Melissa Boggs

Speaker: Milan Bajic  00:35

Who is Melissa Boggs?

Speaker: Melissa Boggs  00:37

Oh, my, who is Melissa Boggs? You prepared me for this question and I did not prepare an answer right off the bat. But that’s probably a little indicative of who I am. So I’ll give you the business version and then I’ll give you the human version, I guess. So currently, I am a leader in the Agile space. I am the vice president of business agility at Sauce Labs and I am also for now starting to call an employee engagement coach and it’s related to being Agile coach but I’ve started to realize that my superpower is really in helping leaders and employees increase their engagement and helping them to see each other because sometimes there’s societal, cultural, sometimes generational gaps that exist and so in helping them to identify those and sort of work through them, then they’re able to connect more fully, and therefore, everyone’s engagement increases. And it’s not just in, ping pong tables are nice, so are snacks in the kitchen but that doesn’t actually increase your engagement with work. 

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  02:01

Because alcohol having a full bar?

Speaker: Melissa Boggs  02:03

Sometimes. It increases your engagement with something. But yeah, I’ve really sort of honed in on that lately, because especially coming out of that, we’re still in the pandemic, but as we’re nearing that, what we hope is the end of the pandemic. I think a lot of leaders are grappling with how do I lead now, people want to stay remote, etc. so there’s a lot more there we could unpack later but I just began to realize, I have a lot of passion for that. So that’s sort of part of me. And I think in parts, I’ve been on both sides of that equation. Personally, I am a mom to two, have a teenager and then also almost a teenager, a wife, a roller skater and I roller skated a ton as a kid. And then in January, well, for Christmas, my family bought me a lovely, really nice pair of roller-skates. And so in January, I picked that up again, and believe it or not, it is like riding a bike and when you haven’t done it for 20 years, you can still do it. So that’s been fun to have a new exercise hobby type of thing. And so I’m sure there’s more but that’s the tip of the iceberg.

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  03:22

I was listening to your discussion with Aaron Sanders about roller-skating and what you were saying, I found the analogy or the what you use to describe what you’re really learning and differences in skating a rink versus going down the hill and I thought that was really cool in a way, you might be familiar with one area and just skating in general, but a different environment requires you to adjust even though something might look familiar. One form might be very familiar, but the environment forces you to really learn or adjust.

Speaker: Melissa Boggs  04:10

I was not counting on that at all. So yeah, it’s funny, because you can and allow me to apply it to Agile for 10 seconds, but you can know the practices and you can apply them in one place but you have to know the underlying principles, because if that environment is 20% different, like a sidewalk versus a rink, then you have to go underneath things like balance and things like kind of skating in your environment and roller skating. So yeah, there’s definitely a metaphor that I think sort of just came up when I was talking about there. But now I’m living it.

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  04:57

Yeah, so that’s fun, and I think it’s interesting how we tried to divide and even you’ve said it, this is who I am professionally, this is who I am personally, but it’s hard to divide those two, like Melissa is one person and it’s a lot of times hard. When is Melissa’s best or when are you at your best? When do you think you’re operating at your optimal?

Speaker: Melissa Boggs  05:27

So I have to say, as soon as those words came out of my mouth, as soon as I divided the two, I was like, oh, he’s going to ask me that, because I would have asked myself about that. I have some very strongly defined values for myself. I went through this actually, when I was applying for my CEC years ago, is when I really did the soul searching. So I know very clearly that my values are courage, empathy and creativity and so at the lack of, or at the risk of sounding cheesy, I think, whether it’s with my kids or my husband or work, when I am applying those values actively in combo, it’s one thing to be courageous but if you don’t also have empathy for your situation or if I personally am not getting to be creative, then I’m not at my best. And so I would say any situation where I have the ability to apply all three of them at the same time, it feels like there’s no ceiling.

