I’m inviting you for a cup of coffee!

I travel all around the world, and I noticed that I enjoy my evenings most when I’m having conversations with people about Management 3.0, ALE Network, Stoos, my upcoming book(s), politics, or science fiction & fantasy literature. And the conversations are best when I can enjoy a good cappuccino or caffè latte at the same time.

I call it Roving Coffee.

It’s a bit like Open Coffee. Only with one major difference.

While Open Coffee is a regular meetup organized in the same location, Roving Coffee is a regular meetup organized by the same person. With Roving Coffee, people self-organize around a visiting traveler, instead of a static meeting point.

I even made a simple web page for it: rovingcoffee.com

It’s an experiment.

If it works well, maybe I can open the website for other travelers too, so they can announce their own roving coffees. And if it doesn’t work… Well, I can simply delete the site, of course.

For now, I hope you will join me in Stockholm, Vienna, Brussels, Copenhagen, Riga, Krakow, Bologna, Lisbon, Helsinki, or Oxford. (More cities will be announced later…)

And please let me know in which places they have coffee that doesn’t look like it was scooped off the beach at the Maasvlakte.

(The picture is from Kenny Louie.)

 

You’re not a complexity thinker when… you claim your interpretation of complexity is correct, while others’ are wrong. Because, among scientists, there is no consensus about complexity.

You’re not a complexity thinker when… you predict someone else’s approach to generating change will be wrong, because complexity theory denies predictions based on earlier events.

You’re not a complexity thinker when… you complain your model is misunderstood or misrepresented by many people because the point of your model should be to enable sense-making.

You’re not a complexity thinker when… you only promote your own model, and always attack other people’s models. Because complexity science is against one-size-fits-all.

You’re not a complexity thinker when… you avoid working with people who disagree with you. Because complexity absorption entails creating options and risk-hedging strategies.

You’re not a complexity thinker when… you take your own thinking too seriously.

 

The original announcement for the Stoos Gathering started as follows:

At the Stoos Gathering we will discuss how to accelerate change in management and organizational transformation.

In my interpretation, our goal for the gathering was to achieve an understanding of the problem, an agreement on the desired future, and at least some suggestions for how to get there faster.

The Problem

The participants defined the problem in the form of “a fifty-dimensional mind-map”, as Steve Denning calls it. It is rather comprehensive in terms of root causes and consequences. But we intentionally call it a “work in progress”, not in the least because the problems themselves are evolving too.

The Future

We defined an idealized future as follows:

Organizations can become learning networks of individuals creating value, and the role of leaders should include the stewardship of the living rather than the management of the machine.

Some would say this is not measurable, and they would be right. But the Agile Manifesto was not measurable either, and yet it inspired many. The 21 participants found the communiqué that emerged at the end properly reflected their hopes and dreams, and we can only hope others find it inspiring too.

How to Get There Faster

So far so good.

Of course, for many people the heart of the issue is “how to get there faster”. Plenty of our discussions were not about the problem nor the goal, but about what we can do to accelerate change. Here’s what we came up with:

• We’ve decided that no “guiding coalition for change” can succeed without trust among its members. That’s why we invested heavily in developing trust among the 21 participants. (And yes, that took us some time.) We’ve seen earlier events fail because of clashes of egos trying to promote their own approaches. We did not want to go that way.
• We also concluded that we cannot achieve this acceleration ourselves. We can only achieve it by catalyzing and connecting the initiatives of others. And so we decided that we should not compete with existing models, groups, or events, and we should not support one approach over the other. Granted, some models were briefly talked about, such as Lean Startup, Spiral Dynamics, Elastic Leadership, and Cynefin, but agreement was only on the fact that none of them has truly changed the world, and in order to succeed we may need them all.
• Considering that we aim to be inclusive, and not divisive, we spent considerable time discussing stakeholders (the ones who need change) and change agents (the ones who drive change). In both cases we barely had time to complete a first iteration. More work is needed, hopefully involving other people, to arrive at useful outcomes. (The change agents topic is still awaiting publication.)
• Our hope to connect and catalyze existing ideas and initiatives led to the creation of the LinkedIn group, which has attracted 350 members in less than a week. We discussed alternatives, including Google Groups, but considered that most people among our target audience are on LinkedIn. We also noted that reaching out to the stakeholders and change agents will be crucial, but this effort could logically not be part of the gathering itself. This will require a follow-up in the wider network, with other people.
• We discussed that a movement will probably require an identity. We did not succeed at inventing a name, and we also have not discovered an existing name that we all can identify with. Personally, I think this matter should now be left to the network. A name and identity will emerge if there is sufficient need among the enthusiasts to have one.
• Last but not least, we are all aware that people want to know more about what we did during the Stoos Gathering. This is why some of us have committed to publish blog posts and videos about the event. These are not the “official” outcomes, but should be seen as our personal reflections.

From emails with the other participants I know that more content about specific topics is forthcoming, but I can’t say when or where.

