About this podcast episode

🎙️Unpack the essentials of embodied agile leadership so you can thrive amidst constant change

In today’s podcast, we share this insightful conversation with leadership agility expert Pamela Meyer about her latest book, “Staying in the Game: Leading and Learning with Agility for a Dynamic Future.”

Pamela and Bill share practical advice for how leaders can cultivate the mindsets and practices needed to stay agile, resilient, and continuously learning amidst constant change.

Here is what you will learn:

✅ The four dynamics for staying agile: meaningful identity, community, competition, and commitment

✅ Why leaders need a learning vs. controlling mindset

✅ Examples of agile leaders in action

🎉 How to avoid losing momentum by connecting to your intrinsic motivations

Transcript

(transcripts are auto-generated, so please excuse the brevity)

[00:00:00] Intro

[00:00:00] Speaker: Welcome to the Agile in Action Podcast with Bill Raymond. Bill will explore how business disruptors are adopting agile techniques to gain a competitive advantage in this fast-paced technology driven market.

[00:00:13] Introducing Pamela Meyer

[00:00:13] Bill Raymond: Today, I’m joined by Pamela Meyer, leadership agility expert, keynote speaker and author of five books with the latest being Staying in the Game: Leading and Learning with Agility for a Dynamic Future.

Hi, Pamela. How are you today?

[00:00:28] Pamela Meyer: I’m great. Good to be with you, Bill.

[00:00:31] Bill Raymond: Yeah, I’m excited for our conversation today. We’re going to talk about navigating change and evolving with purpose. I’m really excited about this topic. Before we get started, could you introduce yourself?

[00:00:42] Pamela Meyer: Yeah, absolutely. So I work with leaders and teams that need to be more agile, resilient and innovative and actually my passion for agility and collaboration began some years ago when I was leading creative teams first in the theater as a director and producer. And then that sparked an interest in exploring the human dynamics and creative teams and led to some more credentials and degrees.

And now for the last 20 years, I’ve been working with fortune 500 firms and beyond drawing on that experience and in depth research to help leaders be more agile, resilient, and effective, but also to help them foster environments where everyone can thrive and be more agile.

[00:01:26] Pamela’s books

[00:01:26] Bill Raymond: I wanted to ask you about your book, which is great, by the way, I really appreciate your writing style and it’s really easy to read and understand the concepts in your book, but why did you write staying in the game?

[00:01:38] Pamela Meyer: My last book, The Agility Shift, as you mentioned, was all about the specific shifts that leaders and teams and even organizations need to make to improve agility. And what I noticed was that after just a little bit of time passed, and once these leaders had made these shifts a new need emerged and they needed help staying agile and resilient and I started exploring that question and thinking about that because it’s such human nature for us to go back to our comfort zone and back to our routines, which isn’t necessarily the place when we’re most agile.

And I actually discovered some of the best lessons when I returned to my passion for Alpine skiing and master ski racing. And I saw all these inspiring athletes who were still in it. Some of them were out there in their sixties, seventies, and even eighties, continuing to compete and learn and improve.

And that expanded to discovering lessons from some of the world’s most agile leaders across sectors and really looking at especially what, what keeps people engaged, learning, and adapting, and coming back even stronger after serious setbacks? That was that was really the purpose and the essence of writing this book.

[00:02:56] Avoid losing momentum

[00:02:56] Bill Raymond: I think about this fairly frequently because, when I first started working in business, everything was, I guess we’ll just use a blanket term that everyone likes to use, waterfall, right? So you do these big six month planning activities and then, you spend three months pulling a team together and you start going and by the time you start going, everything’s changed.

And that, that was always something that deflated me for sure. And the team, deflated everyone. So when I started looking into agility and agile, I realized it’s more of a mindset. It’s not just, following some framework like Scrum or whatever, there’s actually ways that you can work together with teams and the way you form teams and keep all of them together, the old training sometimes comes back and you snap back to the way you used to do things and you do lose that momentum. Can you talk a little bit about that topic in terms of how you keep your momentum going?

