As part of our closing keynote, English based systems thinker and well known author, John Seddon presented his keynote. Interestingly, like many speakers these days, Seddon presented with zero slides and talked about the application of systems thinking and the work that he did.
Having been a speaker with plenty of experience, he definitely came across with plenty of confidence, timing his witty remarks perfectly. Backing them up with personal stories about their success and simple things that others could relate to, I think he definitely hit the mark as a keynote speaker getting more people to think and applying systems thinking to the work that we do.
For a number of us already interested in this field of study and almost active application, I think we were simply glad to hear about how someone has been so successful in its application. This is particularly important around its pragmatic application.
His talk reinforced the importance of helping people see the system for themselves, rather than trying to fix the problems for them and how that will lead to longer lasting results. His talk also highlighted that the work that we do in an agile world isn’t always the best place to focus our efforts because we don’t really want to be delivering the wrong thing faster. Whilst I think many practitioners realise this in the agile community, those with less experience or those simply looking to make money out of a value set do not – and something more people need to understand as it’s adoption grows larger.
Finally as much of a friendly and well opinionated man as Seddon is, he is clear where he stands with the term lean, frequently used in his vocabulary in a derogatory sense. I found this point particularly interesting because my experience, and the ideas espoused by other lean followers in the software community harks back to the value and mindset of lean, rather than the tool junkies and commercial lean people Seddon seems to associate the term with. For me it was an important reminder to validate other people’s association and anchors with words before moving towards more fruitful conversations.
I’d definitely recommend Seddon as a speaker and at least the book I read, Freedom from Command and Control.
