The technology beat me on Day 2 of Learning Out Loud at Agile Australia!
If you were following along on the Agile Change Leadership LinkedIn Page on Monday you would have seen that I was publishing lessons learned from the sessions I attended at Agile Australia.
On Day 2 my Linkedin app was on the fritz so I had to resort to taking notes, so here is an overall summary.
Photo credit Team Slattery, Agile Australia
The day started with a very moving talk by Aboriginal lawyer and writer Dr Terri Janke on keeping her leadership tracks true. She specialises in Indigenous Culture and Intellectual Property. This talk gave me goosebumps as Janke told the story of as a young up and coming lawyer she was told by a Torres Straight Islander woman on a Dash 8 flying Cairns to Torres Straight Island (IYKYK!) she didn’t need to earn the accolades and live up to an important persona of leadership, she simply had to keep her tracks true so others could follow. It brought to life the question “what will be your legacy, what will you hand on to others”.
Joshua Kerievsky Keynote
This was followed by Josh Kerievsky, the founder of ModernAgile.org. He has a book coming out soon – The Joy of Agility. As a confirmed hedonist I have this on backorder!
He introduced the audience to his six mantras and about nine stories that bought the mantras to life. The book will be an undoubted source of value in bringing the value of agile to the forefront.
- Be quick but don’t hurry
- Be balanced and graceful
- Be poised to adapt
- Start minimal and evolve
- Drive out fear
- Be readily resourceful
Craig Smith did his epic 40 overview of 40 methods in 40 minutes (and over delivered with way more than 40 methods). This will be publicly available and I so appreciated his referencing the origins – its something we always try to do. We are curious if next year there will be a slide on Agile Change. Craig shared a lot made the cutting room floor, our conversations with agilists this year revealed many of them are getting that change management really is the missing component of successful agility and were relieved to hear that change management has come along way and adapted to the agile environment. So you never know…
Organisational Transformation consultant Cherie Mylordis gave us a great talk on the importance of having a massively transformative purpose with examples from clients.
We loved the simple three step framework of
- Dare to lean in
- Ditch what isn’t working
- Dial up your magical powers!
This was followed by a terrific talk from IPAA CEO Madeleine Culbert, NSW division.
She shared the realities of introducing agile principles and mindset to a small business during the pandemic lockdowns and her focus on
1. Mindset (say no more — but if you want the quickstart program…)
2. Systems (these sounded A LOT like our agile change capabilities.)
3. Behavior (YES! Working Out Loud gets a big shout here! )
4. Culture ( and this looked very much like our Personal Qualities module in the Agile Change Leadership program!)
Of particular note was her sharing of personal vulnerabilities in shifting mindset from perfectionist to delivery focus. Who can resonate?! We know from those who take our Agile Mindset Quiz this is a big barrier for many!
The absolute stand out presentation for me was Nish Mahanty and Tom Robinson’s talk on how to use Wardley Mapping with an applied case study (SignOnSite). I saw Simon Wardley speak a few years ago at Agile Australia and was most intrigued by this methodology. Its difficult to get your head around, but Tom and Nish made it super accessible AND this prompted MANY thoughts about application for change. Stay tuned as I explore this further…
All conferences should have a Jody Weir encounter!
Overall this was another stellar conference from TeamSlatts. They simply do the best conferences in Australia and indeed globally.
It was very crowded which took a lot of getting used to with our organisational focus now so heavily on density limits and personal safety. It did seem like that most of the content was pitched at those new to agile, so finding the ‘aha” moments was a bit challenging, my advice going to future ones is pick the sessions you don’t understand in the abstract. If you understand what they are talking about the learning might be light on.
That said, you should all know how much we rate the beginner mindset – so perhaps extracting value from conferences means stepping into the shoes of some-one new?
The moment where Christiane Anderson and I look down and realise we are both wearing Bared Noddies! We may need to step into some-one elses’s shoes…
