February 12, 2025 • 28 mins
Discover the secret sauce behind creating impactful workshops that foster learning and innovation within organizations. Join me as I engage in a lively conversation with the insightful Paula Lipnick, a seasoned product agility lead, whose expertise in orchestrating transformative workshops is nothing short of inspiring. Paula shares her valuable strategies on aligning workshop goals with team objectives, ensuring sessions are not just productive but also engaging and motivational. Learn how to nurture curiosity and professional growth in fast-paced industries like technology and product management, and explore Paula's engaging analogy of setting the table to create a welcoming environment for collaborative learning.
Explore the journey of maximizing workshop benefits through intentional planning and continuous improvement. We delve into the intricacies of value stream mapping workshops and uncover how breaking down silos can optimize processes, build empathy, and spark innovation among team members. Paula and I also swap stories about the thrilling world of immersive workshops, akin to hackathons, where creativity meets excitement, and nerves turn into innovation. Whether you're curious about adopting new tools or eager to facilitate hands-on learning experiences, this episode offers a treasure trove of insights for making workshops a cornerstone of your learning organization.
Connect with Paula on LinkedIn:
linkedin.com/in/paula-lipnick-mba-pmp-psm
When in Dallas, visit the Dallas World Aquarium:
https://dwazoo.com/
Follow us on LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-agile-within
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:06):
Welcome to the Agile Within.
I am your host, mark Metz.
My mission for this podcast isto provide Agile insights into
human values and behaviorsthrough genuine connections.
My guests and I will sharereal-life stories from our Agile
journeys triumphs, blunders andeverything in between, as well
(00:29):
as the lessons that we havelearned.
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That's impactagilityco.
Well, hey there everybody.
Welcome back.
This is Mark Metz, your host atthe Agile Within.
My guest today for this episodeis Paula Lipnick.
Paula, welcome to the show.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
Thank you for having me here, Mark.
I'm so excited to be here.
Speaker 1 (01:56):
Glad to have you Well .
Paula is a product agility leadwith over 15 years of
experience driving innovationand improving business value.
She's passionate about agile,lean and DevOps practices.
She holds multiplecertifications, including an MBA
(02:18):
, a PSM and a PMP, and whenshe's not transforming teams,
she enjoys volunteering, hikingand catching waves whenever
she's near the ocean.
Ooh, what's your next trip togo to the ocean, paula?
Speaker 2 (02:26):
I'm actually leaving here pretty soon to go to Sri
Lanka and go surfing.
Speaker 1 (02:32):
Wow, so you don't go close, you go big.
Speaker 2 (02:35):
That's right.
That's right.
Gives me an excuse to gosomewhere international.
Enjoy some awesome waves, somegreat beach time.
Speaker 1 (02:44):
Sounds awesome.
International enjoy someawesome waves, some great beach
time Sounds awesome.
Well, paula, you reside in theDallas-Fort Worth area and I've
been there several times, butlet's say, if I haven't been
there and I were coming for thefirst time, what's one thing
that Paula would say that Icouldn't miss doing?
Speaker 2 (02:59):
Mark, you have to go to the Dallas World Aquarium.
The Dallas World Aquarium islocated in downtown Dallas.
It has animals and all aquaticlife forms.
It's amazing.
It's one of my favorite placesin the world.
Speaker 1 (03:16):
I have not been there and I wish I would have talked
with you, because my daughterwas actually in Dallas last week
and I could have told her.
So, hey, that's a good excusefor us to get over there.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
Absolutely, absolutely.
You will love it.
Speaker 1 (03:31):
Great.
Well, I am an animal lover, sowe'll definitely put that on the
list for my wife and I to do.
Well, the title for today'sepisode is Learning
Organizations, love Workshops.
So, Paula, why workshopsspecifically?
Speaker 2 (03:50):
Workshops give you a chance to get away from your
desk and get immersed in all ofthe knowledge and all of the
learning and, plus, you'retaking the work that you're
doing, taking it into theworkshop and learning with that,
so it helps everybody not onlylearn but build confidence
(04:10):
towards.
This is something that I can doand this is something that it's
works and it's going to behelpful, and we should bring it
back after the workshop.
Speaker 1 (04:21):
You and I were talking about this before and
you were talking through somecommon definitions, so maybe's
all about how can we get bettertogether?
Speaker 2 (04:47):
and providing that environment so everyone can
learn.
It's designed for continuousimprovement and evolving
practices and many of thepractices today in technology
and product management areevolving.
Speaker 1 (05:03):
How do you do that encouragement?
Because you say you want toencourage that learning and that
professional growth.
Some people might be a littlemore resistant to that and they
may look at it as you know.
This is fluff time or this istime that I could be spending
doing actual work.
How do you encourage thatcuriosity to be able to have
(05:27):
people interested in learningand growing?
Speaker 2 (05:30):
And it's important that everybody knows that many
of the things that we're doingtoday, especially in technology,
they are changing.
So we've got to change withthat, knowing that this is
something that we can all dotogether and that not everybody
has all of the answersimmediately.
It is something that we shouldbe learning to do and then
(05:51):
focusing on what skills thattakes, identifying that and
letting everybody know how toachieve that.
It starts with, similarly tohow we're creating value for our
customers.
You've got to know what yourgoal is.
Once you know what that goal iscreating, the learning for that
lets everybody understand thatthis is creating value.
(06:13):
This is absolutely essential tocreating that value for our
customers.
Speaker 1 (06:19):
So I'm going to raise my hand and say guilty as
charged here, paula.
I've gone in and done someworkshops where I felt like I
had some goals.
They weren't the same goalsthat the team felt like were
important and it ended up beinga dumpster fire and I had
comments of why are we evendoing this?
What's the purpose of this?
(06:40):
How is this going to help us?