Conclusion

One lesson from earlier events has been that “less is more”. Agreement on the problem, agreement on the desired outcome, and agreement on first steps that can help us to accelerate change, will be more effective than hundreds of pages of content. The constraints matter much more than the content.

I think only in a year or so we will be able to say if the Stoos event was successful. If our event is the main trigger for successful follow-ups by other people (some of whom thinking they can do better than us), then we will have succeeded at accelerating change.

On the other hand, it could be that people find our statements of the problem, the desired future, and our suggestions for acceleration very inspiring. But if nobody actually takes some next steps, my opinion is that we will have failed.

For now, I think we made some progress. It is too early to cry victory or defeat. The Stoos Gathering must be seen as a first step on a road that is probably longer than all of us like.

Next week: Stoos Network (part 7): What's Next?

Yesterday: Stoos Network (part 5): Complaints & Complexity

For more information: Stoos Network website, Stoos Network group

I had promised a 7-part series with my reflections on the Stoos Gathering. Now I promise that this will be my last post on this topic for a while…

I have discussed the goals & outcomes of the event in Stoos, the name & identity, the core idea, and the stakeholders. Now it’s time to consider what comes next. Allow me to suggest the following steps, which can be picked up by anyone in the bigger network. Including me. :)

1) Stakeholders

I think a little more work is needed to identify the groups of stakeholders. We’ve already made progress, and received some comments. But it would be great to have a definitive set of personas, so we can refer to it in later activities and projects. It would be useful when the organizers of an event could say, “our event is primarily targeted at the following personas/stakeholders…”

2) Change Agents

We also need to know which people are already now trying to change the world on their own. They might be interested in consolidating the influence of change agents so that their heroic efforts are more effective. (Managers might call it “leverage”…) I’m talking about individual writers and bloggers, but also institutes, alliances, networking groups, and many more.

3) Strategies

Once we know all stakeholders, and we know all change agents, we could identify strategies mapping change agents onto stakeholders. Some target audiences could be involved at big international conferences, maybe others through books or magazine articles. Some people prefer watching YouTube videos, while others prefer to participate in small local events. Different people have different needs. Our desire for change has to accommodate for that.

4) Events, Big & Small

And then we should make sure to get together and talk once in a while. I know Maarten Volders is already planning to organize something big near the end of the year. And I’m planning to discuss things at a smaller scale in the next ALE Bathtub. But other people will have to organize other events, either as follow-ups or improvements on what we’ve tried at the Stoos Gathering.

5) Publications, Big & Small

I have already received several invitations from magazines and newsletters to write about the Stoos Network, about our achievements and our failures. I cannot change the world by myself, so I hope that some people will step forward and bring the movement to the next level by publishing articles and videos about it. Or podcasts. Or paintings.

6) Name & Identity

As far as I’m concerned, the name of this movement is still undefined. I see Stoos Network as a placeholder, until something better comes along. It may be something that’s already growing elsewhere and that we’re unaware of at this time. It may also be a name that someone in the network spontaneously comes up with. I’m not fond of being recognized as a Stoosonian, because it reminds me too much of Elbonian. And Stooser is, for me, also not an option.

That’s it, for now. Thanks for your patience reading through this series!

And please help each other change the world...

Last week: Stoos Network (part 6): Goals & Outcomes

For more information: Stoos Network website, Stoos Network group

Apart from our stakeholders and the core idea another topic I suggested at the Stoos Gathering was the name and identity of the movement that we feel ourselves part of.

• How should we call ourselves, when we feel part of the same group of people who are trying to modernize management around the world?
• What could be the name of follow-up events, when we organize any?
• How should we brand our social network groups and Twitter stream?

I raised these questions a the start of the world café session on Friday, near the end of the event. In several sessions of 15 minutes the participants suggested many words they felt good about, and they dot voted on their favorites. Some of the least sucky ones were:

Transforma, Cattle List, ValYou, Sparkle, Innov8,
Stos Spirit, Leadership Trust, Stampede,
Intelective, Leadership Craft…

… and there were many more.

But despite five or six 15-minute sessions of brainstorming, the participants could not come to a consensus on a word or name that could properly represent us. None of the words we came up with represented the passion we feel for organizational transformation.

Kati Vilkki then hosted one session trying to formulate the “identity” of the movement. And although parts of the description that emerged ended up being incorporated in our communiqué, it didn’t help us come to agreement on a name.

And thus we decided to stick with Stoos as a placeholder term for a while. And we use Stoos Network as the name of the LinkedIn group, until somebody comes up with something better.

What do you think?

• Is Stoos Network good enough for now?
• Should we ask the network to come up with a name for itself?
• Is there an existing brand that applies to our movement?

If there is a better name for us I hope it will somehow present itself.

