Wine Store: The pandemic compels old school Manhattan store to modernize to retain market. Can mindfulness and agile get Dan Dickson unstuck?

People around us need help. Our inclination is to rush in, fix the problem, and rush out. After all we have stuff we need to do, ourselves. But we can get stuck. And stay stuck. For months.

Dan Dickson wanted his friend’s pet project, a wine store in Manhattan, to succeed. Dan had the skills to add online transactions to their web site. But, he didn’t want to get stuck doing all the work forever.

Dan Dickson built the new site, and created the wine database structure. Because he didn’t want to create a dependency, he left the work to the store staff. They added a few new entries were made to the database, but they were incorrect.

Through a couple of tries, and many months, it never went live.

He set everything up not to get stuck. And there he was: stuck.

He commiserated with Mirela Petalli MSN-ed RN, Dan R Greening, and Matt Zimmerman on the Mindful Agility team.

Hidden challenges were the problem. Dan Dickson couldn't find a path forward, until he looked at the bigger picture from a mindful, agile lens. And then, things started improving.

Call to Action

The CAVU company sponsored Scrum training for Mirela Petalli and Dan Dickson a couple of months ago. CAVU is a benefit company that teaches Scrum to both commercial and underrepresented communities. Christopher Sims and Dan Greening were co-trainers. Mirela and Dan Dickson are now Registered Scrum Masters and Registered Product Owners.

We have recently held live online meditations and classes. If you’d like to get notified about those, do one of three things: join the Facebook group called “Mindful Agility Community,” or like the LinkedIn showcase called “Mindful Agility.” We have an email list at mindfulagility.com, as well.

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Credits

• Many thanks to Dan Dickson for joining us in this episode.
• Cover photo by DepositPhotos

Staff

• Daniel Greening, host, agile consultant, software executive
• Mirela Petalli, co-host, meditation guide, and neurocritical nursing instructor
• Dan Dickson, business coach, executive and management consultant

Links

• Mindful Agility Substack ("The Mindful Sprint" weekly brief)
• Mindful Agility web site
• Mindful Agility Community Facebook group
• Mindful Agility Youtube channel