In this edition: Leading in a Transforming Organisation; Between spaces, scopes, and scales; Webinar/AMA series; Train-the-Trainer / Facilitator (TTT/F); Top posts
Leading in a Transforming Organisation
Last week’s Leading in a Transforming Organisation in London was a special and productive time. Here are some of the participants sharing afterwards on LinkedIn:
As well as plenty of encouragement, I’ve had feedback of the actionable and throught-provoking kind too, and the material will continue to evolve. A sincere thank you to Philippe Guenet in that regard (I should add that he’s doing interesting things with the Foundation module himself). And thank you to our hosts, Craig Lucia, Stan Wade, and Adrian Potter of PA Consulting.
Spurred on by Leading in a Transforming Organisation (from which it borrows), my talk “Between spaces, scopes, and scales” continues to develop. I gave a version to the BCS Agile Specialist Group this week (ie after London), and the recording should be available soon.
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:
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.
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.
[2023-06-29 Updated the middle section to make the three approaches more visible] [2023-06-30 Added the proposed Manchester event (November) to the calendar]
My 3-day training Leading in a Transforming Organisation went really well last week, can’t wait to do it again1! Inevitably, the question of what relates Agendashift, Leading with Outcomes, The Deliberately Adaptive Organisation, etc came up, and while my answers were reasonable enough, I realised I still had a bit of work to do. So here we are with not just one, but three ways of joining the dots:
Essentially the sequence of my books, this progression is the most historically accurate:
Values-based: For me this began with a system of nine values abstracted from the Kanban Method, identified first in a 2013 blog post3 and expanded on in my first book Kanban from the Inside (2014). Not needing to limit myself to writing about principles and practices, nor even only to Kanban, I enjoyed expanding on those values and demonstrating how other frameworks could – with that values-based perspective – be seen as complementary.
Outcome-oriented: Our big “What if”: What if we put agreement on outcomes before solutions? Followed by How do we keep outcomes in the foreground? and How do we connect the two in a learning process? Around that concept and via a lot of collaborative experimentation, we developed a real alternative to managed change, which the world knows is woeful for anything interesting – so no shortage of motivation there! Agendashift (2018, 2021) describes the engagement model; Right to Left (2019, audiobook 2020) takes that outcome-oriented perspective to the Lean-Agile landscape as a whole. A fourth book (a commission) written for the dialogic/generative OD audience is near completion.
Relational: In both Agendashift and Right to Left there are clues that I am beginning to think in terms of mutual relationships. And inspired by Weick, the perspective shifts from organisation (something easily regarded as static) to organising (something active). More recent than the books, the Leading with Outcomes training material goes on to describe organising as “Finding relationships between things; In and through those relationships, helping their participants realise their potential”. A fifth book is at the planning stage.
2. Curriculum: Patterns, Approaches, Tools
Informed this time by the sequence of the four Leading with Outcomes Modules:
As described recently in Picturing Foundation (May), Foundation’s job is to introduce these key patterns:
Ideal, Obstacles, Outcomes – the IdOO (“I do”) pattern
Right to Left – working backwards from key moments of impact and learning
Meaning, Measure, Method – derived from the IdOO pattern, an ideation pattern
Foundation also introduces two complementary and long-established approaches to strategy:
Inside-out – starting with the internal experience and capability of the scope in question, working outwards to its external impact
Outside-in – starting with its customers, suppliers, competitors, and other aspects of its business environment and working through its internal implications
Leading with Outcomes includes a third approach, seen first in the Outside-in module and brought to the fore in Adaptive Organisation:
Relational – framing several crucial aspects of organisation primarily in terms of healthy, productive, and mutually beneficial relationships
Into the patterns plug the tools4, tool selection influenced by context and approach. Some tools are approach-specific; old favourites such as Celebration-5W, 15-minute FOTO, and so on appear in multiple modules. In Foundation meanwhile, we simplify the tools so as not to distract from the patterns.
3. Framework: Metaphor, Model, Method
More concretely: Wholehearted, The Deliberately Adaptive Organisation, Agendashift, with the middle one of those taking a more central role.
Wholehearted – the metaphorical coming together of wholeness and “heartedness” as we think about organisation and leadership. In 2018, during the writing of Right to Left, this usage was inspired by the architect and father of the patterns movement, the late Christopher Alexander:
A thing is whole according to how free it is of inner contradictions. When it is at war with itself, and gives rise to forces which act to tear it down, it is unwhole. The more free it is of its own inner contradictions, the more whole and healthy and wholehearted it becomes.