Tomorrow: Stoos Network (part 5): Complaints & Complexity

Yesterday:  Stoos Network (part 3): Core Idea

For more information: Stoos Network website, Stoos Network group

Aside from many enthusiastic messages we’ve also experienced a bit of a backlash, both during and after the Stoos Gathering.

What did we do wrong?

Both Steve Denning and I are guilty of announcing publicly that we were organizing a private event, and asking for input. Such public announcements (and requests for input) have not happened with earlier private events, such as the ones that led to the Agile Manifesto and the Declaration of Interdependence. The consequence of our openness before the event conflicted with some participants’ need for privacy during the event. And, while other events before didn’t broadcast anything, some people found our sudden silence unsettling. We did not anticipate this.

The four organizers, including me, are also guilty of selecting participants and achieving diversity in limited dimensions. We did our best to invite men and women, people from various continents, both thinkers and practitioners, different professions and age groups, and representatives of multiple stakeholders. As a result we’ve been accused of not inviting enough people who are currently acting as managers. I have not heard such complaints about lack of diversity about the Agile Manifesto, which was primarily created by young white male Americans. But maybe the stakes and expectations for our event were higher.

Finally, the whole Stoos group is guilty of delivering results that are not world shaking. This complaint was voiced several times even before the event was finished, and before some of us had a chance to sleep, travel, and prepare and publish blog posts or produce video. In my mind, our event was only meant to make a first step, and to discuss how to make next steps. It was not intended to solve the world’s biggest problems in only 1.5 days. But maybe we were too enthusiastic in our announcements, raising everyone’s expectations. Furthermore, in this new age of real-time news and social network sharing, people expect more and they expect it faster. And if you don’t deliver they will publicly announce that you’ve failed.

Of course, I’m not complaining.

Like the critics, I’m just observing.

In hindsight, the feedback is understandable and obvious. In complexity thinking we call it retrospective coherence. None of us had predicted such complaints, but in hindsight it is perfectly comprehensible. But without direct experience organizing such an event, it is impossible to manage the unknown unknowns. We can only learn and iterate, inspect and adapt.

Nevertheless, we’re happy about all discussions. Because, when people criticize what you’re doing, it means they care about the topic. It would have been worrying if the silence among our readers and followers was more deafening than our own. Furthermore, as someone pointed out, these discussions are a reflection of the complexity of the problem we are trying to address. If everyone simply agreed, there wouldn’t be a problem in the first place!

For now, I want to send thanks to all who have supported us, but also those raising concerns and steering us in a better direction. In some cases, you could improve your language, but maybe so can we. :-)

And don’t forget the prime directive:

"Regardless of what we discover, we understand and truly believe that everyone did the best job they could, given what they knew at the time, their skills and abilities, the resources available, and the situation at hand.

"At the end of a project everyone knows so much more. Naturally we will discover decisions and actions we wish we could do over. This is wisdom to be celebrated, not judgment used to embarrass."

Now, let’s move on to phase 2… :-)

Tomorrow: Stoos Network (part 6): What’s Next?

Yesterday:  Stoos Network (part 4): Name & Identity

For more information: Stoos Network website, Stoos Network group

One wish I had for the gathering in Stoos was to discover a common foundation that could reconcile differences between the many management thinkers, writers and consultants the world has already generated before.

We have The Toyota Way, the 14 Points for Management, Radical Management, Management 3.0, Wiki-Management, Beyond Budgeting, Tribal Leadership, Servant Leadership, Elastic Leadership, the Declaration of Interdependence, and many more models, values and principles.

I asked the group at Stoos, “Is there something more fundamental?”

Is there a management axiom? Is there something that may be unproven, but yet so self-evident that we can all believe in it? Is there a core message that more or less implies everything else we think is true?

Value-Creating Networks

And so I suggested a late-night session about this topic in the bar of the hotel. For two hours roughly half of the Stoos group joined in an inspiring discussion about the best managed organizations in the world. What emerged was that most of the time we discussed organizations as networks instead of hierarchies. And this reminded me of the value networks I have described earlier on my blog.

I offered the group the suggestion to define organizations as value-generating networks. The group agreed, but decided to rename this to value-creating networks. The participants also agreed that hierarchies are not necessarily bad. There are many examples of well-functioning hierarchies within networks. They are basically a special case. (Though, regrettably, often badly applied.)

Learning, Diverse Individuals

At 1am in the night we agree we had achieved some convergence, but we also felt we had not finished yet. And so we continued the discussion, with a different subset of participants, the next day during open space. As the facilitator I started writing “value-creating networks” at the top of the flip chart, and I collected all kinds of suggestions that were candidates to be added to the core message. Not surprisingly, the participants came up with plenty of values and principles that we recognize from earlier management & leadership models, such as “visibility”, “trust”, “continuous improvement”, “develop people”, “courage”, etc...

I reminded the participants that our intention at this gathering was not to create the 57st management model, with yet another list of values and principles. There are already plenty of good ones. I said our hope is to unite good management thinkers and practitioners, not compete with them.

