Agile Management | NOOP.NL

The Happy Melly Team

Friday was an important day for me. After months of preparations, announcements, and discussions Happy Melly finally took a small but significant step forward with the meeting of the five team members who will be leading the Happy Melly business. (There is probably a 6th team member joining soon, but he couldn’t attend this time.)

The current team members are (left-to-right) Lisette Sutherland (from USA/Netherlands), yours truly (Netherlands/rest of world), Maarten Volders (from Belgium), Sergey Kotlov (from Russia), and (bottom-row-all-by-himself) Vasco Duarte (Portugal/Finland/Germany).

At nine in the morning we started with a backlog of things-to-discuss-and-decide on stickies, about publishing, events, freelancers, marketing, social networks, fees, licensing, and much more. And to my big surprise, we had completed it all by five in the afternoon.

Amazing!

We also used the day to ask each other personal questions, such as “What part of your culture do you recognize in yourself?”, “What is your favorite movie and what does that say about you?”, “How do you exercise physically?”, “What is it you don’t understand about other people?” and “What happened in your past that made you join this team?”

Of course, this is all just the start. There will be a lot of things to do this year, most of which we intend to delegate to others, because it turned out all of us preferred drinking coffee over doing real work. The real work would include the making of apps, websites, services, the publication of articles, videos, books, and the organization of events and courses. Anything is possible, as long as it will help Melly be happier in her work.

If you want to be involved doing real work, join our Google group. Our ideas and calls for help usually start there.

 

One Out of Five

I once made some simple cartoon strips and sent them to several national newspapers, asking them if they wanted to publish my outbursts of creativity on a daily basis. They all kindly rejected my offer. It was one of my first disappointments in business. I was twelve years old.

I also placed a free advertisement in a local newspaper, announcing that I could draw things for people. For a small fee, of course. I received exactly one phone call from someone requesting a caricature drawing based on a photo. Unfortunately, this was beyond my talents, and I had to decline. I was fourteen then.

I tried launching my own little paper magazine about dance music. I spent a whole afternoon asking a dozen or more retailers if they wanted to advertise in my magazine. Nobody wanted to work with me, except one. But this one store manager asked me to come back another time, and I basically had already given up. I must have been fifteen or something.

I was also briefly in contact with a leading Dutch music trade magazine, after I had sent them some of my carefully calculated hit statistics and pop chart analysis. At first they seemed interested in publishing my insights on a regular basis. But, while I waited anxiously by the phone for several days, they never called me back. I was sixteen then.

I once put an ad in the local newspaper offering my services to fellow high school students who had difficulties with math and physics. I hit the jackpot. The phone never stopped ringing. I made myself a nice amount of extra pocket money, optimizing my income with my friendly face and mathematical mind. The parents paid eagerly, and offered me coffee, cakes and mathematically-challenged children to work on.

My fifth idea was a success.

Maybe that’s why my lucky number is five.

I bought my first computer (a Commodore 64) with the revenue. And a monitor. And a tape recorder. And books. Armed with my new computer, I had ideas for several new ventures and businesses. And the cycle of failures started all over again. But (roughly) once every five times, I did something that actually worked.

Don’t worry if your idea doesn’t catch on. Try something else. One out of five is not a bad score.

 

How I Organize My Work (with Remember the Milk)

Frequently people ask me, “How can you be so productive?” The question seems a bit strange to me, because I often consider myself not productive at all! But yes, I am better organized in my work than some other people. (Not giving any names here, but you know who you are!) So I’ve decided to share with everyone how I organize my work. Maybe it helps you. It certainly helps me. :-)

I have a (lot of) system, and I have (a bit of) discipline. I have implemented my system with Remember the Milk (RTM), of which I have the Pro version installed on all my devices. It is the most important thing I need (after Internet, and before coffee).

Tasks and Priorities

In RTM I have all my tasks and ideas organized in lists. Each list represents a project. I gave them all an initial letter to group them together.

