Tag: workshops

About today’s release – and save 25%

Posted on by Mike Burrows

The great consolidation continues apace! Landing this morning on the newer of the two Agendashift Academy platforms was part I of the latest version of the Inside-out Strategy module. Part I introduces many of our most popular exercises, most notably:

  • Our trusty, context-capturing kickoff exercise Celebration-5W
  • The inspiring (and sometimes cathartic) True North: Ideal
  • Our Clean Language-inspired coaching game 15-minute FOTO
  • Obstacles Fast and Slow, the exercise formerly known as Good Obstacle, Bad Obstacle

The last two of those have received some updates. Standalone materials in premium and Creative Commons incarnations will be published in the coming weeks.

For a taste, here’s the module introduction (08:03):

Introduction to Inside-out Strategy (I): On the same page, with purpose

Once part II Inside-out Strategy (II): Fit for maximum impact is recorded, that leaves only the final module Outside-in Strategy: Positioned for success to be done before the old learning platform can be retired. Quite apart from that steady stream of content updates, that consolidation smooths the onboarding process greatly and reduces the administration burden too.

To get an early advance on that win/win, you can now join just the new platform on its own. It means for a few weeks forgoing the two modules still left behind on the old platform, but saving 25% in perpetuity. If you have an old-style subscription you are more than welcome to take up this offer too, especially if your annual subscriptions is up for renewal soon. Ping me to get your old one cancelled, and over the coming months I will actively reach out to subscribers as their annual or monthly subscriptions approach their anniversary. Watch this space for simplifications to billing arrangements for trainers and facilitators also.

Subscribe here:

Grab that saving while it lasts!

With that business stuff out of the way, what’s changing content-wise?

The old version of Inside-out Strategy did not keep up with significant progress elsewhere. The new version has a much clearer and more productive relationship with the Foundation module and it overlaps less with the other two modules. Nevertheless, part I does nicely introduce Outside-in Strategy, and part II will do the same for Adaptive Organisation. That’s because as well as exploring leadership, organisation, and strategy as all the Leading with Outcomes modules do, an additional function the two parts fulfil is to explain how two families of workshops are constructed, ie those that can usefully be understood as derived from the Discovery and Assessment Debrief workshops respectively.

That is good news in turn for Train-the-Trainer / Facilitator (TTT/F), whose middle two sessions are now Inside-out Strategy parts I and II, both sessions packed with our most popular exercises. The next one of those begins in two weeks:

Ping me for coupon codes if any of the following apply:

  • Past TTT/F participants can join again for free (a popular perk)
  • Past participants of Leading in a Transforming Organisation get 60% off
  • Employees in public sector, education, and non-profit organisations get 40% off
  • Members of the old partner programme get 30% off
  • Last but not least, Agendashift Academy subscribers get subscription-specific discounts also

Then what? In this order:

  1. For trainers only, the Inside-out Strategy (I) training materials
  2. For both trainers and facilitators, a new version of the Leading with Outcomes Discovery Workshop
  3. New versions of the 15-minute FOTO and Obstacles Fast and Slow exercises – premium then Creative Commons versions
  4. Inside-out Strategy (II): Fit for maximum impact – the new recording and materials for trainers
  5. For both trainers and facilitators, a new version of the Leading with Outcomes Assessment Debrief Workshop
  6. Outside-in Strategy: Positioned for success – re-recording, training and workshop materials
  7. Retire the old platform

Enough to keep me busy for a while!

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.

Confirming some changes to Leading with Outcomes

Posted on by Mike Burrows

Last week’s Leading with Outcomes trainer/facilitator Zoom [1] confirmed some changes. The first two relate to two of our favourite exercises:

  1. The exercise Good Obstacle, Bad Obstacle has been renamed Obstacles Fast and Slow (yes, both names are indeed references to books). As time passes, the more we have learned to appreciate this exercise, and the latest slideware reflects its importance.
  2. The workshop and training decks now explicitly support 15-minute FOTO’s cheat mode.

