Category Archives: Awesome

20 or 12 Discoveries

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2012 was a year of awesome growth and learning for me, some deliberate, some serendipitous. It turned out to be, again, the most intensive and insightful year of my life. I guess that’s a side effect of personal growth and living intensively: more vulnerability, increased presence, more community, more awareness, more (apparent) real options.

Deliberate Discovery

Deliberate Discovery (“Lone Wolf” by HKD)

To increase probabilities of me properly digesting, discerning and sharing this learning I plan to articulate the topics, techniques and practices I discovered in a sequence of blog posts.
I started to draft a list last week and quickly realised I need to ask you for help: I believe I simply do not remember everything that I discovered…

Please Help Me

So I ask you to complete and enrich the list below. Specifically, I’m interested in:

  • A topic (book, community, practice, you name it) that you talked about or worked on with me in 2012 that is not on this list and that you consider important and valuable.
  • If you’d like to work with me on one of the topics (no matter if it’s on my list already or you suggest it) I’m happy to collaborate on a post (or something else…)
  • If you are interested in some of the topics on the list more than in others and want me to write on it sooner, indicate your interest and I’ll focus accordingly.

This is my draft list, I’ll update it as comments come in:

Awesome Sky

Executive Amazement

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I’ve recently had the pleasure to work with a client where the CEO astonished me multiple times with really awesome ideas. As there’s so much management bashing going on the community, I want to share what I saw, as an inspiration…

Awesome Sky

S is for Sky by Ali Catterall

Crowd-Sourcing Strategy

I worked with the management board on an Agile Strategy Map. We had explored the alignment of the board members the day before, and they had already astonished me by being comfortable with staff members joining that exercise. Similarly, for the Agile Strategy Map, we included some employees so that during group exercises the board members could each pair with someone who was not on the board, increasing the diversity of ideas.

After we had created a draft map and discussed how it should be improved, the CEO suggested two great ideas:

  • the map should be set up on a public wall so that everyone could participate in the creation and refinement
  • once some alternative paths to success have emerged in a sufficiently clear way to be executed, he’d like all employees to vote (as in “buying real options”, but without money) on the ideas to crowd-source prioritisation. “After all, everybody’s bonus depends on us reaching that goal together next year!”

Embracing and Keeping Emotions

At the end of the first two weeks where I had worked with the Product Owner group, mainly on forming them into a team, we did a short feedback round before I left. We had worked in one of their meeting rooms all the time, plastering it with drawings and post-its and visions and ideas… And during the feedback many of them said that they are glad they’re beginning to think and function as a team, and that they are afraid that some of that spirit and momentum might get lost in daily business.

The CEO replied to these concerns, “I want you to keep this room. The new spirit I feel is captured beautifully on these walls. We can set up a new meeting room easily. Whenever you feel the new spirit depletes, when ever you feel the need to revisit these emotions you feel now, come back to this room and look at the walls. Make this your team room and continue what you have started. Keep this spirit!”

Enabling Excellence

This is what management is supposed to be. Amplifying the drive of your people with little signs like this. Take their ideas and emergent ways of work seriously, integrate them into your culture. Embrace the excellence of your people!

AgileInfluencers

Thank You, 2011!

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2011 has been an awesome and truly transformative year for me, maybe the most important in my life so far. The primary reason was that a number of new real options emerged that gave me opportunities to create value for myself and others in ways that I wouldn’t have expected one year ago. I’m very happy with what I achieved this year, and it’s time for a few Thank Yous.

AgileInfluencers

Some of My Influencers of 2011

The biggest change in my life this year was that I joined agile42. This move created learnings, opportunities, connections and friendships that deserve their own post. Thank you, agile42!

I’ll go along the timeline of this year and reflect, that will lead to one possible, sensible order… which does not reflect importance. I can’t possibly cover all the people I’ve met, and I will intentionally omit some personal stuff. So if you are not mentioned in this post and feel you could be, it’s probably because your contribution to my life has been too profound or personal to share in public.

One person that earned her place outside, above and beyond my timeline of 2011 is my wife, Christiane. I couldn’t have done anything of what I did this year without your love and support! Thank you so much.

How My 2011 Started

I was exhausted after a very busy year, having made the hard decision to leave the company I’d worked with for more than eight years to join another one. That meant changing from the most senior and respected expert to the newbie, the beginner in a team of awesome agile coaches. I was excited, and a bit anxious.

