Toasting Management in #stoos? Anstossen or anstoosen?

In ten days or so, barring bad weather or last minute emergencies, some 22 thought leaders, idea farmers, managers, agilists, community leaders or otherwise interesting people will get together in Stoos to catalyze a change management. It turns out, Stoos is a pun in German, which I’d like to explain.

Stoos is the name of a community overlooking Schwyz and located at about 1’300m above sea level, with ski slopes up to about 1950m. In German, it is often referred to as ‘der Stoos’ (the Stoos) as if it were the name of mountain, but I don’t think that is case.

I don’t know why Franz Röösli chose this hotel. We wanted a ski location (in honor of the gathering which produced the Agile Manifesto being held at the Snowbird Lodge in Utah). It needed to have a conference room, be willing to block rooms for 20 people, and be reasonably easy to get to for international travelers. It was the only alternative he proposed, but it looked good, so here we are.

Stoos is very similar to another German word: ‘stossen’ which means ‘to push’. A variation of stossen is anstossen (this would be a preposition in English, but in German its part of the verb). Anstossen has many interested meanings for our gathering:

• to poke
• to kick off (something)
• to toast (or to drink to) something

So what will do in Stoos? We may poke management, but we want to change management, not bury it. Certainly we will start with a toast to tomorrow’s management. Here’s mine:

To common sense! May it displace the Pointy Haired Boss as the leading representative of management! #stoos #toastmgmt

How would you toast management in the 21st century?