In both cases, watch out for releases in the coming weeks of standalone versions of these tools. In relation to Obstacles Fast and Slow, the March edition of our monthly webinar series will be devoted to it, with the goal of replacing the old Good Obstacle, Bad Obstacle video and related material.

The rest of this post relates to the agenda of February’s Leading with Outcomes Train-the-Trainer / Facilitator (TTT/F), which comes in four half-day sessions – Tuesday and Wednesday afternoons UK time, beginning on Tuesday, February 6th, finishing Wednesday 14th.

The old TTT/F agenda:

  1. Leading with Outcomes: Foundation, chapters 1 & 2 (of 3) – introducing and applying the IdOO (“I do”) pattern, Ideal, Obstacles, Outcomes
  2. The Leading with Outcomes Discovery Workshop – a high-level application of the IdOO pattern, covering the classic exercises Celebration-5W, True North, Obstacles Fast and Slow, 15-minute FOTO, and Plan on a Page
  3. The Leading with Outcomes Assessment Debrief Workshop – the assessment, survey debrief, and Areas of Opportunity, then for a second time Obstacles Fast and Slow and 15-minute FOTO (both of those well worth the repeat), and finishing at Option Relationship Mapping, leaving the ideation part to session 4
  4. Beyond inside-out strategy – Leading with Outcomes: Foundation chapter 3, which covers the ideation part of the Assessment Debrief workshop left over from the previous session, followed by overviews of the Outside-in and Adaptive Organisation parts of the Leading with Outcomes curriculum and their related workshop offerings

That structure has worked well enough, but session 4 can feel a bit of mixed bag. The new agenda brings forward some of that content, achieved by seeing sessions 2 and 3 less exclusively in terms of inside-out strategy and more as representing two families of workshops:

  1. Leading with Outcomes: Foundation, chapters 1 & 2 (of 3) – as before
  2. Discovery-level workshops – not only the classic Leading with Outcomes Discovery Workshop and variations thereof, but the Outside-in Strategy Review (OI-SR), understood here as building on Discovery’s basic structure
  3. Assessment-based workshops – the generic survey debrief and other workshops, some of which incorporate additional training content, for example a Reverse STATIK workshop [2] and the Adaptive Organisation Workshop [3]
  4. Moving into action – completing (as before) Leading with Outcomes: Foundation chapter 3, then delving deeper into Adaptive Organisation, possibly including (this is under development) a look at narrative enquiry

Discovery workshops can now be seen as choosing from the following:

Assessment-based workshops similarly:

Details vary, but the IdOO and Meaning, Measure, Method patterns are shared, the former pattern bracketed by establishing context and organising the strategy. The new TTT/F structure should build the confidence not only to make use of these workshop designs, but to innovate new ones.

Not that TTT/F is only about workshops – doing this under the Leading with Outcomes banner means a strong emphasis on leadership development, for which the Foundation training module sets the tone very effectively. Furthermore, I’ll be re-recording the Inside-out and Outside-in training modules in the new year, and to the extent possible within the time available, sessions 2 & 3 will use those latest materials.

You can book your place at the February TTT/F here. Ping me for coupon codes if any of the following apply:

  • Past TTT/F participants can join again for free (quite a popular option)
  • Leading in a Transforming Organisation participants get 60% off
  • Employees in public sector, education, and non-profit organisations get 40% off
  • Members of the old partner programme get 30% off
  • Last but not least, Agendashift Academy subscribers get subscription-specific discounts also

For an overview of Leading with Outcomes in general and the Trainer / Facilitator programmes specifically, the store page is a good place to start.

Notes

[1] I haven’t published the recording and notes but they’re available on request. Intended audience: trainers, facilitators, members of the old partner programme, participants in a past TTT/F or Leading in a Transforming Organisation, or anyone curious about any of these

[2] The Reverse STATIK workshop is how I like to introduce Kanban. It is not officially part of Leading with Outcomes but that might change. The point here is that much of it can be recreated from parts already available to Leading with Outcomes trainers and facilitators.

