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Aug 22 WALTHAM MEETING: The Happiness Metric

Happiness is the key to success. Measuring it is the key to improvement. Everyone knows it instinctively, happy people do better work, make customers happy, and make the workplace a better place to be. People are simply fed up with working in an unhappy company. More and more talented people simply won’t work in command and control environments based on punishment and blame, they’d rather be happy.

More and more books and articles are being written about how important happiness is in a company. But this presentation isn’t a feel good exploration of what could possibly make people happy. It will give you actionable steps you can take the next day to start making your workplace a happier one, delight your customers more often, and bury the competition.

This presentation by Alex Brown, COO and Laura Althoff, Executive Director of Scrum Inc., who developed the webinar with Jeff Sutherland, will show you how to do it.

You will hear about:

  • The science of Happiness
  • How to use the Happiness Metric to more than double your productivity
  • The way to take measurable, testable steps to improve Happiness
  • Empower your team, and yourself, to make real, substantial change
  • The difference between Happiness and complacency, and how to “Pop the Happy Bubble”
  • How your corporate culture impacts your bottom line

Register:

http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/264061

About The Presenters:

Alex Brown is the Chief Operating Officer of Scrum Inc. He has deep experience in Agile/Lean management techniques and business strategy. Alex has expertise in helping executive leadership and working teams collaborate effectively through common goals and metrics. He is actively involved in adapting the Scrum methodology beyond its traditional home in software development into other creative team environments, and has a particular interest in pushing the envelope in financial and progress reporting in a Scrum context. Prior to joining Scrum Inc. Alex was a Principal at The Boston Consulting Group, where he led more than twenty projects to improve competitive positioning and transform fortune 100 companies to leaner and more agile operations. His project experience includes cases in the retail/consumer, IT manufacturing, healthcare, finance, and government sectors.

Laura Althoff oversees client relations, coaches a broad range of companies, and leads workshops focused on Agile Leadership for management. She is deeply involved with organizational transformation and keenly aware of both the professional, personal, and structural challenges facing companies who want to move to an Agile framework. Prior to joining Scrum Inc., she spent a decade and a half as a transformational consultant helping leadership teams in a variety of private industries, as well as elite universities and national arts institutions. She sees her focus as helping teams and leadership define both their vision for change and the resources needed to successfully execute it. Laura is a trained mediator, licensed clinical social worker, and a graduate of the Agile Coaching Institute.

Meeting Agenda:

6:30 pm Introduction

7:00 pm Food, beverages, and socializing

7:20 pm Main event

8:20 pm Done

8:30 pm Done Done

Meeting Location:

NOTE: NEW VENUE. *NOT* AT MICROSOFT LOCATION ON JONES RD.

CORPORATE OFFICE PARK
200 West Street
Waltham, MA 02451

The event room is located on the 1st floor. Enter the building. Take the hallway to the left. Walk past the elevators. The door to the event room will be on your right before the restrooms.

Register:

http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/264061

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Aug 23 DOWNTOWN MEETING: The Happiness Metric

Happiness is the key to success. Measuring it is the key to improvement. Everyone knows it instinctively, happy people do better work, make customers happy, and make the workplace a better place to be. People are simply fed up with working in an unhappy company. More and more talented people simply won’t work in command and control environments based on punishment and blame, they’d rather be happy.

More and more books and articles are being written about how important happiness is in a company. But this presentation isn’t a feel good exploration of what could possibly make people happy. It will give you actionable steps you can take the next day to start making your workplace a happier one, delight your customers more often, and bury the competition.

This presentation by Alex Brown, COO and Laura Althoff, Executive Director of Scrum Inc., who developed the webinar with Jeff Sutherland, will show you how to do it.