So we started a relentless analysis of the keywords that were offered. And in the end only three of those were moved to the top of the page:

• Individuals must be part of the core idea, because networks of machines or documents are not our main concern;
• Learning must be part of the core idea, because we don’t believe in organizations operating as machines with repeatable outcomes;
• Diversity could be part of the core idea, because we believe organizations with all too-similar people usually don’t work well.

This led to the following axiomatic view for managers:

Organizations are value-creating learning networks of diverse individuals

In our analysis, all other terms that were offered in our discussion turned out to be either logical prerequisites or consequences of the core belief. For example:

• Trust is necessary to create value in a network of people
• Continuous improvement directly ties into the learning network
• Sustainability means value-creation for certain stakeholders
• Self-organization is obviously the best approach in a network
• Feedback loops are required for learning
• Etc…

Learning Networks of People Creating Value

This core belief of organizations as “value-creating learning networks of diverse individuals” was used as input for the communiqué that emerged at the end of the Stoos Gathering. We reordered the words for the sake of readability, “individuals” was replaced by “people”, and “diverse” didn’t survive the final review. And thus the final result became…

learning networks of people creating value

Of course, there is plenty of ambiguity in this statement. For example, value to whom? Learning what? But that’s OK. We’ve only tried to identify the “What?” of organizational management. Many dozens of elaborate management models give you very useful answers to the subsequent “How?” question. And those usually depend on the context and the interpreter.

Complexity Made Simple

What I love most about this core idea is that it ties directly into complexity science. From science many experts have learned to recognize organizations as complex adaptive systems that try to survive. It seems our foundational message is nothing more (and nothing less) than the scientific view rewritten in common language. As Roy Osherove said, our version is simplicity science. It is less likely to scare stakeholders away.

And that was our purpose.

We hope smart management thinkers and practitioners can say, “Yes, that core message makes sense. And by the way, I have some good ideas on how to manage such a learning network of (diverse) people creating value.”

Tomorrow: Stoos Network (part 4): Name & Identity

Yesterday:  Stoos Network (part 2): Stakeholders & Personas

For more information: Stoos Network website, Stoos Network group

I write this in my hotel room after having traveled back from Stoos to Zürich airport. The Stoos Gathering just ended and I’m feeling very tired. I had just 6 hours of sleep in the last 2 nights, and tomorrow I have to get up early, again, to catch my plane to Cleveland, US. My report about the proceedings of the Stoos Gathering will have to wait for a day or two.

But there’s one thing I wish to clear up before I tuck in.

A number of people have been waiting (in vain) for feedback from the Stoos Gathering over Twitter during the event. It seems they expected it to be like a regular conference, with a continuous stream of ideas emitted to the outside world.

Apparently, it wasn’t.

The purpose of the Stoos Gathering was to try and reach consensus on how to accelerate management transformation. We decided that, for us to be able to achieve consensus it would be necessary to have a high level of trust, respect and safety among the participants in the room. Many of us didn’t even know each other. But we wanted the participants to share their personal stories, and their stories from their organizations and customers, in order to get to the core of the problem we tried to solve. And this required a high comfort level among all participants.

And so, at the start of the event, we asked ourselves, “What about Twitter?”

Then a long discussion started. We identified two problems with publishing half-baked ideas on a #stoos Twitter stream, while the event was running:

1. Some of the participants had non-disclosure agreements with their organizations and/or customers. They could not say anything if there was a possibility that others would tweet identifiable comments about what was happening.
2. And some of the participants said they would not feel comfortable opening up and expressing their inner thoughts in a group of strangers if there was a chance that comments would turn up on Twitter and the whole world was listening.

The outcome of our 30-minute discussion was that we would only tweet personal opinions (if we felt like it) with the #myview tag appended. And we would ask permission if we wanted to tweet someone else’s contribution before the end of the event. This was the best compromise we could come up with, at a time when many people didn’t know each other.

Personally, I would not have minded more openness to the outside world during the event itself. But the fact was that in this particular case trust was in conflict with transparency. And, in order to achieve our goal, internal trust was of higher priority than external transparency. I had to accept the fact we wouldn’t get much done if we didn’t respect the diverse opinions, feelings and backgrounds of the people in the room.

Yes, we decided at that moment to favor respect people over openness. Sometimes you have to choose…

Regrettably, a few people outside of the room didn’t like this decision. On Twitter I saw comments such as “feeling left out”, ”no concrete results yet”, “wasted opportunity” and “no transparency”.

What did we do wrong?

We went a long way collecting input from many people before the event, via several blog posts. We shared that input and even pasted all the feedback as information radiators on the wall in our room. But, as far a I remember, we never promised anyone to have real-time discussions over Twitter with the whole world during the event. It turned out that, with the participants in the room, that novel concept was simply not going to work. We would have real-time transparency of achieving nothing, instead of transparency-after-the-event about achieving something.

We preferred the last option.

