What's up, Toby? We made it to another week of
the Processed Step podcast. We're rocking and
rolling today. I want to talk about the importance
of rituals as it is a cult song, but something
beyond. Okay. How important rituals are in knowledge
work process? Yeah, throw on the chicken bones
and that whole nine yards. It's a little easy,
you know, it's just like Do you wear the same
pair of socks the whole sprint? Where your lucky
glove what rituals maybe you're thinking of something
different I mean, I think I think the one that
most of us think of are the scrum rituals like
the scrum master and you know that that The scrum
master is kind of falling out of falling out
of favor as of late And they were kind of the
keepers of the rituals, which were, let's meet,
and let's talk about how we're aligned, let's
talk about what we're doing, let's talk about
where we're headed. And I think with kind of
how I went down this path is I was like, where
does it break down? Like, when do we as humans
just do the... people being people type of things
within work that actually doesn't really add
any value. Chris, I got to interrupt you for
a second because I thought we were starting off
here in the direction of baseball season. And
I thought you were going to bring up, you know,
all the crazy rituals and superstitious behaviors
of baseball guys are leaning into the, you know,
the Blue Jays and and advertising that they were
running around tariffs. But I love that you've
jumped right into the deep end of the serious
pool. And so I'll forgo the shenanigans and that
whole rabbit trail that I was already starting
to brew on. I just I couldn't let it go. I had
to I had to get back in the game here. So, yes,
Scrum Masters. It's it's you know, if we step
back for a second, like just the generic term
of what is a ritual. It feels it feels like a
shared habit. you know, that being a group would
participate in. I got to say, you know, so many
of the Scrum Masters that I've worked with, while
they've been very, either super effective technology
leaders or super effective project managers,
I haven't had the opportunity to work with somebody
that straddles that line really well and can
hold these shared habits of both the technical
team and then Crosswalking it back to the business
team. Yeah, and so when you know when you made
the observation that perhaps this The guy wearing
this ceremonial headdress has disappeared from
the landscape I can't say I'm completely surprised
because it did feel like we've struggled To serve
the two masters, you know, it's a translation
job. That's not easy. Yeah Well, it's it but
it's in Well, it's interesting, like a couple
weeks ago we talked about how I was basically
rotating the owner of the meeting. Yeah. And
what's been very interesting about that is that
you learn that like the way that you do it is
not how everybody does it, whatever that thing
is, right? So ours is, you know, doing status
updates or whatever in that meeting. Yeah. But
you realize that a lot of times there's a lot
of fluff. filled in because we are supposed to
do the thing. And we're supposed to do the meeting
and we're supposed to meet with our manager and
we're supposed to do the one -on -one. And we
forget like, is the purpose of this ritual being
a meeting, is the purpose really to serve the
manager and give them information or is this
purpose, is the purpose for the people in the
meeting? We do the boots on the ground. And sometimes
it's just not clear. And so we just do it because
we've done it for years. It's really true. How
many of these things do we do that are just habitual?
It's much like putting a bill on auto pay. It's
out of sight, out of mind, and we just go through
it without really engaging. It takes place. I
think your comment about this new standup approach
and some shared leadership responsibility. I
think that's where classic scrum masters fell
down was that if they were very technical, they
didn't lean into what are the business implications
and who else needs to be involved. And so they
would only speak into the technical team. If
they weren't technically enough, you know, to
manage a development sprint, then they oftentimes
seem to be left outside of what was progressing.
And so. You and I are talking about it in terms
of a delivery team and just how we use this daily
sync up to make sure that everybody's got the
support they need, which feels a lot healthier
than the very prescriptive scrum that emerged
in the early 2000s. There is one right way to,
you know, one ritual to rule them all. Well,
I think where it falls down is if you're just
talking boots on the ground, the manager gets
bored, and or it goes over his head, and so then
he's insecure, and so he has to say something
silly. Or it's just for the manager, which is,
I need to have a status update, which is all
CYA, right? And so if it's not serving both sides,
if it's not a two -party agreement, then it just
breaks down. And so I think it has the meeting,
whatever the, you know, we're, you know, we're,
we're talking about the ritual of, you know,
a standup, but it could be anything, right? Could
be your QBR. Like if it's service both sides,
it's going to have more value. So it has to be
prescriptive, right? Which is like, as a manager,
I need to know XYZ. As boots on the ground, I
need to communicate this, or I need to go and
get help from this is the problem I'm dealing
with. And that ritual, I think, oftentimes breaks
down because there is no, we keep it all in our
head, right? Where if you look at a typical scrum,
it's basically just go around the room, tell
a story, tell another story, tell another story.
