Business Agility Conference 2018 Wrap Up
And it’s a wrap. After a year of planning, we’ve pulled off another successful event. And, if I do say so myself, even better than the first. There were certainly hiccups and issues along the way (I’m looking at you NYC weather), but I think it all came together fantastically in the end.
Interesting Stats
The event itself was bigger and better than last year. We had nearly 350 delegates; from coaches to executives, from over 20 countries representing almost every industry. Some interesting stats from those people who shared their personal information;
- Consultancies (27%), Financial Services (17%), IT & Software (16%), Healthcare (5%), and Retail (5%) made up the bulk of the attendees.
- We had 15 graduate students from the International School of Management in France. They'll be heading back to school soon and leading the change in their curriculum.
- 23% of our attendees were senior executives in their organisations, 28% came from the "frozen middle", 17% programme/project managers, 28% were coaches and individual contributors with the last 4% being the aforementioned students.
- Nearly 40% of attendees came from overseas. Canada (14%), Australia/New Zealand (5%) and Chile (5%) were the largest single contingents. With more delegates coming from Brazil, Turkey, Russia, South Korea, and nearly a dozen European countries. Perhaps more impressive is that 96% of attendees came from outside New York.
The Programme
The number 1 question I get asked is; will you be sharing the slides. The short answer is Yes. The longer answer is, yes and we’re still waiting on slides from some of the speakers. However, instead of making you wait until we have them all, we’re going to be agile and share what we’ve got so far. We’ll share the rest as we get them. The video’s are being processed and edited right now and will come out over the next few weeks.
Jonathan Smart, Head of Development Services for Barclays, gave his story; “The Yin and Yang of Speed and Control”.
Ashok Mohan (Agile Coach) & Burkhard Lustig (Product Owner) flew in from Ableton AG in Germany to tell their story; “From solo artists to an orchestra; a journey toward playing as an ensemble”
Jimmy Allen, Senior Partner with Bain and Company, shared a perspective almost never heard within our business agility tribe; “Founder’s Mentality and Micro-battles”
Jutta Eckstein & John Buck shared some insights gained during writing their latest book on “Company-wide Agility with Beyond Budgeting, Open Space, and Sociocracy”
Laurence Jourdain, self described Agile Magician, flew in from Belgium to provide insights in how BNP Paribas Fortis is on a “journey to be more than a bank”
Sudhir Nelvagal & K. Lars Bruns Male from GE Global Research shared their stories on business agility in physical engineering domains; “Physical-Digital Transformation at a 125 year-old startup”
David Horowitz (CEO @ Retrium) & Matias Nino (Agile Project Manager @ REI Systems) share practical advice on how to “give employees a voice” through the power of retrospectives.
Marsha Z Shenk, founder of 5Movez Consulting, brings a lighthearted, yet practical view of motivation and engagement through “NeuroPhysiology: a Master Key to Business Agility”
Bret Nelson, Director at IHS Markit and ringmaster of the Business Agility Conference, stepped up to tell a highly engaging story on “The Secret Sauce”; how to use culture to drive transformational success.
Susan Courtney (EVP Operations, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Nebraska) and Joni Wheeler (CEO of CoreLink Administrative Solutions) share an inspiring “Story of Leadership Transformation”