Another year has passed, 2011 was filled with major change around the world. Here is my personal look back at 2011, and the changes that took place in my own life:

Personal Growth

A big investment this year was taking the highly regarded Co-Active Coach Training Program. I felt it was time to bring in professional coaching skills to my work as an Agile coach and consultant. The training has expanded my coaching range, allowing me to go farther, more powerfully, in service to my clients. I’ve also started coaching one-on-one, with a focus on magnifying the efforts of other change agents.

After a couple of years of using Innovation Games® with teams, organizations and communities, I finally made it to one of Luke Hohmann’s excellent Innovation Games for Customer Understanding classes, so now I can slap on the IG Trained Facilitator badge to my web site.

Community Building / Citizen Engagement

Community building is a core passion of mine. I love applying the skills and knowledge gained in the workplace to the wider world of citizen engagement. Last January, I participated as a facilitator at the San Jose Citizen Budget Games, a truly unique event where citizens worked collaboratively to purchase items for the upcoming budget. The results were so compelling that in 2012 the city of San Jose plans to invite thousands to play in person and online. If politics were always this fun and engaging, we’d all be taking part.

At a local level, I had the privilege of working with the Sault Ste. Marie Council in a kickstart session designed to provide a foundation for working effectively together. I also designed and facilitated a Youth Forum for the Sault Youth Association using Innovation Games® to deliver compelling results for their strategic plan.

Ignite Sault continues to bring a diverse crowd together, with #4 (recap) and #5 (recap) near sell outs to hear local citizens share their ideas and passions in 5 minute talks.

My latest and most ambitious project is getting a collaborative workspace off the ground. Modelled on the highly successful Gangplank in Chandler, Arizona, Gangplank Sault aims to be THE go to place for creative, innovative work, where entrepreneurial types work together to build a new economic engine in Sault Ste. Marie. Through a series of events including Agility Cafes and Tuesday coworking meetups, momentum is building towards an official launch in early 2012.

Scaling Down

During those Agility Cafes, the same topics kept coming up. People were feeling stressed, overwhelmed, struggling to stay on top of things. That led me to co-create a workshop focused on personal performance, centred on the book Personal Kanban. The pilot workshop was a huge success. With demand high, plans are in the works to do a series of workshops with Jim Benson, friend and co-author. I’m really excited about impacting people’s lives through this simple yet profound way of working.

Another experiment, based on feedback I’ve received is the first of a series of online courses on productivity tools. I believe I’ve found a sweet spot of tools to help any consultant / solopreneur. The first one is on the dreaded expense filing, with plans for managing contacts, e-newsletters, social media and more.

Scaling Up

Another stretch for me came in working with large enterprises for the first time. Through partner consulting agreements with renowned Agile companies Enthiosys and Rally, I’ve had the opportunity to engage with the likes of Rackspace and Bank of America. One highlight for me was learning from Luke Hohmann himself how to build effective product road maps.Well, at least a starting point. Product management is a weak spot in the Agile landscape, one that I’m interested in addressing more.

wRap Up

I’m grateful for a year filled with new beginnings, with foundations set for greater things to come. We all have inspiring stories to share. What were your satisfying moments of 2011? Please share them below in the comments or link to a post elsewhere. May 2012 be a year filled with hope, joy and passion for what you love to do.

My kids and I prepared this little Christmas ditty for some holiday fun. Watch and enjoy!

I discovered I have a gift. Over the years, I’ve assembled a series of tools and processes that greatly streamlines my business operations, something important for a solopreneur like myself. When I talk to other consultants and busy professionals, they are delighted to learn about these improvements for their own work.

When I can help others focus on what they love to do well, instead of spending time on necessary back-office work, then we all benefit. I am especially motivated to help people doing work to make the world a better place. Through them, I too can make a greater impact.

To that end, I produced my 1st online video on expense filing. I’m really excited about this! Managing expenses used to be such a dreadful task for me, taking up lots of time and filled with errors of omission. I’d forget to file some things or details related to expense items. Now I have a system that allows me to file both paper and digital expenses and real-time, reducing costly delays and the time it takes to submit expenses. It’s even fun at times (gasp).

If expense filing is a drag for you, I invite you to take a look. Initial reviews are enthusiastic. All it takes is 30 minutes of your time to watch and you’ll benefit immediately from what you learned.

