Just this week I had a great opportunity to collaborate with some of my agile coach peers on a lighting talk event.  A handful of us got together and presented nine topics in 45 minutes, 5 minutes for each presenter.

It was great fun, and I learned quite a bit from the others.  Everyone came with some amazing energy and some really though provoking concepts.

My talk was called A Copernican Revolution in Management.  You can follow that link to see the slides on SlideShare. Here is (roughly) the transcript from my talk:

— Goal of the firm is to maximize short-term stakeholder value, Michael Porter 20th century management and taught in every business school (And also live in fear of the competition)

–Shareholder value is thus not only the “the biggest idea in business.” It is also the worst. Even Jack Welch, and many other CEOs have denounced it, calling it  “the dumbest idea in the world.” And yet shareholder value still rules business, in part because the C-suite is now given massive stock-based compensation to pursue shareholder value.

—Steven Denning, management consultant turned Agile thought leader, author of Leader’s Guide to Storytelling and The Leader’s Guide to Radical Management writes regularly for Forbes.

— June 2013 Article The Copernican Revolution in Management. Copernicus’ theory of the solar systems was initially seen as only a mathematical and model for scientists to calculate the paths of the planets. Even Pope Clement VII in 1533 thought it was interesting.

— But what many did not realize at the time, was that embedded within this concept was a radical worldview that implicitly undermined the plausibility of established religion in general, the Roman Catholic Church in particular, and the Divine Right of Kings, on which most existing governments in Europe rested their claim to legitimacy.

— People started to question what social value monarchies held for society, and their importance in the structure of society diminished over time. So, take that concept (a revolutionary worldview that take a well-accepted paradigm and flips it on its head), and apply it to management theory — voila! The copernican revolution in management — we are fundamentally thinking differently about our approach to customers, the concept of value, and how we design and support organizations.  We see a focus on: Delighting customers profitably, enabling self-organized teams and networks, collaboration and interactive communication, and iterative and incremental work

— We need to nurture and support the growth of new leaders, who can leverage these emerging realities. So, as you work with leaders and teams, recognize that this is very intuitive to you, and just seems to make sense. But for others it runs counter to decades of training and indoctrination in the corporate world — they are presented with something as revolutionary and unbelievable as being told the solar system as they know functions upside down. I encourage you to: challenge and support, and be patient and kind.

Until the Next Iteration . . .

Jason