Responding to Change over Following a Plan; that’s what the Agile Manifesto says we should be doing and self-organizing teams do it quite well.
One of the heartache scenarios I have always had with APLN Houston is the need to replace a speaker at the last minute. As we schedule more and more presenters from outside of the Houston area, this is becoming more of a concern. Four months into 2010 we have already had a couple of close calls, and for our April meeting it finally happened. Steven “Doc” List, our planned speaker, found himself responding to the changing priorities of his client based work, and they did not include a trip to Houston for our meeting. Now the chase was on for an April speaker…
Doc let me know about 6 am Wednesday morning that his ThoughtWorks obligations would likely prevent him from presenting the April APLN Houston program which was exactly two weeks away. By 7 or so I sent out a note to the leadership team with a couple of ideas, and asked for their thoughts. The email flurry was now afoot. Ideas rolled in, got tossed back and forth; new ideas generated; questions raised and answered and still more ideas presented themselves. In 4-5 hours we had 8 or 9 options for an April program with two top contenders. By noon Thursday, we had confirmed a replacement program for Doc that dovetailed nicely into the Innovation Games Training Workshop we are co-hosting in May.
As APLN Houston has evolved over the last 18 months, this scenario is typical of how our leadership team works. There is no need for any one person to take charge, solve all the problems, answer all the questions, or made all the decisions. This is the power of self-organizing, self-managing teams. Leadership shifts from one person to another as passions, interests, and availability warrant. Anyone of us can veto a decision made by the group if we feel strongly enough about it, and while I think most of us have done that, it is very rare. What is common is recognizing and respecting each other's ideas in the implicit knowledge and trust that we are all focused on a common goal. By repeatedly stepping up and stepping back, we each shape the direction of the organization in ways that are important to ourselves, and the organization is better served because of it.
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