I apologize to anyone if we have given the impression that we were going to have real-time updates, or on-line discussions. We did not intend to organize a conference. We intended to organize a focused discussion with a brand new team. And every newly formed team needs a bit of time to get to know each other, and work on a first sprint without being disturbed all the time.

Well, we finished our first sprint.

We’re delivering the results right now (see: here and here) and next week I’m sure several blog posts and announcements will follow (when we had some sleep). We welcome all the feedback we can get. And please help us do better in the next sprint. Yes, I’m sure we can do better! But interacting with the world while trying to build a new team was something we couldn’t do at the same time. At least not in Stoos.

Sorry, we're not superheroes. But at least now we are a team!

Jurgen

p.s. There were two other reasons for the lack of tweets. 1) The hotel wi-fi worked badly in our room. We often needed to go outside to get online. 2) Most of the discussions were so engaging, time simply flew past.

Tomorrow: Stoos Network (part 2): Name & Identity

For more information: Stoos Network website, Stoos Network group

"Who is our customer?"

This was one of the first questions to pop up during the gathering in Stoos. "Which people are our target audience?” and “Who else is involved?" Or in other words:

"Who are the stakeholders in organizational transformation?"

Many Stakeholders

One of my first contributions during the event was to organize a session about the stakeholders. The participants (about one third of the whole group) discussed this topic for about 30 minutes, and we came up with the following initial list of stakeholders. It turns out there are many…

1. CEO's, top management (o x)
2. Middle management (oooo xxxx)
3. Support, HR, Legal, Operations (xx)
4. Employees, knowledge workers (oooo xx)
5. Customers, end users (oo)
6. Business schools, teachers (oo xxxx)
7. Students, "new millennials" (oo xx)
8. Shareholders, business owners
9. Startups, entrepreneurs (oo xxxxx)
10. Local/regional communities (o x)

Two times in our discussion we used dot voting to see which of these stakeholders we thought were the most important ones to focus on. (We allowed three votes per person.) The results the first time (halfway through our discussion, annotated with o) were different from the second time (at the end of our discussion, annotated with x).

More Stakeholders

I realize this outcome was nothing more than a first draft. But it was a useful result, since we referred to it several times in subsequent discussions. But since then, during the rest of the Stoos event and later, I identified several stakeholders we missed in the first iteration:

1. Management institutes & networks
2. Coaches, consultants & writers
3. Communities, social network groups
4. Governments, law makers 
5. Suppliers
6. Media, journalists

This already adds up to 16 groups of stakeholders of organizational transformation. And I'm sure we missed a few more.

Categories and Personas

Some have suggested that we can categorize stakeholders in different ways. For example, among each of the groups mentioned above there are people who "get it" and people who "don't". Yet another categorization is according to type of industry. The finance and government sectors breed entirely different communities of stakeholders than Internet and media businesses.

The importance of recognizing groups of stakeholders lies in the fact that any approach to change must depend on the needs of stakeholders. For different groups we must be able to answer the question, "what's in it for me?" For example, the message of “trust and transparency” works well among knowledge workers. But many shareholders care about return on investment, rather than return on transparency.

That's why I wondered out loud if maybe we should turn the list of stakeholders into descriptions of personas, as some people do in product development. But the time available in our Stoos event didn't allow us to go that deep.

Feedback and Next Steps

And now, at the end of our first “sprint”, I would love your feedback...

1. Did we miss any stakeholders of organizational transformation?
2. Have there been earlier attempts at defining stakeholders?
3. Are there other useful ways of categorizing stakeholders?
4. Would it be useful to define personas for organizational change?
5. Are there any stakeholders we should ignore, for now?

Based on your feedback I would like to discuss with the original Stoos team how to proceed. Hopefully some next steps can be made in the wider Stoos network, in terms of developing personas and writing user stories.

Tomorrow: Stoos Network (part 3): Core Idea

Yesterday:  Stoos Network (part 1): About Communication

For more information: Stoos Network website, Stoos Network group

I have blogged about Global Management Warming in Stoos several times. And so did Steve Denning, Peter Stevens, Sanjiv Augustine, and Roy Osherove. And we asked for your input in 100 words or less.

This is the feedback I have collected so far. They are (for me) the highlights of the various conversations that have already taken place on our blogs and in email discussions. If you feel some insight or angle is still missing, feel free to let me know. I will make sure this feedback serves as an information radiator during the #Stoos gathering.

Note, these slides are meant to be representative, not exhaustive.

Stoos Gathering View more presentations from Jurgen Appelo

What is the Great Thought that everyone will want to be part of? What is the Big Message that we all can believe in?

This Friday and Saturday some 20+ management thinkers and practitioners will gather in Stoos (Switzerland) and talk about management. In particular, we will discuss why management isn’t changing fast enough.