[3] About the new 1-day Adaptive Organisation workshop, introductory pricing remains available if you’d like to book one for your organisation. In-person very strongly preferred, which means UK and European destinations easily reachable from Manchester unless a longer trip can be made worthwhile. That’s less of an issue for the 3-day Leading in a Transforming Organisation – I have done that as far away as Australia, albeit with a conference keynote and a family visit 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.

About tomorrow’s free webinar/AMA session

Posted on by Mike Burrows

Our monthly webinar/AMA series “The questions that drive us” returns tomorrow to question #1:

What if we put agreement on outcomes before solutions?

Essentially, this is principle #1 framed as a question. Framing it that way makes it even less prescriptive than it would be otherwise and more likely to spark innovation. Moreover, asking it can be an act of leadership. Given the premature rush to solutions typical in most organisations and assuming at least some level of safety, that act of leadership will be available frequently to many.

I got back from India only yesterday afternoon, and while it is fresh in my mind, I thought it would be good to debrief Friday’s conference workshop and certain aspects of Sunday & Monday’s Train-the-Trainer / Facilitator (TTT/F). My plan is to visualise* the designs of multiple workshops to make more visible some of their inbuilt configuration options, and to highlight recent and planned improvements to the materials. In the spotlight will be some old favourites:

See Upcoming events below for the registration links for tomorrow’s event and others, most of them free. Tomorrow’s begins at 15:00 GMT, 16:00 CET, 10am ET, and will finish as usual with an AMA (Ask Mike Anything) session. Notice also that we have the next of our free experience/practice sessions a week later.

*That visualisation is still under construction, but the Picturing Foundation picture is working very well, so I leave you with that for now 🙂

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.

Announcing a new Adaptive Organisation workshop (and more)

Posted on by Mike Burrows

Announcing:

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

And closely related to that:

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

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

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

It follows much the same structure as the training:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

While still in Melbourne I wrote up two changes:

And the Manchester event itself:

4. New experience/practice sessions begin next week

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

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

Upcoming events

February

March

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

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

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

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

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

To deliver Leading with Outcomes training or workshops yourself, see our Authorised Trainer and Authorised Facilitator programmes. See our events calendar for Train-the-Trainer / Facilitator (TTT/F) and Leading in a Transforming Organisation trainings.

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

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

Agendashift roundup, May 2022

Posted on by Mike Burrows

In this edition: June workshop; Academy Update; A fight worth fighting; New podcast interview; 15-minute FOTO version 12; Upcoming; Top posts

June workshop

Plenty of reasons to put this one first: It’s less than 3 weeks away, there’s a 10% discount on offer, and it’s my first public workshop in quite a while:

Academy update

For Agendashift Academy subscribers, the fifth and final chapter of Inside-out strategy: Fit for maximum impact was released last Friday and already we’ve issued the first certificate of completion for this self-paced training.

Currently live:

  • Leading with Outcomes: Foundation (do this one first)
  • Inside-out Strategy: Fit for maximum impact

In production, chapter 1 due for release in June, announcement to follow:

  • Outside-in Strategy: Positioned for success

In development:

  • Adaptive Organisation: Business agility at every scale

Not only are we on track for releasing the whole of the planned Leading with Outcomes curriculum this year, we have plans for some ‘bitesize’ content that we’ll be able to drip out on a weekly basis.

A reminder of our intended audience:

  1. Leaders in transforming organisations – at whatever level of experience and in whatever role
  2. Those that aspire to that – whether that’s aspiring to leadership or to be a leader in an organisation that’s transforming healthily
  3. Those who support the above

Check out our subscription plans for both businesses and individuals; both have monthly and yearly options. And talk to us if you might be interested in the trainer or facilitator programmes which we’ll be announcing soon.

