Wanted: suggestions for new Bucket list pioneers
We are always curious to discover potential pioneers for our Bucket list. Do you have suggestions for us? If so, please share them with us, and tell us why you think this pioneer should be added to the list.
Replies (59)
I think Helen Bevan (@HelenBevan on Twitter) is an inspirational person working in the NHS in England. Gary Hamel talks about NHS Change Day that was started by her and Jackie Lynton (sadly deceased) here:
Let me tell you a story about two individuals, Helen Bevan and Jackie Lynton, who were in the middle of one of the most bureaucratic, biggest organizations in the world and had a profound impact on that organization. The story starts in early 2013 and the organization is Britain's National Health Service, with more than a million employees. As you might imagine, it's bureaucratic. Healthcare is a very complex industry and if you are in Britain or you follow the British newspapers, just about every week you'll find a story of something that's gone wrong in the NHS. Well, Helen and Jackie had many years of experience at the NHS, but they weren't senior line executives. They were mid-level change people who'd run different sorts of traditional change projects at the NHS. They found themselves talking one afternoon to a group of young trainee doctors who had just joined the National Health Service and who were already frustrated about how difficult it was to get things done and how often doing the right thing for patients came second, third or fourth to doing the right thing for bureaucracy so they thought maybe there's another way to drive change here at the NHS. Now, the unit in which they worked, which was an internal consulting unit, they thought that that unit was going to be disbanded within a matter of months, so starting in January 2013, they launched their little project. They gave it a very ambitions name, the Change Day, but they said, "We only have 90 days to do something significant," and the project worked like this. Using a little social media platform and then everything they could do with viral marketing, they invited colleagues in to fill out a simple pledge form where you could pledge something you were going to do within your job, within your scope of permissions, to improve patient care. 2013 was the 65th anniversary of the National Health Service and they were hoping that by March, when they thought the project would have to end, they were hoping to get 65 thousand pledges. By the end of January, they had a few hundred. By Mid-February, about 5,000 and by the time they ended the Day of Change in Mid-March, they had 189 thousand pledges. A typical pledge might come from a group of paediatricians who said, "We promise to taste every medicine before prescribing it to kids and a helpless parent who's gonna have to try to get it down their throats," or it might be a group of nurses on a ward who said, "Every week, with their permission, we'll video our patients with our camera phones and then we'll come back and talk about what we could do to make their experience in the hospital more pleasant for them." So imagine that times 189 thousand pledges. That became the single biggest change program in the history of the NHS and Helen and Jackie launched it without any permissions, without going up, without putting together any big plans. They just started something. That's how you think if you're an activist, not an anarchist, not a terrorist, but if you're an activist, when you say, "I'm not helpless. I'm not going to ask somebody else to do this. This organization is my organization. I care too much about it to be helpless and I believe we can do something starting where I am right now." That's the secret to making a difference. That's the secret to hacking management.
what about Ken Blanchard with his agility approach ( One Minute Manager ) supported by Servant Leadership concept?
How about Margaret Wheately founder of the Berkana Institute http://www.berkana.org?
I find his connections with networks and the human experience really interesting. Quote:
"Collectively we are smarter than any corporation. Learning through communities of practice and knowledge networks enables us to make collective sense. Over the years I have met many people in their 40’s or 50’s who suddenly find themselves without work. Most of them do not have a professional network beyond their organization where they may have worked for a decade or more. Once outside the company, they are adrift.
Being an active citizen-learner by connecting with others outside our everyday lives can expose us to a diversity of skills, knowledge, and perspectives. In a creative economy we are only as good as our networks. An effective network encourages us to keep learning. A good community of practice changes our practice. The more often we change, the better we get at it… We don’t need heroic leaders to create better ways of working. Anyone can exercise leadership by helping make the network smarter, more resilient, and able to make better decisions."
I am particularly drawn to "We don’t need heroic leaders to create better ways of working. Anyone can exercise leadership by helping make the network smarter, more resilient, and able to make better decisions." I like how he's reframing the emphasis of leadership from we need good leaders to lead us into better ways, to leadership can be working to improve a collective process. I think we probably need both of these.
