Dahm M. Hongchai

Transcript

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  00:42

Who is Dahm Mongol Hongchai?

Dahm M. Hongchai  00:48

Dahm is a human, he is a happy human. Yeah, that’s it. Yeah, actually, I worked as a mechanical engineer before me fleeing to the US. I worked in Thailand 11 years. So six years, I was a mechanical engineer, and then moved to be a human resource development manager. So I’m from the two words of machines, and human.

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  01:27

So how do you, like when you say, Human Development Manager, what does that really mean in your context?

Dahm M. Hongchai  01:37

I designed courses, workshops, to develop new engineers, new technicians, or even people who have a lot of experience at my company. And I take care of the whole employee development systems. Yeah.

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  02:01

So, it’s really in developing both the human side of things as well as, obviously the process and that whole side of things, yeah. I know you recently we talked maybe a couple of months ago, we exchanged emails, and you moved from Thailand, you were in Thailand for I think, a lot of COVID during the last year, and then you came back. So what are you up to currently? What are you doing?

Dahm M. Hongchai  02:30

Now we are in Portland, Oregon, I became a full time PhD student at Portland State University. My major is in engineering and technology management. And now I’m interested in organizational change management. So I see change is the truth of life is everywhere, and it will be forever with our life, and even our business. So I think change is really basic, classic, and challenging. I’m really into it, how to help myself first, to change myself to be better every morning, every day, that I have the greatest quality of my life to wake up every day. So I want to be a better Dahm first. And then I have energy, especially positive energy, to help to support other people to change to be a better they.

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  03:38

Wow, that is awesome. And like, you know, when it comes to change, I mean, we talk a lot about change, we talk about changing people changing culture changing, you know, systems. What do you think, you know, looking at your background now, or I’d like to get to also is the same as a monk, how you got into that, but maybe just looking at change, like why do from your perspective, why do we resist change? Why do we sometimes welcome change as humans? And what is your thought on that? aspect when it comes to change?

Dahm M. Hongchai  04:14

Even though change is the truth of life, but some changes are really painful for us. We don’t really practice or prepare ourself to confront those changes. For example, what if I do? What if you lose your loved ones this evening? I asked myself, I think 10 years ago after I lost three friends, like three months, three months, three months and ask myself, “what if my mum died?” That would be such a big change of my life. And then my friend invited me to a temple, it is a foreign temple. I went there every week and three months, and then I made a decision to be a monk. I don’t know why the temple always introduced me to death videos almost every evening. I didn’t tell the temple what my objective was that I came to the temple almost every weekend, but kind of like someone there knew about my purpose. And then I watched videos of death often and then I got used to it. You know, after being a monk, I think 40 days, and then I came back to work. Three years later, my mom died. Like, I talked to her in the morning, in the afternoon, in the evening, and asked her, “have you had dinner yet?” And she said, “no, I’m going to see a doctor”, 10 minutes later, I got a call from my brother, “mom is dying, what should I do?” I didn’t cry. I was really conscious and made a decision to let her go. I took a bus back home, I didn’t cry at all. But when I saw my mom’s body, I cried, but not that much. Because I knew exactly that it would happen sooner or later. So change is with us, is with us all the time. 

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  06:59

And thank you for sharing that. It looks like you embraced the change, right? You didn’t run from it, you weren’t scared of it. You knew that it was coming, we all know it is coming but a lot of times, we’re afraid of the unknowns that I think you know, when we resist the change that has to do I think with what you just said, consciousness, as far as how conscious we are about that change, and also our fear towards the unknown. And maybe that, you know, once we are okay with the unknown, maybe we’re okay with the change. I don’t know. But that is a really, really touching and interesting point that just made me think and my thoughts are going in a couple of different directions as far as that. So when it comes to consciousness, I mean, you know, in meditation, like you know, a lot of times it’s lost on many of us, and especially being in a busy world, and I think you did a talk that, I don’t think I know you did a talk, I wasn’t there for agile 2021. It was called come learn from an agile as Thai monk, stop burning a candle both ends. Could you maybe elaborate on your talk and what were some of the key messages from that talk?

