Why I wrote a book about Management 3.0?

March 27, 2017 — blog, management30

I wrote a book called Doing It – Management 3.0 experiences. In this post, I want to explain my reasons for writing it and you can learn how to get a copy for free.

I’ve often traveled to Bucharest, arrived at the airport and took a taxi to the city center. Finding a taxi is a hustle if you don’t know where to find the taxi ordering machine and trust me, never tell the taxi driver it is your first time in Romania, you will get the grand tour. I once planted some mint plants in my garden because I wanted to make some fresh mint tea. Within a few months they were growing everywhere in my garden, mint turned out to be a rampant weed.

These small two experiences that I am now sharing with you, are experiences you can learn from. Experiences that may not be relevant for you, but still, there is a takeaway in there.

In 2004, I worked at a company and we started doing Scrum. I was a test manager then and I became responsible for implementing scrum within testing. In those days, there was not much information to find on software testing as part of an agile project. We had to discover most of it ourselves and it worked out quite well. Still, I shared our experiences in conferences, such as the Agile Testing Days in Berlin. Why? Well because I believe people could learn from our experiences and it is fun to share experiences.

A few years later, we started doing Scrum together with team members in India: Distributed Scrum. The team was equally distributed between India and The Netherlands. I think we were one of the first product development companies in The Netherlands doing successful distributed Scrum with more than four teams. I know so because I tried really hard to find other companies already doing it. Word got out and other companies asked us if they could visit us. I always said yes, because I believe sharing our experiences could help other organizations in setting up distributed teams.

During my career as a manager, I always encouraged team members to visit other organizations and conferences. Encouraging team members to learn from other experiences was, and is, very important in my view on things. If you never go out to learn, you will always work in the same old bubble. It is important to go out, to discover and to learn, to get excited and perhaps even energized, to yearn to start trying things yourself and to break out of your knowledge bubble.

Sharing experiences and learning from others will make you a better professional. People will ask you questions that will trigger you to think about how you do things or to remember what is was your were solving. It will keep you from preventing to go into we-are-doing-OK-no-need-to-improve mode.

In the end, sharing information will make you feel good. When people are interested in the way you are doing things, it makes you feel proud. They want to learn from you, they are curious about what you accomplished.

Some people are afraid of sharing experiences, or other organizations visiting them. Why? The way you work is the result of lots of experimenting, succeeding and failing.  Other organizations can never fully copy your way of working, and even if they could, you will keep improving and will still be way ahead of them.

I coach organizations and people in using and applying Management 3.0 practices. When I was a manager, I also applied Management 3.0 practices. It gave me a lot of experiences, experiences that I now share through my Management 3.0 workshops. However, I am aware not everyone is able to attend or would like to attend a workshop. Therefore, I wrote a book which contains many of my Management 3.0 experiences.

The book is available for free. I believe that sharing my experiences will help organizations become a better place. And if there are questions, people can reach out to me anyway. Click here to download it.

I would like to thank Jurgen Appelo for writing the foreword and my friend Daan van Osch for reviewing the things I write.

To summarize: don’t be afraid to share your experiences. Go out and make contact with other organizations and subject matter experts. By sharing experiences, you will be challenged and the interest of others will make you feel good. When you encourage your team members to visit organizations, your organization will learn about new approaches.

If you want to read about my Management 3.0 experiences, download my ebook for free.