[00:03:56] Pamela Meyer: Yeah, it’s it really is a critical piece and one of the things I discovered and really stood out with the leaders that I was researching and interviewing and many I work with in client settings, is that there’s a mindset that they maintain that has a bias for learning and adapting rather than planning and control. And that is something sometimes surprising to find in business because the bias does tend to be toward planning and control and risk aversion.

And the irony is actually that learning and adaptation is more risk friendly, mediates risk more than more than planning and control, but our hard wiring tends to keep us out of that space and what I found was that leaders that were tapping into a kind of intrinsic motivation and intrinsic passion for what they were doing were much more attuned to continuous improvement than those that were not agile and that were really focused more on a particular process or framework.

And as wonderful as these agile frameworks are, and I use them myself and work with them in many client settings. If our orientation to them is still a kind of planning and control orientation where we’re not going to get the results we need, and we’re certainly not ultimately going to be agile where we might as well be using any other kind of project management framework and and be wondering why we’re not getting the same kind of results that we hope for.

[00:05:24] Introducing the Four Dynamics

[00:05:24] Bill Raymond: Yeah, that makes sense. And you talk in your book about these four dynamics meaningful identity, community, competition, and commitment. Can you give us a broad strokes overview as to what those are?

[00:05:37] Pamela Meyer: Yes, absolutely. And you know what they, they underpin this, this form of leadership that I describe, and I’ll briefly mention that and describe these four dynamics that I’ve called embodied agile leadership. We’ve heard a lot about agile leadership or leadership agility, but I’ve added the word embodied in front of it because what I found was that those who are really staying agile are truly embodying agility and embodying these concepts, but they’re also attuned to their own bodies and what’s happening around them in a much more holistic way.

And often, especially in Western culture, we tend to come to work as if we only exist from the neck up. And so this approach to agility really includes the whole body. And that started, of course, from some of the lessons I learned from master’s athletes, but it turns out it’s also true with leaders in business.

And so that translates into these four dynamics, meaningful identity, community, competition, and commitment, as you mentioned. And and what I would suggest as listeners are hearing these pay attention to Which one resonates with you most, at least right now in your life. So you’ll very likely one or another will, will be more motivating to you or just pique your curiosity.

So I’ll come back to that later in our conversation, but I want to plant that seed for our listeners.

[00:07:00] Meaningful identity

[00:07:00] Pamela Meyer: So starting with meaningful identity. At the end of the day, leaders, whether they were leaders and athletes on the mountain or in the boardroom or ICU would simply describe it as. It’s who I am.

It’s some core dimension that gives their life and their work a meaning, and that very often is different for everyone, but it’s some kind of intrinsic motivation that gets them out there, and their meaningful identity is really interconnected with the other three dynamics and sometimes they don’t discover their meaningful identity until they participate in these other three dynamics.

So that meaning that community, which really stood out as one of the big reasons that people stay in the game. And particularly when I was out there on these weekend races, all kinds of conditions. All kinds of temperatures. One of the questions I would ask, especially these older racers is, what keeps you coming out here even when you know, your colleagues are staying in bed or, move to warmer climates and one of the biggest things that stood out was that it’s the people they didn’t want to miss out and when their friends were out there, or there was this incredible community and camaraderie and that’s something that I find in really thriving workplaces and teams. That people are challenged to bring their best performance and keep learning when the community is welcoming and they feel seen and they really feel like it’s a place where their talent can thrive.

I interviewed Chris Mikulski, who is the head of HR at H&M Clothing, and he talked about how core that is to their team’s thriving, particularly in a retail environment where sometimes in some sections there can be high turnover.

But they want to create an environment that people want to stay and really feel like they can be themselves. And that translates into great customer experience too.

[00:09:03] Competition

[00:09:03] Pamela Meyer: So the next two are commitment and competition. Sometimes people have a uncomfortable relationship to competition.

