Tag: deliberately-adaptive

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

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.

When to use which Leading with Outcomes workshop

Posted on by Mike Burrows

The facilitated workshops page lists five workshop designs, the first four (those shown on the image above) deliverable by authorised facilitators and trainers alike, the fifth only by trainers:

Plenty of choice there, so which should be used when?

The first two of those work both standalone and together (in either order), and the last two should be regarded as alternatives to each other, so let’s divide them into three groups: Inside-out, Outside-in (that middle workshop in a category of its own), and Adaptive Organisation. No surprise there: the Leading with Outcomes training curriculum is organised in much the same way.

Inside-out

Inside-out covers the first two workshops, Discovery and Assessment Debrief, both of these being up-to-date versions of the workshop designs covered in the first two chapters of my book Agendashift: Outcome-oriented change and continuous transformation (2nd edition 2021).

We use the Discovery Workshop in two ways:

  1. To kick off internal change
  2. To give fresh perspective to a change initiative that is already underway

That second point includes stepping back from the detail uncovered by an Assessment Debrief workshop, perhaps some weeks later as part of a coaching or consulting engagement. Alternatively, a Discovery workshop leads quickly (perhaps directly) into an Assessment Debrief workshop, the former giving context to the latter. Either way, the Discovery workshop produces a high level strategy developed in the language of outcomes – meaningful goals, more immediately actionable outcomes (places to start), and outcomes of intermediate scale (meaningful indicators of success) – all organised coherently.

The Assessment Debrief Workshop can be used with any of our assessment templates (our monthly experience/practice sessions cycle through three of the shorter ones), but most often it is used with the Agendashift Delivery Assessment, aka the Values-Based Assessment, after its six headings of Transparency, Balance, Collaboration, Customer Focus, Flow, and Leadership. Refined repeatedly over a span of nearly a decade for maximum applicability to the widest range of delivery organisations (techology-related or otherwise), this template started life as a framework-agnostic adaptation of the bullets at the end of my first book, Kanban from the Inside, whose 10th anniversary comes in September.

Each assessment template is designed such that participants can be expected to respond positively to at least some of its prompts. Prompts are prioritised, “enjoyed” for what it would be like when (in context) they’re working at their ideal best. Then come obstacles – things that stand in the way of those ideals. They are identified, refined [1], and used as the springboard for the generation of outcomes. As with the Discovery workshop, outcomes are then organised, perhaps more visually this time. Going further into the process than the Discovery workshop does, solution ideas are generated for the most interesting outcomes and experiments designed for the best of those, deliberately biasing that generative process to the outcomes and solutions most likely to generate valuable learning for the organisation.

So… high level first and perhaps drill down, or engage at a more detailed level first and perhaps step back, the choice is yours. Online or in person, each is doable in half a day; a day is sufficient for both.

Outside-in

The two Inside-out workshops are both open to significant customisation, but for initiatives that begin with the customer or other external relationships (with competitors, suppliers, etc), the Outside-in Strategy Review Workshop may be more appropriate. We don’t use this one so often, but when the time is right, it’s powerful.

There are echoes of the previous two workshops in its Ideal, Obstacles, Outcomes progression, but here that IdOO (“I do”) pattern (as we call it) happens within a higher-level agenda:

  1. Customer
  2. Organisation
  3. Product
  4. Platform
  5. Team(s)

We work our way inwards, each subsequent layer given proper context by those that precede it. If you’re looking for customer alignment and/or internal alignment to an organisation that knows the position in the competitive landscape it aims to occupy, this is a great place to start.

Adaptive Organisation

Explaining many organisational dysfunctions and missed opportunities in terms of imbalances, in the Adaptive Organisation workshops we are exploring what it means for different kinds of relationships to be healthy and productive. Given the number and range of these relationships and the agency of many of their participants, we are in the realms of the complex adaptive system (CAS). Accordingly, we pay much attention to the constraints that govern system behaviour.

You will get from that description that the Adaptive Organisation workshops are a little more technical than the others. If there is a workshop/training spectrum, we moving in the direction of training, but still the focus is on the host organisation and it’s very much a participatory experience.