A fight worth fighting

As featured on the Agendashift and Agendashift Academy homepages, the three strategies thing is brewing nicely. Don’t worry if you don’t know what that means – all is explained in my latest article on InfoQ:

That’s pretty definitive, well worth the read if you want to understand where Agendashift is right now. And inspired by my current reading (Bateson):

Read both and the connection between the two will be obvious enough. The punchline to the second one:

In the methods & frameworks world, I believe there is only one fight worth fighting, and it is not between frameworks. It is between those who would fit people and organisations to frameworks (branded or otherwise), and those who find that idea intolerable.

New podcast interview

Last month’s roundup went out early, and it missed a podcast interview that went out on the 30th. It was with Shahin Sheidaei of the Elevate Change podcast, and you can find it here and on the usual podcast platforms:

15-minute FOTO version 12

A small tweak to our Clean Language-inspired coaching game 15-minute FOTO, further emphasising the Host role:

Upcoming

Top posts

  1. 15-minute FOTO, version 12
  2. On values, meaningfulness, and change – parallels with Bateson and Mead
  3. You can’t deliver a task (August 2018)
  4. My favourite Clean Language question (January 2019)
  5. Big changes for the Agendashift Academy (April 2022)

What if we put agreement on outcomes ahead of solutions?

Agendashift™: Serving the transforming organisation
Agendashift  Academy: Leading with Outcomes | Home | Store
Links: Home | Subscribe | Become an Agendashift partner | Events | Contact | Mike
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Celebration-5W version 7

Posted on by Mike Burrows

Spot the difference:

The v7 deck of our context-capturing kickoff exercise Celebration-5W now has two sets of slides, one (left) with the What as “Key accomplishments, objectives, goals, your next breakthrough”, the other (right) with the newer “Your next big breakthrough and all that it makes possible”.

OK, if there are two variants, why not more?

Celebration-5W is actually pretty easy to change, even while you’re doing it! And it’s Creative Commons (CC-BY-SA); with appropriate attribution and under the same licence, you can even publish your version.

Some possible tweaks:

  • What: You’re celebrating the end of the project (not a variation I ever plan to try, but it’s easily done)
  • When: The earliest you dare celebrate the breakthrough upon which this upcoming period most depends (a good one for January, and I have done this one twice already this month)
  • Where: At which Prime Ministerial residence are you celebrating? Kidding, though I do say “have some fun with this one” – practicality isn’t the point here

What’s with the breakthough thing?

See Celebration-5W version 6, “your next big breakthrough” (September 2021).

Beyond that, I am actively exploring this kind of progression, which works as an extended kickoff or even a whole discovery workshop:

  1. Breakthrough – from Celebration-5W
  2. Adaptive challenge – the adaptive challenge that makes the breakthrough important
  3. Purpose – the purpose that makes the challenge meaningful and worth pursuing
  4. Ideal, Obstacles, Outcomes – ie the IdOO (“I do”) pattern:
    1. envisioning a compelling future
    2. identifying what gets in the way of what we want
    3. looking beyond those to what’s better
  5. Organise the strategy* – from the preceding conversations, representing impactfully our understanding/expectation/theory of:
    1. what impacts what, and
    2. where to focus our efforts first

*Language not from the book but familiar if you’re participating in the private beta of Leading with Outcomes: Foundation. Think Mapping, OKR, Theory of Change, etc.

Compared to a typical Agendashift discovery workshop, stages 2 and 3 above replace Agendashift’s True North or similar generative image, minimising the amount of foreign material introduced and any biases that they may bring. True North is great – cathartic even – when you’re about to do something that’s mainly about internal experience and capability, but when you’re about to do some kind of outside-in strategy (say), it may set up the wrong expectations.

Inspiration: Gervase Bushe’s Generative Change Model, as featured in his book (highly recommended) The Dynamics of Generative Change (2020). You may remember that I reconciled this model with Agendashift in the 2nd edition of Agendashift: Outcome-oriented change and continuous transformation (2021). Not only did I find a remarkable correspondence between the two, the thinking didn’t stop there.

Bottom line: Celebration-5W is a fun and highly reliable kickoff exercise. I never regret using it, and when I didn’t use it but could have done, that was usually a mistake. To make it even better, consider it as more than just a standalone exercise.

