Agendashift roundup, March 2024

Posted on by Mike Burrows

In this edition: The Great Consolidation (featuring the new Obstacles Fast and Slow video); The Great Rebalancing (news on books 4 & 5 and my next keynote); April’s webinar and experience/practice sessions; Leading in a Transforming Organisation; Top posts; Upcoming events

The Great Consolidation

On Tuesday I announced the release of Inside-out Strategy (II): Fit for maximum impact. This is notable for several reasons:

  1. It’s the module that most deeply covers how we handle assessments in general, the classic Agendashift Delivery Assessment in particular, and how the Assessment Debrief workshop design has branched out into other things (the Adaptive Organisation Workshop and Pathway to Kanban to name two)
  2. It has the latest versions of Obstacles Fast and Slow and 15-minute FOTO, two of our most important exercises. So does part I, but Obstacles Fast and Slow is now tweaked specially for the assessment, and with 15-minute FOTO there is always more to explore!
  3. Parts I and II together account for the middle half of Train-the-Trainer / Facilitator – ie the second and third of four sessions. They make for a deeper and more repeatable TTT/F than was possible with the corresponding workshop materials alone.
  4. Only one module – Outside-in Strategy: Positioned for success – remains still to be migrated off the old learning management system. With a good number of subscriptions now migrated (with a nice 25% saving) to the new system off yet a third system, the Great Consolidation proceeds nicely. I will begin revising and re-recording Outside-in after Easter.

For access, visit the store page, or watch the introductory video first. The next TTT/F is in May; see the events calendar below. And in case you missed the March webinar, the recording features on a new Obstacles Fast and Slow page on agendashift.com and prominently on the homepage also. To save you a click, here it is:

Obstacles Fast and Slow, recorded March 2024

The Great Rebalancing

Book 4, Organizing Conversations: Patterns of Dialog for the Transforming Organization, is a few minor edits away from completion after a couple of much bigger revisions. I’ll keep you posted on its progress through the production process in the coming months (to be honest, I don’t know how long it will take).

Book 5, Wholehearted: Engaging with Complexity in the Deliberately Adaptive Organisation, is started. I told myself that I would hold fire until book 4 was done, but I could hold on no longer. After having it kick around in my head these past couple of years it feels good!

Out of chapter 1 of Wholehearted – which you’ll have to wait a while to read of course – will come my next keynote, The Great Rebalancing. It will revisit themes I have blogged about before; it turns out that the need for organisations to increase their decision-making capacity leads to an interesting way to frame the shift heralded by the Agile manifesto that we have seen over the past couple of decades. Conference organisers and meetup hosts, you know where to find me; I do paid private speaking engagements also.

April’s webinar and experience/practice sessions

April’s free webinar and experience practice sessions are a bit different to usual. At the webinar, we’ll have special guest Karl Scotland, one of my earliest collaborators in the development of Agendashift and Leading with Outcomes. The experience/practice session will switch from being about assessments (most months, we look at one of three different templates) to being about organising outcomes into some representation of strategy. We’ll do some Option Relationship Mapping (together with Liz Keogh, Karl was its co-creator by the way) and look at some alternative/complementary tools. Again, see the events calendar for both sessions.

I haven’t added webinar and experience/practice sessions for May or June yet. For news of those, watch this space or subscribe to the series links (eventbrite.com both):

Leading in a Transforming Organisation

There are now three of these events in the calendar below: Berlin and London in early and late June (the London one brought forward from July), and Southampton in October (bumped from a highly speculative attempt to put it on at short notice in April). There’s a chance that I’ll do one in Scandinavia in the Autumn; other than that, these represent your best chances to experience Leading with Outcomes in person this year.

Top posts

  1. A big update to 15-minute FOTO (February)
  2. When to use which Leading with Outcomes workshop (March)
  3. From Flow to Business Agility (January)
  4. Leaders as keepers of context (September 2022)
  5. Better user stories start with authentic situations of need (October 2016)

Upcoming events

Recent changes:

  • Leading in a Transforming Organisation (London) is brought forward a week to 25-27 June
  • Added Leading in Transforming Organisation (Southampton), October 8-10
  • Webinars and experience/practise sessions taking a break now until the autumn

May

June

October

*For TTT/F and Leading in a Transforming Organisation, ping me for coupon codes if any of the following apply:

  • Employees in public sector, education, and non-profit organisations get 40% off, as do authorised trainers and facilitators
  • There are subscription-specific discounts for Agendashift Academy subscribers
  • Members of the old partner programme get 30% off
  • Past participants of Leading in a Transforming Organisation can re-attend with 60% off (75% if you work for a public sector, education, or non-profit organisation)
  • Past TTT/F participants can re-attend online for free

Leading with Outcomes from the Agendashift Academy
“Leadership and strategy in the transforming organisation”

Leading with Outcomes is our modular curriculum in leadership and organisation development. Each module is available as self-paced online training or as private, instructor-led training (online or in-person). Certificates of completion or participation according to format. Its modules in the recommended order:

  1. Leading with Outcomes: Foundation
  2. Inside-out Strategy (I): On the same page, with purpose
  3. Inside-out Strategy (II): Fit for maximum impact
  4. Part I: Business agility at every scale
  5. Part II: Between spaces, scopes, and scales
  6. Outside-in Strategy: Positioned for success

Individual subscriptions from £24.50 £18.40 per month after a 7-day free trial, with discounts available for employees and employers in the government, healthcare, education, and non-profit sectors. For bulk subscriptions, ask for our Agendashift for Business brochure.

To deliver Leading with Outcomes training or workshops yourself, see our Authorised Trainer and Authorised Facilitator programmes. Our next TTT/F training takes place in May (online).

Agendashift™: Serving the transforming organisation
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At every scope and scale, developing strategy together, pursuing strategy together, outcomes before solutions, working backwards (“right to left”) from key moments of impact and learning.