You will hear about:

  • The science of Happiness
  • How to use the Happiness Metric to more than double your productivity
  • The way to take measurable, testable steps to improve Happiness
  • Empower your team, and yourself, to make real, substantial change
  • The difference between Happiness and complacency, and how to “Pop the Happy Bubble”
  • How your corporate culture impacts your bottom line

NOTE: This event is being held at Sungard in Boston. To accommodate security, registration will be closed at 9:00 PM EST on Tue 8/21. Walk-ins will not be allowed to attend. Please be sure to register in advance for this event and bring a photo ID.

Register:

http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/264067

About The Presenters:

Alex Brown is the Chief Operating Officer of Scrum Inc. He has deep experience in Agile/Lean management techniques and business strategy. Alex has expertise in helping executive leadership and working teams collaborate effectively through common goals and metrics. He is actively involved in adapting the Scrum methodology beyond its traditional home in software development into other creative team environments, and has a particular interest in pushing the envelope in financial and progress reporting in a Scrum context. Prior to joining Scrum Inc. Alex was a Principal at The Boston Consulting Group, where he led more than twenty projects to improve competitive positioning and transform fortune 100 companies to leaner and more agile operations. His project experience includes cases in the retail/consumer, IT manufacturing, healthcare, finance, and government sectors.

Laura Althoff oversees client relations, coaches a broad range of companies, and leads workshops focused on Agile Leadership for management. She is deeply involved with organizational transformation and keenly aware of both the professional, personal, and structural challenges facing companies who want to move to an Agile framework. Prior to joining Scrum Inc., she spent a decade and a half as a transformational consultant helping leadership teams in a variety of private industries, as well as elite universities and national arts institutions. She sees her focus as helping teams and leadership define both their vision for change and the resources needed to successfully execute it. Laura is a trained mediator, licensed clinical social worker, and a graduate of the Agile Coaching Institute.

Meeting Agenda:

3:30 pm Introduction

4:00 pm Beverages and socializing

4:20 pm Main event

5:20 pm Done

5:30 pm Done Done

Meeting Location:

Sungard
100 Hight Street, 19th Floor
Boston, MA  02110

Please enter the building through the 100 High Street entrance. You must check in with security at the front lobby with a photo ID and get a temporary pass. After getting your temporary pass, take the elevator to the 19th floor. The conference room can be seen after exiting the elevator.

Register:

http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/264067

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How Games Deliver Happiness & Learning

In a previous post on gaming, happiness and learning, I laid it out for you. Here I go again!

When I talk about a game, I mean Jane McGonigal’s definition. This simple definition does not include competition, or any zero-sum “your win is my loss” dynamics. (That is just ONE KIND of game.) So, please STOP and use this definition,  to refer to the rest of the blog post:

Any good game has the following characteristics:

  • A clear goal
  • Clear, uniformly applied rules
  • A way to receive feedback on play
  • Opt-in participation

That last one is key. If the goal, rules and feedback setup are unacceptable to me, I need to be able to OPT OUT. Got that? Please do not try to MAKE me play.

Every good game is opt-in and that means I can OPT OUT.

NOTE: This game definition comes from Jane McGonigals book, REALITY IS BROKEN. Thank you Jane !

Next: You know that people want the good feelings that associate with happiness. The essential feelings that support happiness in a social setting include:

  • A sense of control
  • A sense of progress
  • A sense of membership and community
  • A sense of higher purpose and meaning

NOTE: This framework  comes from Tony Hsieh’s book, DELIVERING HAPPINESS. Thank you Tony Hsieh!

OK, now let me spell it out for you: games that have the 4 properties described by McGonigal definitely deliver happiness as described by Hsieh.

Repeat! Games that have the 4 properties described by McGonigal definitely deliver happiness as described by Hsieh.