Certainly it’s something we’re very familiar with in business, but I describe two types of competition. We’re competing with others and in the business context that might be other people in our sector or other organizations in our sector, but we’re also competing with ourselves and for long time agile leaders and masters athletes sometimes that competition with ourself is the one that keeps us staying in it. We’re always looking to do a little better, learn a little more. So the essence of competition, I describe it not so much as winning in the classic sense, of course, in business we hope we are, we hope we’re continuing to. To do our best in relationship to others, but we’re also competing in a way that means we’re anchored in continuous learning and improvement.

And that’s so critical to everything we do in Agile. Certainly every Agile framework is designed around continuous learning and improvement. So that’s a critical piece. And then I’ll describe the last one, but I wanted to pause just for a moment here, Bill, because I’ve been going on. So if I take a breath and if you have any questions about those three before I share the last one?

[00:10:23] Bill Raymond: You said if you hear one that really resonates with you the most, tomaybe put a little bit more focus on that. And while we didn’t talk about Commitment dynamic,

the one that re most resonates with me is community. When I started my career, I was in IT leadership, and it was really cool in my company to be recognized for that, right? So the, I had a lot of people that I worked with and people knew me for something and I knew other people for something and we shared with each other and we managed to do some great things together because we had that community. But I realized very quickly that I kind of liked the idea of having community, not just inside and outside the organization. And so that’s why I actually started consulting because that allowed me to not only talk to a whole bunch of customers. But then take those customer experiences and share them with other customers.

So I could take what I’ve learned to help them succeed. And then I got into working on a specific product in the project management community. And I became known as a person there and wrote a book. Now, all of that is to say that I really enjoy community. That’s why this podcast is even here to be quite honest with you.

But one of the things that I think the pandemic did is that it put you back, I don’t have a big company. My company is small. We’re just a few people and we hire some independent contractors if we have to, things like that. So I haven’t been able to go to those trade events.

And even if I speak on my computer and do something over a webinar or something, you might get some good feedback and things like that. But just being able to walk off the stage or walk out of the room that you just spoke at or go to someone else’s talk and get to meet them in the hallway and have those conversations.

I felt very disconnected from that. And I have to say, that’s something that I’ve really been putting more of a focus on these last few months is getting myself back out into the space. Because I feel like even though I’m here every week doing this podcast and I’m writing and I’m on LinkedIn, I don’t feel like I’m necessarily as much part of the community as I’d like to be.

[00:12:40] Pamela Meyer: Yeah. And that is so critical. One of the things that, that I heard again and again from people is, and certainly the pandemic, as you said, really heightened that our need for this our, we really discovered it’s such a human need and a need for feeling like we’re part of something bigger than just ourselves and that what we’re doing has meaning beyond just our self interest.

And that’s a huge motivator. Yeah. And so many people are doing things like you’ve described and one of the things that I found helpful is to not just be thinking about where do I find community and how do I get connected in various networks, but to be thinking about it in terms of what could I give to various communities or who else out there might need community and who can I proactively connect people to because that kind of altruism or that sense of being a connector can be really helpful and help foster a greater sense of community yourself.

Thinking about it as a two way street, how do I foster communities. And a sense of community in any space I already participate in to, to make it more robust and more generative. And then also how can I find those as well? And that’s truly the only way community thrives and continues to stay lively is when we do that.

And otherwise they are either our relationships or those. That sense of belonging can start to fade away and and it is particularly hard when we’re in, if we’re in a smaller organization or folks that are working as contractors that we sometimes have to make a greater effort to do that.

[00:14:19] Bill Raymond: Yeah we certainly do. And I do think that is one of those drivers that keeps you moving at that pace, right? You can really allow yourself to deflate if you don’t feel like you are part of a community, whether it’s in your own organization or a larger community.

[00:14:33] Pamela Meyer: Yeah, absolutely. And I’m glad we paused to take a little more time on it because it truly did stand out. And this is true across the board for introverts, extroverts, you don’t have to be standing at the, on the top of a table, to be getting people’s attention to participate in community.