A New Attractor

The difficulty of changing a system is related to what complexity scientists call an attractor. No matter how you try to push the system away from the attractor (with great new ideas), the attractor (hierarchical bureaucracy) is too strong and always pulls the system back. That's why systems thinkers are often looking for leverage, or the one single change in a system that dissolves the attractor and creates a new one.

I now spend my time and energy wondering if we are able to create a new attractor.

In a practical sense that means (for me) coming up with something that will appeal to almost anyone, but for different reasons. We're dealing with many different kinds of managers, with many different needs. Agile was great for software developers because it gave them higher quality and sustainable pace. But it was also great for management, because it promised accelerated time to market, and ability to respond to change.

Likewise, if a Grand Idea will emerge in Stoos I think it should cater to different people.

A Grand Idea

We must cater to both traditional managers and young MBA students, both conservative and creative industries, both top management and middle management. For example, some values (like transparency) sound attractive for some groups (creative people), but definitely not for others (investment banks). If the gatherers in Stoos come up with a Big Message, it should be something that everyone can believe in. And then different flavors (like Beyond Budgeting, Radical Management, Management 3.0, etc) could all focus on certain groups. Just like Scrum and XP and Kanban target different people with different needs. But they are all part of the same movement.

So the question is…

What is the Great Thought that everyone will want to be part of?

What change will look so interesting that it dissolves the current attractor and creates a new one?

A Stakeholders’ Revolution

I am sometimes reminded that revolutions that toppled totalitarian regimes usually did not start within those regimes. That's why the pessimistic part of me thinks that some groups of managers may have to be written off. They will never want to give up what they have now. Just like very few monarchies were eager to embrace democracy.

The revolution may have to come from other stakeholders (employees, customers & communities). After all, they are the ones suffering most from badly managed organizations.

p.s. If you want to keep yourself up-to-date: follow the #Stoos tag on Twitter.

(picture: Nicolas Desprez)

(Jurgen Appelo is author of Management 3.0, a best-selling management book for Agile developers. It has a picture of a monster in it.)

Asking your friends for new year’s resolutions helps you to commit to them, and it’s very similar to 360 Degree Dinner.

I read an interesting article on the Wall Street Journal website about outsourcing your new year’s resolutions to your best friends or significant other. After all, who knows better how you can improve, and investigate your blind spots, than your peers and loved ones?

Within two hours after reading the article I put the idea into practice during a post-Christmas dinner with my friends. Here’s what they came up with:

1. I should mind my health. I travel every week, and I must take care not to forget that a healthy brain needs a healthy body.
2. I should not forget the here and now. I’m always making plans for the future, but some things should be enjoyed in the present.
3. I should de-focus. I’m quite good at focusing on my projects and top priorities. But life doesn’t happen in Remember the Milk.

I thank Femke, Raoul and Erik for addressing my weaknesses, and doing so in a most gentle way. To be honest, there were no real surprises for me. But strangely enough, now that my friends, and not me, have pointed out and discussed my little problems, I feel more committed to try and solve them. (Not in the least because we’ve promised each other to follow up in a few months…)

Asking your friends for new year’s resolutions is very similar to 360 Degree Dinner, a very useful Agile leadership practice that I often discuss in my Management 3.0 courses.

What feedback did you receive in the form of 360 Degree Resolutions?

(picture by Chris)

(Jurgen Appelo is author of Management 3.0, a best-selling management book for Agile developers. It has a picture of a monster in it.)

These are the people who have committed to attend the Stoos Gathering, on January 6+7, in Switzerland.

It started (for me) during the Scrum Gathering in London, when I enjoyed dinner with Steve Denning and Peter Stevens. We discussed the problem that management around the world is changing too slowly, and we wanted to do something about that. We just didn’t know what.

And so we thought, why not invite a number of people that we know, and discuss this? Maybe together we can figure out how to accelerate change in management. And the idea for a gathering of management thinkers and practitioners was born. We pulled in Franz Röösli as a 4th member of the core team, we picked a date (6+7 January), we picked a location (Stoos, Switzerland), and we started discussing which people to invite.

That was the difficult part.

Constraints

Constraint #1… We want an event at the start of the new year. Many invitees loved the idea, but they had already committed to families or other events in January. And thus we received many replies of the type sad-I-can’t-be-there-but-please-keep-me-posted!

Constraint #2… We want to keep the size of the group small, because groups larger than 20 people find it very hard to reach consensus (see: NewScientist). It turns out we have a little over 20 people now, but I hope some will be skiing when the rest are making world-changing decisions.

Constraint #3… We want a diverse group of people. This meant we couldn’t do an open invitation, because we would surely end up with 3 authors and 17 Agile consultants. We intentionally dug in the darkest corners of our social networks, and came up with some very fine names.

Participants

And so we suggested contacts, voted on favorites, and started sending invites. The result is what you see below. It contains a healthy mix of book authors, bloggers, top managers, coaches, consultants, thought leaders, and idea farmers. And we have both men and women. Which proved quite a challenge!

