For those who work as a freelancer or entrepreneur, those words are a disaster. “We don’t need you.” That’s terrible! That means my services are not required, that no-one needs me, that I’m not important...

That’s not how I see it.

In the context of the Jump Movement and its self-organizing method of conversation, it is fantastic when a company says, “We don't need you.” That means it works. And that they can do it themselves. Which is exactly what we want!

Just before the holidays, I was visiting a large youth care organization to offer the Jump Movement experience to a group of team leaders and managers. How else will you know if you’ll like it, if you don’t first try it?

They tried the method, and liked it. “We are going to think about how to continue with this”, they said, after everyone’s positive response to the experience. I went home and let it go. This week, I called the club to check in: “Have you given it some thought?”

“Oh, I’m so sorry, I never called you!”, said the manager. “No problem at all”, I said. “You must have been enjoying your summer holidays!” Somewhat hesitant she continued: “Uhm... in fact, we have already started ourselves, using the manual on your website. So far, it seems to work well.  We are currently testing it out in a few teams, to see what people think.  And once we’re ready to look at how to fully implement it, we will call you.  At the moment, I don’t think we need you.”

I think that’s great! To me, this is a big compliment. It proves the method works and people are actually using it themselves. I know it can be quite hard to just start using a new method, even a simple one like this. So this organization deserves a big compliment.

And of course I am very interested in finding out how things are going, so I will call them again in a couple of months. Just out of curiosity....