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Agile Innovation Leaders


Mar 20, 2022

Full video interview available here: https://youtu.be/oJbZF1yiWvg 

Guest Bio:

Aino Vonge Corry (born 1971 in Aarhus, Denmark) is an independent consultant, who sometimes works as an agile coach.

After gaining her Ph.D. in Computer Science in 2001 she spent the next 10 years failing to choose between being a researcher/teacher in academia, and being a teacher/facilitator in industry. She eventually squared the circle by starting her own company, Metadeveloper, which develops developers by teaching CS, teaching how to teach CS, inviting speakers to IT conferences, and facilitating software development in various ways. She has facilitated retrospectives and other meetings for the past 15 years during which time she has made all the mistakes possible in that field.

Aino has lived in Stockholm, Lund, and Cambridge, but she is now back in Aarhus, Denmark, where she lives with her family, and a growing collection of plush cephalopods.

 

Social Media/ Website

 

Books/ Resources

 

Full Interview Transcript

Ula Ojiaku:

Many thanks Aino for making the time for this conversation and for being my guest on the Agile Innovation Leaders podcast.

Aino Corry: 

And thank you for inviting me, Ula. It was great to have you in the course, you had a lot of good questions. And that's how we met. And I've been looking very much forward to this day.

Ula Ojiaku:

So could you tell us a bit about yourself, you know, who is Aino Corry?

Aino Corry:

Yeah, so Aino Corry is 50 years old, she lives in Denmark, she's got three children. And she, she's always wanted to teach. Actually when I was in primary and secondary school, I wasn't so happy with mathematics teaching, so I decided after school, I wanted to be a mathematics teacher in secondary school. Actually, I thought about it and I thought I didn’t really like school. So maybe I should be a teacher in high school instead. And so I decided to try to go to university to study mathematics to become a high school teacher.

But then I had to do some programming in the mathematics course. And I really, really fell in love with that. So I changed subject to computer science. And then I did my Master's degree with a focus on design patterns, which was very new at the time. And when I finished, I wanted to continue working with design patterns. And that's why I applied for a Ph.D. I applied for a Ph.D., actually, just to prolong my university studies to make more of the fun thing that I've done. And then when I finished, I thought, I wanted to be a researcher and a teacher and I had a job at the university as an assistant professor.

Aino Corry:

And then I decided that I wanted to go out in industry instead, because I, I had a child already, and I wanted to have another child. And I really, I was dead poor, so I wanted to earn a lot of money, so I went down industry to get some money. And that worked, I got some money. And after a few years there, I went back to university to do some research and some teaching, because they had a research project, which was interesting. It was when Bluetooth was quite young and was about programming pervasive computing devices, what you would call IoT today, yes. And then I was there for a few years, and then went back to the industry, and was there for a few years. And then I went back to university. And then I did my research in how to teach computer science and how people learn. So that was also interesting. But then I wanted to stop again because then I was full-time at university and I also did some consulting in the IT industry. So I thought I would go back to the industry.

Aino Corry:

And then I thought, Naah, I want to do something else. I want to be my own boss, I don't want to work that much anymore. I had three children at the time. So I decided to be an independent IT consultant, thinking that then I would work less, that was a huge mistake. I, I like having my own company, but I wouldn't say that I work less because if you have a job and you have a boss, you can tell your boss ‘Oh, it's too much. I don't want to do that much. And please take some of the tasks away from me.’ But when you're your own boss, and you're a time optimist, like I can be, you think ‘I can do that. And I can do that.’ And especially now with COVID, it's even worse because at least prior to this, I had to calculate time in to get from one meeting to another, you know, from one client to another from one country to another. But now I can actually I can work with clients in four different countries in a day. And I've actually, one week I spoke at six different conferences in one week. So normally I would only be at one conference. So it's actually made me a little bit confused and looking very much forward to actually spending time on trains and planes and cars again,

Ula Ojiaku:

To have the downtime…

Aino Corry:

 Yes, I thought I’d never miss that, but I do, so I guess I guess that's my career.

Ula Ojiaku: 

Great. Now, just a little bit more about your research you did on teaching, on how to teach computer science. Now I would expect there would be an intersection of you know, disciplines; it wouldn't just be computer science itself. Was there an element of maybe psychology (of), you know, how people learn and all that?

