Agile Management | NOOP.NL

Let's Measure Something Meaningless

Imagine that the government decided an intake of 2.500 calories per day should be the maximum for each person, regardless of age, gender, health, metabolism, dietary habits, etc. And imagine that the government also measured and enforced this every day, claiming it is “for your own health”, and handing out daily fines for each person who went over target. How would you feel about this practice?

Now imagine that the government decided that a speed of 130 km/hours should be the maximum for each driver, regardless of age, health, mental condition, road condition, traffic condition, weather condition, or the condition of their cars. And imagine that the government measured and enforced this, claiming it is “for your own safety”, and handing out fines to anyone who went over this “target”. How would you feel about that? Oh, wait… this is an actual practice in many countries!

I drove 14 hours from Bologna to Brussels yesterday, with a proper break every 2 hours, good nutrition, a healthy mind, a well-serviced car, and an excellent track record as a driver. During that trip I saw people not using their indicator lights when switching lanes, people overtaking others on the emergency lane, people using their mobile phones, and people driving vehicles that barely deserved the name “car”. And among those many thousands of drivers, I’m sure there were also some with mental problems, physical problems, mechanical problems, etc. However, the one who got picked out by the government was me. I got flashed twice because I drove “too fast”.

For every complex goal, there is a metric that is clear simple and wrong.

In organizations we see this all the time. Managers have a goal, such as faster time-to-market or higher productivity. But productivity is a very complex thing. It depends on motivation, creativity, innovation, collaboration, etc. And managers can’t measure all that stuff easily. So they reduce the metric to the simplest possible thing that can be measured with a computer: the number of hours people are physically at the office. And then they turn it into a target: the computer requires at least 8! Or else…

Measuring something meaningful is hard, so let’s measure something that is meaningless but easy.

Measuring real safety on the streets for everyone is next to impossible, so the government reduces it to the simplest possible metric that can be delegated to computers: speed.

I fear the day when governments find a way to have computers measure our daily intake of calories.

Blog Post #700

Actually, the previous blog post was number 700. This is blog post #701.

I wrote blog post #600 almost a year ago. In that year my readership has dropped from 1528 to 853 page views per day, and from 1078 unique visits to 629 per day.

Why? Well, I can make an educated guess.

I have changed my focus to writing the Management Workout articles, which of course means less time for my blog. And there are other new side-projects, such as Happy Melly and DARE. And I stopped making the Top 100 lists, which have traditionally been the biggest traffic magnets on my blog.

But I’m not complaining!

The Management 3.0 book has sold 17,000 copies in its first two years, and my self-published How to Change the World sold 3,600 copies in its first year. (Most self-published books sell less than 150 copies.) The number of RSS feed subscribers of my blog climbed from 6,600 to 7,290, and the number of Twitter followers climbed from 6,800 to 8,700. And the articles of my upcoming book, Management Workout, have (so far) been viewed or downloaded 37,000 times.

You win some and you lose some. :-)

Dare to Be at DARE!

I got myself involved in co-organizing a conference.

Again.

But this is not just any conference. This is DARE!

DARE is a conference conceived by Maarten Volders, the organizer of the wildly successful Lean Kanban 2011 Benelux. Maarten has teamed up with the initiator of the weirdly successful Stoos Stampede (Amsterdam) (that’s me) and the Happy Melly business network.

DARE is for people who dare to discuss wild ideas about organizational change. For people who dare to introduce bold new practices in their businesses. For people who dare to make work more engaging. And for people who dare to quit their jobs.

DARE has a great line-up of speakers: Dean Leffingwell, Jim Benson, Benjamin Mitchell, Ken Power, Paul Klipp, Hakan Forss, Karl Scotland, and many more. And… it has a great looking website, launched yesterday! I find the layout quite daring actually.

DARE is for agile workers, lean practitioners, systems thinkers, Scrum coaches, Kanban experts, change leaders, complexity thinkers, culture hackers, lean startups, and Stoosians. Only the people who don’t dare to make at least something better in their organizations are not invited.