I think we can actually fill those meetings with
significantly more meat. if we simply were tracking
what needed to be tracked, right? If we didn't
just keep it all in our head, right? Which means
let's go and say, you know, is our Jira hygiene
correct? Or is our hygiene, and it's not, I can
give it to you that. But like if we were able
to just go and say, hey, look, what are we tracking?
What are the metrics that we're tracking? So
like we do delivery, so it's like how many hours
are our delivery team doing? Are we looking at
that every day? It takes 20 seconds to look at
that and say, oh yeah, look, you are filling
out your, you are doing what we've asked, which
is fill out your time. Yeah. Chris, I think it's
really interesting too, and when we think about
this idea of ritual, the... What I what I was
thinking about as you were saying that really
made me think about what is our but what's our
objective? What's the desired outcome that we're
working? and Yeah, and as I often do dating myself,
you know one of the most effective Teams I worked
with was in the early 2000s and this was a manager
that used a whiteboard to track what we were
signing up for I was doing sales operations and
It was really as simple as just who made this
request of our team? What's the request? And
then who's got the rock? And we'd grab a cup
of coffee. We'd look at the board together. And
it wasn't even every day. It was usually like,
Hey, I've got some updates I have to give today.
Can you guys just give verbally? Give me some
updates. We'd do this three or three times through
the week, depending on how big and messy stuff
was. But what was fascinating was to your point.
we knew why we were convening. And it's like,
as a team, we have to represent how much or how
little capacity we have and whether we're still
on track. And that's all he really needed to
know. But when he left that room, he was prepared
to defend his resources to say, my team is fully
deployed or my team has capacity. What's that
next highest priority? But it led us, it focused
on the work. instead of having people do flybys
and make requests. We don't have that much in
a virtual world and yet Slack is the modern flyby,
where it's like, hey, Chris, could you pause
everything you're doing today and give me five
hours of your attention. Well, so let's talk
about, so you've implemented this new ritual
with the delivery team where you guys are rotating
the facility responsibilities. What are you starting
to see? As terms, you know as this starts to
evolve changing habits here it you know, it's
been really it's it's been very positive mostly
because if it basically sheds a light on how
loose the ritual is Meaning what what dashboard
do I go to right like like a very very tactical?
Things when you hand it off to someone else And
it's not defined. You don't, you don't. Like
it's very difficult for the people running the
meeting. It's like, oh no, you got to go click
on this thing. And then they're like, okay, now
I'm oriented because we've gone through this
thing. But some of it, it has to be very prescriptive.
And I think most people are afraid to make those
rituals more prescriptive because they change,
because there's this assumption that the world
is this changing mess. that has to be managed.
And if you have, you know, our standups are three
times a week where if you have this standup and
you're following your agenda, if it changes,
you just go update the agenda. It's not difficult,
but it's very difficult to get humans who are
going to feel like failures because they don't
run the perfect standup. It's easier basically
to not fill them with meat. it just kind of gloss
over everything. Like we're assuming we know
what's supposed to be going on or what the status
should be. And we don't realize that from our
lens, oftentimes we're 90 % covered. But if you
go into someone else's lens, they're going to
view it completely different and you're going
to be like, oh, I completely missed that. It's
been really fascinating because even One of the
things that I said is I was like, Hey, we're
going to have a scribe. Right. And my concept
of what that scribe was, was that someone was
going to basically write down action item, operational
action items and take them back. Right. So this
is my idea. Right. I throw out scribe. What happens
is our colleague goes and actually starts taking
notes on the actual updates. And I'm like, that's
even better. And I was like, I would have never
thought of that. But he took what I said and
made it better. And so it was just this, this
kind of this fascinating, like, oh, like if we
all own, if we all own the meeting, we're going
to fill this thing and make sure that it's a
high, it's a high value effort versus the manager
owns it. He's going to talk at, he's going to
talk at us for 15 minutes or half an hour, an
hour, however long this meeting lasts. And then
we'll be done. Which is interesting because I've
had those meetings where it's like, all right,
this is the put me in coach meeting where it's
like, I'm going to do the rah rah rah. We're
going to go, we're going to go win. I'm not sure
what game we're playing or what sports ball we're
doing. But, but like I have had those where it's
where every week you're like, ah, this is where
I get to make fun of my boss or my boss's boss
because, because I, because I don't know why
I'm here. Yeah. Chris, I love what you're seeing
evolve in introducing more shared responsibility.
