Tag: academy

Agendashift roundup of the year 2023

Posted on by Mike Burrows

Whether you have followed Agendashift and Leading with Outcomes over the years or have only just found us, thank you for your interest and support. As we approach the Christmas and New Year break, let me wish you a time of peace and renewal.

In this end-of-year edition: December looking forward; Top 10 posts of the year; Upcoming events (most of them free)

December looking forward

The usual monthly list of the top 5 most-read posts would overlap quite a bit with the year’s top 10, so instead I’ll point out just one recent post:

As for the rest of the month, I have my fourth book to finish, and only then (though my head feels fit to burst) my fifth to start. Two very different books, their provisional titles:

  • Organizing Conversations: Patterns of Dialog for the Transforming Organisation – for the BMI series in dialogic organisation development, hence the American spelling
  • Wholehearted: Engaging with complexity in the Deliberately Adaptive Organisation

It would be quite something to get both books published in 2024, ten years since my first. Wish me luck! In relation to that second one, I have in the past couple of days updated the Everywhere all at once white paper to include a brief section on the recent What Lies Beneath stuff. You can request your copy here.

Of course 2024 won’t only be spent writing. Two modules of Leading with Outcomes still live on the old learning management system. Once their videos are re-recorded, I can consolidate everything onto the new platform. I’m looking forward also to doing more in-person training and workshops. I intend to put on the 3-day Leading in a Transforming Organisation publicly at least twice in the UK, hope to do it at least once in mainland Europe, and further afield as opportunities arise. Opportunities to do the private 1-day Adaptive Organisation workshop are materialising too; introductory pricing remains available for bookings taken in the next few weeks.

Top 10 posts of 2023

Most popular first, these are this year’s most-read posts:

  1. #2MBM: Meaning before Metric, Measure before Method (July 2020) – the prototype for the Meaning, Measure, Method pattern that features now in every Leading with Outcomes module
  2. Your organisation in 5 networks (November 2022) – now part of the Leading with Outcomes module Adaptive Organisation (II)
  3. My favourite Clean Language question (January 2019) – the oldest post in this list, still a regular fixture on our monthly top 5
  4. What Lies Beneath (Spoiler: Constraints) (October 2023) – only a few weeks old but already #4 for the year!
  5. Explaining the “unreasonable effectiveness” of Agile (July 2023) – expect more on this in the coming months
  6. 15-minute FOTO’s cheat mode (October 2023) – another recent entrant
  7. It’s 10 years since the post that changed my career (January 2023) – referring to the evergreen Introducing Kanban through its values (January 2013), the post that spawned my first book
  8. Start where you are (July 2023) – a twist on an old idea
  9. Sell the pain, not the solution, the theory, or the blame (December 2022) – a tip repeated several times across Leading with Outcomes; see also the March webinar below
  10. Avoiding the disaster that is ‘solution-driven’ (June 2023) – why outcome-orientation matters

Upcoming events

February

March

*TTT/F and (where shown) LIKE events include free one-year membership of the Leading with Outcomes Authorised Facilitator programme, upgradeable to Authorised Trainer at any time. Both of those include access to the video-based Leading with Outcomes training and the full range of Agendashift assessment tools.

Agendashift™: Serving the transforming organisation
Links: Home | Subscribe | Events | Media | Contact | Mike
Agendashift  Academy: Leading with Outcomes | Trainer and Facilitator Programmes | Store

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.

Developing and pursuing strategy in the language of outcomes

Agendashift roundup, November 2023

Posted on by Mike Burrows

In this edition: Adaptive Organisation; 15-minute FOTO; New podcast interview; More free sessions; Train-the-Trainer / Facilitator (TTT/F); Top posts

Adaptive Organisation

There is plenty to report here! Let’s begin with its online, self-paced version. Now that I’ve finished hand-editing the captions on all of its videos, Adaptive Organisation (II) is out of beta. That’s both parts now:

Both parts lean on Leading with Outcomes: Foundation, and we recommend that you take that first.