1. Catherine Louis
   Agile transitions in the scope of complex product development
2. Deborah Hartmann Preuss
   Co-Active Coach, Agile Coach, co-creator of AgileCoachCamp.org
3. Esther Derby
   Co-author of Behind Closed Doors: Secrets of Great Management
4. Franz Röösli
   Author, Director of the Beyond Budgeting Round Table
5. Heitor Roriz
   Organizing Radical Management Gathering in San Paolo
6. Jay Cross
   Business consultant, author, expert on informal learning.
7. John Styffe
   Co-Author of Was Jetzt? ("What now")
8. Jonas Vonlanthen
   Responsible for Liip Suisse Romande, an agile web dev. company
9. Julian Birkinshaw
   Prof. London Business School, Co-Founder MLab, book author
10. Jurgen Appelo
    Author of Management 3.0, initiator of Agile Lean Europe network
11. Kati Vilkki
    Manager at Nokia Siemens Network 
12. Klaus Leopold
    Kanban coach and trainer
13. Melina McKim
    Diverse background in innovation
14. Michael Spayd
    Org. change & systems coach, co-founder Agile Coaching Institute
15. Peter Hundermark
    Scrum Trainer & Coach, Community Leader, South Africa
16. Peter Stevens
    Scrum Trainer & Coach, Community Leader, Switzerland
17. Philippe Hertig
    Managing Director EZI (Switzerland)
18. Rod Collins
    Former CEO, Blue Cross, Blue Shield, Author Leadership in a Wiki World
19. Roy Osherove
    5whys.com blogger, writing 'Notes to a software team leader' book
20. Sanjiv Augustine
    Author of Managing Agile Projects
21. Simon Roberts
    Scrum Trainer & Coach
22. Steve Denning
    Author of Leaders Guide to Radical Management
23. Uli Loth
    Member of Management Team W.L. Gore Europe

These are the people who have committed (with a significant personal investment) to attend the Stoos Gathering. Feel free to pester them with great ideas and useful suggestions, to increase the chance we come down from the mountain with something useful…

p.s. We received dozens of requests from people who would love to attend this gathering. My answer is always a polite “No”. Self-invitations would defy constraints #2 and #3. Sorry! You may harass me later.

What name properly represents you as a modern manager?

I changed my given name when I was 7 years old. I didn’t like the one my parents used to call me with (which was “Jury”). The name gave me bad associations. And so I selected the 2nd of my official first names (“Cornelis Jurgen”), which suited me much better. I taught everyone to use my new self-given name by ignoring them whenever they used the old one. As far as I remember, it didn’t take them long to learn. And basically, they agreed.

The new name represented the proper me.

The Agile name is now more than 10 years old. I still like it, for software developers. But it seems most managers don’t like applying it to themselves. Sure, we can try to call them by that name, but most will ignore it. Many managers like other names. Like Lean. And Leadership. And MBA. But I don’t like those names. They give me bad associations. And so my question is, what other name could modern managers in the 21st century select to call themselves?

What name represents proper management?

I don't think it's "manager" because nobody seems to like that name either. If you are a modern manager, empowering people and improving continuously, while delivering value to stakeholders, what name would you select for yourself?

(Jurgen Appelo is author of Management 3.0, a best-selling management book for Agile developers. It has a picture of a monster in it.)

You pass the t-shirt test when people proudly wear a t-shirt with the logo of your organization on it.

Would you proudly wear a t-shirt with your own name?

I would.

Would you proudly wear a t-shirt with the name of your spouse?

I would.

Would you proudly wear a t-shirt with a drawing by your children?

I would.

Would you proudly wear a t-shirt with a photo of your pet?

I would.

Would you proudly wear a t-shirt with the logo of your employer?

Hmm…

We spend most of our days living with ourselves, our partners, our children, and our organizations. And maybe a dog. Or a chinchilla. A happy life should include feeling happy about the relationships that you maintain, with yourself, your spouse, your kids… and your colleagues. (And your chinchilla.)

I call it the T-Shirt Test. An organization passes the t-shirt test when employees will proudly wear a t-shirt with the company logo on it, hoping that other people notice the name of the organization. Hoping that other people say, “Wow, you have a chinchilla? you work for company X? That’s so cool!”

When your colleagues don’t care to associate themselves gladly, in public, with the image of your organization, you might have a problem.

Are you wearing the name of your company?

(Jurgen Appelo is author of Management 3.0, a best-selling management book for Agile developers. It has a picture of a monster in it.)

As part of the preparations for the Stoos Gathering I am collecting models, values and principles for management. Maybe you can help me?

There is of course my own Management 3.0 model:

1. Energize People
2. Empower Teams
3. Align Constraints
4. Develop Competence
5. Grow Structure
6. Improve Everything

And there are the principles of Steve Denning’s Radical Management:

1. The goal of work is to delight clients.
2. Work is conducted in self-organizing teams.
3. Teams operate in client-driven iterations.
4. Each iteration delivers value to clients.
5. Managers foster radical transparency.
6. Managers nurture continuous self-improvement.
7. Managers communicating interactively through stories, questions and conversations.

