Neuro-Agile Transformation: Unleashing Brain Power for Learning & Change (With Hafedh Messaoudi) - Lean Agile London 24 TalkInTen

Each year, the Product Agility podcast goes on tour. We get to go to some of the best conferences and interview some of the most influential speakers out there. 
And this year is no different. We kick off our talks in 10 initiative for 2024 by visiting Lean Agile London. 
Lean Agile London is a fantastic community event, which has a lot of soul and a lot of energy to it. They've also attracted some of the best speakers I've seen on a lineup for a long time. Over the next few days, we are gonna be bringing you as many of these speakers talks in 10 as we possibly can do. 
Each of these episodes will be recorded on the ground in the moment, so you may hear some background noise, I hope, but that adds to the ambiance and makes it feel like you are there with us. This episode of the Product Agility Podcast is sponsored by AHA Slides, your solution for more engaging and productive team meetings. Transform your team's learning experience with our HA slides, AI powered tools 
designed to quickly generate quizzes and interactive content boost engagement and efficiency in one go when. What more can you ask for? Visit aha slides.com and use the exclusive discount code prod agility 2024 to get 50% off of all yearly plans. Now, shall we get onto our talk in 10? Lean Agile London 2024? We are here of our talks in 10. Um, again, we are in the Echoy corridor, so please, please do forgive us for any background noise or echoes that you might hear. Uh, 'cause I'm here with Haard whose talk was on. 
I've I 
do you know what? All of a sudden my mind's gone blank. Neuro agile, 
neuro 
neuro agile transformation. That was it. Because when you start talking about brain science and, um, neuro agile, I started thinking about training from the back of the room, you see, and I got all carried thinking about that, but I started wondering, oh, is he training from the back of the room trainer? And my mind was just an overwhelmed with all that information rather than talk the name of your talk. So, uh, you gave your talk. Uh, when did you give your talk? Was it, it was just a few, um, moments ago. It 
was, uh, like one hour ago actually. And one hour ago. Fantastic. Well, I would say fresh off the press, um, can you give us a little bit of an introduction to yourself and then a nice kind of overview of what your talk was about? 
Sure. So, um, really glad to be here first. Uh, thank you for this opportunity there. Um, my name is Ed. I am a business agility coach and a trainer. Um, I'm also a training from the back of the room trainer, uh, which is, uh, a brain based learning approach, um, that I have been, that I fall, fall in love with actually. Uh, because it not only helps me with my trainings, it also helps me as an agile coach, as a personal coach as well. Um, 
so my talk indeed was about neuro agility. Um, it was about 
how to leverage on some insights from brain science 
that can help us as change agents, help others. 
Um, 
so I've been helping teams teaching training hundreds of, uh, people, uh, for the last decade or so, and coaching organizations, teams even, um, uh, as a professional coach as well with individuals. Uh, but when I discovered TBR, 
I discovered a whole new way of approaching things. 
Of course, I was a trainer before. I 
used to think that my training was were good. I did the best that I could. I, you know, participated in serious games meetings. I used experiential learning and stuff like that, but I, it was just mimicking and maybe trying things. 
But the day I 
really got into TBR and found out the basis, the roots of where this approach came from, 
I thought to myself, but 
how come didn't you get interested into how human brain works? How, how come it's not something that every changed agent, every coach 
is not putting on the top of his backlog of tools and activities on things. So I thought to myself, um, let's get things rolling. Let's 
do some more research. And, uh, so I, I followed some small courses. I'm not, I'm no neuroscientist. Okay. So that, uh, 
I'm really enthusiastic of the approach and I want to shine this, this is actually the subject of my, the outcome of my talk is about to give 
some sparkles in the eyes of the audience, just to be curious about this, because I believe that it can help, um, any change agent 
how, 
thank you for this question. Uh, 
so, 
um, 
there is a lot of, um, ways that can help. 
So for example, if we, if you are a trainer and 
you spend a lot of hours preparing your training, preparing the accountant, the slides, it, it, it, it can become really tiresome. Um, it can become really heavy. And sometimes I knew, I know some trainers who give up on this activity because it takes time, it takes a lot of effort. 
Uh, TBR came with a very simple approach 
designing on four simple steps. A lot of tools pre 
ready to use, sorry, tools that can be, um, uh, direct to the go adaptative 
and adaptable to any content. So it make me gain around 60 to 70% of the time that I used to do preparing my workshops and my trainings. So I, I found a huge, uh, gain of time and money 
on, on that. Uh, 
so this is on training. So use to answer your question, how 
a framework that makes it easy to design trainings 
a set of tools that you can I 
implant anywhere, uh, uh, according to your training plan. 