So how do you choose thosegoals so that the team is bought
in and you really I like to usethe term set the table and
maybe that's a term that getslost but really when you invite
a guest over, you want to have atable set so that it's really
nice and sets the environment,sets the attitude that you're
(07:02):
going to have a very relaxed,nice, comfortable meal.
So how do we set the table fora workshop?
Speaker 2 (07:08):
Absolutely, and this is something that I learned from
a very wise coach myself andwhat he would do is he would
bring us into the workshop.
We would define our goalstogether, so we would be
creating the goals as a groupfor the workshop.
Speaker 1 (07:22):
That's really good.
What did that look like?
What kind of?
How did you do that?
Like brainstorming session, ofof getting everybody together?
Speaker 2 (07:30):
We would all get together and then there would be
an over overall value goal thatwe wanted to have, and then we
would have goals that would helpus achieve that.
So we started out with a biggoal goals that would help us
achieve that.
So we started out with a biggoal.
We'd break that down intosmaller goals.
We'd decide on it all together.
So we knew what we were workingtowards, we knew what our North
(07:52):
Star was going to be, and thenwe had some ways that we would
also quantify that too.
So you have your goal and youhave your metrics.
Speaker 1 (08:01):
There were some characteristics that you had
talked to me about thatworkshops should have.
What are those characteristics?
Speaker 2 (08:08):
Okay, the characteristics that we should
have is that it should be across-functional team.
You need to have all of themembers of that team that are
doing the workshop.
They should be able to deliverthat value from end to end.
There's a lot of value to beingimmersed in it, which means
that you're not bringing in yourlaptop batting on your
messaging, you're trying toleave your phone on silent and I
(08:34):
mean like happens right?
I mean like there are things.
But having that air cover,being able to go in there and
say, hey, I'm going to focus allof my energy on what we're
doing today in the workshop, isvery valuable.
Speaker 1 (08:50):
And I would guess some working agreements would be
good to set up front.
Make sure everybody agrees tothose rules.
I mean obviously, like if Iwere coming into a workshop, if
my daughter calls for anemergency, I'm going to pick up
the phone, but if it's awork-related call, hey, I'm
going to put it down for an hourand I'm going to give I'm going
(09:10):
to give Paula my undividedattention for an hour.
Speaker 2 (09:13):
Absolutely, absolutely.
And yeah, having that workingagreement is always a part of
the beginning of a workshop, andletting everybody decide on
what those components of theworking agreement are together,
that aligns the team too.
Working agreements areessential for outlining how
you're going to work together,but they're also one of the
(09:34):
other value drivers that theyhave is aligning a team.
Speaker 1 (09:37):
What about experimentation?
Where does that come intoworkshops?
So how do we learn and how wefeel safe in the team to?
I'm just going to say, to bereal, because sometimes when you
go into a training class or aworkshop, maybe they're not
people that you're intimatelyfamiliar with and maybe you
don't work with, and I've seenpeople that definitely want to
(10:00):
come in and they want to showtheir best side and they want to
impress.
But how do you get down to thenitty gritty and say we want to
talk about the warts, not justall the pretty fluffy stuff?
Speaker 2 (10:13):
Mark, I love that because, like you did say, you
touched on something veryimportant getting real Many of
the people that you're going tobe in the workshop with
sometimes you don't work withthem every day, and how do you
get to psychological safety?
How do you build that trust andmake it so it's okay to fail?
Things don't always work outthe first time you try them.
(10:34):
That's actually a reallyimportant part of learning is
having the opportunity to failand learning from what didn't
work out.
So these are all things thathelp in the workshop environment
and they help when you go backout into the real world and
you're using the skills and thepractices that you learned
(10:54):
inside of the workshop.
And so all of the things thatyou're doing up front, where
you're creating the workingagreement, you're creating the
common goals, you're doing someicebreakers, you're doing a lot
of those things they help buildup that trust and they help
build it up where everyone canwork together inside of the
workshop and be real.
Speaker 1 (11:15):
I've done a check-in before just to see what people's
honest feelings were about youknow what are they coming in
with.
Do you feel distracted comingin?
Is there something that you'rebringing in with you into this
that you can't give it your fullattention?
Are you coming here justbecause your boss told you to?
Are you super excited aboutcoming into this and excited
about the expectations of whatyou might learn?
(11:37):
And you know you think that allright, if I put this in front,
nobody's going to be that honest.
But I have been surprised likereally surprised that people
will be bluntly honest aboutyeah, my boss told me to come to
this, so I'm here.
Speaker 2 (11:51):
Yeah, yeah, and I love that, I applaud that
honesty because that does ithelps build up everyone working
together as a team.
Speaker 1 (12:00):
And you kind of know what you're up against and kind
of I don't know.
You can read the room to acertain extent, but it's just
another extension of being ableto read the room.
Well, paula, talk to us aboutsome of the benefits that you've
seen through holding workshops.
Speaker 2 (12:16):
There's a lot of benefits because everyone's
learning new practices.
That is going to help theirregular work flow better become
something that's an optimizedprocess.
The learning can be usedimmediately after the workshop.
So this is something wherenobody has to wait to get the
value from it.
They can take it, they can useit and then if they run into any
(12:40):
issues and there's somethingthat they can always reach out
to me on or they can reach outto anybody from inside of the
workshop and then it also buildsthat community of practice, of
practice.
So everybody that you go intothe workshop with you can be on
a chat with later and talk aboutsome of the things that you've
learned or some of the thingsthat you still need some more
(13:00):
information on, but you get towork on it together and then
allowing those teams to focus onthose goals and benefits.
Speaker 1 (13:09):
How do you really reinforce that?
Because it's very easy to go toa workshop and even if you are
fully engaged, you've come outenergized, right, and as soon as
you come out at it, come out ofthe workshop, you head back to
your desk and guess what?