It can be in quiet ways. It can be ways that are is fitting for you. But the point is to feel like you’re you are connected with something larger than yourself and with people that share your passion for for whatever it is that gives your life meaning on your work meaning. And and once we do, the interesting thing that happens is it motivates us to learn more, to explore more.

And so I think there’s a real value in community and fostering some of the other values of agility, of learning and adaptation and connectivity and resource sharing,

[00:15:26] Commitment

[00:15:26] Pamela Meyer: so shall I jump into share the last one and then we can circle back to some of the others as well?

[00:15:30] Bill Raymond: Yeah, of course. Sure. Let’s continue.

[00:15:33] Pamela Meyer: So commitment. So we’ve talked about community and competition commitment was one that surprised me a little bit, but once I started talking to these masters athletes, I guess it wasn’t so surprising if you’re talking to a 84 year old ski racer, such as I have with and several folks in their eighties who are still getting out there, still training, still competing, and really working at the top of their game.

So commitment is really about intentionality and prioritization and sometimes it’s also about reprioritization because of course being agile means being able to reprioritize as conditions change. And that means adapting whether it’s external conditions, our internal state or capability, or maybe even our interests are changing, but it’s always reprioritizing.

And certainly if we bring it back to the conversation about agile, agile frameworks have prioritization built into them from the very start of our scrum planning or sprint planning activities. And certainly each sprint cycle is an opportunity to reprioritize, but always based on our values and the value we’re delivering to the customer or the end user.

And getting in sync with that ability to commit to delivering value, to commit to being intentional and prioritizing also is a key practice for leaders that are staying in the game.

[00:17:01] Bill Raymond: Yeah. And people might think that being an independent like you it’s, it’s so much easier because you make the decision. Oh, no, it’s not that easy. You have to prioritize all the time and reprioritize because things come up on a regular basis. And then you have to say, is this for my business? This is for me?

And make sure that you are still going forward and making sure that strategic direction doesn’t go off course.

[00:17:24] Pamela Meyer: Yeah, absolutely. And anybody working in agile knows that it’s the blessing and the curse of working in an agile environment because you’re always being bombarded with, whether it’s new project requirements or other upheavals, it can be even be external things like a change in leadership or your team members change.

And so how do we stay focused on prioritizing to deliver value to generate value. And and that does come with with some real discipline to stay connected to, what our purpose is in the first place. What are our core objectives? And if those change, do we have shared agreements on those and can we adapt?

But it really does depend on some great communication and real centered focus on our own value, which really does bring us back to that meaningful identity. Are we connected with, what is valuable for us to stay engaged, certainly in our own work, but also to be engaged in the value of the projects we’re creating.

[00:18:24] Case studies

[00:18:24] Bill Raymond: Sure. And I think you have some great examples of that in the book. You have some pretty interesting case studies that I think a lot of management style books, they tend to be fairly just this company did this thing, but you have some very interesting case studies. I’d love to hear a few of those.

[00:18:43] Pamela Meyer: Excellent. Yeah. So I’ll start with I’ll start with one that, that is more in, in probably people’s area of familiarity, Dr. Tiffany Dodson, who I’ve had the chance to track her career and work with over the years. She’s now head of global learning at Liberty Mutual Insurance. And one of the things that so struck me, and I really highlight a number of learning leaders across organizations and industries.

She’s not only head of global learning, but she demonstrates it at every turn in how she shows up in her work. And one of the things she shared with me, and this was when she was pretty new to the role at Liberty Mutual, is that whenever she meets with her team, she Starts off the conversation by sharing or asking rather.

I guess she’s sharing. Here’s what I’m learning. And then that fosters an environment for everybody around the table to share what they’re learning, too. So it’s just a simple shift rather than asking for report outs or project updates starting with here’s what I’m learning and that sets the expectation that everybody should be coming to the table talking about what they’re learning and be in a learning mindset in their day to day work because they know that their leader is going to be asking them, and expecting them to follow suit.

