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The Agile Daily Standup - AgileDad

The Agile Daily Standup - AgileDad

By: AgileDad
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In 15 Minutes or LESS every weekday, AgileDad presents The Agile Daily Standup! AgileDad has been recognized worldwide for its Inclusive, Pragmatic, Humanized, Psychology based approach used to help organizations achieve true business agility. What the book advises is no longer enough to help Agile teams and leaders get the proven tools they need to establish and scale their business in what many are calling the new normal. This podcast will review articles, present tips and tricks, tell war stories, and spend time with industry leading experts!AgileDad Economics
Episodes
  • The Man Who Proved Meaning Is Stronger Than Suffering

    The Man Who Proved Meaning Is Stronger Than Suffering
    Feb 6 2026

    The Man Who Proved Meaning Is Stronger Than Suffering

    In the darkest chapter of human history, when hope seemed like a luxury few could afford, one man discovered a truth so powerful that it would outlive the horrors around him.

    His name was Viktor Frankl.

    Frankl was an Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist. In 1942, he was arrested by the Nazis and sent to a concentration camp. Over the next several years, he endured four different camps, including Auschwitz. He lost his parents, his brother, and his pregnant wife. Everything he owned—his career, his manuscript, his freedom—was taken from him.

    By any external measure, his life had been stripped of meaning.

    But here’s where the story turns.

    While imprisoned, Frankl noticed something remarkable.
    People were experiencing the same starvation, brutality, and despair—yet some survived psychologically, while others gave up long before their bodies failed.

    The difference wasn’t strength.
    It wasn’t intelligence.
    It wasn’t luck.

    It was meaning.

    Frankl observed that prisoners who could anchor themselves to a future purpose—a loved one waiting for them, work they still hoped to complete, or a reason to endure one more day—were far more likely to survive. Meaning, he realized, was not a luxury. It was a survival tool.

    One night, freezing and exhausted, Frankl imagined himself standing in a lecture hall after the war, teaching students about the psychology of the concentration camps—explaining how humans can endure unimaginable suffering if they understand why they are suffering.

    That imagined future kept him alive.

    After the war, Frankl returned to Vienna. He rewrote the manuscript that had been taken from him in the camps and published a book that would go on to change millions of lives: Man’s Search for Meaning. It has since sold over 16 million copies and is considered one of the most influential books of the 20th century.

    Frankl didn’t claim suffering was good.
    He didn’t romanticize pain.
    Instead, he offered this quiet, powerful truth:

    “Everything can be taken from a person but one thing: the freedom to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances.”

    He went on to develop logotherapy, a form of psychotherapy centered on helping people discover meaning in their lives—not by eliminating hardship, but by transforming it.

    Frankl lived to be 92 years old.

    The man who lost nearly everything proved something extraordinary:

    👉 Meaning can outlast suffering.
    👉 Purpose can exist even in pain.
    👉 Hope is not found in comfort—it’s found in choice.

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    6 mins
  • Agile Is Not a Process. It’s How Smart Teams Think.

    Agile Is Not a Process. It’s How Smart Teams Think.
    Feb 5 2026

    Agile Is Not a Process. It’s How Smart Teams Think.

    Most people think agile is Jira boards, sprints, standups, and sticky notes.

    Here’s the thing.
    Those are just tools.

    Agile is a mindset about how work *should* move in a world that refuses to stay predictable.

    If you’ve ever worked on a project where requirements changed, deadlines shifted, or priorities flipped overnight, you already know why traditional project management struggles.

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    6 mins
  • Why Soft Skills Outlast Technical Skills on Product Teams - Mike Cohn

    Why Soft Skills Outlast Technical Skills on Product Teams - Mike Cohn
    Feb 4 2026
    Why Soft Skills Outlast Technical Skills on Product Teams - Mike CohnAnyone who has worked in product development for more than a few years has seen the same pattern repeat itself.The technical skills that once felt essential gradually—or sometimes suddenly—become obsolete. Tools change. Frameworks fall out of favor. Architectures that once seemed modern start to look dated.This isn’t new, but it is accelerating.The half-life of technical skills keeps shrinking, especially in technology. In the 1980s, it took ten years for half of what you knew to become outdated. Today, it is four years, and will soon fall below two years according to a Stanford professor. This raises an important question for leaders:Where does investment in people have the greatest long-term impact?Technical skills are necessary, of course. But they are rarely durable.Soft skills behave very differently.When someone learns how to collaborate well, make good decisions, facilitate discussions, or lead others, those skills don’t decay at the same rate. Instead, they tend to compound. They become part of how that person works.Learning how to learn is a good example. Once someone develops that capability, it stays with them. The same is true for decision-making, leadership, and collaboration. These are skills that can continue to improve over time—but they don’t become irrelevant.I once saw just how important this was during a demo to a group of nurses.A programmer demonstrated new functionality and showed text on the screen that suggested giving Saltine crackers to a newborn—clearly clinically inappropriate.He tried to explain that it was just placeholder text. The real point, he said, was the workflow, not the words.But to the nurses, the words mattered a great deal.Their professional identity is grounded in “do no harm.” What they saw on the screen violated that principle. They were ready to escalate the issue and cancel the project.What saved the project wasn’t a technical fix.It was the project manager’s soft skills.He calmed the situation, acknowledged the nurses’ concerns, explained what had happened, and persuaded them to come back a week later for a revised demo.The failure wasn’t technical—it was a failure of empathy.Product development is full of uncertainty. We work with evolving requirements, incomplete information, and users whose trust we must earn and keep.Soft skills reduce risk in these environments.Empathy helps teams understand users. Clear communication builds trust. Collaboration prevents small misunderstandings from becoming major setbacks.And when these skills improve, the benefit isn’t limited to one person.If someone learns a new technical skill, that benefit often stays with them. But when someone learns to collaborate better, the entire team benefits. Everyone gets better.This is one reason leaders often underestimate the return on investing in soft skills.The payoff isn’t always immediate or easy to measure. It tends to show up most clearly under pressure—when teams need to have hard conversations, discuss options honestly, and make good decisions quickly.That’s also when the absence of soft skills is most costly.Some leaders think these skills can wait until things slow down. In reality, pressure is when they matter most.Teams with strong soft skills can disagree productively, make tradeoffs together, and move forward with confidence—because trust was built earlier.Everyone on a product development team benefits from strong soft skills, but some roles depend on them especially heavily.How to connect with AgileDad:- [website] ⁠https://www.agiledad.com/⁠- [instagram] ⁠https://www.instagram.com/agile_coach/⁠- [facebook] ⁠https://www.facebook.com/RealAgileDad/⁠- [Linkedin] ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/leehenson/
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    8 mins
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