Aino Corry:

Yeah, it was a lot of that it was about, well, the psychological aspects of how people react to different, being in different situations, and being spoken to in different ways. And there was something that I don't think maybe you call it neurology but thinking about how to model the brain in order to make it remember what you're saying. And just something like what does it actually mean to learn something? And in Danish, the word for teaching and learning is the same word, but in English teaching and learning are two different words. And that's actually a subtle difference, which is a big difference, which makes it maybe even harder for me as a Dane to start thinking about this because you think about it as the same process.

Aino Corry:

But it's two very different processes. And one of the biggest things that I learned when I started doing research and teaching, and that was after having taught for 16 years or something like that, the thing that I learned was that I was so immensely focused on how to condense this book into presentations and assignments so that the students could listen to me and do the assignments. I didn't think enough about the relation between the student and the material. So I was thinking more about the relation between me and the material, and me and the student. So the really important thing is that, when you have any sort of conversation with people, it's a student, or it's a presentation that you're doing, what you want to do is that you want to change their brains really, right. But you can't see the change in the brains. So you need to figure out how can I, how can I assess that they've changed the brain?

So, the first thing you have to do is think about what is it actually that you want them to be able to do differently? Do you want them to say something else? Do you want them to be able to program, to design, to facilitate, what is it that you want them to do? Because then you can set up? What is the assessment? How do you assess what they can do? Do they actually have to look at the design at an oral exam? Do they have to process some words in a written exam? What is it that you want them to do? And then when you know what you want them to do to assess it, then you can figure out what is it that you want them to do while training do you want them to do the same when you're training them, that they have to do in the assessment.

Aino Corry:

So that the exam is actually what they have been doing for the past hour, month, year, instead of examining something completely different than what they have been doing. And then when you know all that, then you start thinking about okay, so what material do I need for them to read? And that's, that's actually the last thing. And prior to this, I would take a book and I would think, this is the thing that I want to put in their brains. And then at the exam, I would ask them, do you understand that? Can you explain that, but maybe they never explained it during the course, maybe they just did exercises or something like that.

So that was one of the most surprising things is I guess, maybe it's neurology, maybe it’s psychology, it's definitely different. It's lending, from different fields. And, and you can say that the computer science part of it is actually the least part. But the interesting part about computer science and teaching computer science or natural sciences is that it's mostly not so much about discussing things. It's more about being able to understand things and relate things and apply things. Now, I guess well, you can say that all issues, all subjects are like that. But with the natural sciences, it's much more about understanding the world, changing the world. So yeah, I think it's very interesting, but also trying to explain difficult subjects to people. How do you actually do that?

Ula Ojiaku:

So you've already mentioned that you, you know, started your business because you wanted to be an independent, and then you realized, oh, well, there are other things because as a business owner, you probably would do all the other admin tasks that someone else would have in person. Yeah. Now, am I right? In the understanding, you still run, you know, your business, which is the meta developer, right? Do you have employees right now?

Aino Corry:

No, I don’t, and I don't want to. And I've had a lot of people asking me over the years if I want to employ somebody and I, I did try once for just a small gig that I needed a helping hand and I employed that person and that person was not a problem, but all the extra paperwork, with taxes and insurances, and what do I know. So if I'm working with people, now they have their own company, and then they can send me an invoice and then I can pay them like that because I really want to be independent and five, no six years ago, my family and I, we moved to Cambridge in the UK for a year.

And it was so easy for me, I could just do it because even though I had to really work a lot less because I didn't have my network in England and I had three kids who had to move to a different country so I had to focus on them. I could just do it, I could just work less and not make any money or almost no money. Because I didn't, I wasn't responsible to anybody, I was only responsible to myself. That gives me the freedom that I want to have. And during COVID I lost everything in my book. My calendar just was empty. Wow. And I didn't know how to continue with the company. But I only had to worry about myself. I didn't have to worry about anybody that I employed. So that was nice.

Ula Ojiaku:

Yes, I completely agree. I mean, it would be a lot of responsibility, having other people's livelihood as well as yours to think about that. Yeah,

 Aino Corry:

Especially. I mean, this is such a fluid thing. It's difficult to promise anything.