So that’s one of my favorites, but you also mentioned some surprising areas and another one of my favorites actually came from Graham Smith, who is a Vietnam Veteran. He flew reconnaissance missions during the Vietnam war. And he shared a lot about how, first of all, being in an agile mindset is critical to coming back alive after each of these missions.

But it was also about a real team of focus. And he said, one of the first things they tell you when you get off the bus at the Air Force Academy is you have to collaborate to graduate. And I just loved that. And that goes right into the cockpit. He shared these harrowing stories of, flying 50 feet above the ground to avoid radar.

Your wingman’s wing is three feet away, and every move you make has to be responsive with situational awareness, but you can’t make any move that your wingman can’t follow so it’s a true sense of I’m part of a team. I’ve got to bring everybody back safely. And so I’m not only thinking about my being about the well being of My colleagues and that really really struck me but it was also a great example of something that I’ve carried with me from a number of pilots and other folks that have had significant military background and training have shared that early on they’re taught to be aware of plan continuation bias.

And I certainly know this is one I’ve grappled with, but it’s the idea that, you’ve got your mission, all of this work went into it. Maybe you’ve done your sprint planning, or you’ve you’ve locked in on a particular project plan. But if we have plan continuation bias, it means that we’re not going to shift gears as needed in response to incoming information. And that’s really critical and certainly in a life or death situation if you don’t shift gears or sometimes abort the mission I’ve written about that in the past, certainly the miracle on Hudson and Sully Sullenberger’s amazing ability to so quickly adapt in response to a catastrophic situation.

They’re aware of this potential bias and able to negotiate it in very high stakes, high stress situations. And so that’s a critical dimension of certainly staying agile, but being agile in the moment, and that truly calls for an embodied agile leader.

[00:22:29] Plan bias

[00:22:29] Bill Raymond: One of the things that I think we have a challenge with in business, and I think we’ve all experienced this In one shape or form is that we have this plan, and we maybe are starting to recognize it may not be spoken out loud, or maybe it’s being it’s whispered in the hallways or what have you.

But there is this plan that we have, and we’re not quite sure if it’s working. I feel like at some point you have the plan continuation bias, but then It could turn into the plan is wrong, but now you’ve had this bias for so long, it becomes part of you. And then you feel like if I change, if I make a shift, then you might actually be impacting your career for the negative.

[00:23:18] Pamela Meyer: Boy, yeah. It’s really, you’ve really named something that, and I’ve heard this. I’ve heard this actually, a client was talking about this. They’d invested a lot in a new platform and we’re going down a pathway where they were getting data that was really disconfirming that this was going to deliver any value or that the customer even wanted it anymore. But they were in so far that they decided to go ahead and finish it and everybody on the team was like, this is, we wasted even more resources, And it’s not just the resource impact it’s the demoralization of the team and it sets a precedent that we’re not going to truly learn and adapt. And, this is a great opportunity for embodied agile leadership.

And this can happen from anybody on the team. A point I want to make is that an embodied agile leader is anybody who steps up and responds to the unexpected and unplanned and notices an opportunity and effectively responds and so it can be anyone in that circumstance who says, hey, the emperor has no clothes.

Could we pause here and reevaluate this? And there may be compelling reasons to finish. Maybe it’s something that will have use at another time, or they want to extract the final learnings from the project. There may be a point that it is valuable to do, but it’s something that I’ve seen happen so many times that it’s really important that we all understand we, we have this innate psychological bias and there are times when we should pause at least to decide together.

Is this worth really going forward with, or might we all be better off pausing, regrouping, regenerating? This is, this is the essence of resiliency, you know, reenergize ourselves and renew and reset to the value that we do want to deliver. It takes some courage and some fortitude to do it.

But, but if Graham Smith can do it in the cockpit and these 84 year old ski racers can do it on the mountain, then I think we can do it from our workspaces.

[00:25:25] Defensiveness vs. commitment

[00:25:25] Bill Raymond: That’s a really good point. I’d like to drill into that a little bit, because one of the things that I always think about when we hear these types of stories, because we’re in the agile community is the Americans going to the Toyota plant in Japan and seeing that anyone on the line can press that stop button and stop the line.