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  06:34

So courage, empathy, and creativity. Nice. I like those. Let’s maybe unpack a little bit of courage and maybe we can kind of segue into the wild hearts at work and the new podcast that you’re launching, because I think that has a lot to do with courage. You talked about being a rebel wild at heart. Could you give us intro as far as how the idea for the podcast came about and maybe just how do you see our relates to the current environment, because I listened to your intro, and I thought it was really nice the way they described it so it might be helpful to share that. And I definitely encourage you to follow Melissa on podcast, I believe you said the way that you said it or the way that I understood it, it’s going to be a major podcast platforms but you’re also going to have a video kind of unedited version on YouTube. So tell us a little bit more about wild hearts at work?

Speaker: Melissa Boggs  07:49

Well, thank you for first of all, watching the trailer and second for giving me a chance to talk about it because it’s definitely a passion project. It’s definitely all about courage. The podcast itself, kind of came from this idea that through these stories that I’ve kind of collected over the years of coaching, there are people out there doing crazy things and then I mean that in the most wonderful way but we don’t necessarily know about it. And so if you are someone who is like, you feel sort of stuck in the corporate world, and you have all these creative ideas, but you feel like you’re the only one, then I think you’re less likely to take the risk and try something in your company. The other thing is, being a coach, one of the phrases that I heard all the time, and it drives me absolutely crazy and I guarantee all of the other coaches listening to this have heard it. That’s nice, but in the real world. And so what I want to do is give people something to point at something to say, yes, in the real world, so and so at this company that I heard on wild hearts at work did this, they did exactly what I’m talking about or something really close and it kind of gives people, I don’t know equips them with some resources to say, it’s not just me, there are other people doing this and they’ve done it successfully so I want to give it a try. Those are two of the big reasons and then third, I realized, even Friday after I published the trailer that some of this is selfish. I don’t want to feel alone, I don’t want to feel I’m the only one who kind of looks at some of our work structures and workplaces that were built back in the 70s and 80s and I look at that and go like it is a whole new world now. Why are we still behaving the way that we used to when there’s so much more that we have to offer as a society. And so yeah, I think selfishly part of it is just, as people started sending me over the weekend  their suggestions, and I started seeing new story that I hadn’t heard of, I was like, some of this is just me wanting to connect with those people and also feel like, I’m in it, there’s a revolution, if you will…

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  10:25

Or maybe as you’re saying that, it reminded me of  and the way that I look at it, it’s a paradigm shift. So, what we’re talking about is in this like it doesn’t happen the real world. It’s mostly when we’re stuck in the current paradigm, and we’re kind of only seeing from that lens of the current paradigm. And there’s a lot of things that people are pushing in that new paradigm, I think if you talk to anybody or most people will agree that there is a shift and I think COVID is also towards that shift. I think at any point new paradigm is weird, is maybe tied back, it is wild, because it’s something that not everybody is comfortable with. It’s out there a lot of times because it I don’t know if you’re familiar with they keep bringing it up, not many people in Agile community are familiar with Thomas Kuhns, circle of change, or paradigm change. But essentially talks about how we go through these paradigms and it’s hard to accept a current paradigm, but when it starts breaking down, you have a group of people that see the new way. And I think that’s a lot of times in these stories that you’re talking about people sharing these stories, it’s about this new paradigm that’s emerging, new way of working where, like you said, I think when you talked about the new company that you work at sauce lab, where transparency is a big thing, ideas over hierarchy. Those are type of things that are not common in most organizations but if I had to guess in 20 years, when we reflect back, be that will be like a normal, that will be I think, something that people will expect to have in organizations. So is it about highlighting and sharing stories about this new paradigm that’s emerging?