It makes me think, a good friend years ago, and
I've continued to share it, and too often I probably
claim it as my own brilliant idea, but it was
simply this idea of loose and tight. And we don't
want to walk into a meeting or a situation where
everything's so loose that there's no parameters
because we're lost. And it becomes a bit of a
personality battle. You know, somebody tries
to establish some order. Conversely, if it's
so tight, there's no room for meaningful conversation
that didn't make the original agenda. And then
it feels like we perceive the wrong things. And
so what I love about this is, you know, what
I'm hearing you describe in terms of ritual is.
let's be clear or let's be tight around the recurring
things that keep us focused and on track to use
for time. But then let's also be loose enough
that if there's nothing critical, we can we can
jump it. Or if there's a new concept, we've anticipated
that this is going to happen. And so there's
a part of the meeting where we always ask, is
there something new or something else we need
to cover? But I think there's a comfort that
comes from. that repetition, kind of like the
autopay again, where if I know that every meeting
has kind of four parts to it, even if I come
in a little bit late because I'm not able to
get off a client call fast enough or I've had
a hard morning before a morning meeting, when
I show up, I know what part of the meeting we're
in simply because of that basic structure, the
tight parameters that are always predictable.
I feel like... from a decision, you know, so
many of us will think about being exhausted and
so much of it's our executive function, running
and over. And if we have to bring some kind of
context or organization to every discussion,
that's fatiguing. But if it becomes a familiar
kind of meeting, if the ritual, right, this recurring
shared approach is familiar, it feels very natural.
And I can just kind of glide into it. Well, and
the other thing is... The other thing that's
interesting is we literally put this on a dock
of like, what's important for our Monday meeting?
What's important for our Wednesday meeting? What's
important for our Friday meeting? And because
the reality is like you go into a meeting and
our braids can really only hold on to five plus
or minus two, right? Like that's the capacity.
And so if you don't go back to what am I actually
doing? you're just gonna miss. And it's not like
we sit around, not very many people sit around
and think, gosh, well, how can I make my stand
up better? Like those are for the odd ducks that
create a process that podcasts. But yeah, just,
you know, and sharing that for a friend. Anyway,
but what's interesting about that is if you can
have an agenda, you can make sure that you're
hitting that thing that only takes 20 seconds,
but you're just making sure it's done. And it's
that tightening of those very loose things that
maybe once every month is gonna have an exception.
It's pulling those exceptions so that your work
can be more elegant. And I guess that to kind
of... put a cherry on this. It's just, if you're
doing something ritually, you can actually make
it better if you just sit down and have some
discipline and say, look, this is what we're
going to do. This is what this meeting is going
to be. These are the pages that I'm going to
go to to see if we're tracking, to make sure
that we're managing the little loosey goose things
as humans that we just dropped. that it's not
a big deal if we drop them, but it's a big deal
if you wait three months and you've dropped 300.
100%. Here's what I love that you're calling
out again. It's hitting me in a certain way today,
but it's very much this ritual in service to
results. Correct. So many rituals, you know,
in our early life are without, they're mystical,
right? Why do I have to brush my teeth? Why do
I have to go to bed? And then we continue to
those habits as we get older. And hopefully at
some point we realize the ritual of brushing
teeth is in service to fewer root canals or ritual
of going to bed at a consistent time is that
we feel better. And so that results oriented
ritual where there is an intended outcome and
people understand the outcome. I almost feel
like we do a better job of clarifying why we
do things with adults so that then they can have
the end in mind. And I wonder sometimes if we
continue to introduce rituals in the workplace
the same way we do with our kids, right? Where
we say, just go do it, go put on your pajamas.
You know? Because I've had so, and that top -debt
model just always fails. It falls apart at the
first opportunity for people to scamper. Well,
it just kills safety. It does, yeah. We live
in an economy. Like if you go back, I mean, you
know, we talk about oftentimes if you go back,
to our human ancestry, that ritual was really
important for the person that was going through
the ritual and the community that was performing
the ritual. Like there was a sense of stability,
a sense of security, a sense of let's go, like
a sense of place, right? Which I think most people
have lost their sense of place. I think that's
really true. different from the ritual you're
describing three times a week. One of the rituals
that we do every Friday, as we do just a weekly
check -in with the broader team, is this idea
of recognition. And I feel like every team has
these pockets of final deliverable or breakthrough
progress or exceptional conversations. One of
the things I've loved over the last couple of
years at Magic Bend Labs is that we do take a
moment to celebrate and recognize one another.
And I feel like, you know, to your point about
not just for the individual, but for the community,
I think that it's a bonding exercise where we
get to just, you know, recognize somebody and
give them a shout out. It feels good to be recognized,
but it also feels good to acknowledge the good
work of somebody else. And so, yeah, love this
discussion about ritual. It's so powerful. Cool.
Thanks, sir. I made it through another one. Let's
do it have a great Friday. See ya