On February 11th I attended the Agile Market+ at the Prowareness NL office in Delft.
It was a nice afternoon / evening because I met my former colleague Hanneke again, had interesting conversations about Agile and Scrum and attended several interesting talks.

I learned most from Jurgen Appelo’s talk, because the context he gives in his talks add value to the written blogs about his management 3.0. It was also nice to hear Juriaan Kamer, although I though his talk about “The board must go agile too”, was too general. The session with Rini van Solingen was nice too. He wrote a book (Dutch) about self steering teams by addressing the differences between a sheep shepherd and a beemaster. It was an interactive session about the do’s and don’t when leading teams. In the model accompanying the book, the baseline is “Always be prepared to change yourself”. I totally agree, and for many of us, it’s the most difficult thing to do too…

About Jurgen’s Talk

Jurgen Appelo took the stage for an hour to talk about the importance of experimenting to become a better leader with Management 3.0.
In my words, the take-away from his examples are:

• Truly connect,
• Be transparent
• Measure & iterate

It may feel like general remarks, but they aren’t. Especially not when you bring in the Happiness.

About “Truly connect”

If you don’t know the people you work with, how can you truly support them?
So get to know them during a dinner, which they cook in your kitchen. Or have them draw a Personal Map; a mindmap about themselves.
I like the little rules, that make these kind of things successful, like:
“You cannot talk / explain about your Personal Map, you can  only answer questions” or
“You need to thoroughly setup the kitchen very well: recipes,groceries, drinks, music, plates… just don’t do the actual cooking.” If you fail to properly setup the thing, it might fail, or be not as successful as you’d hope’.
Later that evening during a workshop, Rini van Solingen said the same thing: “You as a manager, are responsible for the context (self steering) teams work in. So create a great context.”

Being Happy is a theme. The 12 steps are great, they are nice openers in conversations! Just read more here, if you’re interested.

Be transparent

Be honest, be real, explain stuff, talk about your organization and the rules.
Eg, he identifies ‘Key Decision Areas’ and creates an ‘Authority board’ to make the level of delegation clear to all. Even debate it together. It’s a brilliant idea.
Below you see a board, where is determined that the company purpose (row one) is a “tell”. Jurgen decides. You listen.
But, spending under €500: just inform Jurgen. Over €500: make him agree.

More info : A slidedeck from Jurgen

Measure and Iterate

Be playful, do try, do experiment ánd : measure & improve. Very agile 🙂
He showed some things, but most interesting was hear him talk about how he creates indexes and actually measures.
I already read about the “ScoreBoard Index” a while ago. Basically, you can turn anything into a score.
Use numbers, percentages or a 5 step “Devastated to Ecstatic” scale, but above all: measure. It will give you the ground for change, and make it visible. Be transparent about these indexes!

It was time well spent, thanks Prowareness for facilitating and see you next time!