The Future of Work is already here, it is just only unevenly distributed.
There is a crisis in the world of work. The pace of change in our environment is faster than the internal change in most organizations. Many organizations are struggling to keep up and are risking becoming obsolete. Gallup’s report on engagement crisis with only 32% of US workforce and 13% of the worldwide workforce engaged. Companies in the S&P 500 Index in 1958 stayed in the index an average of 61 years but has fallen to 18 years in 2012. Why is this?
When it comes to our work-life most of our organizations are still designed based on principles from the industrial age. Separation of thinking, planning, and management from the work. Organizations are designed to be top-down hierarchical and inside out rather than outside-in, customer-centric, and decentralized. There is mechanistic view rather than an organic, natural and Agile view of organizations.
This new complex world will put completely new demands on leadership, organizing and just everyday living. We are living in truly exciting times. How can we create organizations that are fit for the future and more human? How can we re-invent organizations so that we will free up people’s potential for doing good? Many of these organizations are also based on triple bottom line principle: “Profit, People, and Planet”. This is my passion and I am super excited about it right now.
At Crisp, we are passionate about being in the forefront of these changes and we are experimenting continually to learn and develop ourselves. One of our latest initiatives is the open community Climate Crisplet with the mission to reduce global warming. We have also open sourced our inner workings in our Crisp DNA to spread and get feedback on how we work.
Personally, I am involved in arranging several really exciting events during the autumn. Below I will share some of the super cool stuff happening and introduce some of the thought-leaders in the area of “Future of Work” that I am collaborating with at the moment. This will be an awesome autumn!
One of my key involvement is with Agile People. The purpose of Agile People is to catalyze and speed up this shift in work to more human and purposeful organizations. Agile People host a community where we are almost 1000 people in our Stockholm Meetup group now! One of Agile People´s key activities is our yearly conference, Agile People Sweden. This years conference theme is “The Future of Work”. And we have an amazing lineup of speakers. Let me introduce some of the keynote speakers this year:
- We are so excited that Jurgen Appelo is returning to our 5th conference. Jurgen presented at our first and third conference. He is a well-known author, speaker, and thought-leader in the agile community. Jurgen Appelo will talk about his latest project Agility Scales.
- For the first time, we have the opportunity to have Bonnitta Roy at our conference. Bonnie had very appreciated Meetup event at King last year. Bonnitta Roy will talk about the principles of self-organization. She is an author and researcher in complexity and human psychology. She is the inventor behind Open Participatory Organizations – OPO. If you are interested in Dave Snowden’s work you need also to check-out Bonnitta´s work.
- James Priest is also returning to Stockholm. James will share patterns from Sociocracy 3.0 (S3) that will enable the organization to be agile in itself. And how to use S3 patterns to scale agility to the organization.
- And the closing keynote will be by Joshua Vial, the “Ex-founder” of the New Zealand community of Enspiral. Ever since I first heard of Joshua and Enspiral in 2012 I have been longing to meet Joshua in person. He is so inspiring and he has an amazing story to share. Enspiral´s purpose is also very inspirational – More People Working On Stuff That Matters!
- And much more. Lennart France and Göran Nilsson will talk about The Agile Company based on how Handelsbanken got rid of bonuses, budgets and more. We will Have Erik Schön sharing his experience. Pia-Mia Thorén & Björn Sandberg with a workshop an Agile HR.
Check-out the full list of conference speakers and workshop leaders.
Further, I am arranging for the following exciting courses and workshops at Crisp also aimed at creating better work-places:
If you have experience from self-organizing teams, flat organizations or tried self-management you might think there are no hierarchies and power dynamics. However, that is just a wishful thought. Actually, power doesn’t go away and it shouldn´t. Right after the Agile People conference, we have put together a special workshop with Bonnitta Roy, Joshua Vial and Susan Basterfield from Enspiral to address the above hot and sensitive topic in this exciting workshop: Understanding power in self-managed collaboration, October 25-26 2017. This workshop is ideal for self-organizing teams.
The future organization (in Swedish) is a course I and my colleague Anders Laestadius is facilitating. The purpose is to give an orientation in the shift that is happening now. We will share several cases of “Teal” and holistic organization as well as ideas for how you can get started with your own journey. Framtidens organisationer, 6-7 november 2017
Whoever can master effective decision-making in a decentralized networked organization will be a winner in the future. Decision-making in traditional hierarchical organizations will be too slow or poorly informed. Nor will totally flat or consensus-based organizations be fast enough. Effective collaborative decision making and many more patterns are addressed in the Sociocracy 3.0 (S3) course that I will be co-facilitating with James Priest and Lili David. Sociocracy 3.0 (S3) – Growing Organisational Agility, Navigating Complexity, November 22-24 2017
Agile is becoming mainstream. The big management consultancies are moving in into the agile space. Many structured and ordered approaches for scaling are becoming more and more popular. But aren’t we losing the spirit of agile? Are these concepts really suitable for scaling in complex adaptive environments? And what can we do instead? How do we recreate the concept of agility, the initial spirit of Agile, and bring us back into much more rapid interaction? This plus new updates to the Cynefin model will be explored in the Dave Snowden Master Class, What’s next for Agile? 27-28 of November.
And in February, Bonnitta Roy will return once more to Crisp for the very new course Foundations of the Open Participatory Organization. In this course, you will learn a new way to see and organize work based on cutting-edge research, global trends, and next-generation organizations. Registration open soon.
Further, we just completed The Leadership Circle Certification (TLC) with Jonathan Reams. We now have 8 Crispers trained in TLC. We also have many courses in the Agile Leadership area. Check the full Crisp course catalog.
I really hope to see you during the autumn.
As Enspiral says – Let’s get “More People Working On Stuff That Matters!”
/Michael
