While looking for inspiration on how to solidly deliver the agile message throughout the layers of the business, I came across a keynote speech on vimeo delivered by Jurgen Appelo.

During the video, Jurgen was covering some of the concepts found in his recently released book Management 3.0.
The concepts and the manner in which he was explaining them rung true in my ears. It was complex thinking put simply and made obvious.
Jurgens humorous attitude, like a spoon full of sugar helped the concepts slip down. The video came to a close and I realized I’d been watching for an hour and a quarter. People in the office were looking at me wondering what had been so entertaining and I felt enriched in the concepts I believed in. I had to pass this along.

I was excited to hear Steve and the others at Dreamstar Cash were also taken by Jurgens words. It was put forward that Steve, Rodney, Ryan and myself attend the Management 3.0 training Jurgen himself was presenting in Barcelona. It is very rare in most companies to have the opportunity to take all the major stakeholders together on a course like this. With the Agile management course in conjunction with training for other team members, this was a prefect opportunity for the business to collectively solidify our knowledge and align under agile principals adding to our commitment of continually improving ourselves and delivering high quality customer focused solutions.

Following on from a Sunday afternoon train ride from Valencia to Barcelona and the compulsory evening bar visit, we all woke early and gathered in a conference room at Hotel Barceló, just seconds from the Sants train station and our hotel. There were 20 people in total attending the course and it was clear that we had all come together from our mixed backgrounds, homelands and roles, to invest more in ourselves and our businesses through Agile. The only regret was our tight travel plans didn’t allow us to spend much time interacting with our new friends following the course.

After an introduction from each of the attendees, Jurgen eased us in with the old misguided concepts, ideas and fads of management, backed up with how and why the new ideals and principals of Agile came to be. These fundamental building blocks were followed up with introductions to more complex ideas and made understandable with great use of metaphors while referencing decades of management research and literature to cement the ideas.
The concepts covered that can also be found in the Management 3.0 book were extended in the course with the closing section concentrating on change management. How can we as Agile leaders, facilitate other peoples to understanding of the concept benefits and buy-in from stakeholders and team members.

Some of the most fun and the largest takeaways came from the end of sections. We got together in groups and worked through problems using the newly taught techniques.

This was Ryan and myself attempting to explain in a story, our swimming pool metaphor to the group, which we believe was by far the most effective metaphor from the day

 These exercises were designed not only to solidify our understanding but also to be used as tools to take back to our workplace and help our teams, stakeholders and inevitably our customers.

One of the big takeaways I personally took was a very simple game that we played called moving motivators.
http://www.noop.nl/2011/09/moving-motivators-free-exercise.html
We took an idea that we were trying to incorporate in our business and using 10 simple cards we were all able to convince ourselves of the motivations behind accepting a change in the business. I saw this as a very important tool for deflecting push back on various concepts that have and will be rolled into the companies processes.

Jurgens delivery during the presentations kept the concepts fun and interesting and we did not realize how mentally tiring it had been until we wound down at the end of each day.
The course took on an extra personal touch when Jurgen walked with us and joined us for dinner, allowing us to get a little more from the experience. He even signed my copy of his book for the team.

Jurgen and the other course participants made these two days a worthy, entertaining and inspirational experience. We not only had a great time but it unified us and delivered us the knowledge and tools to really move forward with our team and expand into the future.

The book Management 3.0 on which the course is based is a more in depth look at most of the concepts covered on the course. The book follows the same fun attitude to reading and simple common sense examples used to explain complex systems ideas while giving solid takeaways that can be used right away in your team and organization. There is no match for being taught by Jurgen himself but reading this book will make it is a worthy ally on your path toward Agility.

 The whole experience was enjoyable and inspiring. It has lead to many great ideas which are being adopted in the near future and has posed intriguing new questions which can only lead to us expanding our knowledge further and delivering happiness to all those involved with Dreamstar Cash.