Identity Is Like Socks

 

I bought a book because someone told me it’s the big thing among Agile Trainers. Not that I am an “Agile Trainer” or want to be one. I love the way they setup their training sessions. With games, fun, movement and stuff. They’re a lively bunch, them Agile Trainers.

So I bought “Training From the Back of the Room!” by Sharon Bowman (affiliate link) and lost myself in the content.

I had to buy the kindle version. Even though I read it on an iPad. Somehow the Apple iBook store isn’t really catching up here in The Netherlands. Or I can’t figure out how the bloody thing works.

So. The coolness, freshness, state-of-the-art-y-ness and usefulness of using a modern training set up. I think the Agile training crowd got that covered. And sure enough, the Bowman book can be a bible for that tribe.

Being a party of one – the community of project shrinks is not that large – I was thinking about flags for a project shrink. A flag for me represents a visible element of a culture that identifies that culture and the people part of the culture. And “playful, interactive and effective workshops” should definitely be a Shrink flag.

I decided it is one.

I copied it from The Agile Trainers and ran with it.

The cool thing with parties of one is you can shape it in “the group” you want to identify yourself with. You can provide it with all the neat flags you want.

A project shrink is mobile, global, nomadic and loves to travel.

Poof.

Just added a laptop and passport to the bag of flags. The Moleskin notebook was already in it.

Yes. I can do that. I just did.

“Identity is funny.” Havi Brooks reminded me: “The mind-boggling collection of internal rules about who gets to self-define as what. And why you don’t get to be a whatever-it-is. The way we silently agree to be put into one box or another.”

But luckily, she adds, “Identity is also fluid. … When we get to recognize the internal rules for what they are, we get to start deprogramming and destuckifying. … It’s messing around with choosing communities, changing metaphors, and rethinking how you approach the culture of your you-ness.”

I don’t want to get all Eckhart Tolle (affiliate link) on you. But. You don’t have to stick to your history to choose your group associations. You may. You don’t have to. Yeah, sure, The Others might look at your history and keep pointing to flags they find. Good for them.

Identity is like socks.

You can change them any time. You can go stripy. You can go plain blue. You can choose from your drawer, the socks you wear over and over and over and over again, or you can buy a new pair. Or make a pair yourself if they don’t exist yet.

I keep obsessing about socks.

And flags.

And identity.

I am mostly explaining this all to myself. Keep reminding me how thing are connected and influence what we do.

Your mindset determines how you think about the world and determines your behavior. Identity is how you perceive yourself in relationship to The Others. And the rest of the world. Identity is a mindset.

You can choose your own flags. Great.

But mostly you will copy flags from others. You need to know that certain flags exists in the first place.

I wouldn’t have found the cool training concepts if I hadn’t experienced them from The Agile Trainers. Perhaps I would have. But I needed the exposure to the concepts before I could copy them.

If you want to get people to associate with an organizational culture, you have to expose it to them in the first place.

If you are trying to reveal a culture, you should focus on making people aware of the visible traits of their current culture. The habits, the rituals, the in-groups and out-groups, the language.

This is the power behind creating a Travel Guide for your organization. You get people to focus on visible traits, rituals and habits, folklore. When they start to form a temporary tribe they are exposed to the collection of flags, or the sock drawer if you want, they can use to pick the ones they want.

When a Project Shrink combines his flags of “cool training”, mobile, global, nomadic and “loves to travel”, he’ll end up with exercises like “The Travel Guide“.

And he might stop wearing socks. It’s summer anyway.

Capish?