This Case Study was written by Jonathan Rodriguez, Agile Coach  at Eventbrite

Management is too important to leave to the managers, Jurgen Appello said. That quote from Jurgen’s book, Managing for Happiness, motivated me to apply M30 practices. I had a fleeting experience as manager so almost everything I’m about to relay, I did it as an Agile Coach.

I found Management 3.0 googling for innovative practices for management and the first one I decided to apply in my life, was Moving Motivators. 

I used it first as a one-on-one session technique. Those sessions were very useful for me and we had a good time doing them.

The great value I found with it is that I was able to help a person in her/his career based on their motivations. I discovered if someone was more motivated by mastery or curiosity needed challenges, then and I had to provide them as best I could. Or if relatedness or acceptance were important motivations I should not let them work alone.

It’s also a powerful tool to play with teams as you can assign points according to the order and see which motivation sums up more for the team. If order is a top motivation for your team, make sure to provide a clear and ordered process.

I joined Eventbrite and I needed to know the people that I was going to work with so I decided to use Personal Map. It’s an excellent tool to know all the corners of your co-workers’ lives.

Having this team building session began to create a spirit of collaboration within the team. They proposed to have a: “What are your plans for this weekend?” section in Friday’s standup meetings.

With the time I started to coach more teams and I needed to “abandon” my first team.

That’s when I used Delegation Cards with this team to see which tasks they were able to take and in which they still needed my help on. 

This technique is spectacular for Agile Coaches. The beginning of my coaching sessions with teams starts with one idea in my head: What should I do to leave this team and they can continue doing what they learnt?

The delegation board encourages the empowerment of team members, something that I think is a big step in the journey to self-organized teams. This practice impacts teams because it’s clear where we are and it’s decided by a consensus.

Another tool I have used is, Meddlers. It was awesome for me to drive conversations when I visited the Eventbrite headquarters in San Francisco. I had bunch of one-on-ones with unknown people and this practice helped me to know where they were in the organization and with all the people they were interacting with. Sometimes the organization has a formal structure, but the real structure is what the employees see.

Let’s say that an organization is dynamic and changes all the time but that’s because it’s made by humans, relationships and different situations that impact the structure.

My experience with Management 3.0 has been wonderful because I believe in the principles behind these practices. People first, manage the system and delight the client.