In this edition: A personal note; Two keynote talks; Articles; Upcoming

To begin on a personal note, Sharon and I are immensely grateful for your kind donations in Florence’s memory. More than £1,500 has been raised for Bluebell Wood Children’s Hospice, and the Lean Agile Brighton conference also raised a four-figure sum this month (exact amount to be announced) for the Make-A-Wish Foundation. On both counts, amazing! Thank you!

Two keynote talks

I’m sort of back to work now, mainly speaking engagements for the moment. We’ll be taking a holiday also – it will be the first time Sharon and I have been able to travel together since 2018. I’m not sure yet what 2026 will bring, but that’s ok, and I’m very open to ideas.

Just this month I have given my talk Introducing the Deliberately Adaptive Organisation four times now! It turns out to be very adaptable: twice this week (and next week at Øredev 2025) it took the form of a quick 30 or 40 minute talk. But earlier this week I had no trouble filling 90 minutes, and two weeks ago, nearly three hours! That last one was for a hybrid seminar at Hull University’s Centre for Systems Studies in association with the Operations Research Society, and it prompted plenty of thoughtful conversation.

Given my impending travels, I have already written my new keynote for Kanban India 2025, which takes place in early December. It’s called Thinking Organisationally about Process, and it puts the kanban of my first book, Kanban from the Inside, into the kind of organisational frame described by my fifth book, Wholehearted: Engaging with Complexity in the Deliberately Adaptive Organisation, with some of the glue provided by my middle book (and audiobook), Right to Left: The digital leader’s guide to Lean and Agile. If the clock starts with my best-known (not to mention career-changing) blog post, Introducing Kanban through its values, that’s a journey of nearly 13 years, but you can get the gist in some 45 minutes!

I mention these because if you run a meetup or conference, you might consider one or even both of these talks. For a fee, I do private events also, as I did only yesterday. Either way, I have availability from mid-December onwards.

Articles

I wrote two this month. Most recently, and prompted by that seminar in Hull and also by a panel session I did with Philippe Guenet and Jen Le Marinel for the International Coaching Federation (ICF):

• Polarities, asymmetries, and why we do what we do

Before that:

• In two senses, a wholehearted organisation is a high-intelligence organisation

Upcoming

With home life very much in transition, I’m honouring my remaining commitments for 2025 but deliberately keeping 2026 open. My public calendar now looks like this:

• 5-7 November, Malmö, Sweden:
  Øredev 2025
• 30 November to 01 December, Pune, India:
  Leading with Outcomes: Train-the-Trainer / Facilitator (TTT/F) – Pune
• 5-6 December, Bengaluru, India:
  Kanban India 2025

Blog-wise, that’s it for October, and with my travels, quite possibly November also. See you in December if not before!

Real life introduces big time! My wife and I have spent most of the past couple of weeks with our daughter at Sheffield Children’s Hospital, and we have a few more days to go yet. Consequently, for reasons both of opportunity and headspace, my output has been minimal of late. I did however manage this LinkedIn post today, and our media page includes at least one new video that I haven’t mentioned previously here. Most of the recent ones are of course Wholehearted-related.

The events calendar hasn’t changed much, but the autumn cohort beginning at the end of September seems not so far away now, and I’m keen to learn who’s interested in attending in Copenhagen/Malmö in November also. Here it is with all kinds of events together, speaking engagements included:

• 3-4 September, Milton Keynes, UK:
  SysPrac25
• 11 September, online, 18:15 BST, 19:15 CEST, 1.15pm EDT:
  Agile Northants: Introducing the Deliberately Adaptive Organisation with Mike Burrows
• 30 September to 18 November, online, cohort-based – 8 weekly sessions, 2 hours each:
  Leading in the Knowledge Economy (LIKE) – Autumn 2025 cohort
• 3-4 November, Copenhagen, Denmark:
  Leading in the Knowledge Economy (LIKE) – Copenhagen
• 5-7 November, Malmö, Sweden:
  Øredev 2025
• 30 November to 01 December, Pune, India:
  Leading with Outcomes: Train-the-Trainer / Facilitator (TTT/F) – Pune
• 3-4 December, Bengaluru, India:
  Leading in the Knowledge Economy (LIKE) – Bengaluru
• 5-6 December, Bengaluru, India:
  Kanban India 2025

For the online and Europe-based training, ping me if you need a discount code. All the usual reasons (gov, educational, non-profit, etc) apply, and the more the merrier.