Speaker: Melissa Boggs  12:31

It’s a mix. This is the creativity part, I really do want there to be a mix of format, some of them will be interviews, some of them will be me talking about topics that I think might appeal to or wild at hearts might be struggling with, like am I the only one that is thinking about compensation right now? And how do we compensate differently? No, you’re not the only one. Also, I have a whole stack of books that I would love to share with people that have either inspired me or I have some that I haven’t even read yet, that I’m going to read intentionally for the podcast to be able to give people a hot take, like, I just read this book, and it was great or maybe it wasn’t. And so yeah, I’m really intent on kind of mixing things up so that every time it’s kind of different. One other thing I wanted to add to is when you’re talking about that paradigm shift. I don’t think we have enough empathy for leaders in that situation, specifically for people who have been managing or leading for a very long time in a very certain way. And I’ve been guilty of that too. Definitely years ago, I would have said, how leadership doesn’t understand or they are the thorn in our side or we can’t do this because of leaders. And while that’s often true, again, I mentioned at the beginning, there’s this gap. Now, having been in those shoes myself, part of the podcast is, I want to create some empathy in both directions. There’s also a bunch of wild leaders that I know that I want to bring onto the podcast who can speak to other CEOs and say, hey, I tried it, it’s scary, but it worked, whatever it may be. I do want to make clear that when I talk about effectively and respectfully rebelling, it’s because all of these people are humans. The CEO who you feel is getting in your way, has an immense amount of pressure that you don’t know about. They are being asked questions that they don’t have the answers to. And so I definitely want to create that balance in the podcast as well so that they feel seen and heard. But maybe you start to understand a little more themselves about the people who are trying to rebel respectfully. So we’ll see where that goes to.

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  15:15

I know you love storytelling and what you did in scrum Alliance, as far as with people sharing stories. What will be some of the stories that you would be open to sharing about wild hearts, real wild hearts out there. Who inspires you, maybe even give us some hints of who you’re thinking about bringing on to talk to. But going back to real examples, who are some companies or people that inspire you?

Speaker: Melissa Boggs  15:49

Some of these, I can’t claim to have a contact with yet so if you are watching this, and you have a contact with these people, I would love you forever. I’ve always been inspired by Zappos, who is the largest company to have adopted holacracy. And now, frankly, if you read the latest book at Zappos have evolved even past it, it’s really amazing if you read it, I think the book is called The Power of WOW and I’m not being paid to sponsor that, I just love the book. But they adopted holacracy biggest company to do it and many of the teams that we work with, who start with Scrum, and then start to add in other things, that’s kind of what happened with them. I get really annoyed, because there’s a lot of articles out there that say, oh, they dropped holacracy, that’s actually not true. If you read the book, they just added to it. And I think like we see with Scrum, sometimes people start going well, that’s not holacracy because they’re doing other things with it. So we can be elitist, I guess. So Zappos is like a huge one. Absolutely loved Menlo and Rich Sheridan and introducing Julia into the workplace, Buffer and their perspective on transparency. If you were to go to Buffers websites, least this was a couple months ago, this is true, you can see they have salary transparency, not just internally, but externally. I mean, they are so incredibly committed to transparency, transparent to their customers even. And I’ve always said, I haven’t had a need for Buffer services, so far, their products, but the minute that I do, I won’t look at anyone else because I’m so aligned with who they are from an internal mission perspective. And these are radical things, I mean, sharing your salaries with the entire world on the internet, I don’t think it gets wilder than that

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  17:58

Exactly.

Speaker: Melissa Boggs  18:00

So those are kind of like the big company names.

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  18:04

And it’s also engaging, I think, when you do things like that, those type of actions promote engagement employees, because some time in my life had like, oh, how much does this person make, how much is the other person making? Am I fairly compensated? And I think, by company going out of the way to do that kind of encourages more of that engagement, more like we’re supporting in a way, and I think that’s engaging and supporting from a company standpoint.

Speaker: Melissa Boggs  18:39

Absolutely. I don’t want it to just focus on the big names either and that’s part of what the podcast is about, I know that there are a bunch of just individual people, in companies that are like, let’s try to do this differently, let’s try to just leave this team differently. There’s a lot of HR people who are doing, kind of rebellious practices, if you will, where it’s like, it’s still the right thing for the company but we’re also going to take the employees into consideration when we do this. And so those are the stories I also want to elevate in addition to the big names that we already know.