There's five fires thatimmediately need to be put out,
and it's like that just getspushed way back to the back part
(13:31):
of your brain.
So how do you encourage othersto really leverage those
learnings and put those intopractice and not fall into the
trap of just dealing with theurgency of the day?
Speaker 2 (13:43):
One of the things that I do is I just touch base
with people.
I like to reach out and say,hey, how's that working out?
Is there anything that you'dlike to talk about?
But also in the past, a lot oftimes, some of the things that
you do inside of that workshopthat create those magic moments,
capturing those.
(14:04):
So I mean, like there's there'sthings that happen while you're
you're doing some of thesereally immersive workshops.
You take pictures of them, youdocument that and then having
everybody have those memoriesfrom that will take you back to
that time where you were likethis is the best thing that I've
(14:26):
ever done.
I cannot wait to do it when Iget back to my desk.
Speaker 1 (14:31):
You are excellent at that because I know for a fact.
I've seen you, I follow you onLinkedIn and I see all the
pictures of the smiling facesthat you take.
So, yes, you practice what youpreach.
Speaker 2 (14:42):
Absolutely, absolutely.
Speaker 1 (14:44):
All right.
So our listeners that are outthere, they may be saying, well,
this is all great, I like whatI'm hearing, but how can you
make it more tangible?
Can you talk about someexamples or give us something a
little more concrete than justtalking on a theory level?
So can you share with us someexamples of workshops that
you've done, and maybe somelessons that you've learned, or
(15:05):
even some mistakes you've madealong the way?
Dare I ask?
Speaker 2 (15:09):
We all learn from making mistakes, that is for
sure.
One of the types of workshopsthat I really enjoy facilitating
and being a part of is a valuestream mapping workshop, because
that takes a process from endto end and it gets everybody
that's involved in that valuestream together to improve that
process and everyone that is inthe value stream they own a part
(15:34):
of it, so they're all gettingtogether, they're all removing
those silos that can sometimesprevent the value from happening
and they're asking each otherwhat their pain points are.
How do I resolve this?
How do I make this better foreveryone in the value stream?
It's amazing to get everyonetogether to feel that energy and
(15:56):
it's like the room becomesalive because you're working
together, you're solving thatcommon problem, all of those
problems together, and you canget tangible results.
Speaker 1 (16:08):
And it's a time where these people typically don't
all get together right.
Speaker 2 (16:13):
That's true, that's true.
Speaker 1 (16:14):
That's true.
Just see the whole picture.
Speaker 2 (16:21):
It's always interesting because sometimes
they work together every day butthey don't talk.
So it's getting everybody inthat whole value stream to talk
to each other and then theyunderstand why something's
waiting in queue for so long.
Understand, like, whysomething's waiting in queue for
so long.
You know, when you're waitingfor something you're always
wondering whether it be somebodythat's coming to your house to
fix your lawnmower or to, like,help you with your plumbing or
(16:45):
something like that.
You're always wondering whyit's taking them so long to
arrive.
Getting everybody together totalk about that and what some of
the challenges are on theirside, then that creates empathy
and that makes everyone worktogether and collaborate even
more.
Speaker 1 (17:02):
So people can be impatient sometimes and they
want, like, immediate results.
So this value stream.
You know it may take a month toget through this value stream.
If it's something that's rathercomplex, you're like we need to
get this down to a day.
So what are some techniquesthat you do to make progress and
keep people interested andenergized without being let down
(17:24):
of well?
Their expectations might not bemet.
So maybe a better way to askthis is how do you keep people's
expectations in check?
Speaker 2 (17:33):
I usually have a really clear agenda of what it
is that we're going to cover andvalue stream mapping usually
takes three days at the least,but you can break that down into
smaller chunks.
I just like to make it soeverybody knows what they can
expect, what day, how long it'sgoing to take.
(17:54):
That usually helps.
But then also just going backover and reviewing the progress
that we've made and how manythings that we like we've got
five process improvements.
It's going to take, you know,reduce this process by this many
hours.
Telling everybody all of theprogress that we're making as we
go to that helps everybody stayengaged, because we all love
(18:18):
progress.
Speaker 1 (18:19):
So, paula, how do you keep people's expectations
intact for, like, let's say, avalue stream mapping workshop
like you're talking about?
So this may be over a few daysthat you're doing this, this
workshop, but the value streamitself of that process, let's
just say maybe it takes a monthfor work to work its way from
(18:42):
beginning to end of the valuestream, and that's not optimal
and everybody's complainingabout it.
And maybe you have somebody inwith very high expectations.
They're like this value streamshould be executed in no more
than three days.
It's this very complex valuestream.
You're going to condense itfrom a month to three days,
(19:04):
right?
So how do you keep thoseexpectations of?
Okay, first step, we're goingto take it from maybe a month.
Let's just shave a week off ofthat.
Or what can we do to make somegradual process?
And maybe there are big leversto pull, but we're not going to
eat an elephant all in one bite.
How do you communicate that andhow do you facilitate that?
Speaker 2 (19:27):
Mark.
There's a lot of ways to makeit visible.
One of my favorite ways is witha prioritization grid showing
just how much effort it's goingto take to implement some of
these process improvements.
I always like to tell everybodythat we're going to go for the
low-hanging fruit first, and thelow-hanging fruit is easy to
(19:48):
implement and it might take acouple of days to implement, but
it's only going to save one ortwo days off of it as far as an
overall process too.
So that's one of the thingsthat everyone will understand
the amount of effort that goesinto implementing some of the
process improvements.
We prioritize that list andthen we estimate how long it's
(20:11):
going to take, but it's part ofthe process to make sure that
everybody has the sameexpectation of how long it's
going to take.
Speaker 1 (20:21):
Have you had any experiences where I'm saying
this?
People can't see the smirk onmy face, but I'm kind of setting
you up here.