Also online, the latest version of my keynote:

With regard to the in-person experience, the Leading in a Transforming Organisation training (Foundation and Adaptive Organisation combined) goes from strength to strength. Thought’s on this month’s training in Manchester:

Also some tweaks to this post from October:

Each of these events generates a further flurry of activity. Trainers now have access to post-Manchester decks and handouts for Adaptive Organisation parts I & II. For Facilitators, an update to the Adaptive Organisation workshop will follow as soon as I have synced the handout with the deck – not a huge task but I begin my travels to India shortly.

I’m looking to do at least two more of these in the UK next year, and maybe a couple of in mainland Europe also. If you have thoughts on bringing it to your city, get in touch! Similarly for the 1-day workshop (only privately for the time being, introductory pricing between now and the end of January).

Adaptive Organisation, the two-part module: Engaging with complexity in the Deliberately Adaptive Organisation

15-minute FOTO

A couple of updates to our Clean Language-based coaching game 15-minute FOTO:

  1. Gaël Mareau has kindly contributed a French language cue card – merci beaucoup Gaël!
  2. During my trip to India I’ll be testing a number of usability improvements (none of them major, but they add up), so expect a new release in the next couple of weeks

New podcast interview

While in Australia last month I was interviewed for Kanban Lab by Orod Semsarzadeh and Soma Mazumder. You can listen to Exploring Kanban from Right to Left: A Thoughtful Conversation with Mike Burrows here:

More interviews, talks, etc on our media page.

More free sessions

Train-the-Trainer / Facilitator (TTT/F)

Unusually, the next TTT/F is in person, and it begins this coming Sunday:

Thank you Prachi, Noopur, and the Kanban India 2023 team – the conference begins on Friday.

The February TTT/F is now confirmed:

Top posts

  1. 15-minute FOTO’s cheat mode (October)
  2. What Lies Beneath (Spoiler: Constraints) (October, recently updated)
  3. Leading in a Transforming Organisation: Takeaways from Manchester (November)
  4. A small update to the Constraints Club exercise (November)
  5. My favourite Clean Language question (January 2019)

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. Foundation module:
  2. Inside-out Strategy:
  3. Adaptive Organisation:
  4. Outside-in Strategy:

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. See our events calendar for Train-the-Trainer / Facilitator (TTT/F) and Leading in a Transforming Organisation trainings.

Agendashift™: Serving the transforming organisation
Links: Home | Subscribe | Events | Media | Contact | Mike
Agendashift  Academy: Leading with Outcomes | Trainer and Facilitator Programmes | Store

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.

Agendashift roundup, October 2023

Posted on by Mike Burrows

In this edition: From Melbourne to Manchester; Adaptive Organisation workshops; Adaptive Organisation online; More free sessions; Train-the-Trainer / Facilitator (TTT/F) and alternatives; Top posts

From Melbourne to Manchester

It was a privilege to open the inaugural Kanban Australia – congratulations to Daniel Ploeg and the team there for putting on such a great event! The Leading in a Transforming Organisation training/workshop held the preceding week wasn’t as well attended as we might have liked, but it was highly productive nevertheless. Two blog posts describe some of what came out of it:

My eldest son moved to Sydney last year, so if anyone wants me back in Australia, count me in 🙂 Between training and conference we enjoyed the weekend together in Melbourne, and I joined him in Sydney afterwards.

Back in the UK, my youngest son lives in Manchester, and by pure coincidence that happens to be the location of the next Leading in a Transforming Organisation, which begins in two weeks on November 14th. Our hosts are the University of Manchester (thank you Andrea), and we have already the most diverse group of attendees signed up I have yet managed to assemble. There is still time to grab a place:

1-day, 2-day and 3-day tickets available. Use BLOG20 for 20% off, and ping me if another discount might apply. There will be NHS and university staff attending – they and other public/educational/non-profit employees get 40% off.

It is not its primary purpose, but I should mention that as described on the event page and below, it offers a path to Authorised Leading with Outcomes Facilitator and Trainer also.