Dahm M. Hongchai  08:22

Yeah, the key message is, take care of your life, your life is really short. Yeah. And, after being a monk, I learned a lot about being conscious. And yeah, after my mom died, I worked really, actually, I have been working really hard since I was a child. Yeah, I worked really hard to get to this point. 11 years that I worked in Thailand, I did many, many things for my family members, and after my mom died, I made a decision to move to study English first in San Francisco, and I got a master’s degree. And after that, I really wanted to be someone in Agile communities. I got many problems, I got many bullies,  I got many resistance from many people who didn’t really want me to be here with you guys. So I worked very hard to get to where I want it to be. And then I travel around the world to see Agiles, yeah. I became sick of anxiety attacks. 

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  09:48

It was too much to handle or…?

Dahm M. Hongchai  09:51

Too much to handle, too much stress, too much energy that I gave to other people, but I didn’t have energy left for myself. I lost all confidence, everything like gone from my body. My friend told me like, I didn’t see even bad spirit at all. I sat on the beach like this.

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  10:15

I saw you. I mean, over the years, as I told you before we started recording, I saw like just how much you were doing, how much you involved, but I would also argue that you got a lot of love. I mean, like, when I talk to certain people and like people that supported in community, like, I think the way that some people, I only saw the positive side, let me put it that way. I didn’t see all the stuff that you probably endured. But there are a lot of people I think that also showed you love and really embraced you. Would you say that’s correct? Or there was a mixture of both?

Dahm M. Hongchai  10:53

I think many people rarely welcome into agile communities. And just a few people they bully me, they try to drag me down. And people who love me to support m, saw me and then they send me messages direct to my inbox. Even some people might, many people invited me to, to their home. Yeah, like my friend in Washington, DC, Cory invited me to stay with his family for almost a week, I think. And many people show me their love. They support me. And I feel like, wow, thank you so much. Even you.

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  11:46

You k now it is great. Again, you know, there’s also like, the way that you know, I guess, you know, you can always see, but maybe to come back a little bit more to your talk and, burning the candles on both ends. What else, I mean, how did you get out of it? Like, in a sense, like, how did you get out of that, You know, I’m assuming it’s some kind of depression or something, you know, energy type of drain, how did you get back out of it? Recently, I saw you doing all kinds of stuff and I want you to talk about that too where you were entertaining people. And some of the stuff the pictures you’re taking. What did it take to get back into it, to enjoy? I think one of the things you said you didn’t enjoy training anymore, it wasn’t fun. So what did you do to get back into it?

Dahm M. Hongchai  12:34

I took a break for two weeks, and then I stay in a resort. It was very quiet for me. So I became with myself 100%. Yeah, like, “come here, don’t send your mind anywhere else”. Come back to your breath. Yeah, come back to your breath, your life is too short. And I ask myself, like, what I want to do next. That’s prioritization. Right?

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  13:08

Yeah, you’re the product owner of your own life, right.

Dahm M. Hongchai  13:13

Yeah. So I then I prioritize what I want to do by using this. Yeah. It’s a Kanban. Like, this is my personal Kanban notebook that I use. I still use it, even though it’s kind of like yeah, ugly but I really like it. And after prioritizing what I want to do in my life, because now I have only 40 years left in this world. Well, I’m 41 years so, and I believe that I will die at the age of 80 years old, so I have only 39 year left. So I want to…

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  14:02

So you know exactly in the year you think you’ll die?

Dahm M. Hongchai  14:05

Yes, of course.

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  14:07

How do you know that?

Dahm M. Hongchai  14:11

I set my mind there. Yeah, that’s the deadline of a project. Right? Yeah. Like we have projects and we know our deadlines, and how about our life? So I set my deadline there. So I know exactly how many hours, how many months, how many years that I have left. And then I can prioritize what I want to do with my life.

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  14:37

So you are time boxing your life in a way?

Dahm M. Hongchai  14:41

Yeah. And then I can focus.