What about those people thatare very good at pointing the
finger of, well, they need to dothis and they need to do that,
but they're not quite as good atlooking toward themselves and
(20:41):
what improvements that they canmake in the process?
Speaker 2 (20:49):
I always like to explain to everybody that what
we're going to do is we're goingto take the overall time and go
for an overall time reduction.
So that doesn't mean justreducing the time for one team
and having that team sweep someof their work over to another
team.
We need to work togethercollaboratively because we can
reduce it overall.
That's the way that everybody'sworking together to solve that
(21:12):
common problem and make thingsbetter across the board for
everyone.
Speaker 1 (21:16):
I'm sure you've never heard the term.
Well, my team's good.
Speaker 2 (21:23):
I mean, you know it's been known to come up.
Speaker 1 (21:31):
All right.
Well, value stream mapping,that's a great one.
Any other examples that come tomind?
Speaker 2 (21:36):
You do a merchant workshop where you're developing
a whole product, and those areextremely fun.
Speaker 1 (21:42):
Yeah, so tell me a little bit about what that looks
like.
So you're creating a newproduct from the ground up?
Speaker 2 (21:48):
Yes, so it's an immersive workshop to create a
product, and this could be aproduct at a very prototype
level.
But what you're doing is youwant to take something that is a
concept and deliver on thatvalue Understanding what the
product is proving out, thatit's going to create value for
(22:10):
your customers, and then gettingeverybody together to work on
it and build out that prototypeand be able to demo it at the
end of the workshop.
Speaker 1 (22:21):
So that almost sounds kind of sort of like a
hackathon type approach, is it?
Is there some overlap fortalking Venn diagrams with the
two approaches, or maybe not?
Speaker 2 (22:32):
Absolutely, because you're really delivering some
kind of a working product at theend of this, and similarly with
a hackathon, you're you'redeveloping a solution.
Speaker 1 (22:43):
So I have to tell you a funny story.
I went to a college hackathonwhere they hosted it at a school
, but there were multipleschools that came in.
It was rather large and so theyhad students.
It was very typical of ahackathon, right, if you think
about just.
They had air mattresses on thefloor, they had snacks
(23:03):
everywhere.
I mean it was truly workinglike overnight for two days to
come up with this product, and Iwas one of the ones at the
hackathon and I was one of thejudges that would walk through
and all the students would showme their product or their
prototype they had put together.
And this one group showed methis very, extremely well
(23:26):
polished application and Icouldn't help but ask them are
you sure you completed this in a24 or 48 hour period?
This looks like you've beenworking on this for a while and
I could see the little smirk intheir face.
And yeah, we've been working onthis one for a little while.
It's like you cheated, but itwas really cool.
Speaker 2 (23:48):
I've coached at hackathons before and the
students they're amazing becausethey get in there, they create
these amazing products and theycreate these amazing solutions.
The only time I ever seeanybody get nervous is when they
have to do the presentation forthe judges.
Speaker 1 (24:07):
Yeah, I didn't know that I felt like or portrayed
one of the sharks on Shark Tank,but apparently I did because,
yeah, you're right, some of themwere a little bit nervous, but
anyway, Okay, so we talked abouta value stream mapping workshop
and we talked about creating aproduct for a workshop.
Any other ideas that you canshare with us, or any other
(24:28):
examples?
Speaker 2 (24:29):
There's shorter workshops that you can do, and
this has to do with somethingthat you're.
It could be a tools adoption orjust a new practice that you're
trying to learn, so not thewhole implementation of a
product, but maybe how you'regoing to make it work better
with, like, a DevOps practice.
Or it's something like you'regoing from one tool to a new
(24:53):
tool and you just want to geteverybody to get their hands on
that tool with their real workso they're able to learn it that
way.
Speaker 1 (25:03):
What's been your favorite workshop that you've
held so far, if you had to pickone?
Speaker 2 (25:13):
I love all of the workshops that I've had the
honor to be involved in.
I do love to gravitate towardsvalue stream mapping and process
improvement.
Anytime we can get everybody inthe room together to solve a
problem like that, those arealways near and dear to my heart
.
Speaker 1 (25:27):
Ah, okay, so you're a value stream mapping girl
Gotcha.
Speaker 2 (25:30):
There you go, there you go.
Speaker 1 (25:34):
All right.
Well, as we're coming to an endhere, just want to kind of put
a bow or put a wrap on this, canyou just summarize and give us,
like, what are the commonelements of putting a workshop
together, a successful workshop?
Speaker 2 (25:47):
As we talked about earlier, it's defining those
common goals, making sure thatyour scope is where you want it
to be.
So you're not trying to boilthe whole ocean, you're just
trying to deliver on what it isthat you're trying to solve for
that day.
You're getting fast feedback,like you said, mark, you're
asking everybody how they feelabout things and you're doing
(26:09):
check-ins, then also doing thoseretrospectives, making all of
the work that you're doingvisual so covering those walls
with sticky notes and havinggiant post-it notes everywhere
and then following up with theteams, making sure that they're
able to implement the practices.
(26:30):
If they're running into anyissues, that you're available to
help them.
Those are the things that'llhelp the workshop be successful.
Speaker 1 (26:38):
All right, Paula.
So if our listeners out therewant to get in touch with you,
what is the best way for them todo that?
Speaker 2 (26:45):
Through LinkedIn.
Speaker 1 (26:46):
Gotcha Through LinkedIn.
We'll put a link to yourprofile in the show notes.
That's great if people havequestions and want to reach out
to you, but probably not for awhile If you're getting ready to
head to Sri Lanka to hit thewaves.
So I can't wait.
You'll share some pictures.
Absolutely, that's reallyexciting.
So I can't wait You'll sharesome pictures.
Absolutely, that's reallyexciting.
I can't wait to hear back fromyou about that.
