At Agila Sverige 2014 I talked about consensus, what it is, why it is the basis for creating good and strong decisions that is often already implemented when the decision is finally made. I also talked about the hand signals we use at Crisp to manage our consensus decision process (read more about it here).

Here’s my slides, that contains more on howto facilitate consensus decision making:

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We are 35 people at Crisp now, and we are a decentralized organized with no managers. So how do decisions get made? This article is a direct translation of our internal wiki page “Hur vi tar beslut på Crisp” (how we make decisions at Crisp).

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Sometimes people approach us at Crisp, and ask if we would consider starting a subsiduary in country X or Y. We normally respond with something like “Sounds cool! But we are a Stockholm company and don’t want the hassle of running a multinational corporation, not unless we see a clear and strong benefit (and we

Besides Lean & Agile, we also have experienced developers doing coaching, injecting themselves into teams to build skills "from within".  To avoid confusion (amongst ourselves) we have developed a custom terminology for our coaching work:

Seal		Seals dive deep down and stays down for a long while. They are faithful, they like problems and to stay with them until solved. Equipped with a great sense of smell, they can track bad code miles away and home in their buddies on the prey.
Duck		Ducks will swim along at the surface on the pond, tracking what goes on. Occasionally they take deep dives. Ducks are especially well equipped with improving teams engineering practices and removing complex obstacles. A duck will follow a team until new ducks evolve and can pollinate other areas.
Albatross		Albatrosses are quite noisy and you will find them talking passionately until new food is available.  They like to keep perspective on things. Albatrosses search for buddies at courses and training events. The secret inner wish for an albatross is to return to the pond and to play with the ducks.

.. what kind of coach are you? 🙂

The Bun protocol ("Bullprotokollet" in Swedish) is a lightweight, decentralized request routing protocol. It is designed to be the simplest possible way to handle requests that are shared by a distributed group of people.

I introduced this to Crisp a few years ago because we had just create a lightweight recruitment process, and later when we were creating a lightweight sales process I saw many similarities. So I did an "extract to interface" refactoring and created this "Bun Protocol" :o)

• "Hmmm… we’re starting to get a lot of requests to teach training courses. How are we going to manage these?"
• "Let’s use the Bun Protocol for now!"
• "OK!"

We have used this protocol for all kinds of external client requests for years now, and it works surprisingly well, so I’d like to share it.

Ekonomen George Akerlof skrev 1970 en uppsats som beskrev informationsassymmetri i vad han kallade "Market For Lemons". Det exempel han använde var marknaden för begagnade bilar, där säljaren alltid vet mer om den bil som säljs än potentiella köpare. Säljaren vet oftast hur välskött den är, hur den körts, etc.

Köparen, däremot, har svårare att avgöra bilens kvaliteter. Visst, det finns ofta en servicehandbok han kan läsa, men hur är bilen körd? Buskörd av en yngling, eller av en försiktig 47-åring?

Detta skapar informationsassymmetri, vilket ger intressanta följder. Säljaren av en bra bil vill ha bra betalt, medan köparen sällan är villig att betala mer än för en bil som har genomsnittskvalitet. Detta gör att säljare av välskötta bilar missgynnas, vilket gör att de inte tycker det är lönt besväret. Kanske försöker de sälja bilen på annat sätt, exempelvis till en bekant som litar på kvaliteten. Detta betyder att de bästa bilarna sakta men säkert försvinner från den öppna marknaden, eftersom genomsnittspriset bara sjunker. Kvar blir bara dåliga bilar, och då har man fått en "Market For Lemons".

Denna terori om informationsassymetri gav Akerlof och två andra nobelpris i ekonomi 2001.

Men har detta någon som helst relevans för konsultmarknaden? Ja, jag menar det.

If you enter the Crisp office you will see these two A3 papers on the wall (click picture for bigger version)

Here is an english translation of these pictures.

The first picture is titled "What is Crisp?". It defines our purpose.
The second picture is titled "Crisp strategy". It defines how the company works and why.

Read on if you are curious about how and why we created these simple A3 pictures, and why it has had such a strong impact on our company.

One of the ancient mysteries of science is why toasted bread is less filling to eat than non-toasted bread.  A revolutionary scientific breakthrough was made this evening bringing us closer to the Answer,

See below for the full report.