The Timeless Way of Building, Christopher Alexander (1980, OUP USA)
Long story short, Wholehearted became the name of our mission statement and part of Agendashift’s branding (“the wholehearted engagement model”). Today, the concept appears in two of the four modules of the Leading with Outcomes training curriculum; Leading with Outcomes: Foundation opens with it. All that time, I have made a point of keeping wholehearted aspirational, exploring some of its implications but taking care not to ruin it by defining it as a process or some other model.
The role of organisational model (or should I say “model of organising”?) is taken by The Deliberately Adaptive Organisation5, which is roughly sketched out in the closing chapters of the 2021 second edition of Agendashift and much better developed in the final Leading with Outcomes module, Adaptive Organisation: Business agility at every scale. It began as a Lean-Agile and outcome-oriented interpretation of Stafford Beer’s Viable System Model (VSM), this providing the structure into which other favourite models could be plugged in. It has since become a radical “re-presentation” of VSM, taking care to minimise what could be regarded either as vestiges of implementation detail or part of the systems practitioner’s process, and to emphasise strongly meanwhile its relational aspects. Further, and in the interests of accessibility, we limit its scope to organisations (Beer’s original model is more abstract) and engage with it progressively (a high-level “top view” comprising just three “spaces”, more detailed “inside views” for each space, and a “side view” that exposes the relationships between organisational scales).
The model loses none of its diagnostic power, but method-wise, there’s a gap. Taking the place of typical systems practice (as-is modelling, diagnosis, and perhaps to-be modelling, etc), we have Agendashift, and it’s a fundamental change. Bypassing the modelling step and resisting the urge to scope things down, we integrate many organisational perspectives, participants bringing experiences from all of the organisational scopes and scales with which they identify, from whole organisation down to sub-team – “Everywhere all at once”, you might say6. While exploring the model situationally to the depth appropriate to the event (anything between a 2-hour assessment debrief and 2-3 days of in-depth training7), participants are developing organisational strategy in the language of outcomes, producing a form of strategy highly amenable to testing.
The Leading with Outcomes universe
To finish, let me draw attention to this post’s title: Three ways to understand the Leading with Outcomes universe. This could just as easily have identified Agendashift instead – it is after all the longest-established of the brands mentioned here! I’m not saying that I won’t continue to describe Leading with Outcomes as “Agendashift as leadership development”, or to use the two names interchangeably. Neither do I have any plans to rebrand the Agendashift Academy! But especially in relation to the Deliberately Adaptive Organisation, Agendashift as the method to complement the model (replacing more traditional methods) seems important somehow. Funny how clarifying the relationship helps to clarify the things it relates. Who knew 😉
Notes
1Melbourne, Australia in October (see calendar below), and there are discussions about putting one on in Manchester in November or early 2024. It comprises one day of Foundation and two of Adaptive Organisation, making three in total. Ping me if interested, or in having one at a city near you.
2While I was planning this post, I initially called this first section Organising Concepts: Values, Outcomes, Relationships. I had forgotten just how important the -oriented of outcome-oriented is, and totally deserved the ensuing confusion! Our direction given by the outcomes we have chosen (for now) to pursue, solutions emerging from the people closest to the need and the opportunity. Outcome-driven (meaning target-driven or perhaps solution-driven in disguise) it is not. That way lies dysfunction. See Avoiding the disaster that is ‘solution-driven’(June 2023).
7Between those extremes there is room for a 1-day Adaptive Organisation workshop. If you’re based in the UK or not too far away and might be interested in having one at your organisation, the first one or two will be on favourable terms. Again, ping me if interested.
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:
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.
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.
I have a confession to make. I still haven’t delivered the revised manuscript for my fourth book, but in spare moments I have begun work on my fifth, working title Wholehearted: Inside the Deliberately Adaptive Organisation, business agility at every scale. There’s nothing like writing to make you revisit things that you thought were settled, and here I am looking again at wholehearted, for five years now the title and theme of Agendashift’s mission. Perhaps you haven’t thought of it in quite these terms before, but if you want your organisation to grow in wholeheartedness, then we’re here to help.
Tentatively (as questions, not prescriptions), let’s take Lean’s¹ “eliminate impediments” and apply it not to flow, but to wholeheartedness. Viewed from two sides (as a system, if you like):
If we eliminate impediments to wholeness, does that improve “heartedness”? If, for example, we simplify lines of communication or address issues of trust or coherence, do we make it more likely that people will be more engaged, acting with purpose and energy?
And going the other way, if we eliminate impediments to “heartedness”, does that improve wholeness? If, for example, we can relieve overburden, might the capacity freed thereby be used to tackle deeper, more structural issues?