The 1-day Adaptive Organisation Workshop can be thought of as an Assessment Debrief workshop with some supporting material. Underlying both its assessment template and that additional material is a very interesting model, the Deliberately Adaptive Organisation, a radical, engaging, and complexity-friendly take on an absolute classic, Stafford Beer’s Viable System Model.

The 3-day Leading in a Transforming Organisation begins with a day of Leading with Outcomes: Foundation (this introduces the IdOO pattern and others) and expands Adaptive Organisation to two days, allowing a much deeper exploration of the model and the organisational issues it helps uncover. That adds up to 3 days of training presented in workshop form, suitable for both public and private settings.

As well as being interesting for its own sake, Leading in a Transforming Organisation can also be used as a near-alternative to Leading with Outcomes: Train-the-Trainer / Facilitator (TTT/F). See the store page for details.

[1] See Obstacles Fast and Slow – the March 7th event, the video it will produce, and some updated resources

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, February 2024

Posted on by Mike Burrows

In this edition: A big update to 15-minute FOTO; The Featureban Flow Experience; Coming in March: Obstacles Fast and Slow and more; Adaptive Organisation (Berlin & London); The Great Consolidation; Top Posts; Upcoming events

A big update to 15-minute FOTO

On Monday I released v13 of our Clean Language-inspired coaching game, 15-minute FOTO. This was the most significant release for a long time, making it easier for participants and facilitators alike to get things started. Read all about it here:

The Featureban Flow Experience

Also last Monday was the Featureban Flow Experience, a two-hour workshop which I co-hosted with Allan Kelly. Featureban is my open-source kanban simulation game, and we played it online using the KanbanZone tool. We had KanbanZone founder Dimitri Ponomareff in attendance also, and behind the scenes the three of us are working out how best make a Featureban template available to other KanbanZone users.

It was a lot fun, and given that this one sold out within 24 hours, I’ve no doubt that there will be more. The next one might see us use Changeban, a Lean Startup-flavoured and more gamified variant.

Speaking of kanban, my first book, Kanban from the Inside, has its 10th anniversary in September. I’m thinking of marking the occasion with a 1-day in-person event, most likely in London. It will be of interest to anyone looking for ways to introduce kanban in a manner more resonant with continuous improvement than the one most often taught. It could be described – at least to those in the know – as “Reverse STATIK meets Leading with Outcomes”, and it leaves you with not only a working kanban system but an organised agenda for change too. If you’re not sure what that all means (let alone what it might look like), watch this space.

Coming in March: Obstacles Fast and Slow and more

Hot on the heels of the 15-minute FOTO update comes Obstacles Fast Slow. This is a rename and an update to Good Obstacle, Bad Obstacle, the exercise that typically precedes 15-minute FOTO. The exercise in short: How you frame obstacles matters, and the process of reframing them can an interesting challenge! The March webinar slot is given over to this exercise so that we can record a new video:

The following week I’m ValueGlide’s guest with a new talk that expands on the short opening keynote I did at SEACON 2022:

The third of three free events in March is a regular fixture, a monthly experience/practice session – a chance perhaps to practice 15-minute FOTO:

April’s by the way breaks from the usual format. See Upcoming events below.

Adaptive Organisation (Berlin & London)

I did my first 1-day Adaptive Organisation Workshop at MBDA last week and was very happy with how it went (“Massive thumbs-up to the whole workshop” was one response). I only do these privately (do get in touch if you’d like to hold one; within reason I am increasingly able to travel) but yesterday I added two public Leading in a Transforming Organisation events to the calendar:

There are substantial savings offered on the first few tickets so get in there! The Berlin venue may be confirmed as soon as tomorrow (update: it was!), so be in little doubt that it will happen. For London, I have a venue in mind but am very open to it being hosted by a sponsoring organisation (so to speak) in return for seats. Don’t hesitate to get in touch if that could be of interest.