Boy, talk about empowerment right? And no one’s going to press that button if they don’t think that they. I mean that button is going to get pressed only if someone thinks that it should right.

And the ability for anyone to be able to stand up and say, I think the strategic direction, isn’t right.

That, that is true leadership. And as you said, it could be anyone that’s working on any effort. But there are hierarchical structures and organizations where we call someone a leader because that’s in their title or, or at least implied.

And the worst thing that could happen at that point in time is to shut someone down. I will be honest, this is something that I’ve struggled with. I’m sure a lot of other people do as a leader, you’re trying to move things forward, right? You’re trying to make sure that we stick.

To a plan, that you also have to be flexible and things like that. But then someone brings this up to you in a room in front of people. And what’s the first thing you do? You get defensive. And so what are some things that you can think of that will help you go from that defensive state to an openness state, so you can think through what’s being said?

[00:26:50] Pamela Meyer: Yeah. It’s really, you’ve really named something that it’s so human for us to have that response and it’s so critical. And this is truly why I’ve started talking more about embodiment in a leadership context because our first response literally is an embodied fight, freeze or flight response.

It’s happening at a neurological embodied level. And If we’re not aware of it and able to manage it or respond to it effectively, then we will be hijacked and have a huge impact. And so what we’re talking about here is, in any level of leadership, being able to model the beliefs, the values, the behaviors that really imply continuous learning.

If you’re the leader at the front of the room and you’re defensive or you’ve shut down or, humiliate somebody for raising their hand to ask for a pause, then you’re going to be reinforcing a culture of planning and control rather than learning and adapting. And so what I write about in several places in the book are some of the ways that we can do this..

It’s amazingly simple, but it does take practice, which is literally to pause and take a breath. It sounds so it’s not rock and science, but literally to just get used to, that much, I would have said the second and a half to take a breath. Even that is enough to foster what some psychologists call a change of body state, when from that fight or flight to disconnect a bit to step back and then pay attention to what’s happening in the room, what’s happening in our bodies that may be a bit reactive, and then to look at, okay let me step back and really hear what was just shared and see if that aligns with something that’s going to contribute or foster value, the value we’re all, we’ve all agreed we’re generating, or or is it something that, that we maybe can set aside, but either way, we have to listen to each other with respect and be sure that we’re responding respectfully in a way that doesn’t shut others down, and I’ve written about this in a number of contexts and again in Staying in the Game, but some of our best lessons for that moment come from improvisational theater, and probably people are familiar with the principle of saying yes and, but it’s just a way that when we’re uncomfortable or when something unexpected happens, rather than deflect it, we pause or perhaps we don’t even have need to pause.

We simply accept what is given and then we add to it. So it might be, saying, yes, I, I’m hearing your idea and I maybe need to look into that a little bit further, but that sounds like something we should explore if I’m not able to respond right away, or and can you tell me more about that.

So we’re always thinking about how can I both be paying attention to the literal empirical evidence that’s before me, but also the impact I’m having. In the room from a humanistic perspective, am I supporting the team’s success? Am I fostering engagement? Am I setting up a dynamic where people are going to be frustrated and be grumbling when they walk out of the room?

We want the work and the communication to happen in the room not, as people get back in, in their texts and slack channels when they’re outside of the room,

[00:30:15] Bill Raymond: Yeah, I always see that there’s every now and again, you go into those meetings, right? Where someone is bold enough to say something that they know everyone else is feeling, right? And then you go and you say, but that’s not in the agenda for this meeting. Let’s move on.

[00:30:32] Pamela Meyer: Right exactly. And, if there’s. If there is an instance where it’s truly not why we were called together and we have time, we don’t have time for it to say, yes, that actually sounds like something interesting. It’s not our core focus today, but I don’t want to lose track of it.

So could we set up some other time to be sure we address that? Or if it truly is absolutely relevant to what everybody’s come to discuss, then perhaps we do need to be able to adapt in that moment and be sure we’re not getting too focused on the agenda, rather than the value we’re creating and the important needs.