Adaptive Organisation workshops

This new 1-day workshop takes the two-part Adaptive Organisation training module (two days of training when done in person, three days when taken with Foundation) and dials down the training dimension to make it all about the conversations your organisation needs to have with itself. Read more in the recent announcement:

For myself, I am offering this workshop only privately, initially with introductory pricing. The materials are available already to authorised Facilitators and Trainers, and if the latter want to experiment with offering it publicly, I won’t stand in their way.

Adaptive Organisation online

Quick updates on the online version of the two-part Adaptive Organisation module:

There is still some work to be done, but were you to start Foundation now, there’s a good chance that the beta tags will gone by the time you get to the above. Don’t wait for part 1 to get re-recorded as version 2.1 or later – that won’t happen until after the Inside-out and Outside-in strategy modules are re-recorded and I can retire the old learning management system, early 2024.

While we’re here, my Adaptive Organisation-related keynote gets an online airing on the 9th, courtesy Blackmetric’s BA community meetup (thank you Adrian Reed):

A busy day, as you’ll see in a moment!

More free sessions

The first free experience/practice session took place last week. A lot to fit in the hour but we did it, just! The next of those and the existing webinar/AMA sessions, one of each per month:

Train-the-Trainer / Facilitator (TTT/F) and alternatives

Unusually, the next TTT/F is in person:

That is thanks to another conference (thank you Prachi, Noopur, and team):

Really glad to be revisiting India – I’ve been several times, thoroughly enjoyed it every time, and after Australia, it will be only my second trip abroad since covid!

I have pencilled in the next online TTT/F for February:

  • 6-14 February, online, Tuesday & Wednesday afternoons (UK time):
    Train-the-Trainer / Facilitator (TTT/F) – to be confirmed

I’ll announce that separately when the booking page is up.

Together with some extra online study and an onboarding call, your alternative to TTT/F is the in-person Leading in a Transforming Organisation. If you would like me to hold one of those somewhere near you in 2024, please get in touch. I’m thinking a couple in the UK (London and perhaps the south coast) and in mainland Europe too (Germany and/or Sweden perhaps). I’m open to travelling further (ie North America and Asia) if numbers or other opportunities make the longer trip worthwhile.

Top posts

  1. What Lies Beneath (Spoiler: Constraints)
  2. 15-minute FOTO’s cheat mode
  3. My favourite Clean Language question (January 2019)
  4. Announcing a new Adaptive Organisation workshop (and more)
  5. On values, meaningfulness, and change – parallels with Bateson and Mead (May 2022)

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. Foundation module:
  2. Inside-out Strategy:
  3. Adaptive Organisation:
  4. Outside-in Strategy:

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. See our events calendar for Train-the-Trainer / Facilitator (TTT/F) and Leading in a Transforming Organisation trainings.

Agendashift™: Serving the transforming organisation
Links: Home | Subscribe | Events | Media | Contact | Mike
Agendashift  Academy: Leading with Outcomes | Trainer and Facilitator Programmes | Store

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.

Announcing a new Adaptive Organisation workshop (and more)

Posted on by Mike Burrows

Announcing:

  1. The immediate availability of the Leading with Outcomes Adaptive Organisation workshop

And closely related to that:

  1. Adaptive Organisation (II): Between spaces, scopes and scales, v2.1 beta
  2. Updates on Leading in a Transforming Organisation, Manchester
  3. New experience/practice sessions begin next week

1. Announcing the immediate availability of the Leading with Outcomes Adaptive Organisation Workshop

This new 1-day workshop takes the two-part Adaptive Organisation training module (two days of training when done in person, three days when taken with Foundation) and dials down the training dimension to make it all about the conversations your organisation needs to have with itself.

It follows much the same structure as the training:

  1. Introduction
  2. Delivery-Discovery-Renewal – value-creating work and how it is coordinated and organised
  3. Adaptive Strategising – keeping us in the game, strategising and self-governing
  4. Mutual Trust Building – addressing the formal organisation’s deficit in information and decision-making capacity
  5. Between and Across Scales – examining the relationships between scales of organisation
  6. Organising at Human Scale – promoting adaptation, innovation, and learning at all scales
  7. What Lies Beneath – dealing with organisational constraints

Points 1-5 above each correspond to a section of the Deliberately Adaptive Organisation assessment, and we’ll be working with that, making this a thorough health-check for your organisation. Per this recent blog post, the final part of the workshop takes it all forward into action, via some very interesting new tools for identifying and visualising organisational constraints.

