It’s been a couple of years since I shared my insights through an email newsletter. I figured it’s the right time to re-start, without spamming you. Hence a post instead of email.
In the past year, it’s become harder to learn from other people face to face. Social media are also becoming so overwhelming, it’s hard to pick up strong insights through the noise. This is what I aim for: to make your life easier. Me and my team pick up strong insights and share those with you.
My favorite book of 2021
Every now and then you read this book that makes you go ‘wow’. No rules rules is one of those. Reed, one of the Netflix founders, describes how he created a unique, empowering culture that led to immense growth.
One of the principles I love is ‘act in Netflix best interest’ to make decisions about money. They trust people and assume they know what’s best. Even if the decision is about a $1 million dollar investment, any person at any level can make an investment decision.
When booking a trip, this principle tells us that while booking business class for a 2 hour flight might be in our best interest, it’s not in the company’s best interest.
Creating a feedback culture
One of the central themes in an agile transformation is openness, transparency and feedback. This might be one of the hardest habits to change in a culture that promotes the opposite.
When we’re taught from a young age to keep opinions for ourselves and never question a senior, how can we give feedback? At Ekipa, we’ve started using Plai to provide our team with the tools to give feedback easily. But tools don’t solve the puzzle. Netflix has defined the 4 A’s of feedback:
Using guidance like this, people can reflect on the way they give and receive feedback. Try it out in your team! In your next retrospective, share these 4 points, discuss them and then elicit open feedback.
Start Agile
Since many organizations are embarking on an agile journey. I’ve tried to gather all the basics to get started in a new ebook.
While writing it, I realized that this book is exactly what the title implies: a way to start. I was new to Agile transformation in bigger companies 5 years ago.
The past years, by co-creating transformation with my team and our customers, I have learned a lot. And that leads me to this: becoming agile is hard work. Download the book and see if you’re ready to get started.
If you are, reach out to me so we can have a discussion about co-creating a modern version of your organization, full of entrepreneurship and innovation.
Agile habits
Transformation requires many people to change the way to see work, leadership, organization, and passion. While it’s easy to get started using a framework like scrum, changing habits isn’t.
Decision-making, financial insight, giving feedback, co-creation, empowerment are examples of habits we need to change in ourselves and the people around us to create a modern organization.
In our podcast, which will launch in May of this year, we want to have discussions with people about those habits. If you are or know someone who has insights and experience on changing habits to support transformation, drop me an email.
Ekipa +
Ekipa practices what it preaches. In order to touch more people with the agile spark + reinvent our own service, we’ve created a transformation platform: Ekipa +. The current version has e-courses, supported by open coach calls and a discord channel where you can meet our coaches.
We’re developing tools to support the agile way of working (OKR tool, 360 degree feedback tool, and more), along with an IXL-style set of materials (playbooks, slide decks, case studies) to accelerate your learning. Check out the current subscriptions if you’re serious about your agile learning journey.
