by Greg Judelman | Feb 11, 2015 | Disruption and Change
About This Session Innovation is not about ideas. Anyone with a sharpie marker and a pad of stickies can plaster the wall with dozens of ideas that could really make an impact. The hard part is in building the skills and culture in which those new ideas can thrive, so they don’t get eaten alive by old habits and structures. This session will describe an approach we’re developing to building an innovation culture through small experiments that grow and scale over time. A project team is trained in new skills and guided through a new initiative, producing champions that bring their colleagues into the new way of working. This work creates a sharable story of successes and failures that demonstrates the benefit organization-wide and engages others into the fold. Senior leadership, middle management and front-line staff all participate in vital and distinct ways. Interest and capacity in the new way of working spreads and eventually it becomes “just the way we work around here”. Now the organization is primed for innovation with an increased capacity to adapt to shifting market conditions, take on new types of projects, focus on customer value and minimize risk through small bets and structured iteration. The presentation of the approach will be supported by stories of client experiences – both successes and failures! This will be an interactive session in which participants will be invited to apply the thinking to their own organizational or client challenges. What You’ll Learn an understanding of an approach to incubating and scaling future-oriented skills and initiatives to drive a culture of innovation awareness of key skills needed to...
by Ellen Grove | Jan 22, 2015 | Disruption and Change
About This Session When change is on the horizon, talking with each other openly about what we’re trying to accomplish and why it matters to us is essential to identifying the new behaviours, actions, and mindset shifts that will bring about real change. Traditional approaches to change management tend towards a top-down approach where most of the planning input comes from a few key people – in order to confront the uncomfortable issues and foster change leadership throughout the organization, new approaches to change planning that engage more of the participants in open and constructive conversation are required to increase the possibility of real success. In this hands-on workshop, participants will be introduced to a simple and fast technique for structuring conversations about change that pulls input from all participants, as well as a playful implementation approach using LEGO Serious Play that sets the stage for everyone involved to participate on an equal footing so that real conversations can happen. What You’ll Take Away an understanding of the importance of making changing planning a participatory process rather than a top-down effort a technique for rapid facilitation of a participatory discussion about emergent change hands-on experience with using LEGO Serious Play as a method for implementing this approach to talking about change About Ellen Ellen Grove is an Agile coach & trainer with Agile Partnership (http://agilepartnership.com) in Montreal & Ottawa, Canada. Ellen helps teams and organizations do better work through coaching them in creating the circumstances in which they can work most productively and effectively. Her Agile coaching practice is founded in over 15 years experience leading software testing, development...
by Riina Hellstrom | Jan 22, 2015 | Disruption and Change
About This Session Disruption of people practices has already begun, and will grow exponentially. Most of HR people stand in the same situation as did CD or DVD companies a few years back. They really did not see it coming. And suddenly they were out of work. This talk will: 1. Dig in the history of organizations a bit: State and explain the building bricks traditional HR is built on in most companies (Taylorism, Behaviorism, industrialization, process thinking, mechanistic view on humans) – this part will give attendants the language to understand the “”foundation for current HR is broken””. 2. Clarify that polishing the current processes will not help you. Riina will show that even if we add some elements which build on a modern human view, such as coaching or wellbeing, it is like adding whipped cream on a pile of shit. There is no scientific research whatsoever that individual incentivizing leads to better performance, on the contrary. HR is broken, benchmarking and best practices is lazy. HR need to start THINKING themselves. 3. Introduce the fields briefly which are currently disrupting the HR, with examples and practical tips. This is the new field of people practices, and this will change rapidly. – Agile & Lean – New organization forms – Lean startup thinking – Service Design – Digitalization & Social & Transparency – Data & Analytics – New people science, Cognitive & psych + neuroscience – Data protection What You’ll Takeaway Realize that the foundation of people practices has changed, and am able to give solid arguments of this within my organization. Swallow the “red pill” – after...
by Jodi Jones | Jan 22, 2015 | Disruption and Change
About This Session In Des Moines, Iowa a group of tech professionals created a 48-hour charity hackathon that connected nonprofit organizations with more than 80 employees from 15 different enterprise and startup companies to solve the tech problems of the nonprofits. The result: nine nonprofits had their biggest technical needs solved in 2 days with more than $100,000 of in-kind services fueling the change. The employees learned new skills, built relationships with great nonprofits and created game changing results for organizations that are always in go-mode. This experience created a new model for how nonprofits and curious minds can collaborate to spark change in any community and create a craving for doing good, not just doing. This same model can be applied to your community and your company. In this session we’ll highlight the steps we took to create this unique experience, how we got buy in from Fortune 500s and startups across the community and the lasting impact it left on an entire community after just 48 hours. What You’ll Take Away Spark a change bigger than any one organization by creating a nonprofit hackathon in your community Learn how to satisfy employee cravings for creativity and new challenges by connecting them with local nonprofits Rally numerous companies at once inside a community create a link between nonprofits, enterprises, startups and community leaders About Jodi Jodi Jones is an assistant director of IT at the Principal Financial Group where she leads software development teams with a focus on improving delivery using agile techniques. She is a change enthusiast with a passion to make her organization and community a great...