Stories Connecting Dots with Markus Andrezak

What have the following things got in common? Weasels, the San Jose public budgeting process, bootstrapping, disposable software, games and mods of games, figure skating, and a Nike sprinter show falling apart after reaching the 100m line? Well, it's Luke Hohmann they have in common. I learned an awful lot from Luke. Years and years ago I attended one of his Innovation Games trainings and while I really really liked it, it took me years to realise what I really learned. For me, personally, this was the event that finally made me decide to leave the developing world towards the product or business side of the world. This event moved a switch in my head. But what I really realised years later was that I really groked games, game design and above all, I had learned how to facilitate. Luke is so deep into „designing" his games that never is it by chance if Luke stands, sits, is in the middle of the room, or in a corner or if he even tears apart some game thing that hangs on the wall. Even designing the simple name tags in the beginning of a class is transformed into a designed game, when Luke does it. But Luke got carried away by the games he found. He bootstrapped an enterprise software company that produced a platform for playing a serious games framework at massive scale. Several thousand payers do not bother him. Scaling world wide also does not bother him. No problem seems to be deep for him to tackle. And this then led Luke to extend his activities to facilitating public budgeting rounds, which he started in San Jose. Also, he applies his framework to education. Who knows what's next? This interview really is a rollercoaster all over the place and also contains really personal stories on why Luke chose the path he chose and what led him. You can see from the show notes how far and deep we went. I'd really urge you to listen to the end. The interview gets even better as longer as we sat together. I hope you enjoy the interview as much as I did and you learn much as I learned! Chapters 0:03:00 What are Serious Games, Innovation Games? 0:23:30 Applying Innovation Games 0:48:24 Scaling Innovation Games in several dimensions & Luke, The Entrepreneur 0:59:04 Personal Choices & the power of collaboration in wicked problems 1:32:22 Concepts - self application of games, disposable software, extrinsic vs. intrinsic quality, strategy frameworks as the next tipping point Chapter Notes 0:03:00 Chapter one: What are Serious Games, Innovation Games? What are Serious Games? „You play a serious game not for pleasure but to have a business outcome. Innovation games are a collection of different games as we have different business problems to solve. A game has four components: (1) It has a goal, something you want to achieve. (2) It has a set of resources and rules and interactions, (3) it has a space or a field of play (4) a way to keep score Why Luke calls games frameworks nowadays. 10:52 The role of fun (or not) in Serious Games; Facilitating Games; (Designing) Games as a way to give permission 17:15 Details matter: A pencil without an eraser „If you want me to engage in the act of design, then don't give me a pencil without an eraser. 18:20 Explaining the „Speed Boat" game as an example, how it can be applied (e.g. as a technique for team retrospectives or identifying improvement potential in products. Games have the potential to de-personalize feedback and critique and thus make feedback more acceptable and actionable 0:23:30 Chapter 2: Applying Innovation Games 23:30 Scrum as a game and changing the rules of a game; Modding games is great and the goal; When you learn innovation games, you learn modding them 28:23 Modding Monopoly as an example why modding makes sense 31:18 Innovation games as a way to discover why and intent and why you don't send bug reports to Richard Stallmann 34:12 Scaling organisations w/ Innovation games „It's not the picture on the wall that drives behaviour, but it's the picture in the head that drives behaviour. That means: You gotta change the picture in the head before you change the picture on the wall." 35:42 Using the „Buy a feature" game to discuss portfolios „Any performing executive team will always have more ideas than it is able to fund. So the question becomes „how to pick?". So McKinsey has the following rules and you want to listen to McKinsey and not Agilists. McKinsey says: pass one - do ROI. Get rid of the projects that are not attractive for ROI - that's easy. But you still gonna have too many. The second pass: Look at the passion and interests of the team. Now, how do we get to the passion and the interest of this team? Well, we have this game!" 39:28 Explaining great experiences is hard: „Reading about riding a bike is not riding a bike" 41:58 - An example of shrinking a portfolio of 38 projects to 6 „There is no way a human being can keep and compare 45 things in his head. I will do better then I put them on the board" 0:48:24 Chapter 3: Scaling Innovation Games in several dimensions & Luke, The Entrepreneur 48:24 Scaling games to gigantic size: (1) Scaling for magnitude of the problem. From market research to internal use to use in agile organisations (2) Scaling the number of participants: From few in person to several thousand online (3) Scaling in industry, e.g. the Austrian Chamber of Commerce (Wirtschaftskammer Österreich) „Really, is my Scaling Agile book that I'm supposed to follow really more than 400 pages?" „You're reading these books on Agile and they're anything but. It's like I'm reading the top ten books on Agile and they outweigh me" 55:16 Entrepreneurship - building an enterprise software company without venture capital funding, Adventures of bootstrapping. 