(27:08):
But, paula, thank you so muchfor coming on the show.
This was very interesting, andall our listeners out there.
If you're interested inworkshops, I think this has been
a very educational session.
And, yeah, just thank you somuch for your time.
Speaker 2 (27:20):
Thank you, Mark.
It's been an honor being here.
Speaker 1 (27:24):
Well, that brings to an end another episode of the
Agile Within.
We'll see everybody next time.
Thanks for joining us foranother episode of the Agile
Within.
If you haven't already, pleasejoin our LinkedIn page to stay
in touch.
Just search for the AgileWithin and please spread the
(27:47):
word with your friends andcolleagues Until next time.
This has been your host, markMetz.
Welcome to the Agile Within.
I am your host, mark Metz.
My mission for this podcast isto provide Agile insights into
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My guests and I will sharereal-life stories from our Agile
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(00:29):
as the lessons that we havelearned.
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The Agile Within starts now.
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That's impactagilityco.
Well, hey there everybody.
Welcome back.
This is Mark Metz, your host atthe Agile Within.
My guest today for this episodeis Paula Lipnick.
Paula, welcome to the show.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
Thank you for having me here, Mark.
I'm so excited to be here.
Speaker 1 (01:56):
Glad to have you Well .
Paula is a product agility leadwith over 15 years of
experience driving innovationand improving business value.
She's passionate about agile,lean and DevOps practices.
She holds multiplecertifications, including an MBA
(02:18):
, a PSM and a PMP, and whenshe's not transforming teams,
she enjoys volunteering, hikingand catching waves whenever
she's near the ocean.
Ooh, what's your next trip togo to the ocean, paula?
Speaker 2 (02:26):
I'm actually leaving here pretty soon to go to Sri
Lanka and go surfing.
Speaker 1 (02:32):
Wow, so you don't go close, you go big.
Speaker 2 (02:35):
That's right.
That's right.
Gives me an excuse to gosomewhere international.
Enjoy some awesome waves, somegreat beach time.
Speaker 1 (02:44):
Sounds awesome.
International enjoy someawesome waves, some great beach
time Sounds awesome.
Well, paula, you reside in theDallas-Fort Worth area and I've
been there several times, butlet's say, if I haven't been
there and I were coming for thefirst time, what's one thing
that Paula would say that Icouldn't miss doing?
Speaker 2 (02:59):
Mark, you have to go to the Dallas World Aquarium.
The Dallas World Aquarium islocated in downtown Dallas.
It has animals and all aquaticlife forms.
It's amazing.
It's one of my favorite placesin the world.
Speaker 1 (03:16):
I have not been there and I wish I would have talked
with you, because my daughterwas actually in Dallas last week
and I could have told her.
So, hey, that's a good excusefor us to get over there.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
Absolutely, absolutely.
You will love it.
Speaker 1 (03:31):
Great.
Well, I am an animal lover, sowe'll definitely put that on the
list for my wife and I to do.
Well, the title for today'sepisode is Learning
Organizations, love Workshops.
So, Paula, why workshopsspecifically?
Speaker 2 (03:50):
Workshops give you a chance to get away from your
desk and get immersed in all ofthe knowledge and all of the
learning and, plus, you'retaking the work that you're
doing, taking it into theworkshop and learning with that,
so it helps everybody not onlylearn but build confidence
(04:10):
towards.
This is something that I can doand this is something that it's
works and it's going to behelpful, and we should bring it
back after the workshop.
Speaker 1 (04:21):
You and I were talking about this before and
you were talking through somecommon definitions, so maybe's
all about how can we get bettertogether?
Speaker 2 (04:47):
and providing that environment so everyone can
learn.
It's designed for continuousimprovement and evolving
practices and many of thepractices today in technology
and product management areevolving.
Speaker 1 (05:03):
How do you do that encouragement?
Because you say you want toencourage that learning and that
professional growth.
Some people might be a littlemore resistant to that and they
may look at it as you know.
This is fluff time or this istime that I could be spending
doing actual work.
How do you encourage thatcuriosity to be able to have
(05:27):
people interested in learningand growing?
Speaker 2 (05:30):
And it's important that everybody knows that many
of the things that we're doingtoday, especially in technology,
they are changing.
So we've got to change withthat, knowing that this is
something that we can all dotogether and that not everybody
has all of the answersimmediately.
It is something that we shouldbe learning to do and then
(05:51):
focusing on what skills thattakes, identifying that and
letting everybody know how toachieve that.
It starts with, similarly tohow we're creating value for our
customers.
You've got to know what yourgoal is.
Once you know what that goal iscreating, the learning for that
lets everybody understand thatthis is creating value.
(06:13):
This is absolutely essential tocreating that value for our
customers.
Speaker 1 (06:19):
So I'm going to raise my hand and say guilty as
charged here, paula.
I've gone in and done someworkshops where I felt like I
had some goals.
They weren't the same goalsthat the team felt like were
important and it ended up beinga dumpster fire and I had
comments of why are we evendoing this?
What's the purpose of this?
(06:40):
How is this going to help us?
So how do you choose thosegoals so that the team is bought
in and you really I like to usethe term set the table and
maybe that's a term that getslost but really when you invite
a guest over, you want to have atable set so that it's really
nice and sets the environment,sets the attitude that you're
(07:02):
going to have a very relaxed,nice, comfortable meal.
So how do we set the table fora workshop?
Speaker 2 (07:08):
Absolutely, and this is something that I learned from
a very wise coach myself andwhat he would do is he would
bring us into the workshop.
We would define our goalstogether, so we would be
creating the goals as a groupfor the workshop.
Speaker 1 (07:22):
That's really good.
What did that look like?
What kind of?
How did you do that?
Like brainstorming session, ofof getting everybody together?