What if we put agreement on outcomes ahead of solutions?

Agendashift™: Serving the transforming organisation
Agendashift  Academy: Leading with Outcomes | Home | Store
Links: Home | Subscribe | Become an Agendashift partner | Events | Contact | Mike
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Blog: Monthly roundups | Classic posts
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Not quite ready for the big reveal

Posted on by Mike Burrows

You wouldn’t necessarily know it from the blog, but we’ve been busy over the summer months. We’re not quite ready for the big reveal but I can say that it will bring some changes to our programme of public workshops. Unfortunately, it necessitates the rescheduling or withdrawal of events previously in the calendar, and in the interests of simplicity, we’ve done a complete clear-out. If you were about to make a booking, our apologies.

Some things don’t change: our self-paced online training Leading with Outcomes is still available. It will help you in the following areas:

  • Building shared understanding of context
  • Framing obstacles for maximum engagement
  • Holding meaningful conversations about outcomes
  • Approaching outcomes strategically

For leaders of all kinds – managers, business architects, coaches, consultants, facilitators, etc – there are some valuable skills there. And as the foundation for everything else the Agendashift Academy will offer its role remains secure, so don’t hesitate! Book here:

What if we put authentic agreement on meaningful outcomes ahead of solutions?

Welcome to Agendashift™, the wholehearted engagement model

Agendashift™, the wholehearted engagement model
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Agendashift: Outcome-oriented change and continuous transformation

Latest media and calendar updates

Posted on by Mike Burrows

Quick one – already some changes since last week’s roundup!

New on Agendashift’s media page, a followup interview with John Coleman:

With workshops, meetups & webinars, here’s how the events calendar looks for the next few weeks:

And always the self-paced option – time and pace convenient to you:

Hope to see you at at least one of those!

What if we put authentic agreement on meaningful outcomes ahead of solutions?

Welcome to Agendashift™, the wholehearted engagement model

Links: Home | About | Our mission: Wholehearted | Become an Agendashift partner | Assessments | Books | Resources | Media | Events | Contact | Mike | Subscribe
Workshops: Transformation strategy | Outside-in strategy | Short training
Blog: Monthly roundups | Classic posts
Community: Slack | LinkedIn group | Twitter

workshop 2x1

The IdOO pattern as leadership model

Posted on by Mike Burrows

The IdOO pattern (below) is integral to the first two chapters of the Agendashift 2nd edition (March 2021) and also to our Leading with Outcomes and Coaching with Outcomes training (self-paced and interactive workshop respectively). It hardly seems possible that the pattern is only a year old, but this post from April last year really does seem to be my first mention of it.

agendashift-framework-overview-16x10-2020-12-07-idoo

So what is it? Well, it’s at least four things in one, demonstrating its considerable “stretchiness” in terms of the timescales involved:

  • It’s a leadership routine – three or four quick questions, some quick answers, taking just moments
  • It’s a coaching pattern – a higher-level structure to wrap around your favourite coaching tools to bring some strategic perspective – less emphasis on getting to the next commitment, more on the strategic landscape in which options will be developed
  • For facilitators, it’s the overall arc for a string of workshop exercises, whether that’s an hour’s worth or a day’s
  • For consultants, it’s a way to frame a client engagement – as helping them understand where they’d like to get to, what’s in the way of that, and what they might achieve along the way

When taken slowly enough it’s fractal: there may be obstacles in the way of any outcome, and there is always the opportunity to bootstrap the process and identify new ideals at different levels of detail.