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  19:27

I don’t know if you’ve heard from Fidelity that they give their employees one day a week or most of the Fidelity. They still leave it to each of the I’m assuming product lines. But every week, Tuesdays are for self-development. And for somebody as Fidelity to do that, I thought that’s amazing. You don’t have to report so if you want to go screw around and not do anything on Tuesdays, if you’re lost because they’ve given you a day to focus on developing yourself and sharing and collaborating with others not necessarily, their company and I thought that’s a commitment from a company encouraged to trust the employees to develop themselves because we all in busy environment, it’s tough to find time to dedicate to learning and creating that space for people is nice.

Speaker: Melissa Boggs  20:25

Yeah, and I hadn’t heard about that, and I love it and I’d love to learn more. I love that, first the trust that demonstrates by the company into their employees, all of their employees. And then secondly, I think we’ll all be amazed to hear what comes out of that and those are the types of things I don’t think we hear enough out. It’s like, oh, I think Google kind of did that, too and we did hear some of the stories, they did a good job of saying, yeah, we did this, was it 20% time is what they called it. And there’s some cool products from Google that came from that time. And so yeah, I’m excited to hear how that will bring new things. Cool.

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  21:09

Maybe to shift gears a little bit, I want to talk to you about self-awareness. When you talk about bridging that gap between leaders and employees, or people that are typically doing the work, self-awareness is needed on both ends. What is self-awareness in your own words?

Speaker: Melissa Boggs  21:32

Oh, goodness. To me, self-awareness is a constant practice. It’s almost self-explanatory. It’s this constant, like, how did I show up in that situation? How am I showing up to this other person right now? It’s maybe a blend of empathy for whoever you’re engaged with in that moment, or however you’re communicating in that moment and yourself. Because I also think, through therapy, I have learned that self-awareness can also border on, sort of, I know self-parading sometimes, and so you have to be really aware of that line that you’re walking, and also have empathy for yourself. But, yeah, I mean, it’s a constant, what is it that I need to be working on right now? How am I showing up? Being aware that there’s many things so sometimes you have to be willing to go okay, I’m just going to focus on this one thing for myself right now, knowing I have other things to work on. But yeah, and more context for your question, in what situations self-awareness like, lead me, Miljan?

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  23:03

It’s interesting, right? So the way that I look at it aligned with empathy and what you were saying, but the way that I look at it, is willing to suspend your own beliefs, willing to question what do I believe in? What do I stand for? What do other people stand for? It’s almost like taking yourself out of that situation, trying to empathize, trying to look at things, maybe in a bigger perspective, and saying, how well am I aware of things? What is my sense making around? What’s going through Melissa’s head? What are the values that Melissa has and how do they align with my values and beliefs? What are the experiences that Melissa went through the shape her values? How does that come across to me and how aware am I from her perspective, versus how it’s impacting my values? And I think it goes to how well am I managing my emotional states, because a lot of times in self-awareness, I tell people I used to play soccer all throughout college, and I would swear in several Croatian, like referees and that didn’t feel good. I had to swear in English, so they understand me. But as a teenager, I really wasn’t self-aware and I think maybe it’s just being shocked coming to a new country where you don’t know the language, you don’t know the culture. So I think it was one way for me maybe to express even but definitely when I reflect back my self-awareness, I was reactive. So I think when you have more awareness, you’re more creative, coming back to one of you, rather than reactive and I don’t know if you see it that way.

Speaker: Melissa Boggs  25:00

Yeah, and actually, I love how you said that because I think self-awareness is more proactive. And it is things like getting really clear with yourself, about what is important to you and being aware, as you said, how it shows up, but also what you’re willing to accept and what boundaries that you’re going to put around yourself in order to be true to those values. Brene Brown, who I worship, and yeah, that would be an amazing guest to have on my podcast, she has a really cool YouTube video, she was actually on Russell Brand podcast. And the question that he posed to her was, well, it’s her question, and then he posts it back to her, do you believe that people are doing the best that they can? And I’ll tie it back to self-awareness in the second. And so they had this really funny interesting, with some swear words, conversation about whether or not you believe people are doing the best they can based on their circumstances, their knowledge, their own self-awareness, etc. And I recommend everyone go watch the video, because I’ll never represent it as well as she did. But basically, she said, you kind of have to believe that because you can’t control the other person anyway. So if you believe they’re doing the best that they can, then what do you need in your boundaries and your self-awareness to have a healthy relationship with them, because you can wish all day that they’re going to show up the way you want them to. But the only thing that you can control is your own awareness of yourself and your own actions and your own boundaries. And so I think that’s sort of what you were getting at is that self-awareness is proactive. And it’s like, what’s important to me? How am I showing up? How am I checking that? Am I kind of having a mini retro in my own head after a conflict or after something good? After this podcast, am I going to sit back and go, how did I show up for Miljan? Did I help him achieve the goals he had in the podcast? And so …

