Continuous Improvement with Iron Man

I love Iron Man in the MCU! His armors are awesome and his character development is superb. He started out as an egotistic and self-centered billionaire/playboy and became a hero who sacrificed his life to save the universe from Thanos. 🤩 As an Agile Coach, Tony Stark’s continuous improvement and evolution deeply resonates with me. You can see that with every new armor version, Iron Man becomes better, based on what he has learned and experienced. If that doesn’t scream kaizen, I don’t know what will!

The world may have seemed to stop during this Covid-19 pandemic with everyone staying at home and streets being empty, but continuous improvement and learning did not. And rightfully so. I think it became even more important, so we can evolve and adapt. In this post, I want to share key learnings I valued during this time of the pandemic.

Focus

Agile and Lean puts emphasis in the value of focusing on the most important thing to work on for the product. Stephen Covey defined the habit of putting first things first as one of the 7 habits of highly effective people. This is one of the values that helped me adjust to the effects of the pandemic. It was easy to feel overwhelmed, and countless of times I had to stop, take a deep breath, and focus. The guiding principle is to do the most important tasks first and accept that you will let go of other activities. You will not be able to do everything you want, but you ensure you are able to do what is important at any given time. When you feel you are veering away from your target, you stop, be still, and then refocus.

Part of being focused is knowing not to take on too many tasks, responsibilities, or activities. It is ok to say “no”, and there are a lot of good, respectful, and kind ways to say it. One key thing is you don’t want to be defensive about it, just be open and say what you have on your plate and what is important to you. Trust that people will understand, especially your family, friends, and even your bosses and colleagues at work. They know you and have trust in you too.

You Work with Humans

Even though Tony Stark comes off as being arrogant and narcissistic, I think he has great compassion for others. He takes care of his teammates, providing them with armor, tools, tech that helps protect them. He provided the team with the Avengers Tower and Avengers facility in Upstate New York. He mentored Spider-Man and deeply cared for him. He had good relationships with his employees – Happy Hogan and Pepper Potts.

One of the Agile values defined in the Agile Manifesto is: “People and interactions over processes and tools.” For me, one application of this value is having compassion for the people you work with. I greatly appreciate the support I got from my boss when I had to adjust my working schedule to help my kids with school-at-home. My peers appreciated the times I caught up with them to see how they were doing and how they were coping with the effects of the pandemic. They were happy to have someone show concern for them. As an Agile Coach, this is one of the services I offer to people I work with. As someone working with an Agile Coach, I think this is one thing you can expect from your coach.

God says in Ephesians 4:32: “Be kind and compassionate to one another…”. This Bible verse speaks to me more and more each day during this pandemic.

Attitude of Gratitude

Modern society doesn’t promote being content with what you have. It is easy to get lost in acquiring new things, getting more and more of what you want. You are blasted with ads of products claiming to be better than the products you currently have. Advancements in technology, always a double-edged sword, can easily make you want to get the latest, the best so far. With the restrictions, lockdowns, and quarantines, the things we thought we could not live without, became less important.

Expressing gratitude for the things I have and appreciating them more are actions that are helping me cope with the challenges of the pandemic. It takes my mind away from things I worry about and focuses it instead on things I should be thankful for. This attitude of gratitude brings much needed positivity. As an Agile Coach, I make it a point to celebrate success and wins with the team. Even a simple “thank you” to show appreciation can go a long way in promoting a positive attitude and strengthening of relationships.

Work in Harmony

When Iron Man first met Thor in the MCU, he learned that Thor’s lightning can power up his armor. In Endgame, we saw how Iron Man used this knowledge when he made the Nano Lightning Refocuser and asked Thor to hit him with lightning so that he can use the energy to blast Thanos. It’s always a treat to see in the movies how the Avengers come together as a team and combine their powers to be stronger.

This past year I have constantly reflected on how respect, trust, and patience are very important for collaboration. Respect your teammates and colleagues: their effort, contributions, insights, skills and experience. Trust them that they will do their best. Be patient when things don’t go as planned or your expectations are not met. The pandemic added numerous challenges and difficulties to the way we work together and in addition had great effects to our lives outside of work. Finding harmony with my colleagues was one critical thing that helped me this past year.