I think it’s fair to say that there’s a limit to how much progress you can make on one side of the wholeheartedness equation before the other side begins to dominate. If it’s wholeness you seek, you need heartedness also, and vice versa.
Note, however, the “more likely” and “might” in my examples. Be careful of men bearing virtuous circles! If there is a virtuous circle here, we must (as I have written before) ask what mechanisms sustain it. That’s not delivered by wholehearted on its own as described here, but we do have that covered. Keeping wholehearted doing what it does best, representing an ideal to pursue:
In Leading with Outcomes: Foundation, we begin by exploring what it means to lead in a wholehearted organisation (experience shows it to be a helpful way to think about leading in transforming organisations more generally)
But today’s exercise: if you want your organisation to grow in wholeheartedness, which of its two sides most need your attention? Wholeness or heartedness? And when you do that, then what happens?
¹Further to that Lean inspiration, Philippe Guenet tells me that there are encouraging resonances with The Flow System (Brian Rivera, John W. Turner, and Nigel Thurlow). I haven’t read that yet, but now I think about it, I’m not surprised. It’s on my list.
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:
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.
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.
In this edition: Leading in a Transforming Organisation; Train-the-Trainer / Facilitator (TTT/F); Keynote, webinar, and media pages; Agendashift Academy update; Top posts
Leading in a Transforming Organisation
The “London Event” (June) now has a proper name, a confirmed venue, and already a strong list of delegates signed up. In October it transfers to Melbourne, Australia, ahead of Kanban Australia, where I’m giving a keynote. In both cases, you can choose to do one, two, or three days, covering Leading with Outcomes: Foundation and Adaptive Organisation: Business agility at every scale (parts I & II). Also, as outlined here, there is an upgrade path to Authorised Facilitator that bypasses TTT/F (more on that in a moment). Information on both events:
The latest online TTT/F concluded last week and there were a couple of nice updates on LinkedIn from Stan Wade and Zvonko Podbojec afterwards. The next TTT/F is now in the calendar for September, this time in the UK afternoons – a lot more convenient for timezones west of here! In December, I’ll be doing one in person in Bengaluru, India, (and yes, giving a keynote at Kanban India beforehand).
My talk “Between spaces, scopes, and scales” continues to iterate! The latest recording is now available on a new keynotes page. Related to that talk, a new webinars page has the recording of Flight Levels creator Klaus Leopold’s guest appearance at our monthly webinar.
I also had a lot of fun bringing up to date my “Right to Left” talk. You’ll find that and (from a few months ago) my short SEACOM keynote on the keynotes page too. In short, the latest versions of some of my favourite talks, together with slides, references, and links to related resources. Past recordings remain on the media page too if you want to see how things have evolved.
I’m due to give “Between spaces, scopes, and scales” again on June 8th online and on July 6th in Nottingham. Unfortunately, at the time of writing, booking pages for those aren’t yet available. It’s looking tight for the 8th, so watch the events page for updates.
Agendashift Academy update
Now that all four modules of Leading with Outcomes are available online, I promised that after spending the month of May away from the camera I would give an update on future plans for the Agendashift Academy. Not necessarily in release order, I’m planning the following:
“Right to Left Bitesize” – a long series of bite-sized (ie short) episodes based on the assessment prompts that go with the Right to Left book, brought up to date (the book was published in 2019, the audiobook in 2020 with minimal changes). There are 60 prompts and I expect to use most if not all of them, so that will keep me going for some time!
“Right to Left: The Agendashift Academy podcast” featuring selected (ie a minority) of the above episodes, together with other material I’m happy to release publicly
As an experiment, hosting the above in the Academy’s community platform, with a view to migrating content to there from the training platform
Adding a “supporter” tier for access to material outside of the core Leading with Outcomes curriculum
Top posts
To see #1 and #3 on this list brought up to date, see also (under “Keynotes” above) the updated Right to Left talk.
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:
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.
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.
It turns out that I haven’t spoken on Right to Left (the title of my third book) for quite some time and I have taken the opportunity to draw a new picture that shows Right to Left as one of three main patterns of Leading with Outcomes. It, the IdOO (“I do”) pattern, and Meaning, Measure, Method all feature in all four modules. Expect to see this picture or one very much like it appearing in future material!
“At every scope and scale, developing strategy together, pursuing strategy together, (agreement on) outcomes before solutions“
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:
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.
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.
In this edition: Adaptive Organisation (II) is complete; Events in May; Events in June; Latest additions to the media page; Top posts
Adaptive Organisation (II) is complete
Never say finished, but the last chapter of the last part of the last module of our leadership and organisation development programme Leading with Outcomes was released this week. Already the first certificates of completion have been issued! Read more and watch a short video (11:39):
As mentioned there, I’ll be taking a break from recording during May, not least because we have the builders in. No later than next month’s roundup I’ll outline what’s coming next content-wise.