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  27:14

I have no goal besides conversations, maybe that’s a good goal which I question. Just maybe to add, and to build on what you’re saying, a  lot of times we focus so much on knowing others and I think self-awareness is, how much do we know about ourselves? And when I think about that, I don’t know crap about myself, kind of like, why I do certain things, like if I spend little bit more time thinking, why am I just pissed off right now? Or why am I happy right now, trying to tie back and there’s this exercise that I do in classes, which is I tell people, anytime you’re pissed off, or somebody’s pissed you off, one of your values, or beliefs was either, shattered over, violated, whatever you want to call it. And I started thinking more and more about that, even I joke around. When I piss my wife off, instead of trying to think about, why is she mad, I’m thinking what did I do? I know she loves me, what did I do to piss her off that much that she’s angry. And that helped me at least understand myself a little bit better and understand her and that made me think. Before, I focus so much on understanding the kind of the process is the hardest stuff, other people even, psychology yet, when I put a mirror to myself, the guy that you’re looking at or the person that you’re looking in the mirror is not as clear as you think you will be to yourself. I don’t know, that’s my thought on that.

Speaker: Melissa Boggs  29:19

So one thing I’ll add, when you’re talking about teenagers, it kind of occurred to me, I referenced earlier the generational gaps that exist. So my daughter’s 15, she’s Generation Z, because it’s what they’re calling them and they are more self-aware, they’re more awake, they are more in touch with how they affect other people. Then, I could have dreamed of being at that age and sometimes even more than myself, and I look at her and I’m like the information that they have access to and the understanding that they have of how they affect the world, which I’m sure is what our parents said about us, I hope, but it’s like exponential with this group that’s coming up. So for me, when I speak with leaders or we’re talking about closing this gap and I’m like, you think that we are bad, we’re not bad, but you think that we are pushing the boundaries, you just wait, she just wait, because our kids who are raised by us, they’re going to push it even more, and I’m so proud of that, I’m so happy for that because I think that means, there’s a better world coming but it certainly creates challenges. Exactly. But it certainly creates challenges when you have, you know, my daughter’s maybe three or four years away from being in the workplace, if you will. And you still have I mean, that’s a lot of generations and a lot of perspectives in the workplace. And so that self-awareness is going to be paramount.

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  31:03

But there’s also things they won’t tolerate. I’ve been teaching a university, undergraduate, graduate too and it’s crazy, kids don’t have, I guess, they haven’t been molded or impacted by some of the things that we have grown up. So, there are certain thing they don’t really understand, why would you work in non-collaborative way? Why would you just specialize in one thing like being a generalist is a good thing, and being aware of the broader environment, not just my own, and maybe that’s  how our environment shapes us. Where I grew up and growing up was a lot different than when we moved here and the environment who creates you, is a person. Anyway, I thought that was really interesting and I wanted to get your thoughts on self-awareness. I don’t know if you have anything else maybe to share. To kind of stay on that topic, how do we support others in their leadership journey? What ways can we support both people on the ground in the trenches who are leaders? So I’m assuming helping them with their self-awareness is one of the things but what else can we do to help them on their journey?

