Agile Management | NOOP.NL

Ring the Bell!

A few years ago I discussed some organizational challenges with my former CEO, and I noted the employees in our company rarely took time to enjoy their successes. People were always working hard and they never seemed to celebrate the things that went well. I suggested that maybe we should have a big bell in the office, so that we could ring it whenever there was something to celebrate. The idea of a bell came to my mind because I wanted something that would be visible, inviting, and impossible to ignore when used.

One week later, to my big surprise, the CEO brought me a copper ship’s bell and said, “Here’s your bell. Now do something useful with it.” I convinced the office police manager to hang it in the middle of our big open office space, and I let everyone in the company know that every employee was allowed to ring the bell, if they had something to celebrate.

From that moment, every few weeks or so, someone would enthusiastically yank on the rope, for signing a government contract, deploying a .NET web application, or for something less strenuous, such as running a marathon, or birthing a baby. Any reason was valid. (I once rang the bell for having more visitors on my blog than the company had on its website. It was just my excuse to enjoy another celebration.)

When the sound of the ship’s bell blared through the office, all employees immediately got together for a 10-minute celebration. Our people knew that the bell was often a signal for free cake or cookies, which probably contributed to the quick and easy gathering of the entire work force around the coffee machine. The person who rang the bell then usually took a few minutes to explain what was being celebrated. There was enthusiastic applause. Yay! And then the eating started. The last time I heard the bell was when the CEO announced my departure from the company.

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

Live Your Message

I try to practice what I preach.

I think it’s the only sustainable way to grow a business.

When a consultant says “management should trust people to self-organize”, it is wise to wonder about any forms of command-and-control the consultant might apply to his business.

When an organization promotes Scrum or Kanban, it is useful to seek any evidence that the organization is indeed using Scrum or Kanban to manage its own workflows.

When a speaker promotes complexity or systems thinking, you would be wise to wonder about the nature of his presentation style and personal communication, and how this affects a greater whole.

My own goal is to help people be happier in their jobs. Therefore you could ask yourself whether I’m happy in my own job (I am!), and what I do for the people I work with.

The proof is in the pudding.

Yesterday someone in Finland asked me, “Our sales team sells products to customers that I don’t want to use myself in our organization. What should I do?”

I said, “Maybe you should quit your job.”

 

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?

 

Empowerment, That Horrible Word

What scientists call distributed control is usually called empowerment by management consultants. However, some experts don’t like the term. The word seems to suggest that people are “disempowered” by default and need to be “empowered” by their managers. Perhaps that was indeed its original meaning, and I agree that this could be seen as disrespectful.

On the other hand, I believe networked systems are more powerful than hierarchical systems, because it’s so much harder to destroy them. By distributing control in an organization we not only empower workers, we also empower the managers. Maybe we should see it as empowerment of the system, not of the people. Remember the last time you were sick? I bet you felt quite powerless as an individual person against that tiny distributed virus. I’m just glad your distributed immune system was even more powerful, or else I had one reader less!

Plenty of arguments in favor of empowerment are cited in management literature, such as improving worker satisfaction, increasing profitability, and strengthening competitiveness. All of it is true. But never forget that the real reason for empowerment is to improve system effectiveness and survival. We enable the organization to be more resilient and agile, by delegating decision making and distributing control.

All over the world, knowledge workers are becoming better educated and more able to take matters in their own hands. And the more educated people are, the less effective authoritarian power works. In many organizations teams understand their work better than their managers do. Therefore the primary concern of management should be empowerment, not supervision. We aim for a more powerful system, not better controlled people.

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

Delegation Requires Boundaries

The origin of the word management is from Italian, meaning “taking care of horses”.

All I know about horses is what I picked up from fantasy literature. I know they often have saddles, bridles, spurs, bits, shoes (not Italian), and long beautiful manes that always blow the right way when warriors need to stab an enemy to death. The ones who just go and sit on a wild horse and yell “yee-haw!” are usually dead before page 50.

The caretaking of horses includes giving direction and setting boundaries. Quite often, when managers delegate work to teams they don’t give them clear boundaries of authority. By trial and error teams need to find out what they can and cannot do, usually incurring some emotional damage along the way. This was described by Donald Reinertsen as the “discovery of invisible electric fences” [Reinertsen, Managing the Design Factory p.107]. Repeatedly running into an electric fence is not only a waste of time and resources, but it also kills motivation, and it ruins the coat of the horse. With no idea of what the invisible boundaries are around it, the horse will prefer to stand still and just eat some biscuits.

Reinertsen suggests creating a list of key decision areas to address this problem. The list can include things like “Working hours”, “Key technologies”, “Product design”, and “Team membership”. A manager should make it perfectly clear what the team’s authority level is for each key decision area in this list. When the horse can actually see the fence, there will be less fear and pain. And the farther away the fence, the more the horse will enjoy its territory.

It also works the other way around, because of the reflexive relationship of responsibility and accountability. A team usually delegates work to management, such as “Rewards and remuneration”, “Business partnerships”, “Market strategy”, and “Parking space”. The horse is not required to simply accept any kind of boundaries, constraints, and abuse.

Nature gave the horse strong teeth and hind legs for a reason.

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

Purpose Over Targets

I recently gave someone my business card, because he asked for it during an interesting conversation. A few days later, to my surprise, it turns out he had added me to his personal business mailing list, and I received one promotional email after another.

I hate that.

The purpose of my work is to help many people be happy in their work. Of course, I also have a mailing list. I use it to send people articles that maybe will help them improve their jobs, and be happy. In order to push my performance I could set myself a target, such as “2500 subscribers before the end of the year”. By reaching more people I could possibly help more people, and fulfill my purpose. And yes, every now and then I ask my contacts, “Do you want to be on my mailing list?” Nothing wrong with that, I think.

Of course, I could add all 7,000 contacts in my database to the mailing list. That would make me reach my target right now. Woohoo! But, would it help me with my purpose? I don’t think so.

People would hate me.

That’s the difference between a purpose and a target. And that’s why I don’t like how many apply the SMART model for goals, because the SMART model moves people’s attention away from a purpose to a target. Your targets are useless if you can’t identify your purpose.

A well-defined SMART goal helps you decide how to reach your target. Your purpose should help you realize how not to reach it.

If you agree, why don’t you add yourself to my mailing list?

 

I Hated Management, Now I Love It

I remember well that I hated management, many years ago. I hated checking whether people had done what I told them to do. I hated doing performance appraisals. I hated discussing individual salaries and bonuses. I hated aligning teams with top management’s latest business strategy. And I hated wearing a suit, while the nice people were wearing sweaters.

Now I know why.

It hated bad management. And I hated failing all the time.

Now I love giving direction to the Management 3.0 program. I love finding intrinsic motivation, and discussing constraints with self-organizing trainers and facilitators. I love leading classes and audiences, and measuring progress when training or speaking. I love being one of the founders of both ALE and Stoos. I love conceiving and nurturing the Happy Melly business. And I love wearing jeans and sweaters.

I also know why.

I love good management. And I love success. :-)