0:59:04 Chapter 4: Personal Choices & the power of collaboration in wicked problems 59:04 Getting personal - choices in life: Figure skating as first exercise in latching onto something without compromise. The way of the weasel. Latching onto something and sticking to it. Not chasing the easy way, but the only way possible. „So, yeah, I thought: I'm gonna live like a weasel for a rest of my life" 65:01 The power of collaboration - „I really do believe - and it's not just Luke, it's also my team and people like you in our network - we really do believe that collaborating teams are the best hope we have for solving the problems we face" „Teams are everywhere, Teams are the foundation of our work in the future" A list of books (links below): Team of Teams Team Genius The Silo Effect Exponential Organisations The Connected Company 1:06:51 Extending games to public matters, like funding and budgeting decisions for the public: Every Voice engaged foundation 1:11:16 Games in education, on the example of middle school 1:15:16 Not the easiest way to live, but the most satisfying. The Weasel way again. More examples by Luke and Henry Rollins 1:20:56 The importance of the support of others and support in success 1:25:33 „And So I've stopped talking to VCs" and what Luke still learned from VCs 1:32:22 Chapter 5: Concepts - self application of games, disposable software, extrinsic vs. intrinsic quality, strategy frameworks as the next tipping point 1:32:00 Self applying the cure to the Luke's company so that everyone knows the experience to the companies' benefit. 1:36:45 Disposable Software 1:39:02 Release quality, intrinsic quality, extrinsic quality 1:39:45 „They improved quality so much that they lost all innovation." „You know, the guy who built Flappy Bird, I don't know if he had green bar automated tests. Did he have an automated production pipeline? CI/CD? No, I doubt it. He was just a kid having some fun. And he built an incredibly high extrinsic quality App. Now, I don't know about the level of intrinsic quality … and the point is: It doesn't matter. 1:42:28 Why the ideal Sprinter shoe should fall apart after exactly 100m 1:46:28 Strategy frameworks on the tipping point: The Ansoff Matrix - an early approach on strategy „As we move from physical labor to knowledge work - and we continue to move down knowledge work - these (strategy & problem solving) frameworks are the next tipping point and it's really fundamental" Links and Notes Books and resources by Luke Hohmann Innovation Games Beyond Software Architecture Journey of the Software Professional: The sociology of Software Development Blog Post: The role of passion in prioritization Every Voice Engaged foundation Organizations andPeople mentioned and more resources Wirtschaftkammer Österreich WKO Report on the cooperation between who and Conteneo Interview with Henry Rollins as a Joe Rogan Experience Podcast: Books mentioned Annie Dillard - „Living like Weasels" from the book „Teaching a Stone to Talk" Team of Teams Team Genius The Silo Effect Exponential Organisations The Connected Company Reality is broken, Jane McGonigal Gamestorming People mentioned Jane McGonigal: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_McGonigal Game Designer Matt Leacock (e.g. Pandemic Board Game) Figure skater Toller Cranston: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toller_Cranston

Dave Gray - Liminal Thinking To be honest, doing this podcast is the treat of all treats I am giving away to myself. Already in the small, tiny history of this podcast – this has been an opportunity for me to connect and re-connect to all these people who's ideas and work are so important to me, mean a lot to me and really changed the way I think and work. And now, for this episode, I'll talk to Dave, Dave Gray. And there's a funny story that connects me with Dave and I mean that literally. Years ago, I already read - and applied - Dave's earliest book Gamestorming. And to an even wider degree I sucked in his book „The Connected Company" - which I think is one of the most brilliant descriptions of the change that companies will have to face when they want to keep up in the … I don't know how to call it … maybe, digital era. But really, while I loved these books, I did not know at all who Dave is. One day, though, Jabe Bloom, now working with Praxis Flow, introduced me to Dave and suggested we'd have to talk. At the time, Dave