Speaker: Melissa Boggs  32:38

Sure, I think the self-awareness part is huge. But also, no matter who you are, empathy for others is huge. We say that like, it’s really easy, like, oh, just understand where they’re coming from. But often, if you don’t have a lived experience that crosses that chasm, you can’t just immediately have empathy. And so that’s actually where storytelling really comes in, where podcasts like yours and mine come in, we help them by creating a place for those stories to be told so that whoever you are, whatever place you are in a hierarchy, you have an opportunity to learn from other people. Most people, one way or another, I do believe people are doing the best that they can. Again, it has to do with the knowledge they have, the co-creation of their environment and the circumstances that they’re in. So I’ll tell you, I know, we’re probably going to talk about Scrum Alliance a little bit. When I was in my role as chief scrum master and Co-CEO, there were times when my team was saying, why can’t we do this? Or why don’t you understand this and sometimes, I’m a huge believer in transparency but sometimes there were things that I would just was not allowed to share, whether it was legally or from an HR perspective, for whatever what it was. And it was such a difficult place to be in. Because we now have this sort of gap between us and I would do the best I could to kind of close it but sometimes, literally my hands are tied and I couldn’t share the whole story at that moment.

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  34:29

I’m sure it affects the trust too. We stand for transparency, we talk about all this stuff, but then things like you said legally or whatever, you can say, I can’t see how that would help the trust. Only the theory of trust, if you have with your team could expect you to do that.

Speaker: Melissa Boggs  34:47

Yeah, to certain extent. I mean, I think if you have developed a good foundation of trust with your team, and you just tell them I’m sorry, I totally understand why this is frustrating, this is just something I can’t share right now, I will share what I can when I can. But in both cases in that situation, you feel like you’re on separate sides of something, even though you want to be on the same team. And so this is where people like us can ask the questions to help them understand each other? And say okay, so you’re in a specific place being asked questions or being told that you can’t say something, but you need information too in order to feel secure and so it’s self-awareness combined with empathy. And we can help people on their leadership journey by helping them to understand that, simply that, which is everyone in any given situation has needs that need to be met, questions they’re probably being asked one way or another, and they’re all doing the best that they can. And so how do we help them close those gaps and whatever situation that might be? That was a very general answer to your question.

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  36:08

Maybe to build on that, I’m sure like, coaching, to support people on their journey, self-awareness is one thing you can help them as a coach. A lot of times, when we come in, is just creating that space for people to figure things on their own, or just to have somebody to talk to and let their frustrations out or just talk to things and I think there’s coaches and people that are supporting both at the team level and somebody that might be at the senior level or having more decision rights. Those are things that we can do. What do you typically do or what have you done, maybe we can even switch over a little bit to scrum Alliance, what have you done and what have you seen in those situations as a leader, so it goes both ways. And being in both roles I’m sure there were times that were frustrating and I think I heard you say a couple of times, that it was the most challenging time but also the most exciting time or I don’t know exact word that you use, but you use those two polarities in the sense that it was tough, but it was also fun and you learned a lot.

Speaker: Melissa Boggs  37:38

Absolutely. I think the word I usually use is rewarding, the most rewarding and the most challenging. If I could remember, there’s a quote from I think it’s Wuthering Heights “the best of times the worst of times”. I wouldn’t say the worst. My goal at scrum Alliance was to unleash people in service to the mission and so in my particular role of the two, my focus was really on helping the organization internally to pursue the mission in alignment with their values, in alignment with the mission. And so that meant changing organizational structures and design, changing the way that we made decisions. And again, unleashing them like there were some incredibly creative and innovative people in that staff. 

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  38:38

Yeah, who’s the lady? Sorry to interrupt, but I wanted to bring up the story from HR, the lady in HR when you introduced the new way of hiring and why it was a full day on interviews. I see that as an unleashing from an HR standpoint, what you did, it wasn’t necessarily it was done before, but definitely for scrum alliance to do interviews that way, that was like unleashing the HR. What was the lady’s name that was…