A post-Wholehearted version of my white paper, Everywhere all at once

As previewed in last month’s roundup and announced this month, there is now a new version of the white paper, Everywhere all at once. Watch the short video and download your copy of the paper here:

• Everywhere all at once: Introducing the Deliberately Adaptive Organisation

As for the book, you can find Wholehearted: Engaging with Complexity in the Deliberately Adaptive Organisation (April 2025) in both print and Kindle editions on amazon.co.uk, amazon.com, amazon.de and other Amazon sites around the world. The e-book is also available on LeanPub, Kobo, Apple Books, and Google Play Books. Enjoy! Leave a review!

That’s all for now. Hoping that August will be considerably less fraught, but being the holidays for many, I expect that I’ll be keeping the next roundup light too. If you’ll be taking a break, enjoy!

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In 2023, I published two versions of my white paper Everywhere all at once. That was well before Wholehearted (2025), so it’s high time it was revised! Not having dared to look at it for quite a while, I was relieved to find that the old version had stood up pretty well; nevertheless, I have enjoyed realigning it with the book.

Over the summer (if not longer) I will be producing frequent short videos, so here’s a quick overview:

Content-wise, the video follows the white paper pretty closely, though in less depth:

1. A relational approach
2. A model for every organisational scale
3. Between scales: the space between
4. Organising at human scale
5. What lies beneath: Constraints
6. Not your grandfather’s VSM / A model for the digital-age organisation

Grab the white paper itself at agendashift.com/everywhere. 

Whether you watch or read first, enjoy!

Cheers,
Mike

Three videos, 5 or 6 minutes each:

• Agendashift roundup, June 2025
• Wholehearted, backwards
• Engage with the organisation *as it actually is*

Enjoy! All published to LinkedIn, also on my YouTube channel. “Like and subscribe”, as they say!

In this edition:

1. Autumn programme: conferences, LIKE, and TTT/F
2. Concluding the “Leadership as…” series
3. A post-Wholehearted version of my white paper, Everywhere all at once

1. Autumn Programme: conferences, LIKE, and TTT/F

In the form of my talk “Introducing the Deliberately Adaptive Organisation”, I will be taking my new book, Wholehearted: Engaging with Complexity in the Deliberately Adaptive Organisation to three quite different conferences:

• SysPrac25, the System Thinking Practitioners Conference, in Milton Keynes, UK
• The big technology conference Øredev, in Malmö, Sweden
• Kanban India 2025, in Bengaluru, India, to which I have been coming more years than I can remember!

My trips to Scandinavia and India create some training opportunities – two LIKEs and a TTT/F:

• 3-4 November, Copenhagen, Denmark:
  Leading in the Knowledge Economy (LIKE) – Copenhagen
• 30 November to 01 December, Pune, India:
  Leading with Outcomes: Train-the-Trainer / Facilitator (TTT/F) – Pune
• 3-4 December, Bengaluru, India:
  Leading in the Knowledge Economy (LIKE) – Bengaluru

There are a couple of things to note about those. First, the Copenhagen one (which might join the conference on the Swedish side of the bridge in Malmö) needs a venue. Can you help? Would your organisation like to host it in return for free &/or discounted places or some other arrangement? It will be the first in-person training of its kind since the publication of Wholehearted, and it would be great to get at least a small quorum together sooner rather than later.

Second, the TTT/F in Pune (not in Bengaluru as in previous years) is the only public TTT/F planned for the remainder of the year. If you travel to India for this or for LIKE, you won’t be the first to have done so – it can be surprisingly cost-effective. And take in the conference while you’re there!