Related to that (my talk references his work), on May 15th at 15:00 BST, 16:00 CEST, 10am EDT we are joined for our monthly webinar/AMA by a very special guest, Flight Levels creator Klaus Leopold:
Last but not least, on Tuesday and Wednesday mornings (UK time), May 16th, 16th, 23rd, and 24th is our next Leading with Outcomes: Train-the-Trainer / Facilitator (TTT/F). This is likely the only time this year that we will run TTT/F in this time slot. If you are based east of the UK, this may be your best option!
Also worth bearing in mind may be these two TTT/F alternatives that aren’t in the calendar yet: In Melbourne, Australia in October I’ll be doing a 3-day event similar to the June event in London that will be upgradeable to Facilitator, though not to Trainer. And in December there will be a full TTT/F in Bengaluru, India, in person. Thank you to the Kanban Australia and Kanban India conferences for their kind invitations. About that upgrade option:
That second event is really two or three events in one, and although all sales so far have been for all three days, there are other options. The equivalent self-paced modules:
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:
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.
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.
I say “complete” and not “finished” because I’ll always be making improvements. Adaptive Organisation went through two major revisions and I’ve lost count of how many iterations I’ve done on Foundation! That is not to say that I’m dissatisfied – far from it – but there is always learning to be done, especially now that there are other trainers and facilitators using the Leading with Outcomes material.
Next month we have the builders in at home so I’ll be taking a break from recording. No later than May’s roundup I will outline my plans for new content, and I have a book to finish (a commission, not a Wholehearted / Adaptive Organisation book, that one is yet to start). Today though, I will allow myself to enjoy the moment 🙂
Just to put Adaptive Organisation in some context, it’s the most advanced module of Leading with Outcomes, covering what I think of as the “deep magic” of organising, using a model that puts relationships (of several kinds) front and centre. Although there is more theory to cover, it does it very much in the style of Leading with Outcomes (outcome-oriented, “every scale” engagement, etc), it refers back to other modules, and it completes Leading with Outcomes nicely I think. That said, I have taken care not to assume too much in the way of prior knowledge. If the subject matter interests you, feel free to dive right in.
Check out the sections below for ways to access this material both in your own time and with me – mostly online, but in person in the case of the London event. The webinars and meetups (another one added only today) are all highly relevant and the next one is only two days away. One way or another (or several), please join me!
I leave you with this video (11:39), my closing thoughts from that final chapter of that final module. I hope that it makes sense standalone, or at least that it intrigues!
Closing thoughts on Adaptive Organisation: Business agility at every scale (11:39)
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:
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.
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.
Perhaps the most Agendashifty exercise of them all, the Clean Language-inspired 15-minute FOTO in both Lite and Classic forms (days 2 & 3 respectively), and other key tools and patterns
Accordingly, as worked out with the Trainer community and as now described on the event page, you can take all three days of the London event and become an Authorised Facilitator without needing to take TTT/F:
Take out an Agendashift Academy subscription – from £24.50 per month, noting that an annual subscription (£245) will save you 40% on this training, so do this first!
Take out a Leading with Outcomes Authorised Facilitator subscription – free for the first year, then £245 annually, less the 10%-40% discount
Join me for a quick onboarding call over Zoom covering assessment/survey administration and customising workshop materials
As an Authorised Leading with Outcomes Facilitator, you can:
Administer surveys using our full range of assessment templates and without size restrictions
Facilitate with our workshop materials the Leading with Outcomes Discovery Workshop, the Assessment Debrief Workshop (use with our full range of assessment templates), and the Outside-in Strategy Review
That’s four sessions of 4 hours each on the mornings (UK time) of Tuesday 16th, Wednesday 17th, Tuesday 23rd, and Wednesday 24th May 2023, beginning 08:30BST, 09:30CEST. If you’re a subscriber or partner, don’t forget your discount code. Similarly, ping me for a code if you’re employed in the government, healthcare, education, or non-profit sectors.
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:
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.
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.