Ula Ojiaku:

Now, but hopefully, with the, you know, lockdown restrictions on I mean, unfortunately, we're still not out, you know of the red and unfortunately, many lives have been lost, and many people have been affected but it seems like there is light at the end of the tunnel with the (covid) vaccination (roll-out) and all that. So would you say your calendar is filling up again?

Aino Corry:

Yes, it actually became overfilled, yeah during COVID. Because my book came out. So I had hoped that when my book came out, I would travel everywhere in the world and sign my books. Unfortunately, that couldn't happen because of COVID. But that's the least of the things that could happen to people during COVID. I've been very lucky. But my book came up...

Ula Ojiaku:

Retrospectives Antipatterns…

Aino Corry:

Yes. and, and that meant that there were a lot of people who wanted to talk to me about retrospectives, which was why I wrote the book. So that was great. So I don't know if it had filled up as easily without the book, but it definitely helped, I think. But I'm looking so much forward to getting out and speaking at conferences again. I taught at the university yesterday, and I will again tomorrow. And that was in real life. It was so nice, people were laughing and we were clapping. And we were like doing icebreaker exercises where we were standing up and moving towards each other. And it was really nice.

Ula Ojiaku:

Yeah, I mean, nothing can ever replace that, you know, face-to-face in-person interaction. Whilst we're grateful for technology, you know, for bridging the gap, you know, but once in a while, it's definitely important. Yeah. Great. Now, so since you've shown us your book, Retrospectives Antipatterns. And you've talked about it briefly, why don't we delve into that a bit. And for the audience who are listening either (via) audio or video only, there will be the links to the, you know, to the book, and other resources that we touch on in the show notes. So what you said people were, you know, asking you lots of questions about retrospectives, and asking for advice, which was one of the motivations for writing the book. Could you tell us the story behind that?

Aino Corry:

I love to tell the story behind the book. Thank you for asking, Ula. So I started facilitating Retrospectives because Linda Rising gave me a book by Norman Kerth called Project Retrospectives. And then I started facilitating them. And then Diana Larsen and Esther Derby wrote a book about Agile Retrospectives - Making Good Teams Great, which condensed all the retrospective activities into smaller bite-sized ones that you can use after each sprint. And I facilitated retrospectives at in the time I worked for a company called Trifle, inside Trifle with the customers. When I went back to university, I facilitated retrospectives there. And I just really, really liked it. I even facilitated retrospectives with my family and myself, and everybody basically who couldn't get away. And I, I got a lot of experience. And then once I was at a conference that I’d been part of organizing the conference and inviting speakers and what I do at these conferences is that if a speaker gets sick, or can't be there, then I fill in with a presentation.

So they came to me and asked me is ‘Could you fill in with a presentation? Just 20 minutes?’ ‘Okay, I said, When do you want it?’ And they said ‘In 20 minutes, and we would want it to be a new talk, could you do that?’ I was like, how can I? How can I prepare a new talk in 20 minutes for a 20-minute talk? And then I thought the only thing that I really, really know about that I can talk about for lengths, are all the mistakes that I'm continuously making when facilitating retrospectives So I thought this is definitely something I can talk about. So I just, I just, I think I drew some pictures, or I found some pictures online. And then I just spoke out from those I, I spoke about three different things that I called Antipatterns for Retrospectives, things that often go wrong for me and how to solve it. So not just explaining the problems, but also how to get out of the problem situation. And they really liked it.

And then I started giving that talk. And I extended it to 45 minutes to an hour, I extended it to a day. And people kept asking me, ‘Where can we read more about this?’ And I said you can't really because it's, it's in my head. And then somebody said ‘Maybe we you should write a book.’ And so I thought I'm not going to write a book, I already did my Ph.D. dissertation, and I'm not doing that again. Not the best part of it for me. But then I started just writing, you know, first, it was just a few Word documents that I shared with people in my retrospective network. And they gave me feedback on that. And then I started a Leanpub book. And it turned out people wanted to buy the Leanpub book. So I thought, well, maybe I should add some more chapters. And then I thought it would be interesting to see if there's any publishers who would like to publish it.

Aino Corry:

And luckily, I have a very good network in IT, so I asked a lot of people who are already authors and, and Martin Fowler introduced me to somebody from Pearson, Greg Dench, and he, he read my book, the PDF that I sent from Leanpub, and he said that they thought they'd like to publish it. And there was a lot of back and forth and back and forth. And could you change the title? Because Antipatterns sounds so depressing and negative? And I said, but it is an Antipatterns, so I cannot. And then those things about I want this octopus, this big octopus?

