Last week our dear friends Cliff and Fiona from Sweden dropped by for a visit. Cliff Hazell graduated from his Kanban training with Klaus in South Africa and also has co-trained some Kanban courses with Klaus. Cliff is now working with Spotify in Stockholm, where he is responsible for driving the company’s agility forward. As everyone knows, when it comes to agility, Spotify is the flagship company par excellence. And there are good reasons for this, as Cliff was able to prove to about 50 visitors at the Lean & Agile Coffee in Vienna on 20 August 2015th.
With the provocative title of his presentation “How to copy Spotify and become awesome in 3 days” Cliff nailed it : Spotify is precisely not so “awesome”, because they are using the best existing practices. No way, far from it ! Spotify’s success is based on constantly questioning their way of working and making everything visible to the employers – the practices – create themselves, reject, change, improve, etc. The current operation of Spotify is – quite Kanban-like – seen as the last momentary stand of error.
Cliff commented his Talk: “I mostly tried to convey two things in this presentation: First, copying us, especially just the names of parts, will not make you awesome. You have to learn to adapt your way of working. Second, I believe lots of our success comes from things we do not do (or try not to do). E. G. punishing failure, creating a culture hero, Standardizing too much or too early. ”
Bottom line, the Lean & Agile Coffee was a really successful event, with lively discussions that stimulate to think and rethink. In September Lean & Agile Coffee will be taking a coffee break. The next Coffee will take place on October 12, 2015. Theme and location will be announced – as usual – early enough in our Xing-User-Group.