Join now, and you can use coupon “PAINFREE” to get $5 off until Friday, December 9, limited to first 50 subscribers.

Spend less time on expenses, more on what you love.

Xpenser is the tool that I use for expense management. You will need an account to take this course. Sign up for a free trial. I explain in the 2nd lecture how to configure it and get started.

Looking for the crowd-sourced mind map of the session? You can view/edit/copy/export it here.

Empowered individuals. Creative, participatory decision making. Connectedness and care for each other. These words apply equally to an Agile organization as to a healthy community. What might happen if we applied Agile values and methods to transform communities? I will share my experiences over the past year and up to Agile 2011 to nurture engaged community in my home town and beyond – tools and methods, trials and triumphs, how Agile applied to community differs from organization. This is bleeding edge stuff, an area of opportunity for Agile consultants to do work that transforms the world. My hope is to inspire and encourage others to join me in these efforts, and to meet others already on this journey.

Below is a copy of the experience report, best viewed in full screen mode.

Going to Agile 2011? There are two opportunities in the program to connect with me and other like-minded change agents:

1. Thursday, 9 am – 30 minute experience report interactive presentation.
2. Thursday, 11 am – 60 minute Open Jam event titled “Whatever the problem, community is the answer”. This was a proposed 90 minute session originally. I haven’t thought how I’ll modify the format for an Open Jam yet, though will likely shorten to one hour, depending on interest level. Space will be less than a dedicated room so not sure if World Cafe still best format. Ideas welcome.

Scrum, the most widely used Agile development framework got some major praise recently from outside its software origins from Steve Denning, a thought leader in leadership, management, innovation, and organizational storytelling:

If there was a Nobel Prize for management, and if there was any justice in the world, I believe that the prize would be awarded, among others, to Jeff Sutherland, Ken Schwaber and Mike Cohn for their contributions to the invention of Scrum.

Why such high praise? For Steve, Scrum creates the right environment to combine “rapid innovation with disciplined execution”. Steve rightly points out that the secret to success with Scrum is recognizing that Scrum is about a change in mind shift and culture, not a process that one merely follows. He uses Salesforce’s adoption of Scrum to validate his point:

Unlike many firms that have tried to implement Scrum, the leadership at Salesforce.com saw that Scrum involved not just the adoption of a new business process, or a framework for managing software development, but rather as a fundamental transformation of the way work was managed in the company. They realized that they were introducing a new  way of thinking, speaking and acting in the workplace for both managers and workers. They committed to it boldly and the results have been extraordinary.

Read more: Scrum is a Major Management Discovery [Forbes]

Our family enjoys hosting people from all over the world through a service called Couch Surfing. My daughter Malia and I put this map together of where some of our guests came from. We used Google Spreadsheets and a Google map widget.

If you are wondering “What’s an Agility Café?” then read this.

We welcomed two new people to the café, Birgit Kroll who owns Personal Fit Meal Catering and Sandra Hodge, owner of Sandra Hodge Studio. Regulars Robert Bonell of Bonell & Associates and Cindy Crawford, our host from Sault Downtown Association were also there.

Agility Cafe participants: Birgit, Bob, Sandra, Cindy (and me, Gerry)

Proposed topics:

Proposed topics

Topic map, what we discussed, learned, and will act upon:

Topic map (click to view in larger size)

Topic: What should I name my business?

Action for this week: decide whether or not to go with personal name as company name (at least for now)

Topic: How can I better manage my time?

Action for this week: make work to do visible by setting up a task board flip chart with columns To Do, In Progress, Done. Put all tasks on stickies and use board to track and prioritize work.

Topic: How can I get started video blogging?

Action for this week: set up a YouTube account and try uploading a test video recorded using camera.

Satisfaction scores

Satisfaction scores (out of 10)

The Café continues to resonate well as-is. In Sandra’s words, “I’ve been looking for something like this.”

Experiments for next time:

• start session at 12:05, so people should arrive no later than 12:00
• Birgit to brainstorm some ideas for shared lunch (who better?)

If you are wondering “What’s an Agility Café?” then read this to learn more and register for the next one.

Resort Brochure sample

How would you introduce Agile/Scrum to participants of a Tourism conference in 2 hours? For me, the Tourism Brochure game seemed like a natural fit. Participants get a chance to experience the entire Scrum process, from feature brainstorming and prioritization to product demo and retrospective.

