Here is today’s summary of the “Campfire Talks with Herbie”.
TameFlow Community Member: Richard Kasperowski
Name (and Company/Affiliation if desired)
Who are you?
Richard Kasperowski is an author, teacher, speaker, and coach focused on team building and high-performance teams.
Richard is the author of two books: High-Performance Teams: The Foundations and The Core Protocols: A Guide to Greatness, as well as the forthcoming book High-Performance Teams: Core Protocols for Psychological Safety and Emotional Intelligence.
He leads clients in building and maintaining high-performance teams that get great results using the Core Protocols, [Agile](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agile_software_development}, and Open Space Technology.
Richard created and teaches the course Agile Software Development at Harvard University, and he co-teaches the Spark! fellowship at Boston University. Learn more at www.kasperowski.com.
How did you get involved with Agile, Coaching, Organizational Performance - and in particular with TameFlow?
Software developer working with a group of friends who had discovered the XP book. We read it and tried some of the practices. It was great! Pair programming and TDD with a friend at another job. Wrote the best code of my life!
Manager in small start-up, discovering Scrum and getting great results together
Manager in a large multinational company, pretty much doing Scrum by the book with my teams. They were great. Other managers asked me for advice and help. I becan coaching.
Are you currently (or do you intend) making a living in this sector? And with TameFlow?
Yep, this is my life. I write, teach, talk about, and do “agile” full-time.
Give us a typical day in your life!
- Wake up
- Mint tea
- Yoga with Molly (my wife) or solo meditation
- Breakfast
- Morning email & other electronic communication
- Morning work: teaching or coaching with a client, prep a class, write, prep a conference talk, prep for an event, do some marketing, record a podcast segment, pair-program with a colleague, host a global online coffee break, etc.
- Walk with Molly
- Lunch with Molly, usually a giant salad -Afternoon email & other electronic communication
- Afternoon work, maybe outside on my tiny balcony outdoor standing desk
- Walk with Molly
- Spanish class
- Make dinner with Molly, eat with the whole family
- Evening work, solo walk (listening to some Spanish-language podcasts)
- Bed
What makes you happy at the end of a day?
I’m happy most of the day.
What’s the most important skill or insight you’ve developed while getting involved with this industry?
Figure out what you want. Head in that direction.
What are the greatest rewards you’ve had (personally or professionally) or would like to receive in this industry?
I love it when my students and client reach their goals and discover new goals they hadn’t thought about previously. I love mentoring newer people and watching them succeed.
If other TameFlow enthusiasts want to reach out to you, where do they find you?
Typically on LinkedIn or via my site https://kasperowski.com/.
What question(s) would you like to ask Steve, or what topics would you like him to develop in relation to the TameFlow Approach)?
Let’s talk about teams, the best teams we’ve ever been on in our lives, what that felt like, how to do that again on purpose.
Herbie talks about… great teams
The TameFlow Approach is entirely supportive and adopts the Core Protocols. In fact, Chapter 8 Creating a Shared Vision at the Team Level of the Hyper Productive Knowledge Work Performance, The TameFlow Approach and Its Application to Scrum and Kanban book is entirely about this. Great teams can actually be nurtured and crafted.
As I wrote in that chapter:
[…] for a knowledge-based organization to become hyper-productive, true teamwork is absolutely necessary. It is therefore of prominent importance to have actionable practices that really make a team spirit emerge from inside the group(s) of individuals that work together in their creating of knowledge.
And if your teams have not developed such team spirit, the Core Protocols are one tool that provides us with such actionable practices.
Furthermore, creating a shared vision at the team level is a factor that greatly supports the Unity of Purpose at the organizational level.
In short, nurturing great teams will help in the making of great organizations.
If you found the topics in the “Campfire Talks with Herbie” interesting, there is much more to learn about them in the The Book of TameFlow book.