Ula Ojiaku:

Yes, yes.

Aino Corry:

Well, it looks a little bit like a children's book, are you sure you want it to look like a children's book and I said actually, I'm, I'm really like a child myself. So I want it to be me. And then I said, and it has to be printed in color. Because I want all these Antipatterns to have not just a name, but also a picture. Because with Antipatterns, what you do is that you create an awareness, so I described, this is the context you're in, this is what normally happens, but that's the Antipattern solution. That's actually another good solution that gives you these drawbacks. But then you have the refactored solution, which gives you these benefits.

And I want the patterns as well as Antipatterns, it sort of enables you to have a discussion and a higher level of extraction. So you can say, for instance, with patterns, you can say, then I use the observed or I implemented composite, and then you don't have to explain all the nitty gritty details. And it's the same with these Antipatterns. So instead of saying, ‘Well, we tried to vote, but then some people held up their vote, and I allowed them to do so. But maybe I could have done it differently’, you can just say, well, then I ended in political votes. And there's also the name and then the picture because for some people, the name is easy to remember, but for other people, the picture.

Ula Ojiaku:

The pictures, yes.

Aino Corry:

I definitely am very visual. So I, I really remember pictures like that. And graphs, it really helps me understand I love UML, and when I work with architecture, it's very important for me to be able to draw these things. So that's how the book came about. And there were other publishers who didn't want it because they thought it was not technical enough or they didn't like the Antipatterns in the title or they thought it was too negative, but Pearson wanted it, so that's great. I'm very grateful for that.

Ula Ojiaku:

That's fantastic. Again, we'll have the link to the book in the show notes. And I mean, so I do identify with, you know, the things you said or where you kind of held your ground and in terms of how the book was meant to look for pictures. And if it's playful, it's easier to absorb. There is the saying in English, you know, a picture is worth more than a thousand words. Definitely. And in that way, you're kind of trying to cater for different people with different learning styles, because there are some of us who can read you know, but pictures kind of makes it, breaks it up and kind of, you know, conveys the message even more effectively in some instances. On that note though, are you, do you already have an audio version of it? Or do you think it would bode well as an audio version?

Aino Corry:

Yeah, that's a bit embarrassing, Ula, because I have narrated, I think five of the chapters. But then I stopped, but I will narrate it. I am doing it and it will happen, hopefully, yeah, but it turns out it's much more difficult to make an audiobook than you think I want to narrate it myself. I agree. Have you tried it?

Ula Ojiaku:

Well, no, just with, you know, starting the podcast and you know, kind of speaking, there is a whole lot to it. So I can imagine trying to bring a book to life, you know, kind of enunciating, and there'll be some places you need to emphasize. That's why I've never done it yet. But I can imagine.

Aino Corry:

Yeah, well, I could have hired an actor to do it, but I wanted it to be me, because it's my experience. It's, it's my voice that should be in this book. And then so I'm Danish and English is my second language. I normally think, Okay, I'm pretty good at English, I can speak fluent English, people understand what I'm saying I can express myself and the book is written in English. But then when you start recording it, and you’ll listen to it afterwards, you make so many mistakes, or at least I do. So I have to repeat that again. So it just takes a lot longer than I thought, but it will be there, it's my plan.

Ula Ojiaku:

We'll be looking out for it, definitely, yeah. Okay, so, in your view, what are Retrospectives, and why are they important?

Aino Corry:

Well Retrospectives is a way for a team to set time aside to reflect on where they are, inspect, you'd say, and learn from, that, appreciate what happened, and see how can we improve going forward, the way that we communicate, the way that we work, the way that we program or design, or whatever we do. It's simply taking time aside to appreciate and inspect and then adapt to the situation. In a sense, it's the core of Agile, right, inspecting and adapting. And for a team to have regular Retrospectives, I think it's so important. Sometimes they'll think we don't have anything to talk about, we don't have any problems.