All was well, until I discovered later that there might be 70 participants at the session (note to self: inquire about session size when making proposal). Yikes! I then went to work on ways to scale the game with just one facilitator aka my plan to keep my sanity intact.

Scaling the resort brochure game

Preparation was key. I spent an inordinate amount of time creating supplementary material:

• sample brochure to see what the final destination will look like
• task boards and progress charts drawn up for each team
• pre-made backlog of stickies for each team (thanks Don for the feature suggestions!)
• slides (see below) to indicate at every step what we are doing, how much time we have and when to stop current activity
• music to play during activities, with the end of the music signalling end of activity. My iPod came in handy for this.
• material kits for each table, with plenty of fun stuff to keep the spirits up
• a concept map to fill in the Scrum Framework and a sample note taking sheet

Insights from facilitating

• Provide clear instructions for people to understand concepts, which includes multiple learning methods. This workshop in some ways ran smoother than some smaller ones I’ve facilitated. There was less confusion, increased flow of activity. You can scale much better with the right supports in place.
• Keep steps as simple as possible. Each step in the process was kept small and focused, making it easier to follow.
• Demonstrate by example. For the product review/demo, I helped one team do their demo while the other groups watched. That gave me a chance to go through what needed to be done and why. It produced several teaching moments, and increased the value of the other group’s product review sessions.
• Keep the fun and energy levels up to make everything go smoother. The music and materials added a sense of play and excitement to the game.
• 8 teams need more than one facilitator. Had there been one more person, teams could have had questions answered more quickly, or gone less astray during an activity. To compensate, I added time to some activities in order to get around to tables.
• Sharon Bowman‘s Training from the Back of the Room continues to yield excellent results for me. I had plenty of energy left, even after a hectic two hours because the participants, not me, were the centre of attention. Opening and closing discussions, small table activities kept them busy and learning together, with me as their ‘guide on the side’ as Sharon likes to say.

If you are wondering “What’s an Agility Café?” then read this.

Downtown Association back door

We welcomed two new people to the café, Trevor Swenson and a co-owner of Scripture Gift and Book shop, whose name I’ve sadly forgotten. I haven’t forgotten the amazing brownies she brought however.

Cindy had lots to update us on since our last session, she is really on fire. The other half of the session was spent pondering the feasibility / desirability of a co-working space in Sault Ste. Marie. The idea resonated with everyone present, with a number of ideas for how to keep building momentum. Andrew Ross, expect some emails from us. Darryl Buck from RBB Innovations is keen on the idea as well, so we’ll continue to discuss this with him.

Mind map of conversation (click on photo to view in larger size)

Overall rating this time: 7

Likes:

• venue
• open discussion
• rich update from Cindy
• silent brainstorming

Improve:

• time was short for topic discussions
• interruptions by people coming in late

Experiments for next time:

• time box updates
• expand Agility Café overview online so newbies can become more familiar with format before attending
• pull out mind map from last session for during the update

If you are wondering “What’s an Agility Café?” then read this to learn more and register for the next one.

Agility Café Topic / Action Mind Map (click image to see larger version)

We met for the first time at the Downtown Association, in their spacious board room overlooking Queen St, the sunlight pouring in. Combined with the quiet and large table for note taking, this created an ideal space for rich discussion. This was the best café yet, just keeps getting better.

See the mind map for most of the details. Note that:

1. Each topic is listed, with the challenges, observations and ideas captured.
2. Each person whose topic is discussed selects one or more actions to take in the next week. Those action steps are circled in red.
3. We also check in at the start. Cindy had a lot of exciting breakthroughs to share (highlighted in yellow). That’s what makes this all worthwhile, seeing people get excited, moving past obstacles and closer to their goals.

Topic: Creativity in the Workplace

Darren gives a one minute summary of what we discussed and action steps he plans to take:

Overall scores out of 10:

• 9, 9, 8, 10
• we liked: no noise, sun, focus and flow of conversation

Improvements to get a perfect score:

1. better parking
2. more people for next session

Want to know more about Agility Cafés? Read when they happen, what you’ll get out of them, and how to register.

