The Agile Mindset Series (Part 1 of 4: Energised Everyday Endorphins)

It took months of coaching and disciplining this particular team towards Agility, especially developing the habit of effective daily stand-up meetings (one of the most basic daily acts apparently). However, after a few months, what used to be a short and fun social event turned into a mundane routine checkbox activity for many of us.

Have you ever felt that way about the core ceremony of “ The Daily Scrum/Stand-up?”

Not sure about you, but I definitely have experienced this feeling many times over the past decade of coaching Agile teams across the globe.

For me, Agile is a lifestyle. A major aspect of being Agile is understanding the mechanisms in place and how they exist in the professional daily routine to help us achieve a healthier lifestyle.

With Agile, we do not really need to look for external and additional activities outside of our daily personal and professional routines in pursuit of happiness and intrinsic motivation.

Let me explain why.

When I'm feeling a little low, the easiest way to get myself going is by taking a jog around my neighbourhood or by taking a quick walk to the water-cooler or coffee area. I stretch and try to get a change of scenery because, as I've been told since I was a wee little one, exercising helps release endorphins (I couldn’t even spell it at the time :)).

Endorphins, AKA: the happiness hormone (field of Endocrinology).

Endorphins are key players in keeping us healthy by helping the body cope with the pain of exercising. If you're like me, you probably dread going to the gym and drag your feet when the time comes. But you must also know then of the feeling once it is over -- that one where you feel like maybe you can run for another hour. Yep, those are endorphins hard at work, keeping you feeling energised and happy. 

Laughter is another good way of generating endorphins. It's mood-elevating watching a comedy or socialising with colleagues or other acquaintances, talking about all the ridiculous things you would get up to when you were younger with your friends.

High-performing market-leading organizations are continuously investing in their employees by setting up office gyms or giving them gym memberships and arranging events where employees can just let loose and hang.

Yes, employers are on to the fact that health and happiness make motivated, productive employees who are more creative.

These employers understand that nothing good comes of tying an employee to his desk. In fact,

one particularly successful global organization offers more rewards and benefits to employees who are committed to improving their lifestyle by exercising and sticking to a healthy diet.

Now that we have established the need for exercising, socialising and laughter as great ways to release endorphins, let us see how Agile practices drive happiness.

According to my research & understanding, Agile ways of working have such endorphin-inducing opportunities built into the daily work routine.

For example, during Daily Scrums (daily stand-up meetings), participants experience exercising by holding meetings standing around their KanBan boards for around fifteen minutes, giving everyone an opportunity to socialize, share their day’s targets (social peer-pressure of sharing goals), and get out of their chairs with an occasional joke and frequent laughter. For those who are finding the daily scrum meetings as mundane, there are numerous ideas to light up the spark of creativity.

In some of my training and coaching sessions, I help the audience experience this great opportunity to release endorphins by getting creative about the possible variations of well-defined Agile practices. The delegates understand the concept of “Daily Scrum Meeting” during the STEAM? workshop that I run, and we often have fun experimenting with this simple practice.

I sometimes challenge participants to hold a “Daily Plank Meeting” as an alternative. This is an exercise used by experienced Agile and Lean teams to keep the conversational collaborations shorter and focused. Believe me, these are some of the most productive short meetings we have experienced over the past decade of Agile Cultural Transformation.

So, if you haven't made it a practice already, once a week, try the idea of a plank-down meeting as the next level of maturity for your basic daily stand-up meeting. Either way, endorphins are up for grabs, creating happier teams with such simple and creative ideas for daily routine practices. A motivated staff is the outcome of a true Agile mindset and with further understanding of human biochemistry (endorphins to start with).

And with that, you're well on your way to creating a better and more productively creative workplace for all.

Try it out for yourself and share your findings with daily plank-down meetings. I would love to hear about the outcomes.

Other publications on this series are:

The Agile Mindset Series (Part 2 of 4: Driven Daily Dopamine)

Stay tuned on upcoming thoughts on Agile Mindset based on Endocrinology where I describe the hormones released during Agile Ceremonies.