The link for the second blog article: https://jarche.com/2019/09/citizen-learners/
Elise Shapiro at Qumulo has been one of the primary thought leaders at Qumulo and our distributed management system of structures here. Qumulo engineering would not be the same without her, from our self-organizing & re-organizing teams, to our "community service" programs to share the responsibilities of "management" across everyone in our flat org, to our near tittle-less "member technical staff" titles and more. A couple of blog posts written mostly by MTS folk on what's radical here:
https://qumulo.com/blog/self-organizing-engineering-teams/
https://qumulo.com/blog/why-i-feel-like-my-own-boss-at-qumulo/
So she my personal pioneer, just not known about widely yet.
Hi, Joost & Pim, two pioneers you should be adding:
- Chris Rufer, founder of The Morning Star Company, I believe no additional comment is required here.
- FDSA, a Spanish software company from Palma de Mallorca, in the route towards full Self-Management. I am currently studying it as part of my PhD research project. Its visionary leader and founder is Alejo Ecube, a sort of Spanish "Chris Rufer".
Hi Pim: yes, they are 50 people and growing (maybe as I'm writing, a few more). In this section of their website: https://www.fdsa.es/del-empoderamiento-a-la-autogestion/, you can check FDSA's path towards Self-Management, in the words of his founder Alejo Ecube, only it is written in Spanish (by the way, they guy on the left of the photograph is me, on my first Action Research day with them, in July this year). Here is a recent press release in a leading diary from the Balearic Islands: https://www.ultimahora.es/noticias/economico/2019/10/11/1112649/fdsa-programacion-confia-doip.html, regarding their employment activities. If you wish, I could interview them in English in the name of Corporate Rebels as I'll be flying to Mallorca for another Action Research session with them pretty soon. Best regards. Daniel.
In my opinion, Erik Ringertz (CEO of netlight, a Scandinavian IT consulting company) and netlight itself is worth a visit. He just released the German version of its book "harder better faster stronger" describing their culture, leadership style, environment without hierarchies and why old-fashioned command-and-control environments don't work.
I had the chance to talk to netlight folks a few months ago and also the book was truly inspiring.
https://www.netlight.com/hbfs/
https://twitter.com/Ringertz
An English glimpse behind the scene:
https://soundcloud.com/p-jobbet/erik-ringertz-netlight
Three people immediate comes to mind:
Bob Chapman, CEO of Barry-Wehmiller companies and Chapman & Co consulting, Author of "Everybody Matters - the extraordinary power of caring for your people like family"
Raj Sisodia, co-inventor of Conscious Capitalism and then some!!!
Jane Adshead-Grant, executive coach and associated with Barry-Wehmiller.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg - Supreme Court Justice said,
"Real change, enduring change, happens one step at a time."
and
"If you want to be a true professional, do something outside yourself."
Laura Winterling is truly a pioneer - she sends people off to space!
As a former trainer for astronauts with ESA, Laura knows very well what it means to give up solid ground below your feet. However, she is even more aware of the potential and encourages people like you and me to experience the same when we lift off. Literally, when we become crazy enough to apply for an adventure in space - and also when we listen to her as a speaker at events.
Douglas Engelbart!
Engelbart occupied himself with ‘boosting mankind's capability for coping with complex, urgent problems’. As one of the early birds in the world of personal computing, he advocated that computer technologies should always have that goal in mind: to increase the intellect of the group, not of the individual. His thorough research on ‘collective IQ’ is a great roadmap if we have to transform our society to a local orientated one.
“Whether developing a new product or service, researching a topic of interest, seeking a cure for cancer, or improving conditions in underserved communities, a group's Collective IQ is a key determinant of how effectively it will respond to the challenges presented. More specifically, regardless of the end goals, it comes down to how quickly and intelligently the group can identify needs and opportunities, develop and deploy solutions, and incorporate lessons learned, while continuously iterating and adapting to changing conditions until the goals are met” - (Douglas Engelbart Institute, about Collective IQ ).