Why go to an agility café? People keep coming back because it’s

• a chance to connect and collaborate with a diverse group of people
• get useful, practical tips and support to apply immediately
• fun

Next café is on Feb 25 @ the Downtown Association. Read more and register.

Topics from the last two sessions:

1. End of road discussions – requests for assistance outside of our capacity
2. How to create more chances between each other to collaborate?
3. How to handle marketing multiple services?
4. How to prioritize projects?
5. How to manage committees as clients?

And… the results:

End of road discussions – requests for assistance outside of our capacity

Key takeaways:

• Make it clear what can and can’t be done, in a friendly way. FAQs are useful, provide information in form of scenario/response.
• Not all customers can be served and satisfied. It’s ok to choose who your customers are.
• Choose not to listen to ongoing complaints – set boundaries

How to create more chances between each other to collaborate

How to manage marketing multiple services (or, how to gain focus and traction when dealing with many choices)

How to prioritize

Attributes to prioritize on

Key takeaways:

• Decide on the prioritization attributes that matter, and use those to compare options. Profit, capacity, deadlines are a few examples.
• Give yourself breathing room to be able to make choices, to re-prioritize as needed
• Don’t try to please everyone! Making choices means choosing not to do some things, or to delay responding to requests until more important stuff is taken care of.

How to work with clients who decide everything by committee

Ideas for working with committees

Problem: committees taking too long to make decisions, or re-visiting decisions again and again, thus delaying project and value, increasing cost.

Ideas:

• Find a lever to motivate decisive action: project cost, schedule, or scope reduction due to increase costs and delays.
• Set up contracts to provide incentive to collaborate. There are examples of Agile contracts that do this, encouraging both sides to work as a team to deliver faster, reduce cost and increase value.

At this café, we came up with 3 topics, and got through two:

Bill Murphy shared his situation, with sales agents working individually in various parts of Canada, and a desire to have them as a group better share ideas, build camaraderie and feel connected. Listen to his 1 minute video summary for what we came up with:

About Agility Café

The Agility Café happens every Friday at Dish, 12 – 1:15 pm. Register here to get one of the limited seats. Drop-ins welcome too.

We eat business obstacles for lunch. What’s in your way of delivering more value, at higher quality, with wayyyy more fun?

Format is simple. Come with a topic or two in mind or just an open mind. We’ll brainstorm at the beginning all the topics people want to discuss, then prioritize them. We’ll try and get through as many as we can. Learn from each other, and get your caffeine fix. When it’s over, it’s over.

This is a free event, an experiment in informal coaching and mentoring, and building community.

from eric731 on Flickr

The start of a new year means budget time once again. Councillors have dozens, maybe hundreds of choices to make, and the tradeoffs aren’t often clear. It’s a daunting task to make those decisions, especially for new councillors. They want to better understand the priorities of citizens regarding key budget initiatives, but how in a time and cost-effective manner, in a way that people want to participate?

Engagement with a twist: the city of San José brought in community leaders last Saturday to try their hand at making budget decisions (Mercury News article). They played budget prioritization games, a variation of an Innovation Game® called Buy a Feature. Diverse groups of citizens sat at tables, each possessing play money to purchase items. The key is that no one has enough money to buy the items they care most about – they have to persuade others to pool their money together, and that’s the magic of the game. Each table group also had a list of reductions to choose from to free up money to spend, provided they reached unanimous consent to cut something, like the building of a new police station.

Photos of game materials (best viewed in full screen):

I was there, at the invitation of Luke Hohmann, CEO of Innovation Games, to work as a volunteer observer and learn from the experience, in the hopes of holding a similar event in the Sault. For corporations, this type of event isn’t so unique, but for government, it’s pioneering stuff. My role was to capture both quantitative data, like who spent money on what, and qualitative data, like why an item was purchased, how the discussions went, what items were easy for the group not to purchase. After 90 minutes I had 30 index cards worth of data from our table.

Photos of my work and the team (best viewed in full screen):

As an observer, the passion people have about their city was evident, the options they had to choose from mattered. They struggled between choices, like funding a children’s health initiative vs a fund for community-based organizations. To help citizens, subject matter experts from the city were available to answer questions. People are passionate about their community, and when given a chance for meaningful engagement, they jump to the challenge.

So what was the result?

The Innovation Games team will report back on the results within a couple of weeks, which I will then share.