But there's always something that can be improved, even if it's a small thing. And having those regular Retrospectives helps you remember, to continue to improve in all different aspects, but also, I think Retrospectives is a way to gain trust between team members, it's not the only thing you need to gain trust, but that sharing thing that showing, “Okay, that didn't go very well”, or “I need to learn this”, or “I got stuck with this”. But also, “I was really happy about this”, ”this made me so energetic, and really optimistic about these things”. It helps people understand each other as human beings and as sort of parts of the machinery or parts of the system, that's the team or even the organization. So I think it's important in all aspects. And for everybody.

Ula Ojiaku:

It’s interesting, your definition of what a retrospective is, and I'd never really thought about it as a way for team members to, you know, build trust with themselves, so thanks for mentioning it, that really stood out for me, do you have any examples in your experience where, you know, this happened where there was maybe little or no trust and, you know, subsequently through the Retrospectives the team, started having more trust towards themselves?

Aino Corry:

I would like to say yes, but I have to say that when I realized in the retrospective that there's not enough trust, it is something that you have to work with also between the Retrospectives in a sense if there is not enough trust to share anything, then, then the retrospective will not be trust-building in itself, but it can help you reveal that there is not enough trust, and then you can start working with it, and to me trust is sort of the equation between relationships and that you can rely on people that you rely on people and you have a relationship.

So if you have a relationship, if you know a little bit about each other as human beings, it makes it easy for you to trust people. And also if you can rely on other people, for instance, if they say, ‘Oh, I'll do this’, then they'll do it. Or they'll say they can't do it, that's part of the trust as well. And if you understand, if you learn at the retrospective that there isn't enough trust, the retrospective can become a waste of time.

Aino Corry:

Because if they don't want to share the things that are really difficult, then you will just talk about the meal in the canteen, or whether we should have a meeting that's two hours long, or one hour long, or something like that, which is not really changing anything. It's usually things about how to give feedback or whether the code reviews can be done in this way or the other and whether we need to learn something more. So, but you can definitely be aware that there's trust issues that you can work on outside the retrospective, but then I think another important thing is that if they have already sufficient trust to be able to share things, then I've heard from a lot of people that it can, it can feel almost like team therapy to have a retrospective because they don't have to think about it, they can sort of relax and let the facilitator carry the conversation forward sometimes. And then if it can help them say, now, we talk about this,

Now perhaps we've talked enough about this, now we should talk about this or could you see this from the other side, which is something that I sometimes do as well. So it can be a little bit conflict handling as well to be a facilitator to say what did you hear him say right now? Or can you imagine what his day was like yesterday or something like that? So it can be therapeutic if you want to, but that depends on the facilitator. You can also have a retrospective facilitator, which is perfectly fine, but only wants to talk about how we can improve the way that we actually design things, the architecture we make, the meetings we have, it can still be helpful, doesn't have to be therapy, but it can.

Ula Ojiaku:

Yeah. In running the retrospectives I would assume, I would imagine, there would be some sort of advanced preparation from a facilitative perspective. Now, would you when you get asked to do this by you know, other organizations and teams? Do you normally have a point person and you'd get the brief in terms of what they're trying to achieve from the point person, and that would set the agenda? So have you always found yourself sticking to the agenda? Or have you ever had to kind of flex depending on what you sense the team needs?

Aino Corry:

Yeah, I've definitely had to change my agenda. So if I get invited to facilitate a retrospective, I talk to the one who sponsors me to ask them why, why have you reached out? Do you already have Retrospectives? If you have Retrospectives, why do you need an external facilitator? What normally works for you in retrospective? What doesn't work? Is there any conflict? I should know about it? Is there anybody who's really quiet? Anybody who's really a loudmouth? Is there anything that can help me plan this retrospective in the right way? Then sometimes they say, oh, we'd really, really like this retrospective to focus on how they can learn as a team, or we'd really like this to focus on their communication with other teams. And then in some, sometimes I'll say, okay, so, so we'll say that's the theme for the retrospective. And then I'll let people know that that's a theme for the retrospective. But other times, if it's a new group, then I'll probably encourage that sponsor to allow me to make some, just a generic retrospective. So for a new group who has to work together, maybe he or she will allow me to create a futurespective for them, which is the kind of retrospective where you imagine that you’re in the future, looking back at what happened. And then they say, okay, then we, then somebody got fired, or this didn’t work, or the users hated it.

