I'm Agile, Therefore I Learn

As a professional keynote speaker, I’ve been on literally hundreds of stages and got to be in as many events. I’ve always admired the keynote speakers that, despite being done, don’t sign two books in passing then jump in a car and vanish as they are too busy to linger and listen to others but on the contrary stay and pay attention. Beyond how it’s respectful, it’s an amazing sign that they want to learn. Famously, there’s a wonderful FinTech thought leader called J.P. Nicols and if you book anyone to be a speaker at a finance event and want them to truly be involved he is the one to call. 

Now don’t get me wrong, everyone is terribly busy. Who isn’t these days? With how the market -rightfully!- wants speakers who have everyday real-life experience because technology is moving too fast for anyone to get on stage after they retired and still be relevant, of course, keynoters have teams and companies to run and they are genuinely on a tight schedule. But to my mind, if you commit to the engagement why not make it an intensive learning experience irrespective of how much you have to fight your command and control tendencies or fret about missing a stand-up? 

No one is too important or too busy to learn.

Now granted, some would argue that once you’ve seen an event you’ve seen them all and there’s little to learn at times from the stale, wooden language repetition of the exact same phrases or from some piece of corporate demagoguery. That’s indisputable. Until such a time that we can make all industry events a replica of the FFS conference that will always be the case but there are rare gems out there.  

All of this long intro to brag that in two weeks time I’m incredibly honoured to be invited to speak in Belgium at the Agile Consortium. I’m looking forward to it like you wouldn’t believe. The program, gosh their program! There’s hardly one title of any talk there, that I would happily miss. Not one. 

And I may be wrong, but my feeling is that after the hundreds of finance events and many HR and tech ones I’ve spoken at, the tone, the level and the honesty at a prestigious Agile event can only be soul-refreshing! And I’ll be curious how we listen to each other too not only how we talk “at” each other. The number of times that speakers step on stage after each other with nay a reference to what the last speaker said even if directly relevant boggles the mind. 

This mindset of ours, these human characteristics we all share if we “are” Agile - the resilience, the intrinsic flexibility, the courage, the personal responsibility and the obsession with better, they should all spill into how we learn and how we communicate. 

Even better, the event is about “culture” and “people” and “leadership” so we have to, don’t we? 

For my part - I’ll attempt something new and ask the attendees not to listen but to think for/with me. 

What better time to test my hypothesis that Agile can be a shortcut to treating people better by lending its measurements to the correlation to Psychological Safety and therefore firmly demonstrating to business the value of both than to ask a room filled with some of the best heads? 

And of course, asking for opinions from stage, no matter how empathic is never useful - whether soliciting a show of hands, using the online opinion meters or asking for comments later never really works so instead, I intend to hound people on the corridors and demand they let me probe their brains after (beware!:)

So I’m looking forward to squinty eyes and head scratches, to losing track of time, to hearing about journeys and stories, and new ideas and bits and bobs that worked or failed and to eyes rolled and laughter and learning - come on down to this one or find one like it - moments like these carry us through and help us fight the good fight day-to-day.

Beyond the self-serving satisfaction, I also hope we all get out of there with enough novel ideas and energy for a firm “right, out of my way, I know exactly what to try to make everyone come along on the Agile journey - stop the excuses and the laziness”.

Next week I’ll finally be done with the article I’ve been struggling with on Product Owners and Servant Leadership so if you have ideas about that - the need for either that is-, please shoot me some messages about it, now is the time.

Have a week full of “wow” and learning.