I interviewed two participants to get their impressions. In a nutshell, what I heard was the event went well beyond their expectations, based on their experience from previous years. This one was highly collaborative, informative, and even (gasp) FUN! Watch the short 1 minute videos to see for yourself.

A true measure of an event like this is that besides better understanding citizen priorities, a community grows closer together. This event delivered on that. They heard each other’s stories and dreams. They shared their diverse knowledge to make better decisions, collectively, and they had a fun time getting to know each other.

I believe this is just the start, an appetizer for what is possible in how citizens and government can engage each other. My intention is to learn from the San José experience and try a similar event in my home town of Sault Ste. Marie. I’m already getting enthusiastic feedback from members of council and Mayor Amaroso, who are also passionate about citizen engagement. Thanks to Luke and his hard-working Innovation Games® team, who poured in over two months of effort to make this one day happen. Citizen engagement, stronger community and better budgets – that’s worth investing in.

More photos:

Agility Café has found its home! Fridays at noon at the Dish. Last week we tackled two issues raised at the café:

• how to avoid becoming too overwhelmed
• how to nurture the creative process (though we discovered a deeper underlying need)

You can watch short 2 min summaries of both discussions below, starring the lovely Darren Jorgensen.

The café this Friday is the last one this month, sadly as I will be away the following two Fridays. If you have something you want help with, or just want to get out of the office, then come out and join us this week.

RSVP for Café #4 on Friday, Jan 14 @ 12 pm, or just show up.

Jessica and Darren

Jennifer Wendling from Fuzed Notions and Darren Jorgensen with his partner from Molly Media Studios joined me last Friday for warm eats and dialogue at the 2nd ever Business Agility Café. It was as fun as productive since Jennifer and Darren know each other so well. Darren was beaming at how reducing multitasking is helping Molly Media get more stuff done, something he learned about at the Business Agility workshop a couple of weeks ago.

Topics we covered:

1. From Jennifer: how to decrease time from completing projects to getting invoices out? Some of Jennifer’s projects take one or even two months before the invoice goes out, creating cash flow issues and awkwardness asking for payments well after the project is done. We quickly recognized that there are many steps in the process, with Jen involved in most of them, leading to delays. I left Jen with the task of documenting the workflow from project completion to invoice sent to see visually what is happening and how long each step takes. A favourite quote of mine is you can’t manage what you can’t see.
2. From Darren: using a task board for video production projects. We discussed adding checklists for each status of a task, so that a task cannot move from one status to another. Looking forward to seeing photos!
3. From Darren: how to find a sustainable pace – too much work leading to burnout. Darren’s new studio will be ready in then new year (yay!) making it less tempting to do work from home (when the equipment isn’t there). I talked about how time boxes and Scrum can create a rhythm and flow that provides the confidence to know when things will get done, lessening the need to work around the clock due to worry about uncertainty.
4. From Darren and Jennifer: how to reduce feast or famine cycles. Jennifer made some excellent points about nurturing relationships on an ongoing basis, keeping in contact with people so they think of you when a need for your services arises. Most of all Jennifer drove home the need for a marketing plan, so these activities align with company goals and are baked into the work plan instead of being starved for time. Good points that I took home with me!

Having done two of these cafés now, in the spirit of inspect and adapt, I’m planning to make the following improvements for future cafés:

1. At the start, give returning participants a brief chance to update others on their experiments since the last café. Participants can use the Business Agility group to provide more-indepth information if they want to.
2. Provide concept maps for people to jot down information as it’s discussed. Concept maps are a visual tool useful for capturing small bits of information in relation to each other. Writing down helps to retain learned information.
3. Record and publish a video summary of each topic discussed, with new insights gained and planned next steps.
4. Use the last 10 minutes to reflect on what we learned, the format and next steps for each participant.

Would you like to join us for the next Business Agility Café? Join the Business Agility group to be notified when the next one will be scheduled in the new year. It’s a low-volume email list for sharing and supporting each other in our experiments to increase value for our clients, our teams, ourselves and the world. What more reasons do you need?

Today a few of us from last week’s Business Agility workshop gathered at Dish to tackle issues getting in our way to delivering more value for ourselves, our companies and the clients we serve.

The format is simple: bring a topic or two you want help with, together we’ll prioritize them and tackle them in order of importance to the group. When the owner of the topic is satisfied with the response, we move on to the next one.