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  14:44

I’ve never heard anybody say that. But even if it’s hypothetically speaking, right, let’s just say even if it’s just putting sense of urgency, that time box, the saying in your mind, you know as you know, it plays games in your mind like just knowing that there is limit, that it’s not forever, that there is that mark at some point, whatever it is, that’s very interesting. And thank you for sharing. That’s just again, made me think of a bunch of different things that you know on my end and I should be probably just at least contemplating about. What about becoming a CST and training with Jeff Sutherland? What was your journey to become Scrum trainer? Sorry, I said CST, but scrum trainer with Scrum Inc. And it looks like Scrum Inc and Jeff embrace you. And I’m interested because a lot of times, you know, I’m familiar with the with scrum.org. I’m familiar with the obviously being a CST to scrum Alliance, but what was that experience working collaborating with Scrum Inc? And how did you get into that? I’m assuming maybe just last,  I don’t know.

Dahm M. Hongchai  16:02

The new best name of being a trainer there, we just got in this name, they are registered scrum trainer.

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  16:12

Registered scrum trainer. So RST?

Dahm M. Hongchai  16:15

Yes RST. Yeah, with Scrum Inc. I got to do many things. They counted everything that I have done in the past, all experiences. Yeah, I think on the day, one day, they knew me that I joined product owners certification, what is that? CSPO. Yeah, at test lab with Jeff. And then I told myself, like, “oh, I want to be a trainer”. And then I want to ask Jeff, “Jeff, I want to be a trainer. The first person in Thailand, could you help me please?”. He didn’t say anything. I think no one wants to commit right? It’s hard. It’s hard to get there and I after that I researched, Oh, there is no Scrum guide in Thai. So I asked Jeff, “hey, Jeff, I want to translate the scrum guide to Thai”. And then he said, “Okay, let me ask Ken”, both of them said yes and I started from there. That is the first piece of being a trainer. I think they called it from that day that I translated the scrum guide, the 2017 version for the first time, and I did for the second time for the 2020 version, and join his workshops, scrum at scale. And I had to produce real experiences, real successful cases, even failed cases and then I report it back to Jeff. Yeah, report it back to Jeff. What I did, I report it back. Yeah, I at that time, I just wanted to share my experiences with Jeff.

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  18:16

Yeah. What was his response? Like, how do they respond to their case studies and experiences?

Dahm M. Hongchai  18:28

Jeff, you know, in a conference in his session, and then he thought of my case study, and then he looked at me, and then he talked about my case study, that made me so happy. And he told people in sessions about my case study and that he asked me to tell people there. That is awesome, he remember me.

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  19:01

And that’s important. I mean, like, yeah, it’s just especially and kudos to you. You did also some co-trainings with Jeff, right? And how did that I mean, I attended the one of Jeff’s trainings, too, and it’s interesting, and I’ve seen them also coaching, how was that experience for you to co-train with Jeff Sutherland.

Dahm M. Hongchai  19:23

First, my dream became true. Even though when he was saying like, is unbelievable, but for me, I could say that it’s believable, because I plan for that. And when I got the invitation from Scrub Inc, I’m like, wow. First, wow, and after that, I was nervous. And then I had to ask for learning materials, training materials as well. Everything that I had to prepare myself before flying from Bangkok to Boston. When I got there, my heart like [beating sounds]

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  20:15

So you were, I thought you were in San Francisco. But that was a long flight, and time difference. 

Dahm M. Hongchai  20:24

And Jeff was really helpful, was really supportive. I still had many questions, I asked him in details and he answered all questions, even small numbers. And I asked him for feedback, what could I do better? I presented in the morning on the first day, and then I asked him for feedback, what I could do better in the afternoon. And he told me, “Ah, I love your energy Dahm, and it would be better if you worked on your pronunciation”. I didn’t practice after that. I was really quiet, try to work with myself inside, didn’t practice about pronunciation at all but I believed him. And then in the afternoon, and on the second day, I presented again, yeah, for my parts. Yeah, and then I went back to ask him, yeah, “could you please give me feedback? Tell me about my pronunciation”. And he said, “it’s much easier to understand you in the afternoon, and on the second day”.

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  21:44

Wow. So, that was immediate improvement or, and let’s see, I think you know, a lot of trainers do and it’s something but maybe for some that are not listening is that it’s always opportunity to improve and it’s never too early to ask for feedback. So even at the you know, lunch for day one of two day training, asking for feedback, and then improving for the second part of the day is really good.