The material has already been made available to authorised Leading with Outcomes facilitators and trainers. For myself, I am pleased to offer it in the form of a private, 1-day, in-person workshop. I charge a fixed rate for anywhere in mainland UK, and I make things as easy as I can for European destinations easily reachable from Manchester or East Midlands airport also. Outside those parameters – further afield, online, or spread over multiple days – let’s see what we can work out.

2. Adaptive Organisation (II): Between spaces, scopes and scales, v2.1 beta

I have already mentioned the two-part Adaptive Organisation training module on which the new workshop is based. This second announcement relates to its presentation in the form of online, video-based, self-paced training at the Agendashift Academy.

Following on from Adaptive Organisation (I): Business agility at every scale (v2.0 beta), I have released the first chapter of Adaptive Organisation (II): Between spaces, scopes and scales (v2.1 beta). Still to come in part II: two more chapters and an “interlude”, one of two windows into the in-person Leading in a Transforming Organisation. The beta tag will disappear when I’ve released all the videos and done their captions (still in progress for part I) and student workbook. Part I will at some point be re-recorded at version 2.1 or later but there is no great rush to do so – the two parts remain compatible.

Part I develops the Deliberately Adaptive Organisation, a model to describe any organisational scope at any scale (or many/all such scopes all at once!). Part II pays attention to issues of scale:

  1. Relationships between scopes at different scales – between team and team-of-teams for example
  2. The difficulty with which organisations adapt as scale increases
  3. Identifying and managing organisational constraints

3. Updates on Leading in a Transforming Organisation: Manchester, 14-16 November

This will be my most diverse group yet at a public training. Thanks to staff from the NHS and two universities (three if you count former staff), it’s quite possible that consultants, coaches, and trainers won’t be in the majority. An experience to savour I think!

New this time: with some additional study, this event allows prospective trainers (not only facilitators) to bypass Train-the-Trainer / Facilitator (TTT/F); further information about that on the event page.

The material (shared with Adaptive Organisation parts I & II) can be considered well-tested now, even a joy to teach! Between London, Melbourne, and my preparations for Manchester, each of the two parts fits comfortably in a day, and they take things more consistently in an emergence and complexity-friendly way, which is to say bottom-up. Not that it was ever top-down, but making it more consistent has definitely added to its impact.

While still in Melbourne I wrote up two changes:

And the Manchester event itself:

4. New experience/practice sessions begin next week

Next week, the first of what will become a monthly fixture:

A different assessment tool each month, and we’re starting with the Deliberately Adaptive Organisation assessment (mini edition), a version of the one used in all the Adaptive Organisation workshop and training products mentioned in this post. A great way to get a firsthand impression of what it’s all about!

Upcoming events

February

March

*TTT/F and (where shown) LIKE events include free one-year membership of the Leading with Outcomes Authorised Facilitator programme, upgradeable to Authorised Trainer at any time. Both of those include access to the video-based Leading with Outcomes training and the full range of Agendashift assessment tools.

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. Foundation module:
  2. Inside-out Strategy:
  3. Adaptive Organisation:
  4. Outside-in Strategy:

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. See our events calendar for Train-the-Trainer / Facilitator (TTT/F) and Leading in a Transforming Organisation trainings.

Agendashift™: Serving the transforming organisation
Links: Home | Subscribe | Events | Media | Contact | Mike
Agendashift  Academy: Leading with Outcomes | Trainer and Facilitator Programmes | Store

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.