Will you dare to be there?

 

12 Reasons Our License Is Better Than Theirs

I have been working on a new version of the Management 3.0 license agreement, with input from the current facilitators and the friends of Happy Melly.

I needed a new agreement because: A) I want to allow other people to create Management 3.0 courseware modules; B) I needed a new pricing model that is more fair; and C) The licensing is taken over by the Happy Melly business network.

Here are 12 reasons why it’s a contract I’m proud of.

1. There is no legalese in this contract. I tested it by asking lots of people to read it, and nobody reported difficulties with the language.
2. There are no extortion prices in this agreement. It does not require USD 10,000 just for the right to use a name, which means it’s interesting for those who are not primarily motivated by big money.
3. The regional pricing based on a purchasing power parity index ensures that licenses are affordable both in wealthy countries and in developing regions.
4. The agreement introduces equality between creators and facilitators. You can produce content, or you can use content, or both. That’s up to you. There is no I-lead-and-you-follow in this system.
5. For facilitators the agreement guarantees freedom of organization, regarding event pricing, registration methods, customizations, evaluations, etc. The only constraint is the message.
6. The agreement guarantees that content creators get paid for the use of their slides, exercises, videos, and games. Free is nice, until you realize you have a mortgage to pay.
7. The agreement guarantees that translators get paid for their help in making content available in other languages and other regions.
8. The agreement has no pyramid scheme in the form of “geographical exclusivity” or “trainer accreditation”. The value is in trust and transparency, not in control and exclusivity.
9. The agreement is event-neutral. It covers everything from 1-hour presentations at conferences to full 2-day in-company courses. It is up to facilitators to decide how bring the message to those who need it.
10. The agreement is brand-neutral. It now mentions the Management 3.0 brand at the top, but this is easily replaced with any other brand. This means you can join us, if you have a great brand to share. {8-)
11. Creators and facilitators sign the contract with Happy Melly, making them a stakeholder of a new business that is cooler than Semco, Virgin, Whole Foods and W.L. Gore combined. {8-)
12. The agreement looks nice. I mean, seriously, why do contracts always look either boring or intimidating?

If you’re interested in creating content for Management 3.0 or facilitating Management 3.0 workshops or courses, go to the Management 3.0 website and fill out the form.

If you have your own brand and content and you’re looking for a way to adopt a similar licensing approach that is fair, simple, transparent, and scalable, contact me or the Happy Melly team.

 

Emphasize Good Practices

In many working environments people’s focus is usually is on fixing problems. This makes sense, because continuous improvement allows organizations to survive and thrive. However, a focus on things that could be improved usually comes down to a focus on failures and mistakes, and this mindset can have some serious side effects. Being a perfectionist, I have sometimes been guilty of this myself. I have “raised the bar” for me and for others until the bar was so high that Godzilla could do a limbo dance underneath while carrying a space shuttle.

However, I noticed a strange thing when I urged people to stop screwing up. I found this didn’t motivate them at all! I realized getting better isn’t just about reducing what goes wrong (making mistakes). It’s also about increasing what is right (using good practices). And every now and then people need a reminder that they’re doing just fine.

It’s no wonder the culture in many organizations feels negative when the focus of discussions is mainly on mistakes and problems. Workers feel they are held accountable for not being perfect. Instead of having a constructive view on improvement, people end up with a defensive frame of mind. They evade taking responsibility, and for every perceived problem they point at others who must have caused it. Because people’s minds are focused on self-defense instead of improvement, things will not get any better, and the organization will just make more mistakes.

I believe we should emphasize the good recipes over the mistakes, because you get more of what you focus on. If you focus on mistakes, people will make more mistakes. If you focus on good practices, people will invent more good practices.

It seems evident to me that we should emphasize the good behaviors, not the bad ones. We should celebrate good practices, not punish mistakes.

This text is part of Yay Questions, a Management 3.0 Workout article. Read more on my mailing list.