Dahm M. Hongchai  22:13

That’s my way when I train people, even three hours, I ask for feedback after the first session, one and a half hours, to make sure that the second part one and a half hours left, they will be happy with me. So I don’t wait until I finish my workshop to ask for feedback. Because the feedback that I get at the last moment is useless.

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  22:47

Yeah, it is too late already.

Dahm M. Hongchai  22:51

For people who are with me now, nothing is early for me. But everything. feedback is a gift. So I can adjust immediately, yeah, with my clients who are in front of me now. 

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  23:07

What are some of the, I mean, like you’ve done I agree, like, at least, you know, energy wise and what I’ve seen, we’ve never met in person, but what I’ve just seen through your posts, and you know, like, you’ve done some crazy stuff where you’re DJing, I think you were a DJ or something. S-o, could you maybe talk about some of the stuff that you’ve done. I also wanted to maybe talk about just crazy stuff that you’ve done during the training to entertain people first. What is that? Oh the lighter

Dahm M. Hongchai  23:40

Yes, we are going to have lights here. So, online training is difficult and at the same time is boring. How to make sure that people are with you 100%. With me, just only with me, make sure that they are with me consciously. Yeah, consciously. When you listen to other people, even though you are doing nothing, but actually you’re sending your mind somewhere else. You are not with those people 100%. So I just want to make sure that people are having fun with me first, and then they relaxed.

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  24:44

And that probably that they want to be there, right?

Dahm M. Hongchai  24:47

Yeah, they want to see some entertainment before studying. I don’t want to make people spreads and then they will close everything they don’t listen to me. They even close their ears.

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  25:03

So what are the things do you do? I mean, like I agree online training is, you know, completely different. And even though I’ve done online training before COVID, not to the extent where I’ve done it now for almost two years, or a year and a half. What other things do you find helpful to do during the trainings?

Dahm M. Hongchai  25:24

Yeah, first I dress up in many themes. I dress up in many themes, being a monk, being  the Statue of Liberty, Harry Potter, a rock star, and I got like disco lights,  I danced in front of people. And when, people like, “what’s going on?” And then they just leave everything and then focus on what I’m going to do. And then they are ready to study with me. Besides dressing up, I like doing like games. Yeah, so I don’t lecture. I don’t lecture people, “hey, here. Try teach you how to [unclear 26:22] like, questionnaire. and then they learn from reading by themselves. And they learn from making mistakes when they answer incorrectly.

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  26:34

That’s something that definitely I think, even when we go back, I think teaching online has opened the doors, opened my eyes to some of the things that I would want to do when we go back to in-person. And I think, you know, definitely, there were a lot of exercises in in-person classes, but I think, how do we combine the online tools and in-person tools and how?  So, it’s been interesting from that standpoint. But what about like you’ve done like, you’ve helped people understand agile and cooking, agile and drawing, gardening, agile working. Could you maybe talk about, at least what I have in my head is when you did agile cooking, I think in San Francisco or something like that. Would you talk about, you know, how did you come up with those ideas was just opportunities that presented themselves and what did you learn from that type of training environment, I guess?

Dahm M. Hongchai  27:39

I thought Thai cooking is for everyone who really want to understand about agile, or even about change, or many, many things. I think I got inspiration from my mom. My mom always asked me, “what do you want to have for your breakfast tomorrow?” This is a good product owner, right? Yeah. So, actually my agile cooking is for predicting people, behaviors at work. So I asked people like, “okay, please cook whatever you picked ingredients for this workshop?” Period. That’s it. Firmly thought instruction. And people  are just okay. Yeah, within the top box, like 10 minutes, and then they came back, “here, my dish”, alright? And then ask a question, “who did you cook for?” They are like, for you Dahm. For my friends”. And I said, “Oh, you don’t really know who your customers are huh? See, they are all quiet. And I answered them, like, “oh, your customer is me”. And some people complain, “you didn’t tell us clearly in your instruction?” And then I replied, “you didn’t ask. That’s your behavior at work, right? When your boss or someone tell you to do something, not clearly, you didn’t even ask them in details, you didn’t even ask whom you are working for”, and they became quiet.

