Agile Management | NOOP.NL

Blog Post #600

This blog has changed my life.

I keep telling everyone that never before have I enjoyed my life and work so much as I do now. And this is all thanks to the decision I made in 2008 to start writing a blog.

Given what I described in my How to Change the World booklet it all makes perfect sense. Each blog post is a small step forward toward a goal. Each post can have some impact on the environment, which may then adapt and respond. Each post generates feedback, understanding, and small-term wins. And each post gives the opportunity to reconsider the goal and move in another direction.

That’s how change management works in a complex environment.

That’s how I changed the little pocket of the universe around me.

This is blog post #600. I wrote blog post #500 exactly a year ago. Readership has grown from 1240 to 1528 page views per day, and from 915 unique visits to 1078 per day. The RSS feed subscribers climbed from 5600 to 6600, and the number of Twitter followers climbed to 6800.

Again, thank you dear readers for sticking around.

You changed made my life.

A Sense of Ownership

People have tried to get me involved as co-author of their book. But I didn’t want to. It was not my book.

Some have asked me to help organize their conference. But I didn’t do it. It was not my conference.

And I have always resisted coaching and consulting on other people’s projects. I didn’t care. They were not my projects.

It is true. I’m egocentric.

I care more about my work. About my team. And my business. My house. My children. I care somewhat less about yours.

Your Project, Not Mine

A friend of mine recently told me that his off-shore team was producing terrible results, and slowly too. When he traveled there to discuss the quality and productivity problems, he found out that the same people had their own little startup on the side, working on it in their spare time. And the product they were making as a startup was amazing. While the product they were making as off-shore employees was crap.

I think these people had an ownership problem.

They thought, “This is your project, but we only care about our project.”

Ownership First, Urgency Later

John Kotter introduced the concept of “a sense of urgency”. People will not change their behaviors if they don’t feel it is urgent.

But maybe we need something else first. Maybe “a sense of ownership” has to precede the sense of urgency. When people see a house on fire, most of them bring a camera, not a fire extinguisher. Unless it is their own house.

Therefore, my suggestion to my friend is to fire his off-shore team, and then hire their startup as a subcontractor. That should allow them to own what they make.

     

Management 3.0 in Chicago and Oslo

I usually don’t blog to promote individual courses, but I will make an exception this time. That’s because my courses in Chicago and Oslo will be the last ones before the big summer break. And they will have to pay for my summer holidays. ;-)

Why should you consider attending the Management 3.0 course?

Maybe because you will play cool games such as Moving Motivators, Delegation Poker and Meddlers.

Maybe because my last three courses were rated 9.4 (London, UK),
9.2 (Bologna, Italy) and 9.5 (Buenos Aires, Argentina).

All the examples from real life and the exercises were really good and made it interesting all the way.

- Erik Svensson, Project Manager at Ericsson, Sweden

Maybe because you are facing the challenge of transforming your organization to a more Agile mindset.

Maybe because you are looking for some new thinking in the craft, art, and science of management and leadership.

It has the right mix of examples, theory, and games. Convincing and authentic.

- Sergiu Gavrila, Team Leader at itdesign GmbH, Germany

Maybe because almost 60% of the students rate the course with a 9 or 10 (out of 10).

Or maybe because you read the book, and now you want to see some action.

What I appreciate the most about Jurgen is that he does not offer simple trite answers that might work in very specific organizations. Rather, he gives his students the tools or frameworks to help them arrive at their own solutions.

- Mike Evans, Iteration Manager at Nationwide, USA

Check out the full schedule here.

What's Your Reason to Join the Stampede?

Why do people register for the Stoos Stampede in Amsterdam?

Let’s try and make some educated guesses by using the champfrogs schale.

Curiosity

I am sure plenty of change agents are curious to know how this new kind of event will play out. Will it lead to actionable results for organizational transformation? Will it lead to nothing? No better way to know than to be there.

Honor

Maybe some will feel it an honor to be there. It will be the first “stampede” under the Stoos umbrella name. And there are already rumors that others will follow on other continents. It’s great to be among the first.

Acceptance

Some who attend the stampede might be looking for acceptance. I know that many change agents feel like aliens in their own organizations. But at this event they will be among similarly-minded people.

Mastery

The point of being a change agent is to become good at changing a little bit of the world around you. At the Stoos Stampede we will share stories about how to do this, which will help people to become more competent at it.

Freedom

Many people who are trying to change organizations are looking for freedom from command and control. The Stoos Stampede organization is exactly like that. There is (almost) no control. And lots of freedom.

Relatedness

There’s no better way to get connected with other people than face-to-face conversations where we inspire each other about organizational change. I’m quite sure this event will lead to lots of new relationships being forged.

Order

Ah, a tricky one. The people who crave for a bit of order should not feel disappointed. The stampede will not be a chaos. We will have some rules and constraints in place, to maximize the power of self-organization.

Goal

People who look for purpose won’t need to look further. Everyone who gathers at the Stoos Stampede is looking for ways to get happier employees and customers, and more meaning to running a healthy organization.

Status

Hm, this will depend on yourself I suppose. A change agent is only as good as the change he or she was able to introduce in the system. And status will follow if you did a good job at that.

What is your reason to come to Amsterdam on 6+7 July?

Deferred Terminology

Oh, how we love discussions about terminology…

Is my course about management or leadership?

Are the problems we discuss complex or complicated?

Do the teams need coaches or mentors?

Should they have responsibility or accountability?

Are we being agile or lean?

The discussions about terminology go on and on. Yes, I’ve been guilty about this too. I love a good fight about a few letters, every now and then. :-)

But does it matter?

After more than a decade we should know that we can make good progress in our work despite uncertainty, fuzzy boundaries, diverse opinions, and minimal definitions.

We can go on forever trying to find the “right” specifications for our most cherished words. But maybe we should stop splitting hairs over terminology and go and produce something.

Ah! But if we produce things... should we then aim for output or outcome?