Engelbart believed in the power of the well-connected group instead of the well-connected individual. He thought designing technologies for groups would help us evolve and develop skills to cope with the complex problems our highly advanced civilization presents us.
Check out David Blake and his company Degreed. They pave they way for jailbraking the Degree and taking our valuation of skills into the 21th century. 'The future doesn't care how you became an expert'
Degreed is a EDtech company. They facilitate personalised learning within an eco-learning system. They have three locations I think: Utah, San Fransico and Leiden (they bought Gibbon). Number of employers
+/- 350.
But the best information about their mission and vission you can check out here:
(David Blake - Ted talk - Jailbreaking the Degree)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wdA74Iynnr0
And if you have a bit of time you could read his book (written with Kelly palmer)
The Expertise Economy.
Degreed is a EDtech company. They facilitate personalised learning within an eco-learning system. They have three locations I think: Utah, San Fransico and Leiden (they bought Gibbon). Number of employers
+/- 350.
But the best information about their mission and vission you can check out here:
(David Blake - Ted talk - Jailbreaking the Degree)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wdA74Iynnr0
And if you have a bit of time you could read his book (written with Kelly palmer)
The Expertise Economy.
Have a look at Hermann Arnold (Co-founder Haufe Umantis, yes, you have them on the list) and his work around "Wir sind Chef" (sorry, German only) and lately FLEAT (www.fleat.com) as an operating system for agility.
Also Tim Leberecht (author of the Business Romantic and Co-Founder of the House of Beautiful Business). Mission is to beautify the world of work!
Oh, and of course: John Seddon, Vanguard Method. His latest book is "Beyond Command and Control". Get a taste of his thinking on this episode of the Bosslevel Podcast, ranting about "agile" as the most dysfunctional management fad ever... (https://podcasts.google.com/?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly9yc3Muc2ltcGxlY2FzdC5jb20vcG9kY2FzdHMvMTM2Ny9yc3M&episode=YjQ3NGU2NjMtOWFlYy00ZjJkLTgxOGYtNzNjNzZhMDRkYmNi&hl=en-CH&ved=2ahUKEwiltLmZ_IzmAhXPeZoKHZAHA4YQieUEegQIARAE&ep=6&at=1574946312040)
What about Maria Pia Thoren from Agile People? With her work, often aligned with Beyond Budgeting, and her book she has been able to give a recipe for transforming HR in an agile way.
Another interesting case is Talent Garden with its founder Davide Dattoli. It’s focus not just on coworking, but on innovation and start- up support through incubation.
At the beginning of my entrepreneurial journey, I found Guy Kawasaki's advice in "Rules for Revolutionaries" very inspirational and enlightening. Many of your current posts are picking up ideas from his publications. He continues to inspire me day after day, although he doesn't come across as a guru. "The Art of the Start" was another one of my bedside books.
You should meet Stefan Hildt who runs Universal Express in Poland. Very much a realist, he has an outstanding, progressive business mind. Stefan is a big fan of Jack Stack who spent time with him because of an interest in what the Hildts (father and son) were doing in Poland immediately after the fall of communism. They had a lot to talk about because Stefan had developed a very similar management style before getting to know about Stack's work. Stefan says, "Go see Jack Stack as soon as possible." Maybe these two should be a focus for you in 2020? A family friend, Corporate Rebel Ellen knows Stefan very well.
Brandwatch, a social intelligence company in Brighton, UK might be worth a visit. I wrote my master thesis there and really admired how everything feels like family. I wouldn't name it an innovative workplace but the feeling of togetherness is amazing. I usually travel twice a year to Brighton just to visit my former colleagues 😊
Wrote a tiny post about my time there:
https://daheq.com/blog/besides-burgers-and-beers/
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You should really talk to David Heinemeier Hansson (creator Ruby on Rails & founder Basecamp). His book "It Doesn't Have to Be Crazy at Work" is a real eye-opener!