Speaker 2 (07:30):
We would all get together and then there would be
an over overall value goal thatwe wanted to have, and then we
would have goals that would helpus achieve that.
So we started out with a biggoal goals that would help us
achieve that.
So we started out with a biggoal.
We'd break that down intosmaller goals.
We'd decide on it all together.
So we knew what we were workingtowards, we knew what our North
(07:52):
Star was going to be, and thenwe had some ways that we would
also quantify that too.
So you have your goal and youhave your metrics.
Speaker 1 (08:01):
There were some characteristics that you had
talked to me about thatworkshops should have.
What are those characteristics?
Speaker 2 (08:08):
Okay, the characteristics that we should
have is that it should be across-functional team.
You need to have all of themembers of that team that are
doing the workshop.
They should be able to deliverthat value from end to end.
There's a lot of value to beingimmersed in it, which means
that you're not bringing in yourlaptop batting on your
messaging, you're trying toleave your phone on silent and I
(08:34):
mean like happens right?
I mean like there are things.
But having that air cover,being able to go in there and
say, hey, I'm going to focus allof my energy on what we're
doing today in the workshop, isvery valuable.
Speaker 1 (08:50):
And I would guess some working agreements would be
good to set up front.
Make sure everybody agrees tothose rules.
I mean obviously, like if Iwere coming into a workshop, if
my daughter calls for anemergency, I'm going to pick up
the phone, but if it's awork-related call, hey, I'm
going to put it down for an hourand I'm going to give I'm going
(09:10):
to give Paula my undividedattention for an hour.
Speaker 2 (09:13):
Absolutely, absolutely.
And yeah, having that workingagreement is always a part of
the beginning of a workshop, andletting everybody decide on
what those components of theworking agreement are together,
that aligns the team too.
Working agreements areessential for outlining how
you're going to work together,but they're also one of the
(09:34):
other value drivers that theyhave is aligning a team.
Speaker 1 (09:37):
What about experimentation?
Where does that come intoworkshops?
So how do we learn and how wefeel safe in the team to?
I'm just going to say, to bereal, because sometimes when you
go into a training class or aworkshop, maybe they're not
people that you're intimatelyfamiliar with and maybe you
don't work with, and I've seenpeople that definitely want to
(10:00):
come in and they want to showtheir best side and they want to
impress.
But how do you get down to thenitty gritty and say we want to
talk about the warts, not justall the pretty fluffy stuff?
Speaker 2 (10:13):
Mark, I love that because, like you did say, you
touched on something veryimportant getting real Many of
the people that you're going tobe in the workshop with
sometimes you don't work withthem every day, and how do you
get to psychological safety?
How do you build that trust andmake it so it's okay to fail?
Things don't always work outthe first time you try them.
(10:34):
That's actually a reallyimportant part of learning is
having the opportunity to failand learning from what didn't
work out.
So these are all things thathelp in the workshop environment
and they help when you go backout into the real world and
you're using the skills and thepractices that you learned
(10:54):
inside of the workshop.
And so all of the things thatyou're doing up front, where
you're creating the workingagreement, you're creating the
common goals, you're doing someicebreakers, you're doing a lot
of those things they help buildup that trust and they help
build it up where everyone canwork together inside of the
workshop and be real.
Speaker 1 (11:15):
I've done a check-in before just to see what people's
honest feelings were about youknow what are they coming in
with.
Do you feel distracted comingin?
Is there something that you'rebringing in with you into this
that you can't give it your fullattention?
Are you coming here justbecause your boss told you to?
Are you super excited aboutcoming into this and excited
about the expectations of whatyou might learn?
(11:37):
And you know you think that allright, if I put this in front,
nobody's going to be that honest.
But I have been surprised likereally surprised that people
will be bluntly honest aboutyeah, my boss told me to come to
this, so I'm here.
Speaker 2 (11:51):
Yeah, yeah, and I love that, I applaud that
honesty because that does ithelps build up everyone working
together as a team.
Speaker 1 (12:00):
And you kind of know what you're up against and kind
of I don't know.
You can read the room to acertain extent, but it's just
another extension of being ableto read the room.
Well, paula, talk to us aboutsome of the benefits that you've
seen through holding workshops.
Speaker 2 (12:16):
There's a lot of benefits because everyone's
learning new practices.
That is going to help theirregular work flow better become
something that's an optimizedprocess.
The learning can be usedimmediately after the workshop.
So this is something wherenobody has to wait to get the
value from it.
They can take it, they can useit and then if they run into any
(12:40):
issues and there's somethingthat they can always reach out
to me on or they can reach outto anybody from inside of the
workshop and then it also buildsthat community of practice, of
practice.
So everybody that you go intothe workshop with you can be on
a chat with later and talk aboutsome of the things that you've
learned or some of the thingsthat you still need some more
(13:00):
information on, but you get towork on it together and then
allowing those teams to focus onthose goals and benefits.
Speaker 1 (13:09):
How do you really reinforce that?
Because it's very easy to go toa workshop and even if you are
fully engaged, you've come outenergized, right, and as soon as
you come out at it, come out ofthe workshop, you head back to
your desk and guess what?
There's five fires thatimmediately need to be put out,
and it's like that just getspushed way back to the back part
(13:31):
of your brain.
So how do you encourage othersto really leverage those
learnings and put those intopractice and not fall into the
trap of just dealing with theurgency of the day?
Speaker 2 (13:43):
One of the things that I do is I just touch base
with people.
I like to reach out and say,hey, how's that working out?
Is there anything that you'dlike to talk about?
But also in the past, a lot oftimes, some of the things that
you do inside of that workshopthat create those magic moments,
capturing those.
(14:04):
So I mean, like there's there'sthings that happen while you're
you're doing some of thesereally immersive workshops.