was interviewing people for his new book. And so we met on Skype and talked. At the end, I asked Dave what the book will be all about and Dave said, he wouldn't yet know. And then, roughly mid last year, his new book came out and it stunned me: The book is called "Liminal Thinking". And from my perspective it is the distilled and abstracted learning of all these interviews that Dave took. Rather than explaining how people and companies have to change, what this book explains is how each one of us has to change and work on himself to have an impact on our environments. At least if we want to be happy at work, keep people happy at work, want to have the right direction of impact or … just want to be happy. While being not the thickest of books, it is a read that I would recommend to take in small steps and really enjoy - and also take all the challenging exercises. Dave is a guy of many facets. At the core, it seems to me, he is driven by finding ways to influence the world of work to be a better place. Since early on he was driven by looking for tools that help people to get a better understanding of what is going o around him. Since being a kid he is working on visualization of context and he treated this as an art form. Along the way, he discovered games as a meaningful form of understanding. In 1993, he founded XPlane, a company that helps companies to understand and, well explane, you guess it, mainly by ways of visualizing. Chapters 00:00:00 Intro 00:03:08 What Is Liminal Thinking Punk & Rap & R&B; Thresholds; Transitions 00:08:28 Changing yourself to impact your environment rather than changing others The dog story - The way you look at the situation influences the outcome; „We underestimate how much our beliefs about another individual tend to create the behavior we expect" 00:19:23 How Dave's latest book „Liminal Thinking" was conceived and written It started as a missing book on Agile and become something different. The process of extending and abstracting the message (by extending the research) 00:30.13 The structure of „Liminal Thinking" and why it works 00:34:32 How things that are good for you don't always feel good on the example of „Liminal Thinking" being on the brink of nearly not being written at one time and the catharsis of re-re-revising the book again and again. 00:41:13 How Dave Gray discovered and developed the art form of visualization and how that helps him and even drives and carries his own company. "What we can draw is always ahead of what we can make. We have to be able to draw it before we can make it. Not everything that can be drawn can be created or done. But: If it can't be drawn it can definitely not be done." „To me that (visualization) is my art." „The polite way to say NO is „sorry, I don't understand that" 0:48:30 How visualization can help communication and overcome the effects of the telephone game in companies and thus align companies over strategy and other concepts. The journey to visualize is even more important than the effect of having the visualization. Visualization helps communicate and come up with the right questions. Links Dave Gray's profile at his company XPLANE Dave's first book "Gamestorming" Dave's book „The Connected Company" Dave's latest book „Liminal Thinking" Dave's videos of interviews he did for the book If you liked this issue, please make sure you give this podcast a five star rating or any other form of appreciation. Also, I am always happy for any comments sent to me on any of the available channels. Thanks for listening in and I hope to have you as my guest again for my next show. Good bye!

In der vierten Episode bin ich zu Gast vor Ort bei [sipgate] in Düsseldorf und habe sie dort in Ihren Räumen in Düsseldorf aufgenommen. sipgate macht Telefonie für zu Hause, unterwegs und das Büro. Und das macht es nicht irgendwie. Sondern sipgate macht alles selber. sipgate ist also eine kleine Telekom, aber eben vollkommen anders. Das Interview führt von der ursprünglichen Geschäftsidee - Vorwahlnummern für Auslandstelefonate im Internet anzeigen - bis zur heutigen Ausbaustufe: Telefonie in allen Stufen selber bauen und anbieten. Dabei wird - hoffentlich auch bei Euch zu Hause - deutlich wie ein Unternehmen wächst und durch welche Stufen es geht. Von der Gründung im Studentenwohnheim, über das Schlafen im Büro und auch einmal nur noch 7000 Euro auf dem Konto bis zum heutigen, ausgebauten Produkt. Wir beschäftigen uns natürlich auch damit, was eine Firma ausserhalb des Produkts machen muss und wie sie dem Markt gegenüber immer aufgeschlossen bleiben kann. Vor allem: wie schafft es sipgate in diesem Markt innovationsfähig zu bleiben? Nebenbei hören wir auch, was eine Küche, ein Restaurant, [ein Buch] und [die Veranstaltungsreihe LeanDus] damit zu tun haben. sipgate ist eine Firma von feinen Menschen gemacht und das führt direkten Weges dazu, dass es eine ganz Feine Firma ist. Im Gespräch hören wir aber, dass auch das nicht selbstverständlich, sondern eine ganze Menge Arbeit. Wie gesagt, es gibt keine Abkürzungen! Kapitel 0:00:00 Intro Aufbrüche 