My Plans for 2019
It looks like 2019 will be an important year for me and the three teams that I work with. In this post, I want to give you a high-level overview of everything that I have planned for our various brands and how it all fits together. You can expect more details in follow-up posts, but first, let’s look at the essentials of my plan (which obviously keeps changing) and how you could participate in these projects.
Agility Scales
The Agility Scales team has made good progress, but we are still searching for product/market fit. More funding is needed to realize our vision of adventurous agile transformations with a gamified platform full of agile practices, guides, tracks, and journeys.
The team is switching to a more agile approach of investing, with shorter runways, quarterly goals, full transparency, and continuous funding. Do you want to own a piece of the future of agile transformations? We already have 300+ crowd investors and we add more each week. Investors who step in now can get a free lifetime license to use the Mind Settlers app, and even a free keynote from yours truly!
Learn more about funding Agility Scales
Mind Settlers
For the Mind Settlers app and platform, we know it takes a lot of work to create a wildly successful product. We allow ourselves to experiment until at least November 2019, which will be 2.5 years after we started. The average time until product/market fit is three years, according to my sources. But it’s longer for “blue ocean” business models, which is the type that we seem to have chosen.
The immediate focus of our team is improved discovery of great content, team management features, and content creation by users. Other things, such as the iOS version that our users keep asking for, must be postponed until after product/market fit. After all, copying features to other platforms is something we should do in the execution phase, not in the exploration phase. However, if you have an Android phone, you can play with the app right now.
Download Mind Settlers from the Play Store
From February 2019, you see empty space in our planning. That’s because the priorities for this period will depend on the Shiftup and Management 3.0 projects. See below.
Book 5
I have just submitted the manuscript of Startup, Scaleup, Screwup to the publisher. There are a few more things to do, such as finishing the illustrations and processing the copy edits. And then the book marketing starts in full earnest.
In May and (possibly) June 2019, I expect to enjoy a book tour in North America to celebrate the book release. I did the same for Managing for Happiness, which was a lot of fun. However, from that event, I learned that there should be more focus on actual book sales. I will discuss this with the local organizers.
Contact me if you want to host a book tour event
My book team and I will take a break in the Summer and then refocus our book promotion on Europe in the Autumn of next year. Sorry, South America and Australasia will have to wait until 2020. I must focus all my efforts on North America and Europe first.
Shiftup workshops
I have picked the name Shiftup as the brand that will be launched together with my new book. Shiftup will be the brand for all my new content creation. Maybe there will even be multiple books.
Together with my book team, I am preparing for new workshops based on the new book and I will be testing them from January until April (more about that in another post). These workshops are intended for corporates and will focus on innovating, executing, starting, and scaling, and they will co-exist with the Management 3.0 curriculum. (There will be little or no overlap.)
The plan is to have the Mind Settlers app play an important role in the Shiftup workshop. It would be great to have workshop tracks, games, challenges, and achievements supported by the platform, and facilitated by coaches and consultants. Training from the back of the room could be much easier when participants have a platform at their disposal that guides them through exercises and discussions.
I will use the Summer to finalize the new Shiftup workshop and then make it available for other facilitators. They should be able to organize these new workshops around the world from September 2019.
Happy Melly One
I am not an active member anymore of the Happy Melly One team, which is the team that manages the Management 3.0 and Happy Melly brands. But I am still the largest co-owner among the crowd of owners of the company, and thus I am very interested in their work and the progress that they make.
With the success of Management 3.0 licensing, I have asked the team to do the same for my new Shiftup workshops. I want an arrangement around licensing and certification that is similar to Management 3.0, so why not ask the same team to handle that for me?
The team told me that their first focus is on scaling up the Management 3.0 efforts, but they want to reorganize themselves so that they can handle other brands as well. Management 3.0 and Shiftup will co-exist as an older brother and a younger sister on the same team. We will discuss all details in 2019.
Management 3.0
It looks like the revenues from Management 3.0 licensing will enjoy another 40% growth this year, compared to last year. This growth has not slowed down since I personally changed focus to Agility Scales, Mind Settlers, and my new book. This is awesome!
The team is now working on a rebranding effort of the website and the materials. After that, they will introduce new forms of licensing (with multiple levels) that I also will want to apply to the new Shiftup workshops.
At the same time, I will be experimenting by using the Mind Settlers app and platform for the Shiftup workshops. If that goes well, I will work with the team to introduce the same new technology for Management 3.0, redesigning the workshops to make use of digital, platform-based content rather than static PowerPoint slides.
Happy Melly
Last but not least, the team has decided to reevaluate the Happy Melly brand and business model. The team has pivoted multiple times, and even though community members like the brand name, no business model that we tried has really taken off.
The latest idea will be to completely connect Happy Melly with Management 3.0 so that HM is a part of Management 3.0 and will be emphasizing the happiness at work component of the brand. More about that later.
For now, Melly is on a well-deserved vacation but she will be back with new insights soon. Maybe the Agility Scales and Happy Melly One teams can somehow work together on a reorientation in 2019. After all, both have active community members, and there is a significant overlap.
Conclusion
As you can see, a lot is happening in 2019. I work with three different teams but, somehow, everything is interrelated. The success of each of them can be boosted by the others.
If you want to be part of all of this, then I remind you once again that the Agility Scales team is seeking more funding. The future of organizational transformations is in technology. I’m sure of it. You can be co-owner of Mind Settlers, our agile adventures platform and benefit (indirectly) from the future success of the Management 3.0 and Shiftup programs.
As a final word of caution: plans are useless, but planning is everything. I don’t think I have to explain to any of you that everything I just described is subject to change. Because things happen. You know. That’s life.