The lists starting with j- are my business projects (J is for Jojo Ventures, my own company), and the ones with p- are my private projects. The lists beginning with s- are for the various sites that I manage myself, and the ones with w- contain things to do for my book projects (for W as in Writing).

Note: I also have separate spreadsheets and Trello task boards for some of these projects. On RTM I only keep track of simple private tasks, not an overview of work-in-progress.

On each list I prioritize my tasks with RTM’s four standard colors.

The orange tasks (prio 1) are the ones I hope to do within a week. Dark blue (prio 2) is for tasks I want to do within (roughly) a month, while light blue (prio 3) is what I want to do (again roughly) within a quarter of a year. I assign the color white (prio 4) to ideas that I’m not even sure I will have time for at all. But I keep them for as long as I find the ideas interesting. Sometimes they become blue, sometimes they don’t.

Recurring Tasks

I have some recurring tasks that function as reminders to check and update other systems. For example, “check statuses Training Calendar” reminds me each Sunday to open my separate Training Calendar spreadsheet of upcoming courses, where I have a checklist with details about all classes. RTM is not the right tool to keep such detailed information. I have similar recurring tasks for “check statuses Speaking Calendar”, “check invoices”, etc.

Likewise, I have a recurring task every Sunday that simply reminds me to update RTM itself. A meta-task, you could call it. In 10 or 15 minutes I simply go through all the lists in RTM and I update the priorities of various tasks, because usually things have changed since the week before (including my own opinions, needs, and estimates). I also use this opportunity to prioritize what I would like to do in the upcoming week, setting all those tasks to prio 1 (orange). By focusing on orange tasks I can ignore everything else for the remainder of the week. In the next seven days I will only do things that have a high priority.

Locations and Searches

Each of my tasks also has a location. Int means I can do the task anywhere, but I will need Internet access (for example, pay an invoice). Any means I can do the task without Internet, anywhere in the world (for example, buy new batteries). Rdm means I have to do the task in Rotterdam (for example, ship packages), while Bxl means I must do it in Brussels (for example, buy chocolates).

I have defined a custom search list for each of these locations. For example, do-Any has all the priority 1 tasks, without a specific due date, that I can do anywhere, and do-Bxl has the dateless priority 1 tasks I can only do in Brussels.

This way I can easily look at what I could do next, depending on where I am and whether I have Internet.

In case you’re interested: the custom search query is status:incomplete and location:any and priority:1 and due:never.

Today

Last but not least, there is do-Today (also supported by default on the Home screen of the RTM app).

At the start of each new day I go through my four custom search lists (do-Any, do-Int, do-Rdm, do-Bxl) to look at the options (reminding me of things I’d like to do this week), and I set the due date of some tasks to “today” for whatever I would like to finish that same day. Of course, I’m often too optimistic, like almost everyone else, but that’s OK. What I cannot complete simply rolls over to tomorrow, or I set the due date back to empty, which means the task goes back to do-Int, or wherever it came from. It might get another chance later that week.

At the end of the week I usually have a couple of tasks left that I was unable to complete. Again, it’s not a big issue. They can get another chance next week, or I reduce their priority back from orange to blue.

System and Discipline

This is the system I use to manage my work. You may notice it is influenced by the Getting Things Done method, which may explain people’s surprise that I’m actually getting things done!

Don’t be fooled if this all looks daunting to you. Once you’ve set it up, it takes only 15 minutes for the weekly planning, and a minute per day for the daily planning. That’s all. Oh, and of course a little bit of discipline in actually using it for everything! I often shake my head in disbelief at those who claim to use Remember the Milk, and then write their ideas, tasks, and reminders in a Moleskine journal, on their hands, or on sticky notes. (Yes, don’t deny it!)

The system I just described is effective.

And it works. For me.

p.s. Ticking "write blog post" off today's list, and I notice I still have a lot on there. I expect some rolling over tonight...

 

How to Calculate Your Fees (for Other Countries)

Some of my friends struggle with money questions.