We’ve seen too many disasters that have happened that really are the result of poor communication or people being afraid to raise their hand and communicate.

[00:31:19] Ideas for improvement[00:31:19] Improvement takeaways

[00:31:19] Bill Raymond: We talked about these four dynamics of meaningful identity, community, competition, and commitment. And sometimes these all flow together nicely, and sometimes they don’t, right?

Maybe our commitment is to be more competitively driven and then we end up derailing ourselves like we just talked about. So that could just mean derailing myself as a team player or derailing the entire team. what are some of the steps that you can effectively take to avoid that?

[00:31:51] Pamela Meyer: Yeah, that’s it. That’s a really great question. And I would say, I talk about embodied agile leadership as first and foremost, self leadership, meaning it has to start with our self awareness and our ability to be effective as an individual leader. And so that means raising our awareness of what is meaningful to us what drives us, what is our, it’s who I am.

And then I remember I had asked people early on as I was describing or introducing each of the other three dynamics community competition and commitment to pay attention and see if one stood out in is as being really relevant to where they are in their lives today, or just that is compelling.

And you had mentioned community really stands out for you. So whichever resonated most would be a great place to start in terms of raising that self awareness and then thinking about how do I live into that a little more and maybe create more space for others to join me in that? So I create a little more of a generative experience.

And in the book I have, I conclude each chapter with a series of reflective questions and even offer a downloadable guide that people can use as almost a workbook or a journal to reflect. But I would really start there. Start with What stands out as something that sounds energizing and motivating to you, and then do a deeper dive into that, because when we get derailed, it tends to be that we’ve lost focus of what we care about. What’s valuable to us, and then we start getting hijacked by other people’s agendas, or, which way the wind is blowing, when we don’t have that core sense of ourselves. if we’re prioritizing, of course, we need to know what we’re prioritizing for and what is motivating and energizing to us.

So that’s my recommendation to, to start there and then approach it with an attitude of inquiry. You’ve got some beginning ideas, but there’s a lot more to learn and a lot more than you can model once you begin your learning to, to foster that energy within the teams or the organizations that you’re working within.

[00:34:02] Bill Raymond: Thank you so much Pamela Meyer. This has been a great conversation. Boy, has it gone by fast.

[00:34:08] Pamela Meyer: It has. Thank you, Bill.

[00:34:09] How to reach Pamela Meyer

[00:34:09] Bill Raymond: Yeah. Before we wrap up, though, I’d love to know if it’s okay for other people to reach out to you?

[00:34:15] Pamela Meyer: Yes, absolutely. I would love to connect.

[00:34:17] Bill Raymond: How might people reach you?

[00:34:19] Pamela Meyer: Yeah. So there are a number of ways, certainly on my website, https://pamela-meyer. com. I’ve got a contact link there. That’s probably one of the best. And certainly I’m on LinkedIn as well as Pamela Meyer, PhD. And love to connect and continue to share ideas and resources.

[00:34:36] Bill Raymond: And we talked a lot about your new book, staying in the game, leading and learning with agility for a dynamic future. How can people get that book?

[00:34:44] Pamela Meyer: Probably the easiest way these days is on Amazon, but it’s also available through your favorite bookseller. And we’d really love to, to get people’s response to that. It’s a great place for us to continue the conversation.

[00:34:56] Bill Raymond: And it is also a great book and thank you for writing it and sharing this time with us so that you can share some of these ideas and concepts with us.

[00:35:04] Pamela Meyer: Thank you so much. It’s been a pleasure having this conversation with you, Bill!

[00:35:07] Speaker: Thank you for listening to the Agile in Action Podcast with Bill Raymond. Subscribe now to stay current on the latest trends in team, organization, and agile techniques. Please take a moment to rate and comment to help us grow our community. This podcast is produced in affiliation with Cambermast LLC, and our executive producer is Reama Dagasan.

If there is a topic you would like Bill to cover, contact him directly at Bill.Raymond@agileinaction.com.