0:02:02 Genesis - Selbstanwendung, Daten eintippen, 19 Raucher und ein Nichtraucher 0:13:02 Einbruch und Neuerfindung - 7.000 EUR, Ein Schwenk / Pivot in 3 Monaten, Hyperspeed, all hands on deck 0:18:35 Radikales DiY 0:24:32 Regulierung, na und? - „Um Regulierung haben wir uns damals nicht so gekümmert." ; „Wir haben damals tatsächlich die Grundgebühr abgeschafft" 0:27:28 Aller Anfang ist … improvisiert 0:29:44 Fertig? Nö! Stabilisierung 0:34:22 Wandel und Kultur - nach einem Blick in ein schwarzes Loch 0:39:26 Richtung geben - Rollen ändern sich 0:44:00 Kommunikation überall Vorne bleiben 0:46:52 Gestalten bis der Arzt kommt - nach innen und außen 0:50:26 Das Restaurant - der Hub, ein Ferrari, unerwartete Effekte 0:58:10 24 Work Hacks - das Buch 1:01:22 Marketing und Sales - the sipgate way 1:11:14 Lean DUS - embrace 1:15:53 Ein toller Abschied Die Geschichte von sipgate ist spannend und ich hoffe, Ihr konntet das so lebendig miterleben wie ich. Es ist schon beeindruckend, wie direkt und aus dem Leben die Phasen von sipgate waren und wie intensiv das alles gelebt werden musste. Und das ist wohl auch der Unterschied zu einem Innovationsansatz „by the book". Der Unterschied ist „skin in the game". „Skin in the game" hat bei sipgate dazu geführt, dass sie genau die Firma gebaut haben, die sie bauen mussten, weil sie eben damit leben und glücklich werden müssen. „Skin in the game" hat auch zu unglaublicher Identifikation mit dem Service und Produkt geführt und in der folge zum Übernachten im Büro wenn es sein muss. „Skin in the game" sorgte auch dafür, dass eine Erneuerung des Geschäftsmodells (und der Technik) in Monaten erfolgte. Und „Skin in the game" sorgt bis heute dafür, dass man sich der Notwendigkeit zur Erneuerung ständig bewusst ist - und handeln muss. Auch bei sipgate wird wieder deutlich, wie die handelnden Personen die Kultur definieren. Weil sie müssen. Die Gründer definieren automatisch, im Vorbeigehen die Kultur und im Nachhinein wird deutlich, welche Weichen sie gestellt haben um dorthin zu gelangen. Dadurch ist sipgate unverwechselbar sipgate und die Art und Weise wie geführt wird drückt sich in allem aus. Genauso beeindruckend ist aber, dass man dieses Geschäftsmodell nur „entdecken" konnte. Stück für Stück. Würde man heute hingehen und versuchen dieses Geschäftsmodell am Reißbrett entwerfen würde man scheitern oder seiner eigenen Arbeit nicht trauen. Den Telekommunikationsmarkt hacken wäre als Investitionsmodell kaum möglich oder glaubwürdig in einer Präsentation. Um das zu schaffen muss von Grund auf Pioniere werden. Ich bedanke mich für Eure Aufmerksamkeit. Ich würde mich freuen, wenn Ihr Bewertungen und Kommentare hinterlasst oder über irgendeinen Kanal an mich schickt! Und genau so freue mich auf die nächste Folge in ein paar Wochen, die wieder ganz anders wird Bis dahin, Markus

Michael Foley, author of the bestseller „The Age of absurdity - why modern life makes it hard to be happy" is the guest of this episode. The book is a celebration of insight from the most diverse philosophers, and an examination of the states we'd like to achieve and desperately are missing to hit. All his books center round deep insights around everyday life. Michael lives in London and since 2007 has completely devoted to writing. In one of his latest books, he goes into depth with Henri Bergson, a french philosopher, who lived from 1859 to 1941, son to a Polish jewish composer and an Irish jewish mother. At the time he was one of the most influential thinkers and kind of pre-dated quantum physics, chaos theory amongst other topics n science. He also won the nobel price. One of Bergsons many contributions was process theory. In a nutshell, process theory says that everything is in constant movement, there are no finite end states, everything is connected. While this may sound trivial, the consequences are overwhelming. With this model, Bergson lay the model for models that ended up being discovered by science only decades later. Statements of Quantum Theory, Emergence and Chaos Theory and lots more are such examples. So, embrace yourself for an entertaining deep dive into what the process view is, how Bergson sees Emergence and chaos theory, what bottom up and top down thinking and approaches bring to us and how tension helps us to innovate and much much more. Make sure, you also have a look at Michael Foley's books: „The Age of absurdity - why modern life makes it hard to be happy" "Life Lessons from Bergson" and many more ... What really keeps me thinking after this episode are two things: 1) How parallel and connected Michael Foley's world of thinking is connected to mine, although coming from totally different angles and professions. 