Development teams often fail to recognize the complex group interactions and multi-person relationships that are critical to build and maintain a highly productive team. Instead, they adopt follow-the-crowd practices such as stand up meetings or Kanban boards without understanding the underlying fundamentals. Michael Wolf introduces group interaction patterns of highly productive development teams to provide a framework for understanding group interactions and a vocabulary for discussing ways to improve. Michael will facilitate a highly-experiential introduction to techniques from 4 group work practices: * Liberating Structures * The Core Protocols * Group Works Card Deck (& Group Works Pattern Language) * Personal Kanban

1. Group Interaction Liberating Structures
Patterns Including and unleashing everyone
The keys for Highly
Productive Teams
Bring life to meetings and other gatherings
Michael R. Wolf All live in greatness
MichaelRWolf@att.net
@LearningWolf
206-679-7941
visualize learn improve
All Mammals Learn by Playing

2. Here we are…. Let’s dig in!

3. Why care about Group Works?
 Lead a more fulfilled life.
 Honestly!!! I’ll personally attest to it.
 You don’t have to tell “The Boss” why you’re doing it….
… but it’s an open secret. It’s all inter-related.

4. Why update current processes?
Pete Peterson
NCDD (National Coalition for
Dialog and Deliberation)
Seattle 2012 Biennial Conference
http://ncdd.org/10232
Amazing 17 minute plenary speech

5. What processes are better?
1. Liberating Structures
“… the practices they have all learned are neither adapted to today’s
realities nor designed to achieve the ideals…”
1. Group Works Card Deck
“Good process builds strong communities. Our work is an act of love in
service to the world”.
1. The Core Protocols
2. Personal Kanban

6. Why should I listen to you?

7. I am not the moon…

8. Presentation Overview
 You Experience the techniques
- “Technique Slam”
1. GW - Group Work Pattern Language
2. LS - Liberating Structures
3. CP - Core Protocols
4. PK - Personal Kanban
 I Facilitate your learning
- “Guide on the Side” (my preferred style)
- “Sage on the Stage” (only when “necessary”)
 Closing (FKA Q&A)

9. I want to leave you wanting more…
Flight of beers Speed Dating

10.  “Including and unleashing everyone”
LS - Liberating
Structures  33 liberating structures, each includes
- What is made possible?
- Micro structures & Design Elements => Min Specs
1. A structuring invitation
2. How the space is arranged and what materials are needed
3. How participation is distributed
4. How groups are configures
5. A sequence of steps and time allocation
 Keith McCandless & Henri Lipmanowicz

11.  What is made possible?
1-2-4-All - Ideas: more, better, faster
(from LS) - Involvement and buy-in
 Make an Invitation
- What practices produce Better Software?
 Distribute Participation
- I will be timekeeper, facilitator
- You will think, write, listen, share and refine
 Configure Groups
- Group of 1 – think & write
- Group of 2 – listen & share
- Group of 4 – listen & refine
- All - facilitated – collect & display
 Arrange Space
- Face-to-face. Knee-to-knee. Groups of 4.
- Disregard “Space Police”
 Sequence & Allocate Time
- Listen for sound and directions

12.  Authors: Jim Benson & Tonianne DeMaria Barry
PK –  Two simple, main points (printed on alternate pages)
Personal Kanban - Visualize your work
- Limit your Work In Progress
 Jim co-founded Seattle Lean Coffee 2-3 years ago
 Kaizen Camp also founded by Jim and Tonianne
- “Discussing the Future of Work”
- Seattle in 2011 & 2012
- Coming to NYC, SoCal, Boulder, DC, Atlanta, San Francisco, Boston
- Plans for on Tel Aviv, London, Berlin, and Australia

13. Very Simple
Every meeting a  Every meeting starts with a purpose
Kanban (from PK)  No meeting starts with an agenda
 Everyone creates agenda items
- Written on stickies
- Placed in “Backlog”
 Every item is briefly introduced
 Everyone distributes 2-4 votes across all items
 Voila! A prioritized backlog. Timely. Relevant.
 Work commences as item moves from “Backlog” to “WIP”
 Limit WIP (Work in Progress)
 Move item to “Done” when finished
- … or time box is exceeded
- … with consensus on extensions
- Happy Dance! Celebrate!

14. Every meeting is a Kanban.
 I mean it!!!
 Business
- 1-on-1 meetings with Supervisor
- Status meetings (until replaced by task board)
- Working meetings
 Civic
- Ballard Greenways
- St Luke’s Urban Garden (TheSLUG)
- Ballard Urban Gardeners (BUG)
 Personal
- “Wolf meetings”
- Special projects (i.e. IRS audit, yearly taxes, weekend getaway)

15. Kanban board during Seattle Lean Coffee

16. Kanban for Weekly “Wolf Meetings” & Special Tax Project

17. Kanban board for Michael - Old

18. Kanban board for Michael - New

19. Coming from Wolf Enterprises Kanban R&D…
• Tablet form-factor UI
• Easy upload/download
• Light weight
• Portable
• Front & back lit
• Solar, AC, DC, Candle, &c
• 0% opacity
• Landscape & Portrait
• Doubles as book holder and
paper weight

