Get ready for a 2024 of exponential growth!

Hey Reader,

As the year ends, I’d love to invite you to do a retrospective for what 2023 brought to you and start envisioning 2024. As you can imagine, I do this for my business. But I also love to do it for myself, as far as my personal and career growth are concerned!

So, are you in?

You can pick your personal life, maybe taking stock specifically of your health, your career, or even of everything together. The only thing that matters is that you get excited about the exercise.

Make it simple. The best retrospectives usually are. Remember the 5 stages of a retrospective.

1 Set the stage: remind yourself what’s a retrospective. Then choose a quiet place where you can be uninterrupted and remain in reflection mode for a decent amount of time, like 1 hour. Prepare your material: post-its or Miro so that you can self-document.

Time to think: what’s the one question you want to use to guide your self-retrospective?

2. Gather Data: without any judgment, do a post-it party of ideas trying to answer that question.

3. Generate insights: now allow yourself to critique all the data. Group things. Put them on timelines or in scales if it makes sense. Play with them a bit. What’s emerging for you?

4. Decide what to do: No action, no learning. So, based on those insights you just had, there are ideas for moving forward in your mind, I’m sure. But they’re not all equal in merit! What do you feel more energized or excited about? Pick that one to do and detail what it can look like in terms of steps and don’t shy away from dates. Take ownership!

5. Close the retrospective: lastly, put things on your calendar, journal, document things wherever you like to document them. Make sure the exercise is more than intellectual fancy and close the chapter of this retrospective behind you.

I know it’s a simple exercise, but it is powerful! There is power precisely because it is simple.

I’ll let you in my question for my personal retrospective this year: Where from and where to? So, I revisited where I’ve been, and how it relates with what else I want to see happening in 2024.

Feel free to steal it if it resonates with you.

Happy exercise!

And now, onto some more things I want to share with you. 👇

A break for the year-end season

In the upcoming 3 weeks you won’t be hearing from me! At All things Agile we take a long break to relax and recharge. So, no emails, no new videos, no blog posts, no social media. We are really off!

Anything urgent is obviously dealt with, so you can always send an email to hello@allthingsagile.co. Please allow an average of 36 hours depending on the timezone differences.

That being said, I hope you are also planning as long of a break as you can so that 2024 can be your best year yet!

From the Blog and YouTube channel

Unless you’ve watched 100% of my videos or read all my blog posts, I invite you to check them out if your plans for downtime involve learning. You will notice between the blog and the video I sometimes share different insights. For example, if you watched a particular video before, how about reading the companion blog? And vice-versa?

Here are some blog posts I’d suggest based on their popularity:

The 12 Agile Principles: LINK
5 personal Values extraordinary agile coaches uphold: LINK
Agile is not the opposite of waterfall: LINK
3 courageous questions to ask that boost effectiveness: LINK
Stop “adding more resources” to your project or teams. It’s hurting their performance. LINK
Are you that agile coach who just asks frustrating questions? LINK
What is technical debt and do you have to pay it back? LINK
Is Agile Changing? LINK

As far as creating lists, it’s easier to point to lists in the YouTube, so here are a few for you to enjoy:

Team development: LINK
Agile coaching in practice: LINK
Focusing on the skills for coaching: LINK

Happy learning!

The Agile Circle and All Things Agile upcoming projects in 2024

And finally...

I’m coming up with exciting stuff for 2024, from live masterclasses, to a sequence of videos, to how I plan on showing up in social media (better conversations!).

And I’ll be doing my best to publish monthly calendars, so that you can plan a bit better your participation as well.

All the content will be based on simplicity and effectiveness, just like you experienced with the retrospective above.

Regardless of whether you're a seasoned pro or just starting, we're going back to basics together —because let's face it, that's where the magic happens.

Here's a sneak peek into what's in store:

~~Better~~ Effective Retrospectives: What does it look like to show up big for your team_ any team, to support their growth? Get really (un)comfortable with this tool.
~~Better~~ Effective Planning: Agile does require planning and there are better patterns of planning to use. All that prepares you to…
Simple Agile. I’ll share with you a ton about my own model Simple Agile and how to use patterns of agility to support any team using any agile framework! Or better yet, create their own!
Coach-Leader Mastery: And you can expect a deep dive into how to evolve into an excellent coach-leader in agility, whatever position you occupy in your company. Because let’s face it, while agile is here to stay, these “agile roles” are shifting more and more.

Can you picture the amazing conversations we'll be having, starting with the basics (but trust me, not the boring kind) in January? By December, you'll be looking back at a year of exponential growth and accomplishment.

Don't be fooled by the word 'basics'—it's the foundation for something extraordinary. Get ready to be delighted as you watch your growth explode like never before!

That being said, there’s plenty of adjustments we can make based on some of the things you’d love to hear more about.

What are some of your current pain points? What would you like to learn more about? What would move the needle for you in 2024?

You can always reply to this email to let me know, as we start building new content soon next year!

I hope you are excited for a whole new year of growth!

Have a wonderful end of 2023. See you back in 2024!

Cheers,