For our first gathering, we had 3 excellent topics:

At the end, everyone rated the hour from 1 to 10 on a value received scale and shared what would have garnered a perfect score. Everyone scored high. The only improvement offered was one person’s wish to be more prepared with questions. All in all, a great first experiment.

Want to come to the weekly Agility Café? Contact Gerry to be put on the mailing list.

Food tip: the eggplant peanut soup at Dish pure awesomesauce

I’ve never been to Council Chambers before, except to see my friend Mhem from Burma become a Canadian citizen. On Monday, I’ll made my second trip for another historic event. Debbie Amaroso became the first female mayor in Sault Ste. Marie. Debbie is an incredible person and I am excited about the passion she has for community engagement.

I was there with my iPhone, OWLE, and tripod streaming the event live. You can watch the recording below. The best part is the first five minutes, with the pipe and drum procession, singing of O Canada by a darling little girl, followed by Mayor Amaroso’s swearing in and speech.

Reposted from the Sault Ste. Marie Innovation Centre web site:

Join the Sault Ste. Marie Innovation Centre on Monday  November 29, 2010 for the Business Agility Workshop. This full-day workshop will be held at the Algoma Water Town Inn from 9:00 am until 4:30 pm. The cost to attend is $100, however if you register by November 17 you can take advantage of our early-bird discount and pay just $50.

Learn how to accelerate business performance by:

• Eliminating bottlenecks to increase productivity
• Embracing change for competitive advantage in an increasingly fast-paced world
• Fostering creativity and innovation in the workplace
• Delivering higher value faster by focusing on what is most important
• Cultivating a motivated and happy workforce.

The workshop will feature interactive and hands-on learning exercises, focused instruction on techniques, time to discuss unique challenges, and practical tools and knowledge that you can begin using in your workplace immediately.

This workshop normally has a value of $400, but is being made available here for $100.
Register by November 17 – You can save even more with our early-bird discount and pay just $50.

Download the registration form here

OR

Register by contacting:

Angie Wagner: (705)942-7927 ext. 3133 or awagner@ssmic.com

Workshop facilitators:

Gerry Kirk helps organizations and groups self-organize to generate creative and innovative work spaces for higher productivity and happier environments. He works as a coach, trainer and consultant, specializing with small medium enterprises and distributed environments. Before coaching Gerry spent 10 years as a developer, QA manager, then project manager. His passion is building a community where everyone can reach their true potential and together create astonishing results. Locally, that includes Ignite Sault, Soo Podcamp and on a bigger scale Change Camp Sault.

Selena Delesie: Selena Delesie is a coach, trainer and consultant who runs her own company, Delesie Solutions. She has more than 10 years of experience in the software industry, primarily coaching, leading and managing for a broad-range of leading-edge technologies. Selena facilitates the evolution of good teams and organizations into great ones, using individualized and team-based coaching and interactive training experiences. She is an active speaker, participant and leader in a variety of software associations and conferences. Links to Selena’s published works, blog, website and contact information can be found at www.selenadelesie.com.

Agile 2010 is just around the corner, and I’m doing a little happy dance as this is the first time I’m leading a session at a major conference. Yeah, that rocks, and I’m team up with the talented and equally good looking Michael Sahota.

Agile 2010 Session: Look before you leap – Agile readiness assessments done right
When: Thursday, 1:30 pm (90 minutes)
Level: Expert
Who should come: Geared to experienced coaches hired to help new clients transition to Agile

Why attend?

A common approach to help get clients started with Agile is to undertake a readiness assessment to:

1. Understand current challenges and goals
2. Understand the environment and technical practices
3. Decide what techniques (Scrum, Kanban, collocation, pairing, etc) might be suitable
4. Build a plan with them of what a transition to Agile might look like

Unfortunately there is very little written about how to go about this. Hence, this knowledge-sharing workshop to define this better.

The workshop involves active participation so come ready to share your experiences and learn from others.

Workshop road-tested

We’ve overhauled the session twice, after taking it on the road to Agile CoachCamp Canada and running a condensed online session. We’ve discovered that what coaches like more than anything else is a chance to connect and share stories, so we’ll provide ample opportunity for that, and the connections to keep the conversation going afterwards.