Agendashift roundup, September 2023

Posted on by Mike Burrows

In this edition: Experience/practice sessions; Leading in a Transforming Organisation; Looking ahead to December; Top posts

(New! Free!) Experience/Practice sessions

I have added two more dates to the calendar, the first experience/practice sessions of what should become a monthly fixture (series link):

They’re a chance to try one of our famously inclusive, non-prescriptive, and framework-agnostic assessments (a different template each month) and to experience with others some post-assessment conversations, Agendashift-style.

Post-debrief conversations will follow the IdOO (“I do”) pattern – Ideal, Obstacles, Outcomes, for which materials based on Leading with Outcomes: Foundation will be provided. If, within that structure, you would like to take the brief opportunity to practice our Clean Language coaching game 15-minute FOTO (Academy version here), this should be possible, numbers permitting.

These are in addition to the free monthly webinars that continue to cycle through the three “questions that drive us” (series link). The next two of those:

Leading in a Transforming Organisation: Engaging with complexity in the Deliberately Adaptive Organisation

I’m both counting down the days to Australia and looking ahead to Manchester!

This is where it’s happening in Agendashift-land right now. If you’re tired of approaches to organisational challenges that can’t see beyond process (and trust me, it’s liberating to get past that) and have little of consequence to say about complexity, get yourself to one of these if you possibly can.

I should mention that my trip to Australia – my first trip abroad since COVID – is thanks to Kanban Australia 2023. Thank you Daniel and the rest of the organising team!

Looking ahead to December

In early December I’m off to India for Kanban India and the last TTT/F of the year:

And a thank you to Noopur, Prachi, and the rest of the organising team there too!

Top posts

  1. An invitation to a more thoughtful assessment (September)
  2. My favourite Clean Language question (January 2019)
  3. What I really think about Scrum (August 2020)
  4. Your organisation in 5 networks (November 2022)
  5. From Reverse STATIK to a ‘Pathway’ for continuous transformation (October 2019)

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. Foundation module:
  2. Inside-out Strategy:
  3. Adaptive Organisation:
  4. Outside-in Strategy:

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. See our events calendar for Train-the-Trainer / Facilitator (TTT/F) and Leading in a Transforming Organisation trainings.

Agendashift™: Serving the transforming organisation
Links: Home | Subscribe | Events | Media | Contact | Mike
Agendashift  Academy: Leading with Outcomes | Trainer and Facilitator Programmes | Store

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.

An invitation to a more thoughtful assessment

Posted on by Mike Burrows

All the organisational scopes you identify with

Before you begin, think about all the organisational scopes you identify with. Formally-recognised or otherwise, your scopes bring together people, their value-creating work, and a sense of shared identity. Yours might include:

  • Teams, teams-of-teams, or bigger
  • Scopes smaller than teams
  • Cross-cutting scopes that intersect with multiple other scopes

Next, two kinds of “healthy and productive”:

  1. Thinking about your scopes individually, how healthy and productive would you say they are?
  2. How healthy and productive would you say are the relationships between scopes?

To the assessment itself:

  • As you score each assessment prompt, try to choose a point on our four-point scale that’s representative of all of your scopes
  • Where that’s hard to do authentically, you can restrict yourself to the scope or scopes with which you identify you most strongly
  • Don’t worry about being inconsistent – ranges of experience, opinion, and perspective are just as interesting as consensus, and our process will make good use of both

That’s quite a change from “Choose a scope and stick to it”! Given its length, I don’t know that I would use it frequently outside the Adaptive Organisation assessment, but for that one, it’s more in keeping with the module of the same name’s “Start where you are, everywhere all at once” approach.

Experience the full version of the assessment for yourself via the Melbourne (October) or Manchester (November) editions of Leading in a Transforming Organisation, or the online module Adaptive Organisation (I): Business Agility at every scale. Or a private event! If the 3-day Leading in a Transforming Organisation would be infeasible, various shorter options are available, and a new 1-day Adaptive Organisation workshop is ready to test, and on favourable terms. If that could be of interest, get in touch.

Related

Upcoming events

February

March

*TTT/F and (where shown) LIKE events include free one-year membership of the Leading with Outcomes Authorised Facilitator programme, upgradeable to Authorised Trainer at any time. Both of those include access to the video-based Leading with Outcomes training and the full range of Agendashift assessment tools.