2) How it is possible that a nobel price winner like Henri Bergson is so unknown today, after laying such broad foundations for philosophy, literature, science and much more. Incredible! Chapters are: Intro Chapter One: Henri Bergson, his process theory and what it means for modern life, (non)determinism Chapter Two: Emergence and Chaos Theory: Is emergence crawling or also big bumps? Emergence and it's meaning for agile. Emergence and innovation. The meaning of randomness and serendipity in innovation. Chapter Three: Bottom up vs top down: properties of approaches and combining them via feedback loops to create great systems Chapter Four: Tension is good for innovation; Tension and facilitation and much more Chapter Five: Process thinking and fun & comedy; petrification; Paying attention a means against getting petrified; Urge for the next thing, FOMO, Silo and specialisation as features of top down thinking. Some statements from the interview: Chapter one Henri Bergson, his process theory and what it means for modern life, (non)determinism "The first mistake is to think there is some final way of doing things, that can be quantified and written down" "It is a different way of looking at things, which doesn't accept any finality" "Linear logic is a good way to develop technology but not helpful in understanding human situations and human systems" Chapter two Emergence and Chaos Theory: Is emergence crawling or also big bumps? Emergence and it's meaning for agile. Emergence and innovation. The meaning of randomness and serendipity in innovation. "We accidentally developed consciousness, which is our great blessing and our great curse." "We only recently understood the principle behind it (emergence), which is the feedback loop and the feedback loop is one of the most important concepts ever discovered in the 20th century" "And the beauty of it is: it's so simple" "Everything goes round in a circle, there is no linear cause and effect" "Life is the constant creation of the absolutely new, the unpredictable, the unrepeatable" "Success and failure are emergent feature, I think. … What people like to think is that they control success and failure: when people succeed they think it's due to their own effort. When they fail, they put it down to bad luck or fate or someone else's fault." "The genius idea is to suddenly connect two things that haven't been connected." Chapter three Bottom up vs. top down: properties of approaches and combining them via feedback loops to create great systems "It is a general tension, there is good things and bad thing about both" "Basically everything started bottom up, through evolution" "The internet is a great example for it (the interaction of bottom up and top down) "Bottom up is creative, imaginative, energetic … but it has no direction" "Top down is very good for discipline and control and direction, but it has no energy or imagination - it tends to become fixed" "Populism is the bottom asserting its energy" "A mistake of bottom up is to think that anything new must be better" "Flattery is the most important management tool" "The bad news, again, is that people think flattery is easy … it is an art" "Flattery is jut a tool, it doesn't mean people are good or bad." Chapter four Tension is good for innovation; Tension and facilitation and much more "Tension is what's happening between top down and bottom up, for example" "I think tension can be a creative force, providing the people can hold the tension in balance without trying to suppress the other parties." "... (if out of balance that can lead) to a violent relationship. so what you want is harmonious tension. Hard to achieve, though" "Justice and merci, the demands of the individual / the demands of others, there is no answer to these things. They are tensions. they can be creative tensions if we hold them together and understand them and try not to let the one dominate the other too much. The trick is to hold them in tension" Chapter five Process thinking and fun & comedy; petrification; Paying attention a means against getting petrified; Urge for the next thing, FOMO, Silo and specialisation as features of top down thinking. "Of course, it's difficult. But then, everything is difficult. Life is meant to be difficult." "Philosophy is just about learning" A re products meant to make things easy? Easy vs. experience. "… there is that tendency today that experience is about doing something new, going somewhere new, finding new people. We see this constantly in relationships too. People constantly want new people rather than understanding the value in the people they are actually with. So it's a problem of potential. The world is obsessed with potential." "Q: Living in the moment is something we need to practice? Michael: Yes, but I really got to hate that phrase because it has become such a cliché. We also have to stop using the word mindfulness. … I agree with the principle, totally. But it's become a cliché." "Comedy could become the new mindfulness." "My theory is that play is the new fashionable thing, play is the new mindfulness." "The paradox is: you can detach in order to engage more" "The essence of excellence is to make it seem effortless" "I am working on a book that combines everything, that' what I want to do. Not just philosophy, but fiction and poetry. … What I want to do is pull them all together in one strange book. … and it'll never be published because my agent hates it."

