The Ikigai model
Online Scrum UserGroup»
A few weeks ago, I attended another free online event by the Scrum UserGroup Karlsruhe and I’m only getting around to writing about it now. I’ll be backdating this post. Come on, it’s my blog, I can do that! However, it does come back to bite you if you don’t write about it immediately. You can no longer remember everything and also not in the right order.
On the other hand, it’s helpful to see what stuck with you, and if I read my notes correctly, here’s what I learned.
It’s great that meetups are still happening and doing them online is convenient. You can simply stay in your home office a little longer after work and connect with like-minded people on a topic via Zoom. The group in Karlsruhe is very active. I don’t know who exactly organizes the Karlruhe group, I would know who it does in Freiburg. This time, Veit Richter from Emendare gave a talk, and Emendare is a major player in the Scrum/Agile Coaching field in Karlsruhe.
Another thought on online meetups before I start. These are actually great times because what or who is stopping you from participating in an online meetup in the North of Germany, abroad or even overseas - apart from the time difference? Or you could invite speakers from far away, just like they did for the Fear Free Development talk in August last year.
The show’s topic»
Veit was already in the Zoom call and had set up the Scrum UserGroup rollup behind himself. Like other artists or comedians, speakers at conferences or user groups usually have their own program or small show, and Veit was no exception.
His talk is about Ikigai (iki 生き = life, gai がい = value) or the meaning of (your) life, but translated it more freely to himself as “The reason to get up in the morning”, rather than simply staying in bed – in German: “Im Bett liegen bleiben”. This reminds me of the gret german song by Elen ”Liegen ist Frieden” (lying is peace). But that’s not the point here. This is about getting up and being motivated.
His show was well-structured, and it had a personal connection for Veit, who had spent some time in Asia and nowadays motivates employees and teams as a Scrum Master, Agile coach or “Impediment bulldozer”. I have a picture in my mind now. ;)
Motivation in the Workplace»
Spoiler alert! If you haven’t seen Veit’s talk yet, but still plan to, then this post is not for you because I reveal a lot about it.
First, Veit asked his listeners what motivates them and their teams and recorded it in a beautiful and pragmatic way - a text editor. Then, he introduced a game to us as an impulse or food for thought. Everyone should ideally have some coins with them in their home office because distributing them via Zoom isn’t possible.
Everyone had to build a tower of coins and then stack them upside down, coin by coin and then back up again and again. The whole game or should I say work was supposed to take 15 minutes, but we didn’t last that long.
Reason for a retrospective!
Why is that? Why did we quit after such a short time?
Veit goes through the list from the beginning with us, and we discovered which of our points motivate people for real and which ones are not enough. In the end, we only had two points on the plus side: showing people why their work is important and you can’t motivate people at all, let them motivate themselves.
He then explained with anecdotes and pictures what contributes to motivation. These are meaning/purpose, significance/value, and attainability/being feasible.
The Four Circles»
Ten minutes later, we arrived at the Ikigai model, a Venn diagram. Like any model, it is just a simplification for a complex world.
However, it can help you find your reason to get up in the morning. According to the model, four dimensions play a role:
- what you love / you burn for
- what you are good at
- what you can be paid for
- and what the world needs
What you love and what you are passionate about, that’s your passion. What you love and the world needs can be your mission. What you are good at and earns you money is your profession. And finally, what you earn money with and what the world needs could be your vocation.
I don’t want to get lost in examples right now; it’s more fun to explore in a group, but one thing stuck with me - you can notice when something is missing. And that doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to find this in your job. There are examples where people don’t have enough of “what the world needs” in their jobs and simply engage as volunteer after work. Or others don’t earn enough with what they enjoy doing and earn some extra cash somewhere else because it’s worth to them.
There were also discussions about the point of what earns you money. It can certainly be replaced with something that pays off for you, something where you get something in return, some reward.
What if people become aware of their Ikigai because of some coaching and leave?
What if not and they stay?
Additionals»
But the best thing about a UserGroup like this is that you can also drift away. There are always new book tipps, quotes or other insights to learn. I’m sure that not each of Veit’s lectures on Ikigai is exactly the same. And there was quite a bit to note for me, I did it at post-its. I probably mixed them, so here are some of them, maybe not in the right order:
Throughput VS. Innovation»
When working with the coins, it also depends on the demands you have on the activity. That’s a topic that often comes up for me anyway. Is it about throughput optimization (in this case, use Kanban) or project innovation (use Scrum)? There are always all sorts of topics like this that come up at Scrum Meetup.
DoR is an Anti-pattern»
Someone mentioned D.o.R. (Definition of Ready), and someone else said that it is an anti-pattern. Another one asked: Why? Because you don’t face the challenges and say “this Story can’t go into the sprint,” for example, because the ticket doesn’t have acceptance criteria yet. But then nothing moves forward either. What’s better? Definition of Fun! That’s when a task has the Celebration Criteria. When is it worth celebrating? Even better, someone has heard of backlog items that only had a title and a phone number. Interesting, right?
Henry Ford quotes»
On my quote post-it, there’s only “Henry Ford”, “reputation” and “feedback”. So let’s see what I might have meant by that?
Google leads me to Henry Ford about customer feedback:
“If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.”
– Henry Ford
It is unclear whether he really said that. In terms of reputation I have found this one:
“You can’t build a reputation on what you are going to do.”
– Henry Ford
You can have the best ideas in the world, but if you don’t do anything with them, they don’t matter. Just thinking about them doesn’t count. If you have an idea, talk about it, but more importantly, do something!
E.S.V.P. Retrospective»
Veit is also a fan of (self-)reflection. And for that, E.S.V.P., a method to determine motivation (engagement), is suitable.
Ask the participants to anonymously share their attitude towards an event or something as a retrospective or in advance. Do they see themselves more as an Explorer, Shopper, Vacationer or Prisoner?
- Explorers - are eager to discover new ideas and insights. They want to learn everything they can about the iteration/release/project.
- Shoppers - will look over all the available information and be happy to go home with one useful new idea
- Vacationers - aren’t interested in the work of the retrospective but are happy to be away from the daily grind.
- Prisoners - feel they have been forced to attend and would rather be doing something else.
Collect the results and create a histogram to show the data. Acknowledge the results and lead a discussion about what the results mean for the group.
This is definitely a take-away for me, so does that mean I am? ;)
Conclusion»
The event was shorter than expected but entertaining and educational.
Most of the action takes place in the discussions and interactions between Veit and the participants because Veit goes through his program pretty quickly. But he can handle his audience well. All in all, the time was well spent.
Afterwards, instead of going from an event location to a bar or the like, it was time to return to the family to spend the evening together.
Nevertheless, I hope and look forward to on-site user group meetups again.