2. Concluding the “Leadership as…” series

Seven articles inspired by Chapter 4 – the scaling chapter – of Wholehearted:

1. Leadership as structuring
2. Leadership as translating
3. Leadership as reconciling
4. Leadership as connecting
5. Leadership as inviting
6. Leadership as representing
7. Untangling the strands (Or: How not to scale, and a remedy)

Those last two posts (which you can take in either order) bring the preceding five together nicely, so you might like to start with one of those.

It’s hard to say whether my experimental policy of publishing to LinkedIn first has made a significant difference, but I will stick with it for a bit longer. LinkedIn being what it is, reactions (likes etc) are great, but it’s comments that really bring posts to others’ attention. Tell us what you think!

3. A post-Wholehearted version of my white paper, Everywhere all at once

Earlier versions of my white paper Everywhere all at once: Introducing the Deliberately Adaptive Organisation, an accessible, situational, and complexity-aware presentation of the Viable System Model were released in June and December 2023. Even that later version preceded the publication of Wholehearted by well over a year, and I have now reworked it. I’ll release this new version next month under an amended title, but if you’d like to review it meanwhile, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.

As for the book, you can find Wholehearted: Engaging with Complexity in the Deliberately Adaptive Organisation (April 2025) in both print and Kindle editions on amazon.co.uk, amazon.com, amazon.de and other Amazon sites around the world. The e-book is also available on LeanPub, Kobo, Apple Books, and Google Play Books. Enjoy! Leave a review!

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In this edition: The wholehearted, deliberately adaptive organisation; Leading with Outcomes; Top posts

The wholehearted, deliberately adaptive organisation

Given that it’s the month after the full release of Wholehearted: Engaging with Complexity in the Deliberately Adaptive Organisation, it’s hardly surprising that I’ve been busy promoting the new book!

This week I was the guest at the Blackmetrics #BAcommunity webinar (thank you Adrian Reed for the invitation), and the recording, slides, references, and other links are already available here:

• Keynote: Introducing the Deliberately Adaptive Organisation (agendashift.com)

I overran a bit, so there was less time than usual for Q&A. I’ll be more careful with the level of detail in future versions! I’m giving it again next week, but in person:

• 05 June, Nottingham, England:
  Mike Burrows: Introducing the Deliberately Adaptive Organisation

Thank you Sergio Seelochan and Agile Nottingham for that one.

I have also been blogging on LinkedIn, and it’s turning into a series:

1. Leadership as structuring
2. Leadership as translating
3. Leadership as reconciling

To come:

4. Leadership as connecting
5. Leadership and participation
6. Leadership and identity

Further ahead, there’s the Autumn LIKE (the Spring one is past its halfway point now):

• 30 September to 11 November, online, cohort-based – 7 weekly sessions, 2 hours each:
  Leading in the Knowledge Economy (LIKE) – Autumn 2025 cohort

Not yet in the calendar, I will do a 2-day in-person one of these in Bangalore in December, and possibly one in Sweden or Denmark in November if I’m accepted to speak at Øredev. I’m also very open to doing one again in Manchester – I have both university and NHS interest there, and it might be very cool to do one for both groups together.

Last but not least, and as previously announced, on the Media page you’ll find an interview released earlier this month with Rohit Gautam for his Curiosulus Chronicles podcast, and below that one, interviews released in April with Mike Jones and Laksh Raghavan for their Strategy Meets Reality and Cyb3rSyn Labs podcasts respectively.