How? Here is how:

Happiness Property: How a GAME delivers this Happiness property:
Sense of Control A clear goal delivers a sense of control by making the goal explicit. There is no guessing.Clear rules deliver a sense of control by making the rules explicit. There is no guessing.Opt-in participation puts me in the driver’s seat. I DECIDE if I play.
Sense of Progress A clear way to get feedback (the “score”) delivers a sense of progress by showing exactly how effort translates to results.
Sense of Membership & Belonging Opt-in participation means the person chooses to engage. When everyone playing is opting-in, a large increase in group engagement is the result.
Sense of Higher Purpose If the goal of the game is a higher cause that leads to a chance at changing the world, that game can deliver a sense of higher purpose. For example, web sites like www.HopeMob.com definitely deliver this sense of higher purpose.

 

Applications of this Knowledge

OK, now let’s look at meetings.

Meetings are usually soul-sucking death marches from hell.

Why? Because they are poorly structured games, that’s why.

The typical meeting:

  • Has a vague goal !!
  • Has unclear rules (if it has any rules at all!). Further, some rules do not apply to certain people attending the meeting, mostly authority figures !!
  • Has no clear way to track progress during the meeting. No visible checklist, progress bar, or task board, etc. Most meetings do not provide any feedback on progress !!
  • Is MANDATORY for you to attend !!

My point: ALL meetings are games. And they are POORLY STRUCTURED games that are NOT FUN to play because of their bad structure !

Still with me? OK, all classes are meetings !

Repeat, all classes are meetings!

Once again, the meeting is poorly structured– UNLESS the teacher is a good one. Good teachers pay attention intuitively to good-game mechanics, whether they understand that term or not !! Good teachers always provide the minimal structure that makes any game FUN:

  • A clear goal
  • Clear, uniformly applied rules
  • A way to receive feedback on play
  • Opt-in participation

Why? Because they UNDERSTAND that they must create a space that is safe for thinking and learning. All learning is experimentation. Experimentation (“learning”) is RISKY unless the space is made and kept OPEN for thinking, learning, and BEING WRONG. No way I am going to feel safe if I am made a fool for guessing wrong ! Every good teacher knows this, and creates a safe space for thinking and learning– for experimenting.

So, when you think about “games in education”, please note:

  • All meetings are games, and all meetings need good-game structure to be enjoyable
  • Good-game structure creates feelings of control, progress, membership and purpose
  • All classes are meetings, and can benefit almost immediately by tuning up the game mechanics

I do not know how to be any more clear about this. Meetings are broken, and classroom learning is broken, because they are GAMES: games that are NOT FUN to play.

Meetings are games. Therefore, anyone who thinks that they are adding game mechanics to meeting and games is missing the point.

Meetings and classes are ALREADY games.

They simply need a tune-up !!

My book THE CULTURE GAME explains how to do this and provides actionable guidance on how to tune up your meetings!!

Remember: every classroom is a meeting, and every meeting is a game. Game your meetings!

See also:

Gaming Happiness At Work

 

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July 25 WALTHAM MEETING: Moving Beyond Icebreakers

In this session you’ll experience a few interactives from the book “Moving Beyond Icebreakers” which includes over 300 interactives and how to use them effectively to achieve meeting goals, build team, address difficult issues, and engage communities. Learn how seemingly simple activities can have the power to transform your meetings and your teams. Visit movingbeyondicebreakers.org to learn more about the book and the model that we have used for over 25 years in our work to effectively change communities.

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REGISTER

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About The Presenter:

Heang Ly has over Thirteen years of experience leading both youth and adult groups in a variety of settings. She has organized and led teams in schools, non-profits, community groups, and universities. As Director of Consulting and Training at The Center for Teen Empowerment, Heang provides trainings as well as short term and long term technical support to any organization or company interested in using Teen Empowerment’s Moving Beyond Icebreakers interactive approach to leading meetings, facilitating, and managing groups. The Moving Beyond Icebreakers Model, is the product of over 25 years of thoughtful experience in making institutions in the community more effective, impacting the values, beliefs, and behaviors of youth and adults, and developing mechanisms for people of all ages to work together productively toward achieving their goals.

