Are you building comfortable place for you?

What about the last question from the previous article? Did you answer it?

Last time we were talking about places that are too comfortable for us. But maybe this is not a problem?
Maybe there are challenges around you? Maybe there are things that require learning? Things that take people out of their comfortable zones?
Maybe it’s not about a place, but about… you?


Maybe you are just letting those opportunities go away? Let them be taken by another person? Maybe you build this asylum around you with your own hand?


I understand that no one likes to be overwhelmed. Don’t want to do a job that should be done by someone else. Yet, if there’s no one who is responsible and the task requires someone’s attention and time, who would be willing to help? If there is no one who knows how or those who knows already have too much on their plate?

Maybe there are situations like this in your company? What are you doing then? Are you pushing them back?
Yes, it’s not your responsibility. Yes, you don’t have to do it. No one will argue with you about this.

On the other hand, you can. If you want to.


Maybe your comfort is not built on a solid ground where nothing changes?
Maybe you just don’t let in anything new?

Think about it.

If the place is too comfortable maybe there is something that you can do about it?

Too comfortable?

Piece.
Quiet.
You can calm down and do your job.

You know what has to be done.
You know how it needs to be done.

And even if there are any differences between the issues... there is no reason to panic.
You have been here so many times.
Solutions are always similar.
You know where to go for help. Whom to ask if it would be needed.

You feel comfortable. Almost relaxed.

Negative or positive feedback?

Positive feedback is like a compliment or a reward for your effort. Your skills were good enough (or even better), you made right decisions. Your actions get us closer to success. No matter whether we reached a goal or not, you’ve done the best that you could and what is even more important – you’ve done more than anyone on your place would do.
It’s always great to hear words like this. It proves that our efforts are put in the right direction. That we are valuable member of the team/project/organization. It shows us that we grow in the right area.
It’s easy to receive feedback like this, because who doesn’t like to hear a few good words about himself?

Daily (after stand-up) presentations

In my team we are always trying something new, we like to experiment with new ideas, we looking for new ways of learning something which is worth to be learned.
After one of our's retrospection we decided to do a presentations, at least once a week. We had presentations before, but we wanted to start with someting that would be organized in better way, would be regular.
We knew that each of us reads a lot, tries many new things on daily basis and it would be great to spread this knowledge and share it with teammates. We created even a list with our propositions of subjects for those presentations.

That was good idea and we were so eager to do so... but...

After a few weeks it turns out that not so much presentations were done. We had ideas (many of them was already listed), we had knowledge (each of us already knew something about some of the subjects on the list), but in most times, we couldn't convert our knowledge into a few slides of presentation. It was just too... hard? I believe, not, it was just too time consuming.
Yeah, what can I say, we are lazy, we like to learn, but to teach is a different story, if you want to teach you need to be prepared, it requires additional work on something that you already know. That leads to simple conclusion - if I can spend my time to learn something new or on creating presentation about something that I already know, choice is easy and obvious for most of us.

That's why our "presentations plan" died... but not completely.
We talked about the idea almost on each retrospection and many times on daily meetings. On the other hand, we shared a links with each other, we had short conversations in pairs or in bigger groups.
When I noticed all those facts I started to merge them into an one idea - daily (after stand up) presentations.

What it's all about?
After our stand-up meetings we started to do a short (not longer than 10 minutes) presentations. It can be anything, summary of a great article, short introduction to a new idea or tool, it just must be short and interesting.
We agreed that no presentation (I mean document or something similar) is required. Just whiteboard, presenter and all interested people.

Whether it is revealing? I think, not, but I believe that organizing somehow our short and random discussions (with various number of participators) improved spreading a knowledge. Removing necessary of creating a real presentation (documents) decreased our laziness and we are more likely to doing such a presentations even once a day (or even more if it won't take more than 10).

I believe that most of us want to learn, want to develop their skills almost all the time. Why don't try to do it together? It will be more efficient and you will increase a chance to learn something that you could even didn't know it exists.