Agile and Beyond

In a wide-ranging 3 way conversation with Jesse Pearlman, Agilist and Customer Success Manager at CA Technologies and former U.S. Marine, and my business partner Michael Rocharde, a Business Transformation Consultant and former intelligence officer in the British Army, we discussed leadership, leadership style comparisons, servant leadership, leadership crises, raising and supporting servant leaders in a corporate world, and leadership in government.

While recognizing that positive change (even if revolutionary) is on the horizon, we examined some of the most persistent and destructive problems of our time.

We covered the following:

• The deficit in visionary leadership.
• Unchecked capitalism, economic disparity and avarice behavior.
• The rupture in the American political economy.
• True change and grassroots leadership.
• Visionary leadership vs. a management and survival mindset.
• The legalization of corruption and the absence of leadership.
• The prioritization of shareholders over customers, employees, and citizens.
• Prospects for the current system.
• Collaborative social enterprises.
• Soulless greed, the rapaciousness of unregulated capitalism. and the coming revolution.
• Benefitting everyone.
• The resiliency of collaboratively made decisions.
• Responsive startups and slow-moving behemoths.
• People vs. profit.
• Transparency, clearing interference and enabling teams.
• Leading, inspiring, and motivating.
• Worker empowerment and Michael Moore's latest film “Where to Invade Next.”
• Exhaustion with corporate governance.
• Technological expansion.
• Tackling the biggest problems.
• 7th Generation and the Iroquois Nation Principles.
• High-performing teams.
• America's lack of a clear and unifying goal.
• Technology and its negative effects on culture.
• America's broken institutions.
• The Coming Change.
• Corporations and their destructive effects on families and community.
• Millennials and the restoration of collaboration and communal living.
• The end of meritocracy.
• Corporate welfare and artificial life support.
• Corporate predation.
• The benefit of staying small.
• Thoughtless Economic Disruption.
• AI and Automation -- producing more with less people.
• Creating realities and intrinsic motivation.
• Experimenting, inspecting and adapting.
• Innovation and Breaking Things.
• Liberating People from Institutional Abuse.
• Aligning the needs of people and enterprises.
• Brainstorming and Masterminds.
• The Screwed-up American Education System.
• Critical Thinking and Self-Knowledge.
• Classic corporate governance and Subordination.
• Freedom, entrepreneurship, and the risk of failure.
• Winning with style and negative leadership styles.
• Strength, submission, and vulnerability.
• Elevating others and paying if forward.
• The only things that matter - our planet and our human connections.
• Life under state-capitalism: atomization, isolation, and distrust.
• The American Cultural Myth – you too can become a billionaire!
• The End of Retirement, Millennials, and Student Debt.
• The Death of Corporate Loyalty.
• Critical thinking skills, leadership, and the importance of chess.
• Socrates and change.
• Questioning habitual thought patterns.
• America's most persistent boxes: Fear, Uncertainty, and the Military-industrial Complex.
• State supported capitalism and violence.
• Innovation, government subsidies, and the war machine.
• Fear and xenophobia.

This episode is a little different. A joint experiment. A nebulous mission.

In this inspiring international discussion, I was honored to be joined by two co-hosts: Dawna Jones of Vancouver and Gert Penne of Belgium.

And three guests: Willow Bumby and Lindsey Henwood of Vancouver, and Josh Shaffer of Tampa.

With 6+ participants, spanning 3+ countries, 3 continents, and 3 generations we explored not only the future of work, but also the future of education.

Dawna Jones is the AUTHOR of DECISION-MAKING for DUMMIES. Her book appears on Steve Denning's (Forbes) list of 8 Noteworthy Books for 2014. Dawna is also the host of the “Evolutionary Provocateur” podcast.

Gert Penne, an account executive in the tech industry, is a an Empathic Problem Solver, who takes a principle-centered approach to teaming across cultures, disciplines, and generations.

At the end of a 2-continent, 3-country Skype call, Dawna, Gert, and I found ourselves talking about generational differences globally. With the goal to learn how the next generation sees the Future of Work, we decided to invite 3 Millennials to a follow-up call. This show is that call.

Millennials fall just after the Gen-Xers. They were born between 1982 and 2004.

We were fortunate to have 3 Millennials join us.

Josh Shaffer is an early Millennial, and works for Accenture in Talent Acquisition in Tampa.

Willow Bumby is an iOS Engineer, designer, and writer, as well as a teacher at Lighthouse Labs in Vancouver.

Lindsay Henwood is a User Experience Design Instructor at Red Academy, a rapidly growing Tech School startup in Vancouver.

Two other Millennials joined us virtually.

Lauren Kirmil is a Marketing and Media Specialist and a former technical recruiter in the San Francisco Bay Area. During her extensive travels throughout Southeast Asia she worked as a freelance travel writer.

Grace Liu is a former Outreach Support Officer at the British Consulate in Guangzhou, China. She recently received funding to start a venture in Shenzhen. With the assistance of her NYU professor she also plans to start an NGO incorporating ancient contemplative practices, including meditation.

In this discussion we covered a wide range of topics.

• Distributed workforces and workplace flexibility and the big American offensive to change the workplace.
• Self-responsibility, self-awareness, self-perception.
• Cultural fit: the “techie” mold and the pressure to fit in.
• The dying days of the industrial model, the irrelevant university degree and the rise of bootcamp style education.
• The need to understand the next generation, and the companies which will die.
• The rise of the robots and the growing fear of job loss.
• Capitalism and its schizophrenic booms and busts: do we want an economy based on self-interest or creativity and collaboration?
• Tribalism and the need to belong: do we become global citizens or nationalists?
• Surviving the industrial model and designing the new workplace.
• The need to shift easily into different industries and the costly risk in over-specialization.
• The silliness of our current system and people's inability to work with power.
• And the power coming from the “Millennial values”.

In episode 1 of a 3 part conversation with Jesse Pearlman, Agilist and Customer Success Expert at CA Technologies (formerly Rally Software), we discuss post-mortems in the Marines and retrospectives in Agile organizations, the false security of training environments, Rally's vision and creating realities, Agile addictions, the dichotomy of corporate and Agile terminology, the democratization of corporate entities, the granting of authority, the pain needed to change, the need to go big, and the value of Agile Coaches.

In the final episode of a 4 part conversation with Erika Lenz, Scrum Master, former poet, evolutionary biologist, and tutor, we discuss what makes Erika unique, comfort with the creative process, the prevalence of mental illness in the arts, grounding others in difficult situations, the power of divergent thinking, building bridges, social dancing, choreography, and floorcraft, helping others to pivot in order to change the behavior of a team, the benefits of adding emotional content in tech environments, the benefits in valuing everyone, and kinesthetic intelligence.