Aino Corry:

And the way that I have this futurespective, with the new team is that then I get to understand and they get to understand about each other. What do they hope and what do they feel will happen in this project, and then we can have action points, which will allow them to get the things that they hope and avoid the things that they fear. So sometimes I'll let the sponsor know, well, actually, we should do it a little bit different way. And sometimes I'll say, that's fine, we'll focus on that. But it is often so that you need to have an extra agenda when you prepare for a retrospective, at least a little bit. Because sometimes you suddenly end up in a situation where you have somebody who's speaking all the time or somebody who's really quiet.

And then all the plenary discussions that you decided on, you can't have those because plenary discussions are not very nice if you have like a big difference in how much people wants to speak. And then you have to divide them into smaller groups, or you have to change it in writing. Or you have to make round robins where everybody takes turns in saying something, so just as an example. But it could also be that you notice that all the things that they're talking about are problematic, turns out to be things that we think are sort of out of their hands, not really something they can do anything about. And then if you spend all the time discussing things that you can't change, then it's just like a session where you're just complaining about everything.

And in those cases, I sometimes get out the soup exercise that I learned from Diana Larsen where you make the three circles, things the team can do, things the team can influence, and then you have the soup outside. And then I say well out of all these problems that you're complaining about, how many of these are things you can do something about, how many of these things you can influence, how many of these things are in the soup, and for the things in the soup, you might just have to accept that this is the world we live in, like Corona right now. Yeah, It’s what it is.

Ula Ojiaku:

Amazing. So, so what would you say would be, from what you've observed, I'm sure you've had a spectrum of or a continuum of teams from what you'd consider high performing to maybe people… I mean, a team that’s still up and coming. What would be your view of the characteristics of a high-performing team?

Aino Corry:

Yeah, that's a good question. In my experience, it's not so much the individual's skill set that makes a high-performing team, an individual with the highest skill set can do a lot on its own. But if we talk about a high-performing team, it's about a team that can communicate, it's about a team where you feel there’s psychological safety to say when you're stuck, or when you need help. Because if you're only working on what you want, first and foremost, and only helping other people, if you really have to, then it's not really high performing, and things will clot up and it'll be slow.

One of the symptoms that I see in teams that are high-performing is that they're laughing together. So I evaluate sometimes teams based on how much they laugh, and not how much they laugh over each other, but how much they laugh together. And how, yeah, I think, I think it's a good litmus test. Because if they laugh together, then it makes them happier for each other, because the laughter starts, you know, all the happiness hormones in your brain and sensing around your body. So if you laugh together with somebody, you like them a bit more.

And if you like them a bit more, you might trust them a bit more. And if you trust them a bit more, you might reach out and ask for help. Or you might offer help, when you see that somebody needs it. And if you are in an environment where you will you think that you can work freely, and you can speak freely, and you feel nice, then you're much more efficient together with other people. So that's what I see in high-performing teams.

Ula Ojiaku:

I mean, everything you've said because I was going to ask you to define for the benefit of the audience who might not be familiar with the term what psychological safety is? So would you say, you know, it's pretty much what you've broken down, you know, how much they laugh together, how safe they feel in asking for help, and, you know, yeah, being able to work together.

Aino Corry:

Yeah, I think that Gitte Klitgaard has, has taught me one of the most important things about psychological safety. And that is that it's actually not about being comfortable all the time, but it's about feeling comfortable about being uncomfortable. So even if you're saying something, which doesn't feel nice, you should still feel comfortable about it. And I think that's an interesting difference. So it's not just about making everybody feel good all the time and not having problems and only laughing and talking about positive things. That's not psychological safety. It's being okay to say I have a down day, or it's being okay to say that I don't understand what you're saying, or I feel negative, or I'm worried about this, or I don't think that this was done well enough, we could do it differently, that to me is psychological safety.

Ula Ojiaku:

Would you say that psychological safety, you know, having an environment that encourages the sense of psychological safety, is that only up to the team to foster? (If not) So who else would be involved, in your view?

Aino Corry:

I think that there's a culture in an organization and there can definitely be a culture of organizational safety and there can be a culture of non-psychological safety. And if, if the management is also showing that they're comfortable with saying uncomfortable things, I think that helps. If they're comfortable with saying, ‘Oh, we didn't do very well about that, or I made a mistake, or, if they're okay with telling people to do things differently, instead of making it really awkward or being very angry about it. That's, that's brilliant. And I remember one of the great managers, I had once that I made a huge mistake, that was really embarrassing. And when I noticed it, I felt so bad. I was beating myself up about it, but I had to tell my manager, and I had to come forward and say I messed up completely.