Leading in a Transforming Organisation is the longer form of the Adaptive Organisation workshop; the latter was extracted from the former. Presented in workshop format, it integrates the following modules of Leading with Outcomes, which you can take self-paced online if you can’t get to do it in person:

  1. Leading with Outcomes: Foundation
  2. Adaptive Organisation (I): Business agility at every scale
  3. Adaptive Organisation (II): Between spaces, scopes, and scales

The Great Consolidation

Slowly but surely, the Agendashift Academy is moving off its old platform and onto the new one, relying less and less on the gubbins that held it all together, making for a much smoother experience. Subscriptions are now native to the new platform, and a number of people whose yearly subscriptions were approaching renewal moved theirs across this month.

Over the next few weeks while this process continues, both in recognition that two modules have yet to be transferred (I’ll be re-recording them) and as an incentive to move subscriptions across, a substantial discount of 25% applies. Visit the Academy’s Store page to take advantage.

Top Posts

  1. A big update to 15-minute FOTO (February)
  2. From Flow to Business Agility (January)
  3. My favourite Clean Language question (January 2019)
  4. From Reverse STATIK to a ‘Pathway’ for continuous transformation (October 2019)
  5. 15-minute FOTO’s cheat mode (October)

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.

What’s in store for 2024

Posted on by Mike Burrows

Welcome to 2024! Happy New Year!

2024 has already started of course, and with the valued help of over 20 contributors I iterated several times over the holiday period on this article posted on the blog here yesterday:

Also new is a section on the Agendashift Academy site for facilitated Leading with Outcomes workshops:

In the calendar (see Upcoming events below):

Regarding that last one, see Upcoming events below re discounts.

In the pipeline:

Most pressing is the re-recording of the Inside-out and Outside-in strategy modules. Like the Adaptive Organisation module, Inside-out will be split into two, likely titles:

  • Inside-out Strategy (I): On the same page, with purpose
  • Inside-out Strategy (II): Fit for maximum impact (keeping the title of the original one-part module)

Once Inside-out and Outside-in are on the new learning management system there will be significant opportunity for rationalisation. If you’re not already on board there, check these out:

  1. Leading with Outcomes: Foundation
  2. Adaptive Organisation, two parts:

Or get in touch about holding a Leading in a Transforming Organisation training workshop near you; this covers Foundation and Adaptive Organisation, with all the benefits of an in-person experience, and some unique features too. I’m not asking anyone to take responsibility for the event (though that can be arranged); just your interest would be good to know.

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.

From Flow to Business Agility

Posted on by Mike Burrows

Preamble: You may have noticed that I don’t use words like ‘waste’, ‘improvement’, or ‘flow’ nearly as much as my history in Lean-Agile [1, 2] might suggest. Recently [3] I expressed what could be interpreted as a lack of enthusiasm for a more recent term, ‘cognitive load’. Not to put fuel on the fire but to put those and similar terms into what I think is their proper context, here’s where I’m coming from.

Pick a scope, any scope. Bigger is better perhaps – your whole organisation even – but what I’m about to share works for small scopes too, your team, say.

Now picture its sweet spot, a metaphor for the set of its most desirable states or configurations: the right people working on the right things, the right conversations happening at the best possible moment, needs anticipated, met at just the right time [4].

Enjoy that for a moment.

What stops that? What gets in the way? Well, here’s how it often plays out.

Decisions on what work to start aren’t always optimal, and to correct past decisions, new work may need to be started. Already, and despite good intentions, we’re out of that sweet spot.

As a consequence perhaps of those earlier decisions, some of what is in progress can’t be finished, so yet more things get started. Inevitably, before this increasing pile of work finishes, new work arrives, and some of that gets started too.

Those “right conversations”? Can’t you see that we’re busy? Now there’s work being done by people who don’t have all the customer or business context they need. This results in yet more work – rework. With all of that going on, little thought can be spared for the question of how the organisation itself impedes those conversations. 

“Needs anticipated, met at just the right time?” You’re kidding me! People overburdened, work lying around not getting finished, staff and customers alike frustrated by delays, the business having to finance not only the productive, value-adding work, but the delays and the rework too. That sweet spot turned out to be a tiny island in an ocean of other, far less desirable states.