Over the past one and a half year, starting with the ScrumGathering in Munich 2009, I had built a lot of strong connections in the agile community, and finally, at the age of 40, found my tribe. So, before I start with the timeline, a huge thank you to all the readers of this blog and all my followers on Twitter.

My Followers

Thank you all for following!

Timeline

In January, I visited Norway for the first Norwegian CoachCamp that I had organised with Sergey Dmitriev, Ivana Gancheva, Geir Amsjø and a few others, meeting my friends Ken Power, Rachel Davies, and one of my new colleagues, Ralf Kruse. I met influencial thinkers and practitioners like Niklas Bjørnerstedt, Jon Jagger and Johannes Brodwall. A recurring topic of my year, LeanProcrastination, got a major boost in an open space session and through feedback by the real options gurus Chris Matts and Olav Maassen.

In Febuary, our first Play4Agile unconference brought together playful minds from many countries. Ellen Grove and Michael Sahota came all the way from Canada, inspiring me greatly. I’m especially great they joined the StrategicPlay crowd, just as Juliane Conradt and Thorsten Kalnin… Thanks our amazing StrategicPlay mentor, Katrin Elster! Ken Power was there, and Ole Jepsen, who’s work I admire since then. And I met Jurgen Appelo, we started to develop a plan for the ALE network… And he gave me feedback in a signature which I’m still thankful for (see picture below).

On my way home from Play4Agile, I learned that the ultimate change agent had taken one of my best friends.

In March, I started working with agile42. Wow, so many new inspirations… That kept me intellectually busy in a way that before had only happened “after work”…

In April, Ralf and I started the Awesome Coach of the Week blog series. Although we did not post every week, it’s one of this year’s endeavours that I’m quite proud of.

In May, I attended the XP2011 conference in Madrid and we created the vision for the ALE network. We started organising an unconference in Berlin… I met Liz Keogh, who’s been a source of inspiration since she taught me to write Haiku in 2009… This time, we built a vision in Lego together and I learned her model of Feature Injection in her BDD Tutorial. It’s been altering my work…

ChrisMattsLego

Liz building Chris Matts building a Network

I finally met JBrains and Michael Feathers, paired with Matt Wynne to finally learn Ruby, got to know Brian Marick and Esther Derby… (Thank you, Brian, for the chance to tango with Esther!) And the change agent hit again: This time he chose a car crash to take the father of one of my closest friends. Only the good…

One awesome sidetrack that happened while I was in Madrid deserves its own paragraph: I was contacted on Twitter by Pascal Pink, whom I did not know at the time. He wanted to know if I intended to come to the American AgileCoachCamp in Columbus, Ohio, in September … I said it’d not be on my way, and he replied, that would be sad, as so many Americans wanted to meet me and it might be easier for me to come over than for all of them to come here… I was flattered but still said I didn’t plan to go. He asked what kept me, time or money? I said, a bit of both, as to come over for just on weekend would be a bad use of time, and I didn’t know how to pay the flight. He suggested I could come over to LA for a few days, give a talk at an LA meetup and visit one of his clients with him, so that I could learn how they worked in the US. Afterwards, he would go to the ACCUS with me and pay for all my expenses, as part of his sponsorship for the event… I couldn’t believe it at first but he was serious:-) So it happened that one of the three invitations to the US I got this year actually came true.

In June, the ALE2011 organisation started for real, I still haven’t completely conceptualised how we let such an awesome outcome happen by applying anarchy with a purpose… Also in June, I attended the German AgileCoachCamp which I had co-organised and which was sold out in 18 hours… Meeting many awesome friends and getting lots of energy and insights from the community, especially from awesome coaches as Jens Hoffmann, Pierluigi Pugliese, Marc Löffler and Andreas Leidig… And I met Gitte Klitgaard, who’s been joining Twitter in the meantime, leading to lots of awesome conversations with Katrin and my dear Lady of Astonishment. And she’s helped me focus on commitments for this blog…

In July, my wife and me flew to Brussels to attend the amazing wedding of a friend, one of two short holiday trips we had time for this year… Thanks for the invite!

In August, I did my first Kanban trainings with Franz Ivancsich which were well received and we will definitely do more of… ALE2011 organisation took more and more of my time, leading to me not attending Agile2011 although I was one of the few Europeans whose session got accepted. My fellow ProcrastinationCoach Marc Bless played the LeanProcrastination Last Responsible Moment Game with my colleague Dave Sharrock instead, I heard it was well received…

One huge and huggy Thank You needs to go to all my fellow ALE2011 organisers, Marcin, Franck, Oana, Marc, Ivana, Sven, Catia, Jule, Mike&Mike&Mike, Monica, Christiane, Eelco, Ken, Jurgen, Sergey, Yves… We’ve been through a lot. We achieved greatness. Some of us became close friends.