This episode is held in English language. My guest is Jeff Sussna, founder and principal of ingineering.IT. He mainly works in the world of operations and is a well known speaker all over the world in the area of DevOps. Surprisingly, he approaches this field with the tools of Service Design, Cybernetics and Promise Theory. Using these ways of thinking, he also wrote a great book, „Designing Delivery", in which describes the role and challenges of companies in the new world where brands and product development are dialogues. In this conversation, we discuss the following topics: - Services as a fundamental model of coping with a modern, complex world, in which companies need relationships and conversations with their clients. - The role of Design Thinking and Service Design - How Cybernetics can help us understand and decide in situations of complexity and uncertainty - How the model of Promise Theory helps us deal with systems that sometimes fail or are incomplete and how this again helps us to live with the unavoidable circumstance of failure - Thinking broad and embracing ambiguity and dealing with that through balance - Discussions on mindfulness Beyond all, what I really learned and appreciated in this interview was Jeff's ability to break down complex thoughts in easy to understand small steps, taking nothing as granted. Kind of like a good maths teacher. Content: 0:00:00 - Introduction 0:01:19 - When, how and why did Dev and Ops separated? 0:08:06 - Nostalgie of full stack dev and how we are facing bigger tasks because of the INternet's success 0:14:01 - Jeff is not on the wrong end of the value chain with his topics, the whole company should embrace them 0:22:25 - Let's have positiv impact on people, outside and inside of the company 0:28:05 - Is „the family" and „relationship" a good metaphor for how we should work? 0:32:58 - Announcement of winners of Give Aways from Episode 1 0:34:27 - Jeff's Book „Designing Delivery" and the concept of services, Jobs To Be Done, are physical products easier than digital products? 0:47:09 - Design Thinking and Service Design 0:55:27 - Cybernetics 1:01:04 - Portfolio and Feedbackloops as a Cybernetic Systems 1:02:13 - Promise Theory, embracing failure in computer and human systems, incompleteness of systems (also in maths) 1.11:16 - On thinking beyond, going broad and the power of serendipity 1:14:28 - Amiguity and Balance 1:15:11 - On mindfulness, your reaction defines the outcome, there are no shortcuts

In der ersten Folge von Stories Connecting Dots habe ich mit Klaus Leopold über Kanban gesprochen. Klaus macht Kanban in normal, groß und ganz groß. Wir sprechen darüber was Kanban überhaupt ist und wie es Unternehmen helfen kann Dinge explizit zu machen und dadurch besser entscheiden zu können wie es eigentlich darum geht, den Menschen eine sinnvollere Arbeit zu ermöglichen dass die besten Dinge im Leben nicht zu erklären sondern zu erfahren sind über's Bücher schreiben wir verlosen Bücher wie das Vorleben von Werten und Entscheidungen einfacher ist als etwas zu fordern wie man von "einfach coole Sachen machen" zu einem der mietgefragten Kanban-Implementierer Europa wird und vieles vieles mehr Links: Klaus' neuestes Buch "Kanban in der Praxis" Seine Firma Leanability Klaus auf twitter