The photos are from the online workshop. The final product was a collection of specific activities coaches are already using. Given how much was done in a short time virtually, we’re anticipating a huge wall of collected wisdom at the conference!

Reasons given why coaches conduct readiness assessments (click to view larger)

Assembled bag of tips and tricks for assessments (click to view larger)

Learning Outcomes

• Have a clear understanding of assessment objectives and purpose
• Leave with a variety of experienced-based approaches to assessments, understanding strengths and weaknesses of each, as determined by participants
• Become aware of challenges and pitfalls, and steps to mitigate them
• Have greater confidence in conducting your next assessment
• Expand your connections with others doing assessments

There are lots of great sessions in the program on agile adoption, ranging from specific approaches to case studies. This workshop is the only one specifically on how to get started with an engagement by using an Agile assessment.

We do plan to post the results of the workshop, possibly in an e-book, so come contribute your knowledge and become famous.

P.S. This post is also on the Agile 2010 Community web site, which I put together to help people share, connect, organize. You can promote your session there too.

Three weeks ago I had the awesome privilege of facilitating an open space event for the first time. Called ChangeCamp, it was held in my home town of Sault Ste. Marie. This is my reflection on the day as an organizer and facilitator, in the hopes other ChangeCamp groups can learn and be inspired by our local experiment.

ChangeCamp Sault is both the fulfillment and start of a personal dream. I attended the first ChangeCamp at Toronto in January of 2009, then my first experience of open space. Over 200 participants actively engaged in answering the question: how can we re-imagine how government and citizens engage each other in an age of participation? It was an exciting day, full of shared ideas, new connections and belief that we can act to shape our collective future. I knew then that I wanted to create that same experience in my own city, which would be something entirely new. In open space, the people who come set the agenda and engage in open participatory dialogue. At the time the idea felt risky – how would people respond?

The event was held at Sault College in the Native Student Centre, a circular room with plenty of glass windows to let in the sun, a perfect gathering spot. The College was very supportive, providing the facilities at no cost and even covering some of the food cost. We had a lunch catered by their food provider, provided free to participants.

We were pleased to have over 50 people register for the event, given a busy weekend of events and the start of summer holidays. The group had a healthy mix of old and young, men and women, newcomers and long-time residents. To my surprise, I knew hardly anyone there. Due to other events a number of people left early or came late, which made facilitating a little more challenging.

We chose to keep the day shorter by having 3 rounds of sessions, including a ‘getting to action’ time at the end of the day, and a brief lunch. My experience with PodCamp is that people run out of energy mid-way through the afternoon. This turned out to be a good choice. A number of people had left before the end, and those that stayed still had energy for the closing circle.

Setting the stage during the opening circle felt like the most important part of facilitating the day. I shared some of the history that led up to ChangeCamp, including Ignite Sault and Soo Podcamp, two smaller event ‘experiments’ that were tried to test the waters. I asked people to get up and sit beside two people they didn’t know and, without instructions, people started introducing themselves – a healthy sign. The rules of open space: 1/n, bumblebee and butterfly were covered, and the grid explained. People were challenged to make the conversations they came to have happen.

What was the result?

Mark Kuznicki, founder of ChangeCamp likes to say that there are two outcomes: the connections made and the content created. Both are valuable. Through being connected, people felt encouraged, with greater hope for our community’s future. One newcomer remarked that she now felt a part of the community.

My great epiphany is that these connections are the seeds of change. No matter our cause, our ambitions, our hopes and our passions, to bring about change, we must also invest in building community, for a connected community is at the root of all the change we seek. I’ve spent time on many causes and issues over the years, often feeling like little progress is being made, or that bringing about change is hard, at times grueling work. ChangeCamp showed me a different path. I’m having more fun and feeling more successful by nurturing community, through which change will occur.