Part of the Journey is the End

I don’t see the end of this pandemic yet, but I do know that it will end and then there will be other challenges in our journey through life. It is my hope that I can learn and adapt like Iron Man. Even in the end, you can see how he prepared his Mark 85 armor to take on enough of the power of the Infinity Stones. That was not part of the plan, but he was ready, he designed his last armor in the MCU with that capability.

I hope these learnings may be of some help to you. Let’s make sure to open ourselves to even more learnings this 2021.

Continuous Improvement

What do I mean by continuous improvement?

One of the principles behind the Agile Manifesto states: “At regular intervals, the team reflects on how to become more effective, then tunes and adjusts its behavior accordingly.”

To be Agile is to be continuously improving. Our world is ever-changing and in order for us to cope with those changes we must seek to become better, to improve constantly.

I think continuous improvement is part of the habit of “sharpening the saw”, one of the 7 habits of highly effective people as explained by Stephen Covey. This is the habit of renewing yourself, physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually. By doing this you keep yourself ready to face new challenges as they come. Continuous improvement is a good mental exercise, it helps you learn more about what you already know and can also learn something new.

Why is continuous improvement important?

It is only natural for us, as living organisms in this word, to evolve. Continuous improvement is evolution. It is crucial to our survival. And it certainly applies to how we make a living, how we do our job and get money which we need to survive in our world right now. So basically continuous improvement is important because it helps us survive. If we don’t continuously improve, we can not adapt to the changes in our industry. If we can not adapt to changes, our jobs are at risk. If we lose our jobs we won’t have money for our needs.

What do I do to sharpen my saw?

Read articles and blog posts

I have developed the habit of reading at least one article or blog post every day. Doing this activity regularly helps me in a number of ways:

• I learn about latest trends on how to do my work or on how to be better in what I do
• I gain new insights to problems I am currently dealing with or have dealt with in the past. I can read about how other Agile practitioners solved the problems.
• I am able to collect references which I use when I teach about how to be Agile.
• My favorite authors become my mentors in a way. I can learn from them by reading their blogs. And sometimes I get to have discussions with them when I post comments on their blogs or articles.

I would recommend subscribing to your favorite blogs so you can easily get notifications when new content has been published. My favorite are blogs from Mike Cohn.

Read books

I usually read a book if I want to immerse myself in learning about a particular subject.  Recently I have finished reading The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Agile Coaching. I’ve read this one cover-to-cover. Sometimes I would just read selected chapters of a book, just to focus on the subtopics relevant to what I am currently doing. Usually when I read a book, I try to apply what I have learned immediately so that I can better understand what I have learned and retain the knowledge.

Watch online training videos

I love how online training videos are more accessible these days. It is a nice alternative to just reading about a topic.  You just have to make sure you are attentive to the video. Some online training sites have quizzes which will make you more engaged while some have projects you can do, so you can apply what you have learned from the videos.

My favorite online training sites are:

• Front Row Agile
• Pluralsight
• Udacity

Attend meetups and conferences

Recently I have been attending the monthly meetups of the Agile PH community and it is great to hear about the insights and experiences of other Agile practitioners. Plus it is fun to go out and meet new people and break your daily routine at work once in a while.

I consider it a great privilege and opportunity to be able to attend conferences. There is a ton of knowledge and wisdom you can gain from listening and participating on the sessions to having side discussions with attendees. You get to share “war stories” and learn how somebody else from another part of the world is dealing with the same problems you encounter.

To make the most out of attending meetups and conferences you must make sure you participate in the discussions. Listen to what others are sharing. Talk with people. Engage in conversations.

Discuss with peers

You’re lucky when you have a group of people you can discuss with about what’s going on with your work. These individuals have the same role as you or at least have experience shouldering the same responsibilities that you have. Sharing stories and insights is a great way to learn. It is important to get a new perspective on challenges you face at work, it allows you to become better and more creative at handling upcoming obstacles.

Learn from a mentor

When you want to continuously learn and improve, that means you are always a student who needs a teacher –  a master to surpass, a mentor to follow. If you are able to find a mentor who really cares about your growth and is generous in sharing with you all the wisdom he or she has gained, then you should do your best to take care of that relationship and learn all you can. Having a mentor is critical because you need someone to guide you.  Somebody who has walked the path to get to where you want to be. A mentor is also someone you look up to, someone who you want to be. All of this gives you the drive and focus to be better, to improve.