Sebastian and Chris wanted to give a talk at agileworld in Munich. The topic was „Living and Dying in companies“. Furthermore they had the obligation to take care of their two new colleagues Maren and me. They came up with the idea to involve us in the talk somehow. As the topic was about the ecocycle described in liberating structures and why so many things (projects, ideas, habits, processes, etc.) in companies are in a poverty trap or in a rigidity trap without somebody trying to kill them – in that sense a zombie kind of state – why should they give the same talk again? Why not lead by example and kill the talk and create something new out of some parts of the talk and the input of the four of us? All this about 4 hours before it should have been held. Crazy, was the first thing that popped up in my mind. The talk had already good feedback from an live audience, had really nice slides with good self made drawings, worked on several iterations between the two … but having a second thought it made perfect sense! This way we all – the audience included – could feel what the talk was actually about and that we were serious.
4 hours later we stood in front of the doors of the venue, a bit nervous. About 10 minutes into the talk we realized that only one person had left so far and that we talked freely and the audience was engaged. Something new was born out of the „old” talk.
“What was the value of this?”, was one question out of the audience at the end of the talk. My answer to this was, that we proofed the point of the talk. Killing something considered relatively safe – a talk proofed to be good – was practicing a new habit at a time when it was relatively safe. So compared to the company world the lesson for me was that you definitely should practice killing things as long as it is safe. In an urgent situation the obstacles you would have to overcome to do this could probably take too much time and kill you.
Our practice tip during the talk:
Give somebody your cellphone, unlock it, and tell them to randomly kill an app. If this makes you uncomfortable, fine. Ok, before your favorite app is gone, take your phone back 😎. Think about why this is the case, exchange your thoughts.
What about killing an app on your phone every day? Or you could be brave an kill a habit, a process, or something else (no colleagues!!!) and see if it was a zombie anyways. Should you – after a certain time – have the feeling that you were wrong … reanimate it – it was just an experiment.
What zombie do you want to finish off tomorrow?
Good hunting
Tom
tomzigan.de 