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  29:42

But that’s also like, you know, I’ve read somewhere recently that the assumption is like the biggest, I think they use some kind of bad word to describe it, but like, in a way like, you know, assumption is the root of a lot of issues, a lot of problems. And in that instance, you know, and like you said, it’s that assumption about who the customer is, is everywhere in business. Like, you know, we don’t fully understand who the customers are, we build stuff, we develop stuff.  I recently worked with a client where I came in, and I realized that a senior executive has asked three teams to work an initiative to the data is going to impress the client and keep the client. And these three teams busted their butts, they were working really hard trying to, you know, meet the deadline and everything. And then when they delivered, the client actually ended up going to their competitor, and it turned out that, you know, there was a huge assumption made by this VP, that the customer wants this and that this would keep the customer. So people were so deflated, understanding that their leader made a huge assumption that this was important and this is what the customer wanted without validating they were working on this, and then realizing that all the hard work wasn’t really, you know, what they thought it would be just because of an assumption.

Dahm M. Hongchai  31:20

Yeah, actually is good to start working from assumption, by the way, your customers are over there, just go out to ask them, that’s it right? It is easy. And besides this, I call a trap. So there are many traps in my agile cooking. And then after I ask them to cook and then I id alright, are you ready for feedback? I’m going to test your food. And then I became, I became really bad to tell them direct feedback. And for some people who were not ready for feedback, they started being mad and talk like non-stop, and they defended for my feedback. One lady, she defend, she defended great, she defended for the whole day about my feedback, until the last minute, she came to me and she said, “thank you so much for your lesson. I wanted to listen to other people more and more, to become a better me”

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  32:42

And become a better listener. And that’s a huge thing about you know, taking feedback. And I remember when I used to ask for feedback, and then get pissed off.

Dahm M. Hongchai  32:58

Actually people are not ready for that. And agile cooking for the first theme that I created and then I read, oh, I study from Lolly, my Agile coach in San Francisco, he told me about “a leader is a gardener”. What is that? A leader is gardener. I didn’t understand at the time, so I asked him for details, and he told me the details. And then alright, I want to share my agile experience with executives by asking them to make a guardian on a tray, in a pot or something like that, and then yeah, I have many traps for leaders to learn by getting their hands dirty from making garbage, right. And the last point, yeah, everyone were so proud of their beautiful gardens. Yeah, they build it by their hands, by the love, by the cares, and then I told them a big plastic bag, and then ask them, you have 30 seconds to destroy your garden, now. People are like, “why do I need to do it?”, “No, I’m not going to do it”, “No, no, it’s too beautiful”. Just only I think, from doing this around the world, I think not over then and people did it right away, immediately. And I asked them why you did that? You didn’t ask even the objective. Should I tell you the answer? Those people answer this question by saying like, “it’s better to disrupt my business by myself, and I won’t let my competitors, other people to do it, it is more painful to divide as a leader”. You see many people, many people are addicted to their success, and they don’t want to change.

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  35:19

We get too comfortable, right? And it’s also, you know, hard because it is comfortable. And you know, as humans were designed to preserve the energy and all of that, unless, you know, we feel threatened. And when you’re in a safe place…

Dahm M. Hongchai  35:37

That success is beautiful. That’s why they want to just hold it, they don’t want to let it go. Many people asked me, “why you made a decision to leave your career in a job in Thailand and you went to the US?” And now we see your growth in Thailand, that could be like, 10 times. And I told them, like, that’s my comfort zone, that’s my success, and I want to disrupt myself again, I did for the first time 2014. And I’m doing it again 2021.

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  36:17

That is awesome. So maybe, I want to also ask you, since you brought it up, what do you see the differences between maybe mindset culture and how agile is adopted in Asia, or Thailand, maybe I don’t know, and how it’s adopted, here in United States. Is there any differences is there anything that you see the you know, having exposure to both, that stands out to you?

Dahm M. Hongchai  36:47

When we see other skin, everywhere, they have their own unique, they have their own styles, but when we look deeply and deeply and from traveling around the world, we are human, so, all of us resist being changed. Actually, we accept changes, okay. We accept changes but when we get to the point that we are asking to change, or we are being changed, we try to resist first. And then people try to tell us about logical thinking, logical reasons, we try to listen. By the way, at the end of the day, even though because logical thinking and logical reasons, we go back home, we become a human with emotions again. Yeah, so everywhere, we are human, so we are the same. So we resist being changed.