Leading with Outcomes

All of the above comes very much under the Leading with Outcomes umbrella. Other news there:

• A new Leading with Outcomes Cheat Sheet
• And check out Leading with Outcomes: Foundation for a new and cheaper Foundation-only subscription

And the next TTT/F begins on the 16th:

• 16-19 June, four 4-hour sessions online, afternoons UK time:
  Leading with Outcomes: Train-the-Trainer / Facilitator (TTT/F)

Top posts

Blog:

1. (Pre)released today – Wholehearted: Engaging with Complexity in the Deliberately Adaptive Organisation (March)
2. Agendashift roundup of the year 2024 (December)
3. What Lies Beneath (Spoiler: Constraints) (October 2023)
4. Leading with Outcomes Cheat Sheet v2.1 (May)
5. My favourite Clean Language question (January 2019)

LinkedIn articles:

1. Leadership as structuring
2. Mid-month update: Wholehearted Leadership in a Complex World and more
3. Prescriptive vs descriptive
4. Leadership as translating
5. Leadership as reconciling

Leading in the Knowledge Economy (LIKE) – Spring 2025 cohort begins today*, so I’m getting this out early. In this edition: Wholehearted is released in print and on Kindle; Podcasts, meetups, webinars, and Office hours / AMA; Further ahead

Wholehearted is released in print and on Kindle

This month saw the print and Kindle releases of my new book Wholehearted: Engaging with Complexity in the Deliberately Adaptive Organisation. In relation to that, I’ve been blogging more than usual, experimenting with a LinkedIn-first approach. The first two of those posts were perhaps a little dry (I had some things to get off my chest perhaps):

• Where is the complexity in ‘Wholehearted’?
• Systems, purpose, and perspective: Pointers to Wholehearted’s philosophical influences

Then I found my stride:

• Wholehearted, backwards
• Engage with the organisation *as it actually is*
• OODA loop takeaways

Beginning with “Trust-building leadership” (chapter 3) I have a series on leadership planned; expect the first of those early May.

To the book itself, you can find both print and Kindle editions on amazon.co.uk, amazon.com, amazon.de and other Amazon sites around the world. The e-book is also available on LeanPub, Kobo, Apple Books, and Google Play Books.

Podcasts, meetups, webinars, and Office hours / AMA

Two podcast interviews were released this month:

• Beyond Structures: Building Deliberately Adaptive Organisations with Mike Burrows (Strategy Meets Reality Podcast, lbiconsulting.com)
• Viable Systems Model: Deliberately Adaptive Organizations (Cyb3rSyn Labs Podcast, cyb3rsyn.com)

Thank you Mike Jones and Laksh Raghavan. Another is recorded and awaiting release, I’ll be recording another on Friday, and two more in the pipeline also!

Upcoming in May, two different formats – meetup and webinar – but essentially the same talk:

• 08 May, Online, Business Agility Meetup, Berlin, 18:00 BST, 19:00 CEST, 1pm EDT:
  Meetup: Introducing the Deliberately Adaptive Organisation
• 27 May, 18:30 BST, 19:30 CEST, 1:30pm EDT | Blackmetric’s BA Community Webinar Series:
  Webinar: Introducing the Deliberately Adaptive Organisation

Both of those are online (don’t be put off by the “Berlin”), and I know at least one person who plans to attend both. There for the Q&A I guess! To be fair, that can be the most fun part – certainly the most unpredictable, perhaps because I ask for the hard questions!

Finally, a reminder that “Office hours” / Ask Mike Anything (AMA) sessions take place on Thursdays at 2pm UK time – 14:00 BST, 15:00 CEST, 9am EDT. Invitations are published weekly to Academy and Slack subscribers. You can also book a 30-minute Zoom via my Calendly.

Further ahead

The next TTT/F will be in June, and if the spring cohort of LIKE comes too early for you, there’ll be another in the autumn:

• 16-19 June, four 4-hour sessions online, afternoons UK time:
  Leading with Outcomes: Train-the-Trainer / Facilitator (TTT/F)
• 30 September to 11 November, online, cohort-based – 7 weekly sessions, 2 hours each:
  Leading in the Knowledge Economy (LIKE) – Autumn 2025 cohort

That’s it for April – bring on May!

*LIKE begins 2pm UK time – 14:00 BST, 15:00 CEST, 9am EDT today. If you’d like to join, best get in touch with me directly, and quickly! All the usual discounts available.