And the way that he reacted was just wonderful. He said, ‘Well, we'll have to look into that. We'll have to figure out how we can change the process so that that doesn't happen again.’ Because of course, I mean, I probably could have avoided that mistake if I thought about things in a different way. But what he said was that we should have a process where you know, that you should do this at this point in time, that should help you, support you. And I thought that was one of the things that created psychological safety for me because now I felt much safer about saying that I had a problem or made something wrong.

Ula Ojiaku:

In facilitating retrospectives, because you mentioned earlier that if there was anything you could talk about at length, you know, without needing preparation, it would be about the mistakes you've made in facilitating retrospectives. And hence, maybe they could also be some of you know, lead to some of the Antipatterns, could you share some of these Retrospective Antipatterns that you've observed?

Aino Corry:

So one of the Retrospective Antipatterns that I see most often or that I ran into most often myself is the one that I called Prime Directive Ignorance. So the Prime Directive is what Norman Kerth wrote about retrospectives. There was a longer text that states ‘everybody did the best they could at all times, and remember that before you enter a retrospective’, but the problem is that, at least in some of the organizations that I've worked in with some of the people that have worked, they thought it was a bit ridiculous to expect that everybody did the best they could all the time. And to really believe that they couldn't have done any better, because they knew that somebody was slacking. They knew that somebody was being lazy. They also knew that they themselves didn't do the best they could.

Aino Corry:

So how could they really, genuinely believe that? So sometimes I've had retrospectives where I didn't, I didn't state that, I didn't say it out loud, I didn't state in an email or the invitation, I didn't say remember, this retrospective is not about finding a scapegoat or naming and blaming, it's about figuring out how we as a system of people can move on better together. And then I've had some awful retrospectives where some people had been made scapegoats, and they got really sad, and some of them left the retrospectives because they didn't feel safe. And then, and I think some of them may never have entered a retrospective again because it really ruined it for them because in their head now, the retrospective is a free for all, just sending arrows towards somebody, some poor person and shaming them and blaming them. So I think that the Prime Directive Ignorance Antipattern is one of the most important ones and the refactored solution, obviously, in the Prime Directive Ignorance is not to ignore the prime directive. So remember to bring it, put it on the poster in the wall, say it out loud, write it in the email, you can do it with your own words, it doesn't have to be in Kerth’s words, if you like your own words better. But just make sure that people try to do that. Because the thing that Norman Kerth wanted to achieve with this was that people had the mindset of everybody did the best they could.

But it's difficult to have that mindset. We're probably all brought up with our parents asking who left the milk out on the morning table? Who broke that vase, who started that fight, right? We're always trying to find a scapegoat and punish them. Although it's not very constructive, not even with children, and not even with grownups either to find that, it's, it's better to figure out how can they play? And where can they play so that they don't break the vase? How can we remind people to put milk into the refrigerator? Instead of saying you're stupid, you're forgetful, you're lazy, right. But I also appreciate that it might be a bit naive, that you might think, okay, but they could have just done a little better. But helping them out with processes, I think it's a good idea.

Ula Ojiaku:

With reference to the Prime Directive, you know, one of my mentors said something to me that also stuck which is that, you know, most people come to work wanting to do their best job, but sometimes it’s the system that restricts them. So if we, like you said, you know, kind of move away from trying to find a scapegoat or someone to point the finger at, you know, to blame for what's going wrong, can we look at how we can shape the system in such a way that those things, you know, it would be hard to fall into those mistakes because the system is already shaped in a way that would help them focus on the right behaviours and practices and not fall into the wrong undesired ones? Yeah. Amazing. Any other Antipatterns you'd like to share?

Aino Corry:

Yeah, I think that the other one I'd like to share is one that I am becoming more and more aware of how important it is with so many people starting to facilitate retrospectives, because so many people are understanding how powerful it is. A lot of people who maybe aren't, let's say fully dressed, not very experienced in facilitating retrospectives are being thrown into facilitating retrospectives, by people thinking that it's easy. And it's not easy. It's really, really hard. It's hard to do it right. It's easy to understand, but it's difficult to do, it’s like that one minute to learn, a lifetime to master.