Tips for organizers

These were essential ingredients for us having a successful event:

1. Live the ChangeCamp experience as you organize the event. When the organizing team works in an open, participative way, where individual passions are nurtured and talents harnessed, you have the nucleus for a successful event. I used my Agile experience to help with team formation, planning and facilitation.
2. People matter. This was the most diverse group I’ve ever worked with. We had marketing, technical and political savvy. One person had a lot of spare time to do a lot of necessary grunt work. Combined we had numerous key connections in the community. A group of 7 people felt about right for us.
3. Tools matter. We’re all busy volunteers who need to work together effectively with the limited time we have. Digital tools are necessary, but only work if there is buy-in. Our group found a “sweet spot” of simplicity and feature-set that amplified our efforts significantly. Next week, we’ll be presenting our tool set at a ChangeSalon event. We’ll post a follow-up to that event to let you in on our tool stack.
4. Event design matters. Mark Kuznicki, ChangeCamp papa helped a lot with shaping our event. Combine expert knowledge from someone like Mark with knowledge of the community and your goals for the event to help determine the best format. We were fortunate to have learned from an earlier event in designing this one.

I feel like I could easily write 4 more posts on our experience, but we’ll see. My commitment to blog writing is not what it used to be.

Good luck with your next event. Hopefully I’ve shared something useful. Come back in about a week to learn more about tools that can help your team succeed.

My experience of church growing up was that of an extended family. We attended small rural churches of no more than 50 people. Many a Saturday night after church (there was one paster for 4 parishes, Saturday at 5 pm was our time) was spent at someone’s house, where the adults chatted about deeper matters over egg salad sandwiches and the kids played all sorts of games. Fr. Eric, our priest back then and still a good friend likes to remind me of the time he suggested I find a mass to go to while out of town at a hockey tournament, to which I replied, “Why would we go? We don’t know anybody there.” From a young age, the people I gathered with was integral to my faith experience.

Church continued to have a significant place in my life. I stayed active, serving on parish council, organizing a youth group, leading social justice initiatives. I remember organizing a skit with the youth with me as Jésus, a Mexican coffee grower promoting fair trade. We travelled from parish to parish with our message and a car full of packaged coffee. In university I copied Protestant friends by bringing a notepad to church to take notes during the sermons. I even considered becoming a priest, attending a come-and-see weekend at St. Peter Seminary in London as part of my discernment process. In the end, Rowena won and the church lost, as Eric put it in his homily for our wedding.

Fast forward to today, where I have been seriously struggling for over a year to find meaning and fulfillment in my experience of church. In a world where I can interact, dialogue and connect, sitting passively in a pew, going through the same rituals every Sunday no longer satisfies. As a community we do not know each other, going through the motions week after week. Some continue to do volunteer work year after year, despite how unfulfilling it is. What has changed? The world and my faith journey have evolved; the church experience has not.

My work is partly to blame. As an Agile coach, my goal is to help organizations and teams transform their experience of work, where the core roots: respect, courage, focus, commitment and openness can flourish. I have tasted many times the fruits of collaborative work, where all voices are valued and heard, leading to consensus decision making. The Agile community has taught me we do our best work when we can be creative, have fun, feel a sense of purpose; that servant leadership and self-organized teams trump top-down control for results.

Agile is a way of looking at and experiencing the world that matches my personal values, values that were shaped in part by those years growing up in small church communities. I use my experience with Agile to better family life – my wife and I have weekly planning and retrospectives. Agile training helps me create an inclusive atmosphere for volunteer efforts like ChangeCamp Sault. I have often imagined the beauty of a self-organized, empowered church community.

Last October, I began an experiment to apply Agile to take steps towards creating vibrant church community. I was blown away by what this small group accomplished in just their first session – imagine an entire parish community engaged in creating its own vision! Imagine being part of a community actively working on “lives connected”, “positive power”, “bonding mission” and “spiritual partnership”. That’s what I long for. Of course, defining and creating are not the same thing, and I soon realized that major, fundamental change within the Catholic church would be necessary to achieve this vision. Governance model turned upside down. Parishioners given real authority and input. Focus in the mass shifted away from priest, choir and ministers to the people in the pews. Major systemic change that feels so far away from becoming reality.

Unfortunately, there is no real dialogue about the elephant in the sanctuary. Well, I’ve had enough suffering. Sadly, after almost 40 years, church has become an impediment to my faith journey. I feel a sense of loss, with no place to go, only that God is calling me to something greater. I know I am not alone. Starting now, our family begins a journey outside traditional church, meeting in our home, praying for direction. We invite others who thirst for more to come join us and help create that vibrant faith community. In a follow-up post, I will share more about this turn to organic church. I do not know where all this will lead, only that I have to go this way to be true to myself and my beliefs. Egg salad sandwiches optional.