September was easily the busiest and most awesome month of my life. It started with the ALE2011 conference… I met Stephen Parry, who amazed me with insights, a level of thinking I seldom have seen in our community and quotes like “Agile and Lean done wrong only show our clients how to do the wrong things righter”… The most lasting gift he gave me was a signature in his book (next to the one by Jurgen I mentioned above):

FeedbackInBooks

Awesome Feedback in Books

The event was a blast. An amazing mixture of innovative talks, open space facilitated by my amazing friend Mike Sutton, and lots of hugs.

Later that month, I went to LA and Columbus, as described above. Gave my talk about LeanProcrastination and played the LRM game, told Pascal’s client about Feature Injection, played our brand-new agile42 Kanban Pizza Game and met inspiring people at the CoachCamp. Siraj Sirajuddin, Pascal Pink, Mike Hill (whom I’d met in Madrid), Paul Boos, Michael Sahota, Mike Cottmeyer, Sameer Bendre and his lovely wife Meghana, Derek W. Wade, George Dinwiddie… Three people I was especially fond of seeing: Angeline “AgileMeister” Tan—it was awesome to finally meet you in RL, Tobias Mayer, a constant source of inspiration, and Matt Barcomb—I seldom made a close friend so fast. Looking forward to the chance to work together next year!

One unexpected gift I got in Columbus was the outcome of a long chat I had with Pascal, where he told me a few things about US culture and how that influences agile coaching, and explained to me why he had invited me in the first place… A topic for another post.

October and November have been comparably quiet… December started with the XPDays Benelux where Nick Oostvogels and I hosted a Coaching Dojo session. I met Ole Jepsen again, who ran a great session on Human Nature and Agile, and Portia Tung, who inspired me greatly with her Tribal Leadership session…

The closing event of my professional year was the agile42 coach camp last week, which like the ALE2011 gathered some of the most important people in my life in one place of awesome collaboration, challenges and new horizons… Thank you Andrea, Marion, Mike, Ivana, Gaetano, Ralf, Franz, Nusco, TaZ, Hugo, Dave, Lasse, Sergey, Benjamin, Geir…

And, to end with where I started: Thank you, Christiane, my Love.

We’ll rock the world in 2012! I’ll do my best to astonish and surprise you. Merry Christmas and God bless …

OlafAgile42

Thank You, agile42!

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10 months since I joined, and now the end of the year… Time for reflection, and a big Thank You.

OlafAgile42

21 is only half the truth

I’ve become part of a great team of coaches. There’s a saying about Jazz: “Always be the worst guy in every band you’re in.” My amazing friend Mike Sutton gave me the advice to apply the Law of Two Feet to my job, and to go somewhere where I could learn, again. So that’s what I did, join a team where I was (in many ways, at least) the junior. I began to listen, and learn…

How it all began

Marion Eickmann, who prides herself being a Certified Scrum Impediment (CSI), approached me multiple times in recent years to join agile42. We had worked together for a year at my previous company, and she asked me to join Andrea Tomasini and her when they founded agile42 as an Agile Coaching Company. At the time, I was too comfortable being the most senior consultant in the place I worked at, and while she repeatedly asked me over the years, I was hesitant to leave my comfort zone.

Last year, in autumn, she finally was successful… So she’s the first person I need to thank, for her trust, tenacity, and drive to bring me on board. And the courage to cope with a Linchpin constantly challenging the status quo… I had interviews with Andrea and Dave Sharrock who barely knew me at the time, but did not hesitate to embrace me into their team.

My Year With the People of agile42

The first person I worked with was Ralf Kruse. He joined me at the AgileCoachCamp Norway in January, and we teamed up for my very first agile42 gig. Training and coaching together was a challenge I’ve learned a lot from, and I’ve been enjoying the creative tension between us ever since. Thank you, Ralf, for all the inspiration!

At that same CoachCamp, I met Sergey Dmitriev, Benjamin Sommer and Geir Amsjø, who now work with agile42 Norway. Just this week, we all met in Berlin for our third agile42 coach camp this year and developed our strategy for next year. Looking forward to work more with you guys next year!