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  38:02

So that and you know that a lot of times, you know, when you look at leadership, and I’m working with executives, there’s a lot of people imposing change in others, yet, they don’t want to change. So like, you know, a lot of times it’s like, do Agile, you know, a lot of these transformations are being imposed in many different ways. And then when we look at, you know, leaders that they want to change themselves, and when you look at, you know, like you said, you have to kind of be mindful about your own actions and what you’re doing. A lot of that is not reflected on the leadership. And I was recently talking to Evan from business agility Institute, and I was, who else I was talking to, essentially a lot of data points to leadership in organization, like as far as their ability to change, adapt to change, business agility, it points out to lack of willingness at the leadership level to change. And, you know, what you’re just saying, made me think about that aspect where, you know, we want others to change, but yet when it comes to changing ourselves, it’s hard. And probably as a monk and a mindful person that who are, you know, the change starts within and first with us, rather than others. So, do you think like, is that something that is common and I’m not assuming you are alluded to that, is leadership doesn’t matter where you are, it’s also leadership, that a lot of times is impeding change in organization and some of these changes where maybe humans are a little bit more liberated at work and feeling better about what, you know, their work. Because I was just looking, maybe just to add to this, it’s November 2021 and it was I think this month or the pass month was the biggest month where people just quit United States, and that has to do a lot with the environment and the leadership and organization. So what do you think on that, like aspect of leadership, and where it is, and, you know, is the same in Asia, as well as in North America? That, is leadership, that’s the, you know, probably from a Laloose , I’m assuming you’re familiar with Laloose, radically Laloose work from reinventing organizations where he said, like, we can only go as far as the leaders and organizations will allow us, do you think that’s true?

Dahm M. Hongchai  40:44

I think it’s true, because it’s easy to ask other people to change. And when you need to change yourself, you still resist, right? And you have many excuses not to do it. So I see many people who are change agents, who are executives, who are managers, they are not successful of changing themselves, and they try to tell other people, you have to change Dahm. And I looked back like “hmm?”. Yeah, for example, many people try to tell us, “hey, exercise, get exercise”.  And when I look back to them, like, “did you exercise yesterday, or even this morning before telling me to do that?” So it’s better to change ourselves, to be a better one first, before telling other people to do it. That view, that is a role model, and when you be a role model, when you tell other people to, I don’t want to say that tell other people to change, when you support other people to change, when you speak, your voice is something there, right? Yeah, because you have done it. Your body language, your eyes, everything is there from your body, when you try to support other people to change. But if you have never done before, even your voice is kind of like so…

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  42:51

Well, you know, 90% of what we communicate one or not one, it is nonverbal. So it like you said, you know, it’s your body language, it’s the way your tone of the voice or whatever it is, all that combination is. What do you maybe just to see here from your perspective, like, what do you think, you know, where’s agile going? Where have you seen it? Like, I’ve talked to Dave Snowden, I’ve talked to like, the biggest names in Agile, and I wanted to know what their thoughts are, you know, people have been saying that Agile and Scrum is dead for the last 20 years, 10 years, at least. What I’m seeing and what they kind of alluded to, is that, you know, contextualizing things and you know, not being so dogmatic about you know, what framework you’re actually applying, but being able to go back to cooking and the analogy that I use is, you know, coming up with our own recipes, rather than relying you know, even on Scrum and being dogmatic about you know, having everything has to be Scrum or Kanban. But contextualizing approaches and methods and frameworks to your environment. What is your thought on, on that, like in the sense of where do you see these scaling frameworks, methods in general, heading into? Do you think we will more and more be reliant on these prescriptive frameworks? Or do you think it’s going to go somewhere in some other direction?