1. “If I charge EUR 1,000 for a workshop in Germany, how much can I charge when I’m invited to Switzerland?”
2. “What is the value of my USD 3,000 course in the USA when I’m asked to facilitate the same one next month in Brazil?”
3. “As a public speaker I’ve always charged a fixed fee of EUR 800 everywhere. But what is reasonable when I speak in Portugal?”

I have asked myself such questions several times, without learning any good answers. Until I was confronted with the unfair consequences of the flat fees in the Management 3.0 licensing program. The simplicity of flat fees worked well in the startup phase, but now that we’re scaling Management 3.0 globally we need a smarter system. We must take into account the local pricing of courses. And so I finally committed to solving this problem.

Purchasing Power Parity

The idea to adjust prices for local economies is called purchasing power parity. There are different ways of doing this. The basic idea is: you look at how much people are willing to pay locally for a collection of goods or services, compared to another country, and you adjust your prices accordingly.

The easiest and most popular way to do this is to use the Big Mac Index, regularly published by Economist magazine. It lists the price of a big mac in many different countries. But there are several problems with this approach. First, it treats all countries in the Eurozone the same, because they share one currency. Maybe with big macs this is not a big issue, but with workshops and courses it is! Second, what people are prepared to pay for a big mac can hardly be compared to what people are prepared to pay for training or a conference. They are entirely different target audiences (I hope), with different budgetary waistlines.

The CSM Index

That’s when I came up with the idea to create a “CSM index”. It lists (roughly) the average price of a standard Certified Scrum Master course, per country. It’s an easy choice because CSM classes are given by many people all over the world. One could say it’s the most basic commodity in the Agile community. (After stickies.)

With the help of licensed Management 3.0 facilitators and my friends on the Happy Melly mailing list, I was able to come up with my own Purchasing Power Parity index.

This is how it works...

Example 1
Suppose you do workshops in Germany and you are now invited to do the same workshop in Sweden. How much could you charge, given that price levels in Sweden are a bit different? Well, let's say you charge EUR 2,000 in Germany for your workshop. In the spreadsheet you divide that number with the ratio you find behind Germany (73.36%) and then you multiply it with the ratio for Sweden (842.06%). The result is 2000 / 73.36 * 842.06 = 22957. In other words, your EUR 2,000 in Germany is roughly the same as a SEK 22,957 workshop in Sweden. Note that SEK 22,957 converts to EUR 2,740 EUR, so your workshop in Sweden is actually more expensive than in Germany. But it is what those crazy Swedes will pay, compared to the somewhat tighter pursed Germans. Price levels in Sweden are higher on average.

Example 2
You charge EUR 5,000 for a 2-day in-company class in Belgium. What can you charge when you do the same one in China? Well, 5000 divided by 73.03 (ratio for Belgium) and multiplied by 363.33 (ratio for China) results in RMB 24,875. This converts to 3,085 EUR, because price levels in China are lower.

Easy isn’t it? :-)

 

*** DISCLAIMER ***

My spreadsheet is just a first version which is barely good enough for my own purposes. For a number of countries I did not find enough data points of CSM classes. It would probably be useful to extend this tool with other popular classes (Personal Scrum Master, PMP Practitioner, Management 3.0) so that we have a wider dataset and more accurate indexes.

But I don’t have the time to do that. :)

*** DISCLAIMER ***

 

Easy Numbers

With this informal CSM index we can now calculate prices that are more fair, considering local price levels. However, two problems remain: the converted prices now heavily depend on the rough averages of CSM classes. And our nice round original prices end up becoming ugly converted prices. That’s why I prefer to round all my prices to a fixed set of “easy numbers”:

100, 150, 200, 300, 400, 600, 800,

1000, 1500, 2000, 3000, 4000, 6000, 8000,

10000, 15000, etc...

By rounding up and down to easy numbers there is less concern about whether I used the “correct” data points in the CSM index. After all, small differences don’t matter (in most cases), because everything is rounded to easy numbers anyway.