The improvement story runs in the opposite direction. Focusing on finishing. Learning to be more careful about what gets started when. Reducing overburden. Testing assumptions sooner [5]. Improving quality. Reducing rework. These are measures that promote flow – better for the people doing the work, better for the customer, better for the business – a triple win!

So far, so conventional. Is that all there is to it? Of course not. If it were enough simply to manage the process more efficiently, why not just outsource it or sell off the offending product line? Let others find the efficiencies! That can’t be the right answer for most teams, most product lines, or most organisations – those with any kind of future ahead of them at least – but if the logical conclusion of that kind of thinking is a race to the bottom, there must be something that we are missing. Clearly, there’s a trap here.

With some justification, the missing piece is often assumed to be purpose. But the issue is even more basic than that. It is viability. Excluding perhaps project organisations whose mission and timescale are bounded, most organisations would not wish to pursue purpose in ways incompatible with survival, and efficiency is only part of that challenge.

John Boyd (of OODA loop fame) [6], described the challenge as one of “developing our capacity for independent action in a changing environment”. If there is a better definition of the pursuit of viability than that, I haven’t found it. Understand (as Boyd did) the competitive nature of that challenge, and it describes business agility very well too. Without going too deeply here into the study of viable systems [7] (fascinating, but outside the scope of this article), let’s try to make that actionable.

First of all, let’s see all that waste (including other forms of waste not identified above) not only as impediments to flow (as measured by things like lead time, flow efficiency, etc), but as drains on the organisation’s decision-making capacity. All that extra workload, the constant context switching, the quality issues, the dependencies, the frustration, the untested assumptions, the rework, and so on and so on – all of that needs to be dealt with, consuming the decision-making capacity of every participant in the system.

Conversely, improving the system releases decision-making capacity. A good thing no doubt, but improve the system enough it might seem to someone obsessed with efficiency that we now have excess capacity. That’s people we no longer need, right? It’s that trap again!

To understand why that decision-making capacity is so vital, we must understand that sweet spot not as the ultimate goal, but as a local optimum. Adjacent to it are other possibilities – possibilities that people now have the capacity to explore. And what lies beyond those? Not just optimisations to the end-to-end process, but new communication channels that might one day lead to new organisational structures. Not just changes in practice, but innovations and understandings that might lead to radically new solution ideas. Not just improved performance, but the organisation reaching a different understanding of itself and its position in the world.

That is what “developing our capacity for independent action in a changing environment” looks like. Turning that around, if you’re not developing your capacity for independent action, sooner or later you run out of options, and it’s game over. That applies at every level: to the organisation, to its larger structures (teams-of-teams, value streams, cross-cutting structures, and so on) down even to its teams and their team members. It applies to you. At none of these levels do you want your capacity for independent action to be so constrained that effectively you’re out of options. You don’t want to be out of options, and you don’t want that happening around you either.

You thought business agility was only about speed? Think again. Business agility comes from the capacity to keep creating options (ie to strategise), to select and test the best of them at the right time and with sufficient pace (I hesitate to call that execution), and to keep learning from the experience. To sustain it, the organisation must keep striking the right balances between delivering to existing commitments, discovering new opportunities, and developing the capacities they will need. At any level of organisation, some of those activities may (rightly) bring into challenge its structure, its purpose, even its identity. All of that demands decision-making capacity at every level [7, 8].

Decision-making capacity is a fundamental constraint on organisations. Without it, needs and challenges go unrecognised. Opportunities go unexplored. Options don’t get generated. Good options don’t get exercised at the right time or with the right priority. It is provisioned not only by reducing wasteful drains on it (reducing what is popularly known as cognitive load), but by enabling it to be exercised effectively. Therein lies the organisational challenge, because it depends on the availability of opportunities to participate and on situational awareness, both of which are constrained by far more than workload [9].