Speaker: Melissa Boggs  39:07

Alex Arbuckle. I just have to shout out to Stacy too. Hiring events actually started a little bit before Alex, when she arrived, she just wrapped her arms around it and helped me make it even more awesome but Stacy Summers also, I love Stacy so much and she knows I tell her story all the time. But the very first time I came to Stacey and said, I want to bring all of the candidates at the same time to the office and I want to play games with them. She was a little shocked and I think she would say a little terrified and I was like, I promise it’s going to be okay. It’s an experiment. We’re going to try it once, maybe twice, see how it goes. And it was a smashing success frankly, some of the best people we hired came from those hiring events because we design them to find people who could be unleashed in alignment with our values and with the mission. And so they were fun, they were hard. It was it was a complex event to put on but not only did we find great people, but we created community, even with the people that we did not hire. And that was one of my goals. Even the people who didn’t join our staff, some of them still follow me on LinkedIn, and comment on things I’m doing now. And so that part was just incredibly rewarding.

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  40:43

And I think if you look at Alex and Stacy too, we all move, nobody stays for long anywhere, anymore. So those are the things I think that you brought to them and supported them in their journey, leadership journey so they’re going to go to another company, and they’re going to say, hey, let’s try this. And I think, that’s what’s powerful about what we do, you can cross pollinate these ideas, people can figure out what’s working for them, introduce them in other places, and what a in my opinion, great way to support others, and showing them what you’ve done, but also let them create their own journeys along the way. Maybe as we’re kind of closing here, what’s the favorite story that you’d like to share from scrum Alliance experience?

Speaker: Melissa Boggs  41:40

Oh, my goodness. So, toward the end of my tenure there, it was coming up on Christmas and Hanukkah, and the holidays of 2020, we hadn’t seen each other in person in nine months and we put on a virtual Christmas party, which is like, okay, another zoom. But I mean, there were some really cool things that, our events team had done to make our own event really cool. They had put together some swag packages for the employees and we opened them all together. We had one of our employees at the time, who did a lip sync to a couple of songs and they were all dressed up and throughout the entire time, the entire zoom of probably 90 minutes, I can’t remember, I just saw individual people standing up and being themselves in that moment. And particularly with the lip sync, they lip synced to seasons of love from rent, the musical, which the entire song is about, how do you measure a year? How do you conceptualize for yourself what this year meant. And I mean, I was ugly crying, like ugly crying, because in that moment, I was like, we’ve done it, we’ve unleashed all of these people, and whether it’s at scrum Alliance, or somewhere else in the world, they now know that they are valuable as they are, that they have something to offer as they are. And some of them continue to offer that scrum Alliance, some of them like Alex have gone on to other places. But what I wanted, especially for that time and scrum Alliance history, was for those individual people to know that they were valuable. And so to see them stepping up, and  sharing of themselves, kind of told me that, that happened. And I still hear from a lot of them, and I know that they know, they’re valuable, and they know that I think they’re valuable. 

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  44:21

That was awesome. And it’s probably liberating for them too. And as I said, it’s about that journey and I think that’s part of their journey that they’ll remember and that they’ll want to share and create environments wherever they are with others. Maybe as a last thing here for those wild hearts at work and for others, what is one thing that you want to share with them or invite them to do or anything that you want to finish this with? Because I know you have a meeting.

Speaker: Melissa Boggs  45:02

So I have a tagline that I am already planning to use on the podcast. I’m sort of outing myself right now. But it’s loaded so I won’t always get to explain it on the podcast so I’m going to share it with you and then explain it. As cheesy as it sounds, I will end every podcast saying until next time, dear hearts, stay wild. And this might make me cry when I explain it but it is really easy to get disillusioned. This is hard work, and it is hard to push against decades of this is the way it’s always been. And so what I want to encourage people to do here with you, on my own podcast, anytime I talk with people who are creative and radical and innovative and are pushing against the status quo, is to continue to do that, to stay wild, to find other people like you, and connect with them so that you can kind of build each other’s cups up so that you can stay in the work because it’s not going to happen overnight, like COVID did help cope. I hate to put it that way. I experienced during a pandemic accelerated this revolution, but there’s still a lot of work to be done because even when people begin to recognize that we need to change doesn’t mean they necessarily know how and so we have to stay wild in order to get to the other side to the new paradigm.