Klaus Leopold’s Flight Levels, described in his book Rethinking Agile (2020)
The Deliberately Adaptive Organisation, my 21st-century take on Stafford Beer’s Viable System Model, and here in particular, what’s happening in the relationships between different scales (between team and team-of-teams, for example)
And in the foreground, two more:
A phrase (“Reaching…”) borrowed from the opening question of my Outside-in Strategy Review, as described in my book Right to Left: The digital leader’s guide to Lean and Agile (2019, audiobook 2020), and below it, four questions: Who, Where, What, When
From his book The Fractal Organisation (2009), Patrick Hoverstadt’s four dimensions/axes of organisation (lower left) – how to understand an organisation structure that is at least trying to be good fit for its business environment
Not shown, but we’ll come to it in a moment:
Bob Moesta’s Demand-Side Sales 101: Stop Selling and Help Your Customers Make Progress (2020) – ostensibly about sales but really a great book on jobs-to-be-done (JTBD), a book I keep finding myself recommending
Let’s take the last three of those more slowly. The Outside-in Strategy Review – free template here, and the corresponding Leading with Outcomes module here – takes you from the outside of the organisation through to its inside, walking you through the five layers of Customer, Organisation, Product, Platform, and Team(s).
The challenge question for the Customer layer goes as follows:
What’s happening when we’re reaching the right customers, meeting their strategic needs*?
*strategic needs: their needs, our strategy
By design, facilitated dialogue around that question can explore any number of issues. Not to prejudge anything but to help ensure that nothing crucial gets overlooked, we like to unpack it explicitly, hence the Who, Where, What, When questions on the slide.
Notice the correspondences between those customer-related questions and Patrick’s axes/dimensions. These are about how you structure your organisation to best fit your business environment:
Where you have different teams serving different user personas or customer segments, you are organising in the Customer dimension
Where different teams serve different locations, you are organising in the Geography dimension
Where different teams provide different solutions to different customer needs, you are organising in the Technology dimension (technology used in its broadest possible sense here)
Where different teams work at (for example) different stages of a product’s lifecycle, or simply at different times of day, you are organising in the Time dimension.
Organisations don’t need to be enormous before using each of those. I once managed a global department of around 100 people; its structure divided along the time axis first, then geography (with some regulatory accountabilities reaching in from higher up too), then customer and technology together, those last two in an informal matrix. On top of all that, we had a time & geography follow-the-sun thing going as well!
Technology and time come together in jobs-to-be-done (JTBD), hence the Bob Moesta reference. In fact, they come together in at least two ways:
There’s the ‘when’ of what Bob calls a “struggling moment”, or what in one of my more successful posts I called an “authentic situation of need“. This is when the need arises, creating the job-to-be-done and your opportunity to be there for your customer.
There’s another lifecycle, that of the customer’s relationship with you. How do they go from not knowing of your existence to being your champion? Between those extremes, through what stages to they pass, and what are their needs at each stage? Crudely, you can think of the functional separation of things like marketing, sales, and support as organising along this dimension, but read Bob’s book to understand this dimension more deeply in customer and product terms.
Bottom line, if your organisation’s structure doesn’t help it enjoy a healthy and productive relationship with its business environment, it’s going to struggle. Being able to understand its structure in the above terms is a good sign, and a much better starting point I think than the one that emphasises bigger structures and bigger processes for bigger projects, which both sadly and ironically is where Agile seems to be these days¹.
All five models of the complete mashup are brought together in Adaptive Organisation: Business agility at every scale, the fourth and final module of Leading with Outcomes (more on that in the informational section below). The first two models, Flight Levels and the Deliberately Adaptive Organisation are emphasised in my upcoming meetup talk (already two iterations on from the March version as I’ve done it privately since, and I’m aiming for keynote quality):
As always, there are discounts available to employees and employers in the government, healthcare, education, and non-profit sectors – and of course to Academy subscribers. If in doubt, ping me for a coupon code!
[This post shared on LinkedIn here – interaction of any kind appreciated!]
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:
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.
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.
In this edition: Adaptive Organisation (I) and (II); Three days in sunny June (date change); The questions that drive us (Webinar/AMA); Top posts; Events, self-paced training, and media
Adaptive Organisation (I) and (II)
Three related news items:
Adaptive Organisation (I) part I of Adaptive Organisation: Business agility at every scale has been out a few days now
Just two more chapters to go now! You can start part I now, claim your certificate for that, and you’ll be well placed to finish part II by the end of April.
Three days in sunny June (date change)
Please note: To accommodate two anticipated block bookings, we’ve pushed this event back by a week.
Three days, each available separately, each certified. Buy two consecutive days and save 20%. Buy all three together and save 30%:
Day 1. Tuesday, June 20th: Leading with Outcomes: Foundation
Day 2. Wednesday, June 21st: Adaptive Organisation (I): Business agility at every scale
Day 3. Thursday, June 22nd: Adaptive Organisation (II): Between spaces, scopes, and scales
Save a further 10-40% with the discount code shown on your Agendashift Academy subscription – see the What’s included page of your Welcome course in your Academy library.
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:
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.
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 