Quotes from: ““Punished by Rewards: The Trouble with Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A’s, Praise, and Other Bribes” by Alfie Kohn

Alfie Kohn writes and speaks widely on human behavior, education, and parenting. He is the author of twelve books and hundreds of articles. Kohn has been described by Time Magazine as “perhaps the country’s most outspoken critic of education’s fixation on grades and test scores.” He has appeared twice on “Oprah,” as well as on … Read more

Agile Coaching – Lessons from the Trenches

Authors: Gene Gendel and Erin Perry High performing organizations, high performing teams, and high performing people do not often happen organically. They are a return on investment. We’ve spent time in the trenches, both giving and receiving coaching, at organizations of all sizes: from small startups to large enterprises. In this article, we will use … Read more

Bad Smells: Appraisals and Performance Reviews Influenced by Agile Coaches

Agile/Scrum coaches should not position themselves in ways that will give them an authoritative/commanding role within an organization, where they coach. If this happens, organizations/people that are being coached will not gain long-lasting learning.  The result of such engagement, will be have a ‘quick fix’ at most, but it will not be sustainable.  Coaches will … Read more

Motivation 3.0 Is Required to Transition from Tribe Stage 3 to Tribe Stage 4

In his book Drive, Daniel Pink says that when it comes to motivation, there’s a gap between what science knows and what business does. Our current business operating system is built around external, carrot-and-stick motivators — which don’t work and often do more harm than good. We need a system upgrade. And the science shows … Read more

Reviews, Appraisals and Incentives

Author: Gene Gendel I wanted to start this discussion with Wikipedia definition of Performance Appraisal: “A performance appraisal (PA), also referred to as a performance review, performance evaluation,[1] (career) development discussion,[2] or employee appraisal[3] is a method by which the job performance of an employee is documented and evaluated. Performance appraisals are a part of … Read more

Feb 1-3, 2016. Certified LeSS Practitioner in New York

Author: Gene Gendel Event Details  Large-Scale Scrum (LeSS) is a framework for scaling agile development to multiple teams. LeSS builds on top of the Scrum principles such as empiricism, cross-functional, self-managing teams and provides a framework for applying that at scale. It provides simple structural rules and guidelines on how to adopt Scrum in large product development. The … Read more

Fallacies of RAG Reports

Author: Gene Gendel How Much Can You Trust Your Navigation Instruments? 1944…Imagine you are flying back home from a risky military mission…If you are not able to vividly imagine what this experience is like, please follow this link:  https://www.keystepstosuccess.com/2016/01/b-17e-bomber-tight-coupling-of-color-coding-with-numerical-data/ RAG System in Conventional Project Management Today, the RAG system is still widely used in conventional project … Read more