Video Introducing #Stoos to the Scrum Breakfast

Yesterday, the LAS Coreteam organized its first Scrum Breakfast without me. To fill in the spot left by the thought for the day, Kai asked me a few questions over Skype and edited them into a short video. The main topic was Stoos, but we also talked about this years Lean Agile Scrum Conference and the Scrum Retrospectives. You can watch the video or read the (partial) transcript below.

Q: The last I heard from you, you were getting ready for the Stoos gathering. What was the Stoos Gathering?

A: In January, a diverse group of 21 thought leaders, executives, and coaches from around the world met on the Stoos. Our inspiration was the Snowbird Lodge gathering with produced the Agile Manifesto.

Our invitation went beyond Agile and Lean practitioners to include Business, Leadership and HR communities. This group identified much common ground on how management should be and a tremendous discrepancy between that and how most companies are actually run. For instance, we believe organizations can become learning networks of individuals that create value. We believe the role of leaders should include the stewardship of the living rather than the management of the machine.

We want to facilitate the tipping point – the sustainable transformation of management from the command and control philosophy of the 20th century into something compatible with the context of the 21st century. I believe that Scrum, Kanban and Radical Management are examples of ways to “do Stoos,” and other approaches will surely arise.

Q. How can people in Switzerland get involved?

A. Many ways: First join the conversation on linked in and twitter. The group is called the Stoos Network and it has a Linked In group, and our twitter tag is #Stoos (with two o’s). Second, create or join and build community in your region to develop and exchange information on doing Stoos — much like the Scrum Breakfasts. John Styffe is organizing a group in Zurich and I have started a Leadership Breakfast in Washington (together with the American University Business School).

Q. Is that why you are in Washington?

A. The driver was that the building I live in is being renovated and we had to go somewhere for 6 months. I had both personal a professional reasons for choosing the DC area. Steve Denning, the visionary behind Radical Management lives nearby. I want to work with him to make Radical Management a widely accepted approach for doing Stoos across the organization. So I plan to work on three things:

1. Create a course with Steve Denning around Radical Management and doing Stoos
2. Work on the WIKISPEED project – both on actually building cars and on helping this crowd-sourced project become a viable company that continues to live its Stoosonian values.
3. Develop the Stoos Community in Washington, DC.