You take pictures of them, youdocument that and then having
everybody have those memoriesfrom that will take you back to
that time where you were likethis is the best thing that I've
(14:26):
ever done.
I cannot wait to do it when Iget back to my desk.
Speaker 1 (14:31):
You are excellent at that because I know for a fact.
I've seen you, I follow you onLinkedIn and I see all the
pictures of the smiling facesthat you take.
So, yes, you practice what youpreach.
Speaker 2 (14:42):
Absolutely, absolutely.
Speaker 1 (14:44):
All right.
So our listeners that are outthere, they may be saying, well,
this is all great, I like whatI'm hearing, but how can you
make it more tangible?
Can you talk about someexamples or give us something a
little more concrete than justtalking on a theory level?
So can you share with us someexamples of workshops that
you've done, and maybe somelessons that you've learned, or
(15:05):
even some mistakes you've madealong the way?
Dare I ask?
Speaker 2 (15:09):
We all learn from making mistakes, that is for
sure.
One of the types of workshopsthat I really enjoy facilitating
and being a part of is a valuestream mapping workshop, because
that takes a process from endto end and it gets everybody
that's involved in that valuestream together to improve that
process and everyone that is inthe value stream they own a part
(15:34):
of it, so they're all gettingtogether, they're all removing
those silos that can sometimesprevent the value from happening
and they're asking each otherwhat their pain points are.
How do I resolve this?
How do I make this better foreveryone in the value stream?
It's amazing to get everyonetogether to feel that energy and
(15:56):
it's like the room becomesalive because you're working
together, you're solving thatcommon problem, all of those
problems together, and you canget tangible results.
Speaker 1 (16:08):
And it's a time where these people typically don't
all get together right.
Speaker 2 (16:13):
That's true, that's true.
Speaker 1 (16:14):
That's true.
Just see the whole picture.
Speaker 2 (16:21):
It's always interesting because sometimes
they work together every day butthey don't talk.
So it's getting everybody inthat whole value stream to talk
to each other and then theyunderstand why something's
waiting in queue for so long.
Understand, like, whysomething's waiting in queue for
so long.
You know, when you're waitingfor something you're always
wondering whether it be somebodythat's coming to your house to
fix your lawnmower or to, like,help you with your plumbing or
(16:45):
something like that.
You're always wondering whyit's taking them so long to
arrive.
Getting everybody together totalk about that and what some of
the challenges are on theirside, then that creates empathy
and that makes everyone worktogether and collaborate even
more.
Speaker 1 (17:02):
So people can be impatient sometimes and they
want, like, immediate results.
So this value stream.
You know it may take a month toget through this value stream.
If it's something that's rathercomplex, you're like we need to
get this down to a day.
So what are some techniquesthat you do to make progress and
keep people interested andenergized without being let down
(17:24):
of well?
Their expectations might not bemet.
So maybe a better way to askthis is how do you keep people's
expectations in check?
Speaker 2 (17:33):
I usually have a really clear agenda of what it
is that we're going to cover andvalue stream mapping usually
takes three days at the least,but you can break that down into
smaller chunks.
I just like to make it soeverybody knows what they can
expect, what day, how long it'sgoing to take.
(17:54):
That usually helps.
But then also just going backover and reviewing the progress
that we've made and how manythings that we like we've got
five process improvements.
It's going to take, you know,reduce this process by this many
hours.
Telling everybody all of theprogress that we're making as we
go to that helps everybody stayengaged, because we all love
(18:18):
progress.
Speaker 1 (18:19):
So, paula, how do you keep people's expectations
intact for, like, let's say, avalue stream mapping workshop
like you're talking about?
So this may be over a few daysthat you're doing this, this
workshop, but the value streamitself of that process, let's
just say maybe it takes a monthfor work to work its way from
(18:42):
beginning to end of the valuestream, and that's not optimal
and everybody's complainingabout it.
And maybe you have somebody inwith very high expectations.
They're like this value streamshould be executed in no more
than three days.
It's this very complex valuestream.
You're going to condense itfrom a month to three days,
(19:04):
right?
So how do you keep thoseexpectations of?
Okay, first step, we're goingto take it from maybe a month.
Let's just shave a week off ofthat.
Or what can we do to make somegradual process?
And maybe there are big leversto pull, but we're not going to
eat an elephant all in one bite.
How do you communicate that andhow do you facilitate that?
Speaker 2 (19:27):
Mark.
There's a lot of ways to makeit visible.
One of my favorite ways is witha prioritization grid showing
just how much effort it's goingto take to implement some of
these process improvements.
I always like to tell everybodythat we're going to go for the
low-hanging fruit first, and thelow-hanging fruit is easy to
(19:48):
implement and it might take acouple of days to implement, but
it's only going to save one ortwo days off of it as far as an
overall process too.
So that's one of the thingsthat everyone will understand
the amount of effort that goesinto implementing some of the
process improvements.
We prioritize that list andthen we estimate how long it's
(20:11):
going to take, but it's part ofthe process to make sure that
everybody has the sameexpectation of how long it's
going to take.
Speaker 1 (20:21):
Have you had any experiences where I'm saying
this?
People can't see the smirk onmy face, but I'm kind of setting
you up here.
What about those people thatare very good at pointing the
finger of, well, they need to dothis and they need to do that,
but they're not quite as good atlooking toward themselves and
(20:41):
what improvements that they canmake in the process?
Speaker 2 (20:49):
I always like to explain to everybody that what
we're going to do is we're goingto take the overall time and go
for an overall time reduction.
So that doesn't mean justreducing the time for one team
and having that team sweep someof their work over to another
team.
We need to work togethercollaboratively because we can
reduce it overall.
That's the way that everybody'sworking together to solve that
(21:12):
common problem and make thingsbetter across the board for
everyone.
Speaker 1 (21:16):
I'm sure you've never heard the term.
Well, my team's good.