Ask yourself this: what is stopping people from deciding for themselves to do the right thing, to deviate where necessary from accepted practice, to seek to understand their work more contextually, to empathise more deeply with the customer, to interact with different people, to enter into new collaborations, to self-organise around new challenges – ie to innovate process-wise, product-wise, or organisationally? This is the organisation exercising and developing its capacity for independent action, but if the cost is too high or the capacity simply isn’t there, it won’t happen. Or perhaps at some level it is happening, but the surrounding organisation is too focused on other things for it to make a difference.

The truth is that no formal process or organisational structure can guarantee you the decision-making capacity to deal with every situation that your organisation will face. In a changing environment, they may hinder as much as they help. Whether for reasons material or psychological, the people closest to the challenge may feel constrained from acting. Lacking context, others around them may fail to lend their support. The wider organisation may be impeded structurally from recognising that the problem or opportunity even exists.

Yes, it’s important to seek efficiencies, to reduce waste, to pursue flow, to iterate and learn faster. But don’t see it only as a productivity play. If you aren’t quickly seeing the improvements spill over into a more profound kind of capacity [10], it could be that you aren’t helping your organisation half as much as you think. Your organisation’s reserves are enormous. Is it time you released them?

(Comment on LinkedIn | Hacker News)

References

[1] Kanban from the Inside (2014)

[2] Right to Left: The digital leader’s guide to Lean and Agile (2019, audiobook 2020)

[3] I may be on my own here but… (linkedin.com)

[4] Borrowing from Agendashift True North (agendashift.com/resources/true-north)

[5] Cockburn, Alistair, Elements to a Theory of Software Development (HaT Technical Report, 2016)

[6] Boyd, John R., Destruction and Creation (U.S. Army Comand and General Staff College, 1976)

[7] Everywhere all at once: Introducing the Deliberately Adaptive Organisation (agendashift.com/resources/everywhere-all-at-once)

[8] Adaptive Organisation (I): Business agility at every scale (academy.agendashift.com/c/adaptive-organisation-i)

[9] Between spaces, scopes, and scales: What the scaling frameworks don’t tell you (agendashift.com/keynotes#between)

[10] Explaining the “unreasonable effectiveness” of Agile (blog.agendashift.com)

Acknowledgements

For their encouragement, feedback, and comments as this post developed over the holiday period I am grateful to the following: Andrea Place, Badre Srinivasan, Cat Hicks, Craig Lucia, Daniel Walters, David Michel, Dickson Alves de Souza, Dustin Parham, Elizabeth Jones, John Obelenus, Karl Scotland, Kyle Byrd, Leif Hanack, Matt Mitchell, Matthew White, Michael Cicotti, Nader Talai, Nariman Dorafshan, Ricardo Alvarez, Robert Howes, Sarah Whitely, and Shern Tee. Thank you all.

1

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.

Leading in a Transforming Organisation: Takeaways from Manchester

Posted on by Mike Burrows

What was it? How did it go? What next? Where next?

What was it?

A three-day, in-person training, Leading in a Transforming Organisation: Engaging with complexity in the Deliberately Adaptive Organisation, which brings together roughly half of the Leading with Outcomes curriculum:

The Deliberately Adaptive Organisation is my 21st century take on a 20th century model, Stafford Beer’s Viable System Model. Fittingly, a fractal model of organisation meets a fractal model of engagement, the former approached in a relational and constraints-based way, the latter replacing the engineering approach more typically employed. These two aspects combine to make something accessible, complexity-friendly, and practical.

The Deliberately Adaptive Organisation
Leading with Outcomes


For an added bonus, Leading in a Transforming Organisation has by design enough experiential content that with some additional online learning it can serve also as an alternative to Leading with Outcomes Train-the-Trainer / Facilitator (TTT/F). At least a couple of participants attended with that purpose in mind.

How did it go?

