Did you know that the mandate (2 years) of the two co-presidents of the oldest union of entrepreneurs, business owners, in France, the CJD (Centre des jeunes dirigeants) is based on the notion of agility? Interesting, right? Let’s go back, autumn 2012, Agile Tour Paris, “The project where you are the agile hero”, someone comes in…late. Everyone is fired up by the workshop, we ask the latecomer to pay tribute: push-ups! He immediately complies with a smile on his face! first encounter with a JD, the vice-president of the movement, Jérôme Lefèvre.

Then came this little video in memory of that intervention:

CJD Trainer

It’s the beginning of a great encounter. Jérôme asks me to become the official trainer (the one who appears in the 2013/2014 catalog for agility: “agility, give initiative to your teams”). For that I go through a series of tests myself (fair’s fair), and here I am validated. Since I’m an “entrepreneur” myself (small consulting company of 9 people), we connect quickly (but I don’t officially join the CJD, I’m not allowed to, since I provide them with a training service).

For the JDs who might read this, here’s a pitch of the training that is now in your catalog:

Conferences and meetings

Thanks to this encounter I was able to participate in several events: a monthly evening near Béziers (30 people), a Network Meeting (300 people) for which I facilitated a ball point game and gave a short conference, and very recently a conference in the magnificent palais des Papes in Avignon for which I also facilitated workshops (150 people). In short, I learned to meet these JDs (jeunes dirigeants). They’re not at all what you imagine “bosses” to be (old, pot-bellied, constraining, moralizing, etc.). It’s a group of dynamic and interesting young people. Mostly they have fairly small structures, VSEs. So they’re often people very active in value production, or very close to their teams. Besides, now I’m careful, the workshops never really go as usual.

So what about agility?

And so agility is their motto for the two years in progress. Agility? “our” kind? Yes and no, and yes. Yes, they are completely aligned with the movement of thought that represents us in thoughts and actions: during the meetings mentioned, a real agile openspace unfolded before me. No, because they approach the subject very broadly, to encompass all their diversity, and so, as “with us” the word agility quickly loses its meaning. It’s so easy to grab and manipulate. It can fit so many discourses, slip into so many conversations.

But yes again, because their “open” approach directly allows them to open up to debates much broader than the miserable questions about this or that method, about kanban/scrum squabbles, etc. We are directly in sociology, in ethnology almost, especially among the speakers at these different conferences.

Fascinating conferences by futurists

I noted two particularly interesting speakers during these different events. Especially since I find myself very much in their remarks. Their first André-Yves Portnoff is a fascinating little man, passionate, with a hint of irony and enough velvet in his voice to get all his messages across without friction. He advocates as we can often do in agility, the boss, the human entrepreneur, empowering, supporting, helping his teams. “Servant-leadership” par excellence. He abhors the vulture, the asset-stripper, the “short-termist”. I was able to hear him twice, both times he abounds in a discourse close to what I support, better, more thoughtful, more advanced.

An interview with André-Yves Portnoff for the CJD.

Another speaker whose discourse hit home, Marc Halévy. The key point of Marc Halévy’s discourse (his website: Maran Group), is the great bifurcation. We are in a great rupture (technological, ecological, economic, etc.). Now we observe this kind of great rupture, great bifurcation every 500 years (the invasion of Greek cities, the fall of the Roman empire, the feudal mutation, the Renaissance, etc.). And we are arriving in this moment of great rupture, great bifurcation, our “crisis” is only the resistance of the old world to this passage, long live the crisis. From a mass economy we are moving to a niche economy, from a volume economy to a margin economy, from a capitalistic economy to a humanistic economy, from a standard economy to an economy of genius, from a productivity economy to a creativity economy, from a size economy to an economy of agility, from a pillage economy to a frugality economy, from a price economy to an economy of value. It’s fascinating, and completely in line with agile culture.

Want to know more? I’m going to read “un univers complexe” (Oxus - 2011) and

especially his new work that should come out at Dangles in October 2013

“Prospective 2015-2025 - L’après-modernité”.

In short, I’m on the path to CJDization.