By using the CSM index, and applying the easy numbers, I can now finally calculate the answers to the three questions posed earlier:

 

1. EUR 1,000 (Germany) => CHF 1,500 (Switzerland)
2. USD 3,000 (USA) => BRL 4,000 (Brazil)
3. EUR 800 (Netherlands) => EUR 400 (Portugal)

 

My friends will be so happy!

Website, App or Service?

I created a barely-enough version of the spreadsheet for myself (and you are free to use it), but now I’m wondering if anyone is interested in taking this a bit further...

• How about adding data points for other classes (PSM, PMP, etc.) to make the indexes more accurate, and to cover more countries?
• How about updating the data points regularly (once per month maybe) so that the index can evolve along with growing economies?
• How about making a website or an app, similar to currency exchange calculators, so that people don’t have to understand the spreadsheet?
• How about offering this as a professional tool or service for traveling speakers, consultants, trainers, and facilitators?
• How about diversifying to other industries, with other data points and multiple indexes, so that anyone who does business globally can learn what is fair?
• How about offering this as a web service for billing software and invoicing systems?

I know I would be a customer.

Would you?

Contact me.

p.s. In the spreadsheet I used Switzerland instead of the USA to normalize all prices against, because... Well, why not?

 

Who Needs a Head Office?

Some years ago I was in a meeting with the marketing coordinator of a local office of Rabobank, one of the three big Dutch banks. They wanted to know more about social media marketing, and I had just little bit of experience in that area. (Remember, that was some years ago.) While discussing their plans for using Twitter and Facebook I asked them if they needed some kind of approval from Rabobank’s head office. The lady started laughing. “Not at all,” she said. “If head office doesn’t give us what we want, we simply do it ourselves. Nobody here waits for the head office.”

Rabobank is a strange bank. It is actually a cooperation of many local businesses, who operate under the same name. The Rabobank head office doesn’t own the local banks. The local offices own Rabobank! Of course the local offices can do what they want. They are the boss!

With a structure like this, it is no surprise that Rabobank is known as the most stable, friendly, innovative, and profitable bank in my country. It is the only big Dutch bank that did not ask to be bailed out by the government (unlike ING and ABN AMRO, and several small ones). They don’t have a head office with an ego bigger than its wallet. What they have is common sense empowerment, distributed over a network of many small egos. (Sure, Rabobank makes mistakes too. But just small ones, that are safe-to-fail. Not as spectacular as those of the other banks.)

I’m working with my friends on my own version of Rabobank, called Happy Melly. It is similar, but with two important differences:

1. We don’t trade in money, we trade in happiness.
2. We don’t have a head office, we have a Constitution.

Who needs a head office when local offices can make joint decisions easily with modern technologies? A head office is sooó 20th century.

And… we have good news for tax payers:

With no head office capable of simultaneously growing its ego and shrinking its treasury, we will never ask anyone for a bailout either!

 

Share Your Happy Stories

Do you have an interesting story to share about the pursuit of happiness among workers?

On the new Happy Melly blog we have started publishing stories of happier workers. The next story could be yours!

Did you introduce a practice in your organization which helped your colleagues to enjoy their jobs better?

Did your manager do something for you which helped you be happier in your job?

Did one of your co-workers somehow contribute to the happiness of everyone in the company?

Let us know!

You don’t have to write the story yourself. My good friend Vasco is collecting and prioritizing the suggestions. My dear cousin Erik is a writer and he can spin your idea into a nice story. One of them can contact you by email or Skype to ask you for some details.

We started with a story about a Happiness Wall in Rotterdam, a new Sprint Planning III practice in Berlin, and opera performers as an inspiring metaphor.

The next story could be yours.

If you have something nice to share, just send me a quick note, and we will do the rest. When the story is published, you can forward it to the whole world.

Help us share it, and inspire others!

 

I'm Looking for Entrepreneurs and Leaders

I am glad to announce that Happy Melly One was officially registered this week in Rotterdam, The Netherlands. This legal entity will be the first one to adopt the Constitution of Happy Melly. As the only owner in the network at this point I have agreed with co-founders Maarten and Vasco that (for the time being) I will act as the CEO of Happy Melly. And my first job is... inviting more people.