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. Foundation module:
  2. Inside-out Strategy:
  3. Adaptive Organisation:
  4. Outside-in Strategy:

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. See our events calendar for Train-the-Trainer / Facilitator (TTT/F) and Leading in a Transforming Organisation trainings.

Agendashift™: Serving the transforming organisation
Links: Home | Subscribe | Events | Media | Contact | Mike
Agendashift  Academy: Leading with Outcomes | Trainer and Facilitator Programmes | Store

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.

Adaptive Organisation (I): Business agility at every scale v2.0 beta

Posted on by Mike Burrows

As first mentioned to Academy subscribers here, I’m delighted to announce that the videos for all three chapters of v2.0 of Adaptive Organisation (I): Business agility at every scale have been released. As done previously for the Leading with Outcomes: Foundation module, it remains in beta until I’ve released the new workbook and added captions (hand-edited) to all videos. The previous version (v1.6) remains available for the time being on the old learning management system.

Part I covers key building blocks every leader needs to know about organising for adaptability:

  • The three overlapping spaces of the Deliberately Adaptive Organisation
  • Integrating strategy, delivery, and mutual trust-building
  • Managing complexity, finding balance in these and other relationships at every scale

As well as the usual improvements in flow we’ve seen with iterations of this and other modules, these are the main changes since v1.6:

  • A greater and earlier emphasis on emergence and self-organisation
  • An earlier introduction of this modules’s complexity-friendly “start where you are, everywhere all at once” approach, seen first with the accompanying assessment
  • Better integrating the relational and constraint-based aspects of organising (we’ll build on this in some leading-edge complexity-related material in part II)
  • A new interlude between chapters 2 and 3 incorporating workshop exercises from our in-person training, Leading in a Transforming Organisation

For news on progress on both parts I and II (the latter under development as part of my preparations for my Melbourne and Manchester trainings):

*Subscriber-only. For access to these and to all the Leading with Outcomes modules, visit our Store.

Related:

Upcoming events

February

March

*TTT/F and (where shown) LIKE events include free one-year membership of the Leading with Outcomes Authorised Facilitator programme, upgradeable to Authorised Trainer at any time. Both of those include access to the video-based Leading with Outcomes training and the full range of Agendashift assessment tools.

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. Foundation module:
  2. Inside-out Strategy:
  3. Adaptive Organisation:
  4. Outside-in Strategy:

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. See our events calendar for Train-the-Trainer / Facilitator (TTT/F) and Leading in a Transforming Organisation trainings.

Agendashift™: Serving the transforming organisation
Links: Home | Subscribe | Events | Media | Contact | Mike
Agendashift  Academy: Leading with Outcomes | Trainer and Facilitator Programmes | Store

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.

Agendashift roundup, August 2023

Posted on by Mike Burrows

In this late summer edition: Responding to “Scrum is cancer”; Foundation 2.8, Adaptive Organisation 2.0; Looking ahead to the autumn season; Top posts

Responding to “Scrum is cancer”

Doing the rounds on LinkedIn and X / Twitter is the abovementioned. My response here (linkedin.com).

Related:

Foundation 2.8, Adaptive Organisation 2.0

Leading with Outcomes: Foundation version 2.8 beta is now out of beta. As mentioned last month it is to be found not on the Agendashift Academy’s old learning management system (LMS) but on what until recently served only as the community platform for Academy subscribers. The latter is itself developing as an LMS and it presents therefore a consolidation opportunity.

Again as mentioned last month, of the several iterations of Foundation so far, this is the one most influenced by the experience of other authorised trainers (ie not only me) delivering it in person. It is definitely a smoother experience – 12 minutes shorter for no loss of content!

Next up for the same treatment is the two-part Adaptive Organisation module. Recording has started for the first part, Adaptive Organisation (I): Business agility at every scale. It will include some exciting new content (we’re turning up the dial on the complexity-related matters already integral to it), but not at the cost of any significant increase in length. At least that’s the plan; what I can promise is that for Academy students authorised trainers alike it will be a smoother experience.