Dahm M. Hongchai  44:36

I think some people are going to the wrong direction and some people are going to the right direction. So for people who are going to the right direction I see a lot of them to help other people to realize that they are suffering from the path that they are now. If we help people to see their suffering, what they are doing is suffering and make other people unhappy. If they can realize that, and then wake them up, wake them up and help them to find root causes, and then help them to have better actions, how to deal with that. For example, we have a lot of things to do, right, and one person judge many projects. So, that person should speak out, because their suffering. But that person doesn’t speak up because they don’t, because he or she doesn’t realize that’s he is suffering. Even though many people try, even a scrum master and Agile Coach, try to help a him or her that, “hey, that’s not right”, but she or he doesn’t know that they are suffering and they try to resist even though we try to help them.  Or a manager, or managers who doesn’t know how to prioritize work, that’s why they go around to tell many people to do many things at the same time, and they don’t realize that they are making other people unhappy, and they are making other people not really have time to their family members. So I think as an Agile coach, a scrum master should help people to realize that what they are doing is suffering.

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  46:57

Yeah, so what I’m hearing you say is, it’s first before even I mean, we look at, you know, the methods, approaches, frameworks, whatever, just, you know, getting people to realize whatever you’re doing, you know, to have the courage, first of all, to realize, but then to have the courage, you know, this is not working. And this is, you know, let’s find a better way, whatever that better way is, let’s find a better way to work. Because I see, and the reason I bring it up, is I see a lot of developers suffer under Scrum, because either way that’s adopted, it’s not just working for them. And like you said, they’re suffering because maybe of their own perceptions, maybe or whatever the you know, how it’s posing them. And just that even scrum value of courage and saying, you know, but a lot of people just go with the flow, we are there for whatever reasons, either, you know, it’s, you know, security, some type of fear or whatever it is. Okay, so I don’t know if you answered my question, but I think you did in a way that you’re saying, it’s more on, first of all, realizing whatever framework or method you’re adopting, that isn’t working for you, you’re suffering, and then coming up with something that you’re happier, or better.

Dahm M. Hongchai  48:26

Yeah. But people feel it but people are not brave enough to speak up, like, “hey, it doesn’t work. And I’m not happy now, and I want to have better ways of living, of working. Hey, come and meet and sit and discuss to find better ways to work together”.

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  48:53

Yeah, that’s a that’s a good point.

Dahm M. Hongchai  48:56

But people don’t do that. Yeah, many factors.

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  49:01

Yeah. And that’s probably has to do with outside cultural factors, too, as you know, like, you know, in certain cultures, like for, I joke around, but you know, southern Italians, people, where I’m from in the Balkans will tell you to your face, you know, “go screw yourself or this is bullshit”. In some cultures, that’s just not part of the culture. So outside culture has an impact on, you know, individual behaviors as well, what’s acceptable and what’s not. So it becomes harder in those type of cultures for people to speak up.

Dahm M. Hongchai  49:33

Yeah, that’s why we need support from managers, leaders, and many people around you to construct safe environments for people to speak their mind, no punishment.

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  49:53

Yeah, and just that’s yes. Just people to be able to comfortable and that I have that psychological safety. What would you like to share? We’ve 15 minutes I think or something like that. To end, what would you like to share with our listeners? Either a message, a tip, anything that you would like to leave us with?

Dahm M. Hongchai  50:17

I would like to share, your life is too short. You have time limited for your life. Please prioritize what you need to do. Yeah, and get rid of whatever make your life unhappy. On your way that help you to be a better you. And for being this test. Actually, you can apply many ideas, tools, whatever from agile, from Scrum, for many frameworks, or even from lean manufacturing, from six sigma, to help you to get there. For example, lean manufacturing teaches us to get rid of waste. So we have to understand the whole system. At work, we have to understand the whole change. Yeah, where verses are? And how about your life? What are you wasting your time for, get rid of them, and then come back to make your life productive. As at work, get rid of waste, and then yeah, make your work more productive, right. And when we talk about six sigma, Six Sigma offers many tools for problem solving. At work, we have many problems, and we have many tools like Try Ess [unclear 52:01] Fishbone analysis, for training analysis, we can use all of them to help us to find root causes, and set up corrective action and proactive action at work. And at the same time, having said that, your life is too short. And our life have many problems, and we shouldn’t let problems occur again and again. So we can use many tools from lean manufacturing and Six Sigma to find root causes and prevent many unhappy situation. Yes, see? So we can apply many tools for our work and our life at the same time because our life is too short.