I am looking for entrepreneurs!

We need multiple Happy Melly entities in different parts of the world, and I am looking for people to start, own, and run those businesses.

What do we expect from legal entities?

It is the entities who will sign agreements with customers and suppliers, facilitators and content creators, send and receive payments, acquire properties such as domains and trademarks, pay local taxes, and (hopefully) make a profit. In short, the Happy Melly business will be owned collectively by the legal entities. You will be interested to know that last year the Management 3.0 licensing program had almost EUR 100.000 of revenue. I will hand over this program to Happy Melly and we will start several more programs and brands that all have to be owned, managed, and leveraged.

Do you want to be part of this and start your own Happy Melly entity? Are you interested in legal and financial stuff? Please let me know via email.

I am looking for leaders!

I also need people who can play the roles of CFO, COO, CIO, CTO, CMO, etc.

What do I expect from the CxO’s?

As soon as there are multiple legal entities, they elect a CEO to coordinate everything globally. (For now that’s me.) The CEO selects board members to help him. This is some of the work I expect we will need to do:

• Coordinating the finances of entities, calculating contributions to the network, balancing the accounts, etc... (CFO)
• Coordinating gatherings and huddles with legal entities and stakeholders, documenting decisions, doing legal stuff, etc... (COO)
• Coordinating social network accounts, websites, mailings, event sponsoring, branding across materials, etc... (CMO)
• Coordinating content repositories, directories of stakeholders, data gathering and analysis across events and properties, etc... (CIO)
• Coordinating technologies, technical platforms, development of tools, websites and applications, etc... (CTO)

(Note: I expect people understand me better when I refer to the traditional roles, but we will probably choose more interesting names. I look forward to be working with a Chief Coffee Officer.)

It is important that board members serve the network of entities and stakeholders, which is why they have to have leadership qualities. They will get some kind of compensation for their services from the business.

If you find any of this interesting, please contact me via email.

 

A Lead-By-Example Business Network

The problem with practices is that bad practices are easy.

When you create a standard business, it is deceptively easy to create one legal entity with shareholders, appoint a top manager, form a management team, and a hire a truck load of employees to be bossed around and do all the work.

Et voilà! You now have a command-and-control hierarchy.

Such easy solutions are often the wrong ones, although they are applied by many. Only few people appreciate that good practices are hard.

When you aim for an agile business, it is quite an interesting challenge to create multiple independent legal entities, agree on a joint Constitution, elect the top manager democratically, and collaborate with self-employed workers who co-manage the business as stakeholders.

Surprise! You now have a lead-by-example network.

Which is better?

Well, I firmly believe that business networks are more agile, innovative, and engaging than business hierarchies. But the proof of the pudding is in eating your own dog food, and putting money in your mouth. Or something like that.

And so we did.

Happy Melly has officially launched this week.

 

Why I Won't Take Your Call

It seems not a day goes by without people asking me if they can call me over Skype or phone. I always politely decline.

Sorry, I don't do calls.

I prefer email, SMS, Twitter DM’s, LinkedIn or Facebook messages, and any other kind of asynchronous communication. Some people find this hard to understand. After all, “isn’t a phone call more efficient?”

Yes. But I aim for happiness, not efficiency.

Please allow me to explain.

I Need Flow, Not Interruptions

My main activities are writing, reading, speaking, training, socializing, and traveling. None of these activities are easily combined with making phone or Skype calls. In fact, calls are interruptions. They are a pain for a person like me who needs focus and flow to do his job. Keeping a phone as an ongoing distractor would be terrible for the quality of my work. It is my hope that people hire me because I am improving my skills as a writer and speaker, not as a conversationalist.

