Podcasts

Audiobook Synopsis

The Amplio Insights Podcast Series

With the integration of Flow, Lean, the Theory of Constraints, and Design Thinking, Amplio has created a highly flexible and easy-to-adopt set of practices that help teams and organizations achieve their goals faster than ever before. These principles are explained in two highly acclaimed books: Amplio Development: The Path to Effective Lean-Agile Teams and Being an Effective Value Creation Coach. The insights from these books have now been brought to life in the form of an engaging podcast series. Tune in and discover the secrets behind Amplio’s success!

Below are links to audiobook synopses of the coaching chapters in the order they are in the book. You can subscribe to the podcasts for all of the chapters from any one chapter.  For chapter descriptions, head to our Table of Contents below.

The Path to Effective Lean-Agile Teams

Amplio Development: The Path to Effective Lean-Agile Teams is a workbook that supports Success Engineering’s Amplio Development Masterclass workshop designed for the business professional.

This book and the associated appendices are used in this workshop. Amplio Development is a subset of the full Amplio approach.

How to Help Create Success for All Stakeholders

A value creation coach is a person who understands how to help teams and organizations improve with the theories of Flow, Lean, and the Theory of Constraints while also understanding the basics of human learning and interaction. Coaches need to play an active role in helping teams improve. ‘Active,’ doesn’t mean they tell people what to do, which is not effective. 

This book Being an Effective Value Creation Coach provides many of the concepts the author, Al Shalloway, has learned as an experienced team and organization coach and consultant over the last 20+ years. It will jumpstart any coach to be better regardless of the Agile approach they are taking.

Table of Contents

What Is a Value Creation Coach?

A value creation coach is a person who understands how to help teams and organizations improve with the theories of Flow, Lean, and the Theory of Constraints while also understanding the basics of human learning and interaction. Coaches need to play an active role in helping teams improve. ‘Active,’ doesn’t mean they tell people what to do, which is not effective. This is not because people may resist when told to do something. Sometimes people want to be told what to do. But if you tell people what to do, they may do it without working through the details of what is involved. If they run into problems, they may not know what to do. This lack of understanding may have them abandon the suggestion. This creates the mantra of a coach as a guide

Starting an Engagement

No consultant or coach ever walks into an organization fresh. Those that came before you have left tracks on the minds of those present. This podcast discusses how to clear the elephant in the room in starting an engagement so you can be in partnership with those you are working with.

What’s the Difference Between Experts and Those with Less Competence?

Experts do not always have more experience or intelligence than those who are less competent. I suggest the biggest difference is what they look at and what they ignore. These “distinctions” provide them with insights on how to solve problems. For example, an expert skier will see many types of snow while I will just see dry, powder, wet, and good snowball-making snow.

The Pickup Sticks Model of Creating Curriculum

The order in which you present new concepts is important. People can only learn what they already almost know. Yet, very often what they need to know is like the stick buried underneath a pile of things they don’t know. But at the top, is something they already almost know. The metaphor of how you take sticks off of a pile can be used to determine the order in which you convey concepts to people.

It’s Not a Debate

When people know a useful concept, it is normal to try to convince other people of it. Even if this is done with good intentions, it feels uncomfortable to people. It reactivates times they have been talked down to by arrogant people.  Trying to convince people of something is not an effective way of creating new possibilities for people.

Instead of debating, we need to have a discussion for discovery. The reality is that none of us are right all the time.

What to Say to Someone When They Just Don’t Get It

The prior topics provide us with an understanding of distinctions, the order in which they must be conveyed, and that we must undertake a discovery, not a debate. We can now use these to have a conversation with people who look to be belligerent but are really more open to learning than we might think.

How to Get Management to Listen to You

Many Agile coaches complain about management’s lack of wanting to truly understand Agile. This topic is about how to talk to management in a way they will be interested in learning about the value of Agile. The trick is to talk to them from their perspective and to take advantage of what they know and care about.

Getting Executives to Understand Agile by Talking about Value Streams

Many in the Agile community criticize a company’s leadership for not understanding Agile. However, much of this lack of understanding is due to many agilists not talking to them in a manner that executives are interested in. Executives often don’t want to learn Flow, Lean, or the Theory of Constraints. I suggest a better way of communicating the value of Agile is by talking to them about value streams and value stream networks in a way that makes sense for them. This chapter presents an example of how to do this.

Additional Audio and Podcasts

23 Years of Agile in 90 Minutes

In this audio file, Al Shalloway talks about his 23 years in the Agile space. The reference to BLAST can be found here.

Listen now >>