20. …trend setting
• Double sided
• Ambidextrous

21. … multiple after-market styli
• Color
• Width
• Line pattern
• Shapes
• Very extensible

22. … object manipulation
• Tactile
• Digital
• Intuitive
• Extensible

23. Kanban board in ScrumMaster class

24. Event Planning Board at Kaizen Camp

25.  Make an Invitation
TRIZ - What can we do to reliably get the worst result
(from LS) imaginable?
- How does this compare with current procedures?
- What can we stop doing?
 Distribute Participation
- <As in 1-2-4-All>
 Configure Groups
- <As in 1-2-4-All>
 Arrange Space
- <As in 1-2-4-All>
 Sequence & Allocate Time
- <As in 1-2-4-All>

26.  “A pattern language for bringing life to meetings and other gatherings”
GW - Group Works  3 years of design, writing, and layout from “core team”
Pattern Card Deck  Each of 91 Cards in 9 Categories has:
- Title
- Image
- Heart
- Related cards
- Category glyph
 First printing 4Q2011
 “Steward Circle” is getting wisdom out to users, and also listening to
how they’re being used
 Common uses
- Pre-event planning & Post-event evaluation
- Individual & Team skill development
- Breaking out of a fixed mindset
 Core team: Tree Bressen, Dave Pollard, Sue Woehrlin
 Needs “stewards” and early adopters. (Contact me!)

27. Group Works Card Deck
 Support your process
- group convenor,
- planner,
- facilitator, or
- participant
 Years in the making
 Collected from best meetings
 Design Pattern -> “Things that work in groups…”
 … across size
 … across context

28. What you get…
 91 Full color cards
 … a few blank cards
 A 5-panel “key” to categories
 A history and selected uses

29. The whole deck

30. Group Works Card Deck Categories
1. Intent – Why are we here? What are we aiming to accomplish?
2. Context – Circumstances of place and culture.
3. Relationship – Connection with others. Emotional needs.
4. Flow – Rhythm, energy, pacing.
5. Creativity - Multiple intelligences and a variety of modes.
6. Perspective – Watch, understand, and appreciate divergent viewpoints.
7. Modeling – Enable personal and collective self-management
8. Inquiry & Synthesis – Gather, explore. Create shared meaning, consensus.
9. Faith - Trusting the mystery, synergy, and ineffable, complex magic of emergence.

31.  Situation
Case Study - Regular meeting felt like it was getting in a rut. Power
(from GW) dynamics of de-facto leader seemed to be excluding
perspectives. I saw opportunity for group as training lab to
gain experience at facilitating, not merely content.
 Experiments
- Facilitate input from quieter participants
- Balance the interruption dynamic
- One-on-one discussion about group/individual values

32. Group Work Cards (examples for case study)

33.  Jim & Michelle McCarthy
CP –  Collected, refined, codified
Core Protocols  16+ years’ teamwork laboratory (bootcamp)
 11 Commitments
1. I commit to engage when present.
2. I will seek to perceive more than I seek to be perceived.
3. I will use teams, especially when undertaking difficult tasks.
…
11. I will never do anything dumb on purpose.
 11 Core Protocols (Structured Conversations)
1 & 2. Pass (Unpass)
3. Check In
4. Check Out
5. Ask For Help
6. Protocol Check
7. Intention Check
8. Decider
9. Resolution
10. Personal Alignment
11. Investigate

34.  Perfectee:
Perfection Game - Presents an object for perfection
(from CP)  Perfector:
- “On a scale of 1 to 10, I rate this object X based on how much value I can
add.”
- “What I liked about the performance of object X was…”
•Integrates best ideas
- “To make it a 10, you would have to do yada, yada, yada”.
•Improves some object

35. Get Involved…
 Liberating Structures
- Immersion Workshop Series (in Seattle)
 Group Works Card Deck
- Early Adopters’ sessions (like this one)
- Collection of scenarios for using cards
 Personal Kanban
- Periodic seminars around Seattle, U.S., and Mundo
- Kaizen Camp
 The Core Protocols
- Online discussion group via FaceBook
 NCDD (National Council for Dialogue & Deliberation)
- National gathering – Seattle – Oct 12-14
- Pre event – Mapping Methods with the Group Works Cards

36. Caveat
 “Talking abut Music is like dancing about Architecture.”
-- Elvis Costello
 That is, the “knowing” is in the “doing”.
 Learn by doing…
- … playing
- … because “All mammals learn by playing!”

37. Closing (FKA Q&A)
 1-2-4-All
- What is your biggest take away?
- What is left unanswered?
 Go learn. Go play!
- “All mammals learn by playing”

38. About… Including and unleashing everyone
LS - Liberating Structures
All Mammals Learn by Playing LiberatingStructures.org
Bring life to meetings and other gatherings
GW - Group Works Card Deck
GroupWorksDeck.org
All live in greatness
Michael R. Wolf
visualize learn improve
MichaelRWolf@att.net PK - Personal Kanban
206-679-7941 PersonalKanban.com
@LearningWolf

39. LOL Cats!
We don’t need no stinkin’ LOL cats. Here’s a cutie Wolf!