your team faces in doing the work will build trust between you and your stakeholders.

Perhaps helping make your stakeholders more patient and understanding of the overall prioritization, even if it does not match their individual prioritization needs.

Help your stakeholders learn new habits as they move to more Agile ways of working

Working Agile – understanding together, planning together, demonstrating results frequently and getting feedback, and reflecting together to learn and improve – requires new ways of acting.

The ceremonies built into the Scrum framework provide the mechanisms to work Agile. However, unless people participating feel that the DEMO, for instance, is valuable for them, they won’t feel positive about this change.

The neuroscience shows that acting your way to new thinking is the path of least resistance for the brain. This is how we learn new habits. This means that you as Product Owner must work closely with your Scrum Master and Team to make sure that new items of work go through you.

Team members must tell stakeholders who come to them with work items: “I’m happy to do this, but you have to talk with my Product Owner. She is the one prioritizing what we do!” This way of working breaks if stakeholders try to get around you!

You, in the meantime, need to constantly remind your stakeholders about WHY we are prioritizing in this way (it’s the overall value delivered for the customer – in the larger context).

This does not always match the individual needs of stakeholders, but most stakeholders understand the idea of the “greater good.” Be consistent and patient. Changing habits takes time!

For more inspiration, check out the following links:

“Product Ownership in a Nutshell” video
(the basics of product ownership from a Scrum perspective)

Jenni’s article from InfoQ on “Communicating Business Value to Stakeholders

Tips for running a DEMO
(substitute the word “product” for “working software” to make it more relevant)

More on running successful team DEMOs from Scaled Agile Framework perspective

Article on Real Options (in the Agile context)
(about decision making and the “last responsible moment”)

In our latest “Conversations with Leaders,” we interview Michael Poulsen, Vice President, Head of Business Technology at Tryg. Tryg is one of the largest insurance companies in Scandinavia with nearly 7,000 employees.

“Conversations with Leaders” is special series from goAgile and was created when we published our first book TOGETHER — how leaders involve and engage people to get great things done.

Michael Poulsen is a talented agile leader. In this video, he shares his insights and experiences as he answers the following questions:



You can see more in our Conversations with Leaders series here.

Download a free chapter of TOGETHER