I recently witnessed someone having a really difficult time, I feel there is a lot to learn in our professional lives and a lot we can do about tough problems to solve.

I feel we should think about how Empiricism and the Scrum Values can help us through these tough times. This is maybe how?

Empiricism

Scrum is maybe a bit deeper than you have previously experienced. Scrum is founded on Empirical Process Control.

While the framework applies to Products, Software, creative work and provides the nuts and bolts to deliver value, the theory and the principles go beyond the mechanical behaviours.

Transparency: With time, comes change, with change comes the opportunity to adapt. Without transparency, Scrum will fail, inspecting without transparency is misleading and wasteful, inspection without adaptation is considered pointless.

Don’t suffer from change, apply Empiricism to help “Make that change”.

Values

Commitment: I think the most important tool I use to go from suffering change to thriving on change is Transparency.

Courage: Every obstacle is an opportunity, what are your opportunities and how will you go about solving these problems?

Openness: If you feel alone, who are your allies? What conversations can you have with them to increase transparency?

Focus: You have some problems to solve, don’t give up, you will regret giving up, you are not the problem, start with Transparency, time is your friend, not your enemy, be ok that causing change takes time, and every previous failure is just an opportunity to learn new ways to tackle tough problems.

Respect: Believe in the process, believe in Empiricism.

Lead the Way

Self-awareness: Each day, take 5 minutes in a quiet space, focus on you, remind yourself of your Goal, remind yourself that any experiment that did not work yesterday, was an experiment, don’t fall back, fall forward, which problem will you tackle today and what experiment could you try?

Authenticity: You know you are a brilliant human being, lead the way, it will be hard, yes, and each day you will need to recharge that energy you spent, maybe multiple times a day, you can take another 5 minutes reflection focusing on you anytime.

Examplarity: Every day that you show up as your true self without faltering, you will rebuild the confidence others had in you, those around you in your organisation and around your allies.

Kindness: Be kind to yourself, set yourself to be the example, it will be easier then to be kind to others.

Make that Change

To lead the way, start with the one in the mirror, take a look at yourself and make that change.

The world will soon feel a much better place.