The Agile Alliance has published keynote talks from the recent Agile 2019 conference. The keynote speakers were Chris Bailey on retaining focus, Lynne Cazaly on accepting good enough and Portia Tung on playful leadership.
The opening keynote was presented by bestselling author Chris Bailey. Titled How to Manage your Attention in a World of Distraction, he summarized the research that went into his latesst book Hyper Focus and gave advice on how focus your attention more effectively.
The research is clear — the state of our attention determines the state of our lives. Yet our attention has never been as overwhelmed or in-demand as it is today. We’ve never been so busy while accomplishing so little, and we’ve grown increasingly uncomfortable with a lack of stimulation and distraction.
Modeled after Chris Bailey’s bestselling new book, Hyperfocus, this talk reveals how effectively managing our attention hinges on working with greater intention, taming stimulating distractions in advance, and strategically unfocusing to take better mind wandering breaks.
The second keynote ish: The Problem with our Pursuit for Perfection and the Life-Changing Practice of Good Enough presented by Lynn Cazaly, explored our obsession with perfection and how it harms us and our relationships with others. The talk is based on her new book, of the same name.
Excellence, quality and continuous improvement are important, but the pursuit of perfection …not so much. Our drive to make things look or seem perfect is dangerously on the rise and has dire consequences for how we feel about ourselves, how we live and work and how we collaborate with others. Lynne Cazaly shares the latest thinking on how being more ‘ish’ – which means somewhat, more or less, to some extent – is a more flexible, helpful and effective way to think and work. We can go for iteration over perfection more often.
The closing keynote was by Portia Tung, Play Researcher from the School of Play. Titled Playful Leadership – How to Enable Transformational Change and Have Fun Doing It she discussed how taking a playful mindset enables organisational change to be more positive and persistent.
In this highly interactive talk, you will experience the catalysing power of play and gain an understanding of how play can convert seemingly relentless resistance to change into joyful anticipation of growth instead. You will learn and experience the benefits of play firsthand and, by being re-acquainted with the knowledge of play, explore what being a playful leader means to you.