And a lot of people become disillusioned. So one of my retrospective anti-patterns is called the disillusioned facilitator. Because a lot of people are thrown into this role of oh, you can start facilitating retrospectives next week. And then they, maybe they hear something in a podcast like this, oh, this is an activity, you should definitely try it, or they read it online, and then they do it. But then probably they haven't done it before. They're doing it in real life the first time and they might be a bit, not really sure about it, not really having the heart in it.

And people can feel that right away. And then they won’t put their heart into it either, and then it will fall to the ground, you won't get what you expect to get out of it. So, I always encourage people when they start facilitating to try doing it in a sandbox, first, try out the activities with somebody that you trust and know, maybe you have some other people who want to learn how to facilitate retrospectives, and then you can try these activities out with them.

Because explaining these activities can be difficult, coming up with examples that make people understand what they should do can be difficult. But also, really understanding what is the expected outcome, as we talked about right in the beginning Ula, the learning goals, what is it actually that you want to achieve? You're not doing the activity to do the activity, you're doing the activity to achieve something, to figure out what it is you want to achieve makes it easier to perform the right way.

So with the disillusioned facilitator what I'm trying to say is, don't worry, you're doing your best the prime directive holds for you as well. Try it out with people, start with things that you're absolutely sure of, take boring activities for a start if you understand how to explain them. And if you understand what the expected outcome is. And we remember to debrief after the exercises to make sure that the people in the retrospective understand what they just got out of it. Because sometimes if you go just from one activity to the other, maybe they're wondering, why did we do that? Why did we spend half an hour on that? They don't understand that actually, what we got out of it was sharing this experience, or perhaps seeing the weight, how many people thought this or something like that?

Ula Ojiaku

Yeah, never assume, I guess is the cardinal rule there, don't assume, explain why you're doing what you're doing. You're carrying them along on a journey. And you have to (do so) like a good tour guide. This is what I, I tell the teams I coach or some of the coaches that I'm coaching: you're a tour guide, so you have to, you know you're saying ‘this is the destination we’re going (to)’ and as we get to some notable, you know, attraction points, call it out to them, because you can't assume that everyone is following.

Aino Corry

No, no

Ula Ojiaku

Amazing. Now what books, in addition to yours, can someone who wants to learn more about retrospectives and activities, ideas for activities to run during retrospectives? What books would you recommend to them?

Aino Corry

Well, the interesting thing about retrospectives is that there's a lot of different books that apply. Like when we talked about teaching computer science, it's not just computer science. It's also psychology, ethnography, neurology, things like that. And when you want to become a good retrospective facilitator, you also have to look at other things. You have to look at books about body language. A book that I keep returning to is the book Coaching Agile Teams (by) Lyssa Adkins. It's not necessarily about retrospectives, there is a little bit about that in there, but Coaching Agile Teams is about all the different ways of thinking about helping people coming from this place to this place. And that's actually what retrospectives is about. But also Jutta Eckstein has written the book Retrospectives for Organizational Change.

And I think that's important as well to think about retrospectives in a different setting because then you might see that okay, so these retrospectives that you have been asked to do every sprint for a team, maybe that's actually something you can use for the whole organization to help a change or something like that. So I think sort of not just talking about the retrospective books, but other books in general about coaching or communication are very important.

Ula Ojiaku:

Fantastic. So are you on social media? And how can the audience who would want to get in touch with you do so?

Aino Corry:

Yeah, I'm on LinkedIn. LinkedIn, I think Aino Corry, just that link, and I'm on Twitter with my name, @apaipi. I'm also on Instagram, but I never use it. So that's the best place to reach me. And it's really easy to Google me because as with you, we probably have very unique names.

Ula Ojiaku:

Yes, yes, definitely.

Aino Corry:

And I have to say, Ula, thank you for that thing from the coaching that you said about pointing out the different parts of the landscape in the journey that people might not have noticed. I think that's a very, very good analogy that I'll use in my retrospective teaching as well.

Ula Ojiaku:

You're very welcome for that. Thank you for that. Thank you. You're welcome. Any final words before we just wrap this whole thing up?

Aino Corry:

Yeah, make sure you have something that you enjoy every day in your life.

Ula Ojiaku:

Amazing. Thanks again Aino.