I Need Awareness, Not Stress

Of course, a call can be scheduled. But that means I will be committed to a time slot, and everything else must flow around it. But I cannot predict my engagement during a conference, the duration of dinner with organizers, socialization after a course, the delays while traveling, or the size of my jetlag. Basically, agreeing to time slots for calls means adding stress to my work day, and deterioration of my awareness. (And I already find it difficult enough to be aware of my surroundings!) When you interact with me face-to-face you have a right to get my full attention. I should not be worrying about other people’s calls.

I Need Documentation, Not Synchronization

I have a bad memory. At the same time I have interacted with 6000+ people in the last 5 years, according to Google Contacts. You can imagine the challenge of managing dozens of scheduled speeches, courses, articles, and other work items, in collaboration with people all over the world. Therefore, what I need is documentation of conversations. I don’t care that it’s faster to use a phone call to agree on a topic for a speech. What I need is finding the answer to the question, “What did we agree on three months ago?” And I need that answer within seconds from Google. Not from memory.

I Need Convenience, Not Hassle

I have noticed a heavy correlation between organizational competence and the ability to communicate with messages. The best business partners I have worked with take care of everything, and they need only three sentences in an email to do it. They arrange hotel rooms, airport pickups, equipment that actually works, and anything else I might need. While the ones who prefer talking over messaging are more often than not also the ones who forget everything, including payments. In a sense, my requirement for asynchronous communication can be considered a qualification test for organizers. Those who can’t handle messages, probably can’t handle logistics either.

Beware, I Am Not You

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t expect you to organize your job in the same way as I do. I don’t do complex stuff, such as coaching and consultancy. Almost all communication around my work involves simple questions, such as “Shall we book your flight ticket?” (No, I do that myself), “Do you have a photo and bio?” (Yes, they are here), “Can you give us exclusivity?” (Yes, but I won’t) and “Are you a vegetarian?” (Yes, but only with drinks, not with food). Being a non-consultant I have it easy. I am not expected to save companies from bankruptcy with a couple of hectic long-distance calls. My work is actually perfect for messaging.

But I'm sure there are some other things that you need for your happiness. Maybe you only feel good wearing black. Maybe you hate Monday mornings. Maybe the company coffee makes you sick. Maybe you need yoga exercises in your office chair. Whatever it is, if these things are necessary for you to stay sane you don't let people take them away. You don't compromise on happiness.

I’m Keeping the Job I Love

When you have a job you love (as I do) you must organize your work life according to your needs. Certainly, phone calls are an efficient form of communication. But it is a good example of local optimization. I aim to optimize my entire work life, not just individual conversations. To keep enjoying and improving my work, I need flow, awareness, documentation, and convenience.

I apologize to those who would prefer an easy Skype call. I feel privileged that I have a great job. But I would stop doing this awesome work if I was required to handle a dozen calls a day. That’s why I won’t do it, and I prefer no exceptions. By switching to messages, you allow me to keep loving my job, stay happy, and keep improving.

Thank you!

I wrote this post at a Starbucks in Tokyo. I didn’t need to silence my phone, because I knew nobody would be calling me. When I finished I just realized almost 2 hours had gone by. Without interruptions.

Where's the End?

I’m on the train back home from Paris to Brussels. This is my last day “on the road” (or “in the air”) for this year. I have been looking forward to this day for several weeks. While I enjoyed almost every day of doing courses and speaking at conferences, I could only enjoy my work because I knew there was an end.

The time I have at home, which starts tonight, will last for 4 weeks. Again, it has an end. After that another period of traveling will start. But the next period will be different from the period that ends now. (I will switch from training by myself to co-training with others.)

Every time I start something, I know there’s an end.

And every next period will be different from the last.

Some people have complained to me they get tired of being on an Agile team. They work sprint after sprint after sprint, for products that have no milestones or release dates anymore. They plan every week, they release every week, they evaluate every week. Basically, every week is the same.

And so people wonder, where is the end?

How is next time different from last time?

Most people need a sense of closure. They need to know things will end, and they want to know when.

My 4-month trip around the world was great. In just 4 months I’ve been to the USA, China, Australia, and a dozen countries in Europe. But it’s especially great that this awesome work life will end in about 15 minutes.