This post relates most closely to the first of those uses, IdOO as leadership routine. Here is the IdOO mnemonic not as the structure of a conversation but as an easily-remembered leadership model:

  • Ideal – sustaining a sense of overall direction, connecting people to purpose, helping people find meaning in their work
  • Obstacles – building trust and empathy by recognising the obstacles that people face – their everyday frustrations, the “struggling moments” of actual and potential customers – everything that stands in the way of performance and success; real, relevant, and representative problems that better-designed organisations or products would alleviate
  • Outcomes – keeping at the forefront the goals around which work is organised and to which streams of work are aligned; remembering to celebrate their achievement and to focus the associated learning (both organisational and individual) to the maximum

It’s not a million miles away from my 3-point summary of Servant Leadership. Here in the last chapter of Right to Left I’m channeling Greenleaf, noting what I describe as his “masterful systems thinking”:

  1. The first responsibility of the Servant Leader is to help others to be successful – removing impediments, ensuring that basic needs are met
  2. For people to remain engaged, the Servant Leader must help others find autonomy and meaning in their work, together discovering, developing, and pursuing the organisation’s values, mission, and purpose in society
  3. For this process of transformation to be sustained indefinitely, Servant Leaders must help develop Servant Leadership in others

Right to Left: The digital leader’s guide to Lean and Agile, Mike Burrows (2019, audiobook 2020)

I wouldn’t for a moment suggest that IdOO supersedes any of that (IdOO only scratches the surface of point 3, for example), but it could be a good starting point if you find Servant Leadership hard to grapple with.

Sources

I’ve mentioned my Agendashift (2021) and Right to Left (2019) already; let me mention some other books I’ve referenced in one or both of those:

  • Servant Leadership: A Journey into the Nature of Legitimate Power and Greatness, Robert K. Greenleaf (Paulist Press, 25th Anniversary edition, 2002) – decades ahead of its time and still an inspiration; I re-read it every few years
  • The Serving Leader: Five powerful actions to transform your team, business, and community, Kenneth R. Jennings & John Stahl-Wert (Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2nd edition, 2016) – a recent take on servant leadership and a tweak on the language that some will welcome; I’m grateful to Agendashift partner and Servant Leadership champion Angie Main for finding that one
  • Host: Six new roles of engagement, Mark McKergow & Helen Bailey (Solutions Books, 2014) – a change of metaphor and one that brings new insights
  • Turn the Ship Around! A True Story of Turning Followers into Leaders, L. David Marquet (Portfolio, 2013) – another great book all round; helpful advice here with regard both to obstacles (when and when not to take them away, for example) and to the learning and development aspects of the model

Not referenced but worthy additions to that list:

  • Speed of Trust: The One Thing that Changes Everything, Stephen M.R. Covey (Free Press, 2006)
  • Demand-side Sales 101: Stop Selling and Help Your Customers Make Progress, Bob Moesta (Lioncrest Publishing, 2020)

I’m currently listening to the audiobook of Covey’s Speed of Trust, good stuff so far. Bob Moesta’s book fits here better than you might guess from the title; it’s a great book on Jobs to be Done, and it’s my source for the the phrase “struggling moments”.

IdOO at the the conferences

Don’t forget the Agendashift 2021 conference on May 18th – not long now! The IdOO pattern will certainly get a mention in my opening introduction (not keynote – that honour goes to Pia-Mia Thorén). And I’m thrilled that Gervase Bushe will be speaking on leadership in the closing keynote. He is the author or co-author of two of the 2nd edition’s key references, The Dynamics of Generative Change and Dialogic Organisation Development.  

Possibly a mention of IdOO in one form or another in my LAG21 talk on the 25th, trust-building being a key element of the Deliberately Adaptive Organisation (see the last couple of chapters of the Agendashift 2nd edition). Agendashift Academy is proud to sponsor that conference too.

Upcoming

Listed now on the Agendashift Academy’s Store page are our scheduled workshops:

And always now the self-paced option:

Selected appearances by Agendashift partners, me where unspecified:

Agendashift™, the wholehearted engagement model
Links: Home | About | Our mission: Wholehearted | Become an Agendashift partner | Assessments | Books | Resources | Media | Events | Contact | Mike | Subscribe
Workshops: Transformation strategy | Outside-in strategy | Short training
Blog: Monthly roundups | Classic posts
Community: Slack | LinkedIn group | Twitter