Speaker 2 (21:23):
I mean, you know it's been known to come up.
Speaker 1 (21:31):
All right.
Well, value stream mapping,that's a great one.
Any other examples that come tomind?
Speaker 2 (21:36):
You do a merchant workshop where you're developing
a whole product, and those areextremely fun.
Speaker 1 (21:42):
Yeah, so tell me a little bit about what that looks
like.
So you're creating a newproduct from the ground up?
Speaker 2 (21:48):
Yes, so it's an immersive workshop to create a
product, and this could be aproduct at a very prototype
level.
But what you're doing is youwant to take something that is a
concept and deliver on thatvalue Understanding what the
product is proving out, thatit's going to create value for
(22:10):
your customers, and then gettingeverybody together to work on
it and build out that prototypeand be able to demo it at the
end of the workshop.
Speaker 1 (22:21):
So that almost sounds kind of sort of like a
hackathon type approach, is it?
Is there some overlap fortalking Venn diagrams with the
two approaches, or maybe not?
Speaker 2 (22:32):
Absolutely, because you're really delivering some
kind of a working product at theend of this, and similarly with
a hackathon, you're you'redeveloping a solution.
Speaker 1 (22:43):
So I have to tell you a funny story.
I went to a college hackathonwhere they hosted it at a school
, but there were multipleschools that came in.
It was rather large and so theyhad students.
It was very typical of ahackathon, right, if you think
about just.
They had air mattresses on thefloor, they had snacks
(23:03):
everywhere.
I mean it was truly workinglike overnight for two days to
come up with this product, and Iwas one of the ones at the
hackathon and I was one of thejudges that would walk through
and all the students would showme their product or their
prototype they had put together.
And this one group showed methis very, extremely well
(23:26):
polished application and Icouldn't help but ask them are
you sure you completed this in a24 or 48 hour period?
This looks like you've beenworking on this for a while and
I could see the little smirk intheir face.
And yeah, we've been working onthis one for a little while.
It's like you cheated, but itwas really cool.
Speaker 2 (23:48):
I've coached at hackathons before and the
students they're amazing becausethey get in there, they create
these amazing products and theycreate these amazing solutions.
The only time I ever seeanybody get nervous is when they
have to do the presentation forthe judges.
Speaker 1 (24:07):
Yeah, I didn't know that I felt like or portrayed
one of the sharks on Shark Tank,but apparently I did because,
yeah, you're right, some of themwere a little bit nervous, but
anyway, Okay, so we talked abouta value stream mapping workshop
and we talked about creating aproduct for a workshop.
Any other ideas that you canshare with us, or any other
(24:28):
examples?
Speaker 2 (24:29):
There's shorter workshops that you can do, and
this has to do with somethingthat you're.
It could be a tools adoption orjust a new practice that you're
trying to learn, so not thewhole implementation of a
product, but maybe how you'regoing to make it work better
with, like, a DevOps practice.
Or it's something like you'regoing from one tool to a new
(24:53):
tool and you just want to geteverybody to get their hands on
that tool with their real workso they're able to learn it that
way.
Speaker 1 (25:03):
What's been your favorite workshop that you've
held so far, if you had to pickone?
Speaker 2 (25:13):
I love all of the workshops that I've had the
honor to be involved in.
I do love to gravitate towardsvalue stream mapping and process
improvement.
Anytime we can get everybody inthe room together to solve a
problem like that, those arealways near and dear to my heart
.
Speaker 1 (25:27):
Ah, okay, so you're a value stream mapping girl
Gotcha.
Speaker 2 (25:30):
There you go, there you go.
Speaker 1 (25:34):
All right.
Well, as we're coming to an endhere, just want to kind of put
a bow or put a wrap on this, canyou just summarize and give us,
like, what are the commonelements of putting a workshop
together, a successful workshop?
Speaker 2 (25:47):
As we talked about earlier, it's defining those
common goals, making sure thatyour scope is where you want it
to be.
So you're not trying to boilthe whole ocean, you're just
trying to deliver on what it isthat you're trying to solve for
that day.
You're getting fast feedback,like you said, mark, you're
asking everybody how they feelabout things and you're doing
(26:09):
check-ins, then also doing thoseretrospectives, making all of
the work that you're doingvisual so covering those walls
with sticky notes and havinggiant post-it notes everywhere
and then following up with theteams, making sure that they're
able to implement the practices.
(26:30):
If they're running into anyissues, that you're available to
help them.
Those are the things that'llhelp the workshop be successful.
Speaker 1 (26:38):
All right, Paula.
So if our listeners out therewant to get in touch with you,
what is the best way for them todo that?
Speaker 2 (26:45):
Through LinkedIn.
Speaker 1 (26:46):
Gotcha Through LinkedIn.
We'll put a link to yourprofile in the show notes.
That's great if people havequestions and want to reach out
to you, but probably not for awhile If you're getting ready to
head to Sri Lanka to hit thewaves.
So I can't wait.
You'll share some pictures.
Absolutely, that's reallyexciting.
So I can't wait You'll sharesome pictures.
Absolutely, that's reallyexciting.
I can't wait to hear back fromyou about that.
(27:08):
But, paula, thank you so muchfor coming on the show.
This was very interesting, andall our listeners out there.
If you're interested inworkshops, I think this has been
a very educational session.
And, yeah, just thank you somuch for your time.
Speaker 2 (27:20):
Thank you, Mark.
It's been an honor being here.
Speaker 1 (27:24):
Well, that brings to an end another episode of the
Agile Within.
We'll see everybody next time.
Thanks for joining us foranother episode of the Agile
Within.
If you haven't already, pleasejoin our LinkedIn page to stay
in touch.
Just search for the AgileWithin and please spread the
(27:47):
word with your friends andcolleagues Until next time.
This has been your host, markMetz.
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