Of course, several famous management experts have offered their own models. Henry Mintzberg described his six-plane model:

1. Action
   (doing and dealing)
2. People
   (leading and linking)
3. Information
   (communication and controlling)

Gary Hamel came up with his five principles:

1. Life (variety)
2. Markets (flexibility)
3. Democracy (activism)
4. Faith (meaning)
5. Cities (serendipity)

And Toyota offered a very simple set in the Toyota Way:

1. Respect for people
2. Continuous improvement

But let’s not rule out the greatest management thinkers of the 20th century. For example, Peter F. Drucker said there are five tasks for managers:

1. Set objectives
2. Organize
3. Motivate and communicate
4. Measure
5. Develop people

And W. Edwards Deming’s 14 principles were described in Out of the Crisis:

1. Create constancy of purpose.
2. Adopt the new philosophy.
3. Cease dependence on inspection.
4. Minimize total cost.
5. Improve constantly.
6. Institute training.
7. Institute leadership.
8. Drive out fear.
9. Break down barriers.
10. Eliminate targets.
11. Eliminate management by objective.
12. Develop pride of workmanship.
13. Institute self-improvement.
14. The transformation is everybody's job.

Did I forget some important management models, values or principles? Do you know any others I should check out before discussing how to accelerate global management warming?

(Jurgen Appelo is author of Management 3.0, a best-selling management book for Agile developers. It has a picture of a monster in it.)

It is one of the questions I get most often… How do I deal with my crappy organization? I like my work but I don’t like what management is doing. How do I deal with it?

Well, that’s easy…

Option 1: Learn about change management. Most people are terrible at influencing other people and changing organizations. If you’re serious about it you can learn how to be a better change agent.

Option 2: Ignore the environment. If you don’t want to learn how to change organizations, then stop complaining about what’s bad. Accept that the organization is what it is, and enjoy the good parts of your work.

Option 3: Quit your job. The only reason there are bad organizations is that people don’t quit their jobs. Do the world a favor and find a better place to work. Help bad organizations out of their misery by not working for them.

It’s your choice.

(photo: blathlean)

(Jurgen Appelo is author of Management 3.0, a best-selling management book for Agile developers. It has a picture of a monster in it.)

At the Stoos Gathering we will discuss how to accelerate change in management and organizational transformation.

W. Edwards Deming wrote decades ago that bonuses are bad for business. But most managers around the world are still using them.

Peter F. Drucker said ages ago that knowledge workers cannot be subordinates of managers. But managers still pretend they are superiors.

Research tells us again and again that performance appraisals don’t work. But many managers keep relying on them as their primary evaluation technique.

Why?

Why is management so cold?

Why is management changing so slowly?

Agile has revolutionized software development around the world in a matter of 10 years. Granted, we’re not done yet. But we’ve made significant progress.

However, it seems the Arctic Ocean will have melted before we see traditional management being replaced with a new paradigm. The rate at which it happens now is certainly not the same rate as the adoption of Scrum and Kanban.

Is it too slow? Yes!!

Can we heat it up? Well, let’s talk about that…

The Stoos Gathering

Steve Denning (Radical Management), Jurgen Appelo (Management 3.0), Franz Röösli (The Leader’s Dilemma) and Peter Stevens (Scrum Breakfast) are bringing together a group of 20 thought leaders idea farmers from around the world in Agile & Lean leadership. It will be a 2-day gathering in Stoos Switzerland on January 6-7, 2012. Our goal is to discuss how to accelerate the transformation of management around the world.

“We are looking to energize organizations in ways that make them better for the organizations themselves, better for the people doing the work, better for those for whom the work is being done, and better for society as a whole. And we want to understand how we can speed it up!”

Ideas for improving organizations have been around for decades. And yet, very little has happened. Change in business management is happening at a glacier pace. Can we help accelerate the transformation of the way organizations are run? Can we heat things up? Is there something that everyone can subscribe to and that will energize the movement for global change?

Probably not another manifesto.

Certainly not another alliance!

But something else?

Help us prepare!

We are looking for your thoughts on how to energize and catalyze a global movement for organizational transformation. We recognize that all thought leaders idea farmers have their own brands and flavors of management, but at the same time we see all our efforts as part of something larger.

Something global.

Something warmer.

Can you help us?

Please give us your input, in LESS THAN 100 WORDS, here on my blog, or on Steve’s blog, or on Peter’s blog, or via email. We will make sure your information is prominently radiated during the discussions in Stoos. Help us to stimulate our brains and contribute to a positive outcome of the Stoos Gathering.

Let’s generate some global management warming!

We will keep you informed…

p.s. There is no need to ask for invitations. The list of committed attendees will be published soon.

(Photos: Erik Abderhalden, Joeri Cornille, Paul Downey)