For more information about the organization’s powerful work in the community, visit teenempowerment.org. Ms. Ly has been with the Center for Teen Empowerment for seven years. She holds a Bachelor’s degree from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, in Psychology and Education as well as a Master’s degree from Harvard’s Graduate School of Education in Administration, Planning, and Social Policy.

Meeting Agenda:

6:30 pm Agile and Scrum introduction

7:00 pm Food, beverages, and socializing

7:20 pm Main Event: Heang Ly on Moving Beyond Icebreakers

8:20 pm Done

8:30 pm Done Done

Meeting Location:

NOTE: NEW VENUE. *NOT* AT MICROSOFT LOCATION ON JONES RD.

CORPORATE OFFICE PARK
200 West Street
Waltham, MA 02451

The event room is located on the 1st floor. Enter the building. Take the hallway to the left. Walk past the elevators. The door to the event room will be on your right before the restrooms.

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REGISTER

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July 26 2012 (DOWNTOWN): SUSTAINING AGILITY

DAN LE FEBVRE on: SUSTAINING AGILITY

In simplest terms, Agile adoption is about change. Changing our team structures, changing how we make decisions, changing how we deliver software. As we know, however, Agile adoption is anything but simple. Yes, frameworks like Scrum and Kanban can be simple to understand, but implementing them effectively in the real world can be daunting.

Attend this session to get a deeper understanding of the forces at work during an Agile adoption. We’ll show you how the status quo attempts to maintain itself and how to go about installing mechanisms the help you slide the staus quo toward Agile’s desired state. A state of sustainability.

WHAT YOU WILL LEARN

  • Agile transistion dymanics through Force Field Analysis
  • Designing and developing impediment removal mechanisms
  • Managing fear and conflict during Agile adoption
  • Creating internal communites of practice
  • Adopting Agile in the annual project planing process

NOTE: This event is being held at Sungard in Boston. To accommodate security, registration will be closed at Midnight on Tue 7/24. Walk-ins will not be allowed to attend. Please be sure to register in advance for this event and bring a photo ID.

REGISTER

http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/253660

MEETING SCHEDULE

3:30 PM Agile Manifesto Introduction

4:00 PM Break with light food, beverage

4:20 PM MAIN EVENT: SUSTAINING AGILITY with Dan LeFebvre

5:20 PM DONE

5:30PM DONE DONE

REGISTER

http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/253660

ABOUT THE PRESENTER

Dan LeFebvre

Dan LeFebvre is the founder of DCL Agility, LLC, a provider of agile and Scrum coaching, training, and transition services. He is a Certified Scrum Coach with over twenty years in software product development as a developer, manager, director, and coach. He has been applying agile practices to successfully deliver products since 2003.

Dan helps software engineering organizations improve quality and productivity. After successfully delivering software products in diverse industries, he has developed a strong passion for helping organizations create great products and teams.

Dan spent two years as the internal agile coach for Kronos, Boston-based Software Company, where he coordinated and implemented Scrum in the 700 person engineering organization across all sites including Massachusetts, Atlanta, Chicago, Oregon, Montreal, British Columbia, Belgium and India. This resulted in increased visibility into the development process and a reduction in defects by 60% in 18 months.

Dan holds a Master’s degree in Computer Science from Boston University. He is a Certified Scrum Master, Certified Scrum Professional, and the first Certified Scrum Coach in New England. He has contributed articles to Scrum Alliance and Boston SPIN. He has presented at Scrum Gatherings, agile conferences, and agile user groups around the country.

NOTE: This is a AGILE BOSTON/DOWNTOWN event. The venue is:

SUNGARD
100 HIGH STREET, 19th Floor
BOSTON MA  02110

Please enter the building through the 100 High Street entrance. You must check in with security at the front lobby with a photo ID and get a temporary pass. After getting your temporary pass, take the elevator to the 19th floor. The conference room can be seen after exiting the elevator.

REGISTER

http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/253660