1997, age 17. A flash. A poem. My parents -as always- respond with disheartening cynicism. My language teacher responds by sharing a poem he wrote at my age. His tone was spleen and Weltschmerz, where mine was (his words) ‘contemporary cynicism’. Sign o’ the times? My teacher points out that writing takes hard work, not just flashes. I never truly realised that until in 2013, age 43, I created my book “Scrum – A Pocket Guide”. Who would have guessed that in 2017 my book would be available in 3 languages?

An earlier pivotal moment was professionally moving to the Netherlands by the end of 2010. It was the start of a fascinating time supporting many people and organisations in growing their agility through Scrum.

2012. Dots got connected. The sudden realization that it took time to become what I didn’t know I could be. As a happy outsider. To be happy as an outsider too. Good at searching, not at finding; at travelling, not at arriving. Those small contradictions of life, a force rather than a noose. Being a total introvert, a hermit; yet, travelling the world for people and their way of Scrum. A vocation. Some unspeakable need to… ?

That same outsider in me sees the changes in my professional sphere since abandoning my spot of perceived importance in 2016. It affects me to the extent that it affects interactions and collaboration. A sense of bemusement hits me every time I realize how people stopped caring, ceased sharing ideas. A sense of bemusement when individuals compete with no other aim than personal fame or fortune, denying even the mere possibility of any greater, shared good. Displaying a cynicism that rules not my world. Not my vocation. Scrum gave me much. I will keep sharing back.

I observe the effects of the growth, even dominance, of Scrum. Scrum became a commercial model for money making purposes. Or Scrum is just a job, a career. Or the much hoped-for doorway to that personal fame or fortune. The use of Scrum to create better products while humanising the workplace, with people at the heart of it all, is a vocation that not many share.

If cynicism ruled my world, I should have started my own elaborate licensing scheme by now. Go down the worn-out path that many tread, at best paved with good intentions, but blind for the toxic side-effects. I should have re-issued, re-packaged, re-evaluated existing ideas, concepts and theories, added an extra rule and a tacky badge. Run it past the magical, buzzword-combining hype-creator. Act like I am the King of the sea. And the land. And the air. Denying even the mere possibility of any greater, shared good. Just imagine.

New! Unique! Exclusive! Copyrighted! Trademarked! Licensed!

Rather… the pathfinder way. As in our personal lives. If cynicism ruled our world, the doors of serendipity would inevitably remain closed. We would not be open to explore and discover, but be fretting our days away. Now we find ourselves bothered with, but not jammed, over missed absences and unwanted presences. We ended stressing ourselves to death with 2 day jobs (and survived the loss of income). We bought a house we didn’t know we needed (although better reasons are imaginable why we bought it). We live the art of the possible life. Not all is regardless some less expected ways of life, some is because of it. Mind: easy it is not.

We live, bounce, struggle, fight, survive, suffer, prosper, thrive, enjoy, recover, stumble more. At times we look back. With amazement. We see the events and what connects them. The achievements once unimaginable. The signs marking beginnings and endings. Growing a beard. We see the choices we made. And we smile. It looks as if there was a plan. But we walk backwards. We reel the string laid in this labyrinth. We grow younger every year. We have much to figure out.

Anger can fuel you. Dissent can too. Don’t let it turn into an endstate, a dead-stop of cynicism as your final destination. Invoke fusion to happen, beyond right, beyond wrong. Open seas rise in front of you all the time. You can set sail. Or stay at home.

Warm regards
Gunther
A failing clown. No joker.

After the silent resurrection of 2010-2011 (with the birth of our daughter and my re-discovery of the path of Scrum) 2012 was a pivotal year. 2013 subsequently was pretty explosive in growth and global expansion of our views and lives. The first half of it, 2014 was turning out what we were hoping for, a year to harvest, a year to reap some fruits of those preceding years. But in June things changed. Unexpectedly.

A couple of years ago my wife had clearly hinted at spending our yearly holidays in the US in 2014. It had something to do with her reaching an unspeakable age in 2014. Part of the preparation for that trip was ordering a wheel chair for our son, who has Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy, to help us move faster through New York City.

The wheel chair made us realize that our house in the future would require more adaptations than we had already made for our son. We didn’t like that. What manifested suddenly was a partial elucidation on our overall feeling of being locked in. It explained how we made many considerations over the past years on our house, plans that were never made real. That was only re-inforced by looking beyond today and beyond tomorrow, into the future where both our sons, one with DMD and the other with Down Syndrome, might just stay at home always given their disabilities.

So, suddenly we found ourselves in a position that we were looking for a new house, something that we had never before even considered or were aware of. It was unexpected. Not unpleasant. We felt the urgency.

And then urgency was followed by opportunity. A rare combination, and we moved fast.

We discovered a beautiful house, built in 1975, having the amount of ground floor we were looking for (thinking of our son’s immobility), the space we were looking for (thinking of the long-term future). It had character and style, a rural look that we immediately fell in love with. It was not too far from where we lived. But… way beyond our budget. Or so we assumed. We went to visit the house, discovered it was more of a project than a house, but our minds were stuck on it. We discovered that rate of interests are historically low (a ‘positive’ effect of the banking crisis), and that the sellers of the house were willing to give in on their asking price. The smell of opportunity.

We decided to jump. The day before we took off for the States we signed all papers at the bank and the contract was finalized! We had a wonderful holiday in the US, and our fall was spent dreaming of our new house, and obtaining the keys on October 7th.

We subsequently set a goal, i.e. to spend Christmas in our new house. It was not a realistic goal, looking back. It required some miracles, like removing old carpets, scraping off old wall paper, getting craftsmen in to sandblast and clean old wooden stairs and floors, to check the plumbing, to order and get a new stone floor laid, to assure some base electrical installations, to pack and arrange the moving, to start selling our old house, and much more. But we made it. On Monday December 22nd we moved over all large furniture and spent our first night in our new, little cottage.
During the first week we only lost power 3 times and some other minor outages, problems that were all fixed at the root and would not have been discovered so quickly if we hadn’t just moved in like we did.

Now, the rest of our years can be spent on further renovating, redecorating, refurbishing, expanding, and restoring all sorts of facilities, hopes and dreams. It’s good to be fully aware of the fact that nothing ever is complete. It explains our restlessness. I am glad that it got restated in all of its beauty in our hearts and minds by getting a house that 6 months ago we didn’t know we wanted.

To everyone who helped in 2013 make the world a little bit of a better place to live and work in (and all others), we say:

“H A P P Y    H O L I D A Y S”

I was great knowing you, talking to you, working with you, feeling you were around.

See you next year, for more of the same.

Ian, Jente, Nienke, Gunther & Natascha.