Martin Kearns lives and works in Melbourne, which limits our chances to meet in person. He joined us for the first agile42 coach camp in March and inspired me with his experience, how he leads by example and for introducing me to David Bohm’s On Dialogue. Thanks, Kearnsey!

Bridge

A Coach Assisting to Step Up

I was grateful to immediately have the chance to introduce my new colleagues to StrategicPlay—we’re using it increasingly often!

agile42 is not only about the coaches: we couldn’t do what we do without Nina’s gentle and patient assistance.

Bringing years of practical PO experience into our team, Franz Ivancsich from Vienna joined us shortly after me. We developed the Kanban training together with Ralf, and it was a pleasure to co-train with Franz. Awesome to have a whole-hearted hobbit on the team! And when I recently had a lot of pain with a slipped disc, his help as a yoga trainer came in very useful…

Franz Yoga Skills

Franz' Yoga Skills

Teaming with Andrea has been inspiring on many levels. His experience in management and enterprise agile transformations was fully revealed to me when we co-trained the agile42 leadership and management training for the first time, in November. Getting the chance to practically apply our alignment exercise, the agile strategy map and our new Cynefin Lego Game and to be able to contribute my StrategicPlay facilitation skills has lead to an amazing outcome. Two people from that company gave us feedback on how substantially we have changed their lives…

Although we haven’t worked together (at a client) yet, Dave Sharrock coached and inspired me greatly this year. He seems to be inclined to bring me just that next step forward that I’m not yet fully ready to see on my own… Thank you.

In the last two months, I pair-trained with Lasse Ziegler from Finland on a number of Scrum trainings for a company in Germany—thank you, Lasse, it’s been a pleasure to work with you!

The regular coach camps we do make sure that I regularly meet inspirational coaches from abroad… I’m especially grateful that my friend Mike Sutton works increasingly often with us. Funny that he’s just as responsible for me working here as I am for him working with us… Paolo “Nusco” Perrotta lured me back into programming and inspired me to learn Ruby. And he greatly improved my English in unprecedented directions… Roberto Bettazzoni is the coach I can rely on to work wonders in C++, and for a totally different type of Italian humour… And I have immense respect for the gentle Hugo Laurenco, wo agilises Iberia… It seems we cover Europe from the far South to the far North… The most recent person to join us has been Gaetano Mazzanti from Italy, who shares my passion for Kanban (which shows, for instance, in these awesome slides).

What I Learned

When I discovered the term “Agile Coaching” less than two years ago, I thought it was just what I did at the time: Leading change in organisations towards agility without telling people what to do. Over time, my picture of Agile Coaching deepened as I met more and more people who brought diverse expertise and experience to the table, and who challenged my viewpoint again and again. What has astonished me most is the level of ignorance (and sometimes arrogance) many of us (including me) apply to the diversity of organisations out there. We think we have a lot of answers, where instead we should just enable our clients to phrase the right questions. And Agile (or Lean) and all the practices we know are just a small part of the possible answer.

agile42 has taught me humbleness. Humbleness about my own skills, and about the maturity of our agile/lean toolset in general. agile42 has also made me proud. Proud for the valuable contribution I can make to the team with my experience and expertise, and proud for the awesome team I am now part of. We’re one hell of a band…

Thank you, agile42, we are fucking awesome!

RIP Steve

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We will miss your inspired and inspiring mind. You’ve been the narrator of an awesome story.
My favourite of your many quotes:
“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”
Steve Jobs, 1955-2011

The FirstFollower is what Transforms a Lone Nut into a Leader

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Yves Hanoulle pointed me in his blog to a concept that I think he has heard about from Chris Matts. I love inspirations from awesome coaches :-)

First Follower

To create a movement, someone has to start and become the leader. But as long as this someone stays alone, s/he is not yet a leader, s/he’s a lone nut. There’s a specific person who transforms the situation: the lone nut becomes the leader when the First Follower joins hir and they start forming a movement or tribe. Derek Sivers did an amazing, 3min TED talk on this:

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Katrin @Cuxdu Elster, Awesome Facilitator

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@cuxdu

@cuxdu

Some of you might have noticed the “Awesome Coach of the Week” series on the agile42 blog. It’s my way of giving back to the community what I’ve so selfishly taken from it during the last two years—positive energy. Yet, it is focused on Agile Coaches, and some of the awesome people I know have different talents. The first that comes to my mind is Katrin Elster of StrategicPlay® fame, who taught me how to system-think with Lego… Continue reading →