The previous version (1.6) of Adaptive Organisation is still available meanwhile, and I dare say it remains the most refreshing treatment of its subject matter you will find anywhere. And don’t forget the Agendashift classics, Inside-out Strategy: Fit for maximum impact and Outside-in Strategy: Positioned for success.

With more about what to expect, some related posts:

If you’re not already a subscriber, sign up here.

Looking ahead to the autumn season

It being the summer here (though not where I am next headed)…

September and December bring different opportunities to do Train-the-Trainer / Facilitator (TTT/F):

Those are, respectively, the last chance to do TTT/F online this year, and the first to be held in person. Between those two, I’m doing Leading in a Transforming Organisation on opposite sides of the world:

These events are driving forward the Foundation and Adaptive Organisation modules as mentioned above (one day of the former, two days of the latter), and it has been a delight to see how well they go together – hence the abovementioned resequencing. If you have any interest in what it means to lead in an organisation that is transforming (and what organisation isn’t?), join us!

I should mention that my trips to Australia and India – my first trips abroad since COVID – are thanks to these conferences:

I’m grateful to the organisers of both. And yes, there will be some kanban content in my keynotes – I haven’t forgotten my roots!

Finally, with the end of summer approaching, there are only days to wait until the monthly webinar/AMA sessions restart:

Top posts

  1. Explaining the “unreasonable effectiveness” of Agile (July)
  2. When not to do Celebration-5W (August)
  3. My favourite Clean Language question (January 2019)
  4. Leaders as keepers of context (September 2022)
  5. Picturing Foundation (May)

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. Foundation module:
  2. Inside-out Strategy:
  3. Adaptive Organisation:
  4. Outside-in Strategy:

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. See our events calendar for Train-the-Trainer / Facilitator (TTT/F) and Leading in a Transforming Organisation trainings.

Agendashift™: Serving the transforming organisation
Links: Home | Subscribe | Events | Media | Contact | Mike
Agendashift  Academy: Leading with Outcomes | Trainer and Facilitator Programmes | Store

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.

When not to do Celebration-5W

Posted on by Mike Burrows

Celebration-5W is Agendashift’s trusty and energising context-capturing kickoff exercise. I say “trusty”, because I don’t think I have ever experienced a workshop that used it suffer for lack of context, and there have been times when I have regretted not using it. But could it be used inappropriately?

Before answering that question, a reminder of how it works. It’s in the genre of the time travel exercise, and its conceit is that you (by which I mean workshop participants) are using the journalistic 5W questions – Who, What, When, Where, Why – on the celebration you’re going to have when your next big breakthrough (one you haven’t made yet) is ready to be celebrated.

So, when shouldn’t you use it?

First, what is context? Here I mean it in the sense of what participants need to understand in common in order to have a productive conversation, and it lives at the intersection of situation and scope. If that is well enough established by the invitation and/or prework (an Agendashift assessment for example), you might not need it.

Then there are tradeoffs to consider. A narrower context is easier to understand, and for those for whom it is relevant, easier to engage with. The flip side of course is that for others, a narrower context can exclude people, perhaps unhelpfully. Conversely, a broader context engages more people but possibly at the cost of a more challenging experience.

Before choosing a context exercise or designing one, ask yourself the following:

  • Could it be that context will be well enough established already?
  • If we need to narrow (or possibly broaden) context, which dimension needs the most adjustment: scope or situation?

Perhaps to narrow the organisational scope would be to prejudge the outcome. Perhaps the situation deserves broad and diverse representation. Perhaps the same issues impact on different parts of the organisation in very different ways, but still the opportunity to explore them from different directions will be helpful. Perhaps the concept to be explored is sufficiently independent of scale that it is applicable to every scope.

“Perhaps” – several of those there! What I am learning is that the more the situation, issue, or concept at the heart of the event can be seen as scale-independent, the less you need convergence on scope. For example, if you are focussing on something as general as leadership, an exercise that could have the effect of limiting organisational scope might do more harm than good; stories of “leadership at every level” might be a much better starting point. Conversely, process and process-related issues don’t scale well, in which case an exercise like Celebration-5W should get you off to a great start. If it brings multiple scopes into play such that they can learn from each other, so much the better!