A small sample of the overwhelmingly positive feedback:

  • Relevant to anyone with leadership responsibilities
  • A helpful journey through the neglected responsibilities of leadership – with helpful tools to attend to those responsibilities
  • A full learning experience – relevant, effective, great to share with others
  • Building on a journey throughout, in a practical, visual way
  • Can clearly see how this would apply to our organisation
  • This is the Leading with Outcomes masterclass

There were things I would change – in fact on day 3 we tested an impromptu change to how we finished each “chapter”, a change that I have since made to the materials for day 2 also. Quicker, more impactful, and more clearly setting off the two “interludes”, those being the opportunities to practice classic Agendashift exercises such as Good Obstacle, Bad Obstacle, 15-minute FOTO, and various ways to (per the second slide above) “Organise the strategy”.

I was pleased that after some post-London rework, certain themes came out much more strongly:

  1. The value in a bottom-up understanding of organising – not that it doesn’t also work top down, but a bottom-up understanding is essential if you want to go with the grain of emergence and self-organisation or to promote those at non-trivial scales
  2. The question of How might we increase our decision-making capacity? came up repeatedly. Important again for reasons (i) of self-organisation (ref McCulloch), (ii) because the time will come when you don’t have enough of it, and (iii) because it reframes in an interesting and positive way concepts such as reducing waste (Lean) and minimising cognitive load (Team Topologies)
  3. The importance of context – not only in the senses (i) that it is folly to impose solutions from foreign contexts unquestioningly, or (ii) that context affects relationships, but (iii) in the sense that our delivery work and our strategic decision making will both suffer for lack of it – almost inevitably if we rest more than we should on formal structure, agreed process, and established communication paths

As anticipated in previous posts, Agile coaches were very much in the minority. Our hosts were the University of Manchester (a big thank you to Andrea Place for organising), several of the participants were members of staff with leadership and/or leadership development responsibility, and on day 1 we were joined by a senior leader from another university. It was fascinating to see the models, tools, and exercises applied not to a technology organisation but to a highly respected institution that celebrates its bicentenary next year. I find it very hard to believe that a process-based approach – process meant here in the Agile or Lean sense, not the OD sense – would have been anything like as successful.

What next? Where next?

With the event still fresh in my mind I updated the materials over the weekend. There are corresponding changes to be made to the shorter Adaptive Organisation Workshop, and they include changes to the What Lies Beneath string of exercises, whose blog post I have updated for reference already.

I won’t be re-recording the two-part online Adaptive Organisation module just yet (see Leading with Outcomes from the Agendashift Academy below for links). The existing version is still quite new, none of my most recent improvements invalidate in any way what’s there, and it’s more urgent that I re-record the much older Inside-out and Outside-in modules. Not only will it be good to realign those with the newer material, it will let me retire the old learning management system and thereby improve the Academy’s onboarding experience.

I’m hoping to run the three-day in-person event at least twice publicly in the UK next year. Very likely in London, and having taken it north to Manchester, I’m also looking at doing it somewhere between Bournemouth and Brighton on the south coast. Mainland Europe would be good too – Germany and/or Scandinavia seeming the most likely destinations. If you are interested in any of these options or any other (public or private), and especially if you can help get a group together (it doesn’t have to be large), let me know.

I intend to do the abovementioned 1-day Adaptive Organisation workshop in person a few times before I offer it online, in both cases only privately. Accordingly, introductory pricing (with further discounts for public sector, non-profit, etc) remains available until the end of January, possibly for delivery at a later date if you get your order in soon enough. Unless a longer trip can be made worthwhile, I’m looking to do it in the UK or in European destinations easily reachable from Manchester or East Midlands airports. If you’re suitably located and your organisation could use an organisational strategy exercise soon, there’s an opportunity here not to be missed.

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.

A small update to the Constraints Club exercise

Posted on by Mike Burrows

With a week to go to the Manchester training, let me mention a recent (post-Melbourne) update to the Constraints Club exercise. As you may recall, this forms part of the string of exercises described in some detail in the blog post What Lies Beneath (Spoiler: Constraints), which I have updated too.

For full context, read that post. Here though is the relevant slide, to which I have added the question “Out of what does that emerge?”:

Image: The Constraints Club slide

About the Manchester training (see Upcoming events below), this is probably my last opportunity to mention the following:

  • 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 at least 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.

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, 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.