And a some ways, some practices to do follow ups after the training is finished, or warmups before the training starts so that the information doesn't get out after just after the training. 
Um, 
so that's on the training part. As a coach, as a change agent, I find that many of the tools used to make the training stick also make the coaching stick. I mean, coaching stick makes the practices, uh, that the, our, our coachees our clients are, 
uh, want to, to, to, to, to, to use, to get to their final dis the destination that they want to, to reach. Uh, we, uh, we can use TBR and brain-based practices, not only TBR. There are a lot of other approaches. Uh, so for example, in my talk, I, uh, spoke about 
a magical tool that anyone can use to make change happen. 
Um, so it's, it's called, um, space practice. 
Uh, and it's based on the fact that 
whenever as agile coaches we want to introduce a new practice, for example, 
we have only to do it in six different ways in six space times. 
So I gave the example of, for example, introducing whip limits in a Kanban, 
um, from CanBan to a new team. It, 
I 
usually start by talking about the subject. So this is number one. 
I do an awareness session where I speak about Kanban on whip limiting number two. Uh, number three, I do a board game, maybe twig or get ban so that people get their hands on. So number three, number four, um, 
with the team we implement with the wave limit with the board. So team now 
do not see whip limit as a strange abstract concept. They already, the brains started to get 
used to the concept 
number four. So number four, yeah, implementing number five is to review whenever it is required, the web limits. So this becomes part of their habits. And number six, discussing, for example, with other teams. So 
that way we go from a, an abstract new practice may be something that doesn't really, 
uh, ring a bell 
on the team's minds to something that becomes a habit. And that's about all about it. How to create new habits. 
I'd very generative you to give away so much information now is I wish I'd had a pen and paper and I should have asked everyone who's listening as well to get a pen and paper ready for that. Because there's a lovely detailed explanation. Some really, really practical advice. And yeah, trying in the back of the room is a 
annoyingly named, 
you know, I think too many people dismiss training from the back of the room because they think it's just about training. 
Um, and yeah, I always say because as I trainer from the back room trainer myself, that, you know, if you want people to remember what you're saying, 
then come on the course. It isn't just about teaching people. This is about, uh, the guy I had on a podcast many years ago now. aio said, our, our brains aren't limited by capacity, but maybe by their ability to recall. 
And I think training from the back of room gives people those hooks so that you can recall it 'cause it's all in there somewhere. I mean, there's weird things that pop in the most odd moments. It's all in there. We just can't recall it when we need to recall it. And it's a wonderful 
organ muscle, our brains. And I think what you shared there is just a great way to really kind of help build that muscle, you know, get it working better for us. Um, we are, and sadly getting towards the end of our time. Um, I'm just wondering, 
when you were creating the talk, was there a big aha moment for you? 
There's always a big aha. So the first one is like, this is a talk that I need to do in 
English. It's not my mother tongue. I'm, I'm living in Paris. I'm a French 
guy who does trainings in French. So this, uh, my aha moment is I succeeded into designing my 
talk, 
but I used, uh, training from the back of the room to design my talk. And, um, 
one of the things that I used in, uh, 
when I, one of the things that I used when I designed the training is, um, in research 
was the neuro, the neuroplasticity and the capacity of the brain to rewire and adapt. And I stumbled upon cases that people lost half of their brains 
and succeeded into living a happy life. And this shows us that this organ that we have is 
marvelously brilliant into adaptation. We, 
our brain is wired to be on automo to pilot mode most of the time, but it is wonderfully designed for change. And that's it all, will always impresses me. 
Fantastic. Thank you so much for coming on. We could talk for a lot longer. I'd recommend if you haven't looked up the work of, uh, Julie Dirkson, 
um, do look, check out Julie Ds and who her two book design for how people learn and talk to the elephant. Fantastic. But it's great companions to training from the back of the room and, and a friend of the podcast as well. Um, I felt I had to to plug her work 'cause she's phenomenal. We're actually doing a, we're doing a live, I did a livestream with her in a couple of weeks on systems thinking and leadership behavior change. 
'cause Julie's more clever than I am. Someone's gonna like bask in a reflective glow of Julie's brilliance. Um, Barry, thank you so much for coming on. Pleasure. Um, people wanna find out more about Eva, head to LinkedIn. We'll make sure that your LinkedIn profile is linked in the show notes. Um, thank you for coming on everyone. Thank you very much for listening. Um, and you'll hear from us. I can see 
you. 
Bye.