How does play out in Leading with Outcomes? Because it emphasises patterns over tools, Leading with Outcomes: Foundation doesn’t use Celebration-5W; it does however ask the question “What and who are we dealing with?”. Adaptive Organisation: Business agility at every scale doesn’t use it either, but for a very different reason: the fractal model at its heart is scale-independent, and to consider how that works at (and between) multiple scopes and scales simultaneously (“everywhere all at once”) is very much the point. Inside-out Strategy: Fit for maximum impact and Outside-in Strategy: Positioned for success do use it; if there is an inside and an outside, scope matters, and we might as well settle on it (or them) early.

Related:

Upcoming events

February

March

*TTT/F and (where shown) LIKE events include free one-year membership of the Leading with Outcomes Authorised Facilitator programme, upgradeable to Authorised Trainer at any time. Both of those include access to the video-based Leading with Outcomes training and the full range of Agendashift assessment tools.

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. Foundation module:
  2. Inside-out Strategy:
  3. Adaptive Organisation:
  4. Outside-in Strategy:

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. See our events calendar for Train-the-Trainer / Facilitator (TTT/F) and Leading in a Transforming Organisation trainings.

Agendashift™: Serving the transforming organisation
Links: Home | Subscribe | Events | Media | Contact | Mike
Agendashift  Academy: Leading with Outcomes | Trainer and Facilitator Programmes | Store

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.

Agendashift roundup, July 2023

Posted on by Mike Burrows

In this edition: Foundation re-recorded and re-platformed; Looking ahead to the autumn season; Top posts

Foundation re-recorded and re-platformed

Leading with Outcomes: Foundation version 2.8 beta is now out on a different platform to the previously-recorded version, 2.1. As an experiment, the newer one is to be found not on the current learning management system (LMS), but on the community site for Agendashift Academy subscribers. The latter’s underlying platform is itself developing as an LMS and it presents therefore a consolidation opportunity.

Of the several iterations of Foundation so far, this is the one most influenced by the experience of trainers delivering it in person. It is definitely a smoother experience – 12 minutes shorter for no loss of content!

I’ll remove the beta tag when I have finished adding captions, which I’ll release one video at a time. AI does a decent first approximation but I still take the trouble to edit them manually.

With more about what to expect, some related posts:

And to sign up:

Looking ahead to the autumn season

September, October, November, December. Ok, December isn’t really autumn, and neither are the preceding months if you’re in the southern hemisphere (to which I am headed), but it will do!

September and December bring different opportunities to do Train-the-Trainer / Facilitator (TTT/F):

Those are, respectively, the last chance to do TTT/F online this year, and the first to be held in person. Between those two, I’m doing Leading in a Transforming Organisation on opposite sides of the world:

These events are driving forward the Foundation and Adaptive Organisation modules (one day of the former, two days of the latter), and it has been a delight to see how well they go together – hence the abovementioned resequencing. If you have any interest in what it means to lead in an organisation that is transforming (and what organisation isn’t?), join us!

While we’re here, there is no August webinar/AMA session. Not too long to wait though:

Top posts

  1. Explaining the “unreasonable effectiveness” of Agile (July)
  2. Three ways to understand the Leading with Outcomes universe (June)
  3. The wholeheartedness equation (June)
  4. My favourite Clean Language question (January 2019)
  5. Avoiding the disaster that is ‘solution-driven’ (June)

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. Foundation module:
  2. Inside-out Strategy:
  3. Adaptive Organisation:
  4. Outside-in Strategy:

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. See our events calendar for Train-the-Trainer / Facilitator (TTT/F) and Leading in a Transforming Organisation trainings.

Agendashift™: Serving the transforming organisation
Links: Home | Subscribe | Events | Media | Contact | Mike
Agendashift  Academy: Leading with Outcomes | Trainer and Facilitator Programmes | Store

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.