Mike Burrows's Blog, page 4

‘Wholehearted’ launches a week early

That time has come! Book 5, or to use its proper title, Wholehearted: Engaging with Complexity in the Deliberately Adaptive Organisation is here. “Here” meaning Amazon (print and Kindle):

amazon.co.uk  (UK) amazon.com  (US) amazon.de  (DE)

And “here” meaning these other e-book platforms:

LeanPub  (leanpub.com) Kobo  (kobo.com) Apple Books  (books.apple.com) Google Play Books  (play.google.com)

The sticking point was the print edition (Amazon-only, currently), whose release date I could not adequately control (Amazon playing games there I think, but that conversation is for another day). But not only is it now purchasable, I have already received the copies I ordered. The e-book releases were scheduled for the 16th; I brought them forward a week to the 9th, i.e. tomorrow. It prelaunched on LeanPub where it remains as the slightly more expensive DRM-free option, and the e-book is preorderable everywhere else in the meantime.

A double launch

Today is also launch day for Mike Jones’ Strategy Meets Reality podcast, and I’m his first guest!

Watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_yrYzpBoNk Listen: https://open.spotify.com/episode/2j4G0DWjwirsGhp5QY2x3F?si=a8f95aa475a44d4e Like, comment, share: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7315296103967453185/

I’m really pleased with how that came out! I’m doing another podcast interview tomorrow, and I’ll share that one too when it’s ready.

Next month, I’m scheduled to do a meetup and a webinar (slightly different formats but similar material):

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

Before either those, you can experience the book in participatory form:

30 April to 11 June, online, cohort-based – 7 weekly sessions, 2 hours each:
Leading in the Knowledge Economy (LIKE) – Spring 2025 cohort

The spring cohort has a small quorum already, which is to say both that it’s definitely going ahead and that there’s room for more! Ping me for coupon codes – there’s bound to be one that applies.

Back to Wholehearted

This launch feels different! For me personally, it feels like the culmination of a decade or more of work. And when I share even just a little of what it’s about, people respond! There’s a real hunger for models that help people make sense of their organisational challenges. At the same time, they’re smart enough to recognise that traditional methods don’t scale well, that they tend to gloss over different people’s diverse experiences of the organisation, and that they don’t do enough to enable participants to follow through on their own ideas. Wholehearted offers something different, a fascinating bringing together of old and new – tried and tested frameworks (frameworks in the “lens” sense, not on the “something to roll out” sense), presented in a more engaging way, and coupled with modern, generative practices that play well with complexity. Given the tensions between the various “schools” involved, if all that Wholehearted achieves is to demonstrate that such a synthesis is possible, it will have made a contribution, and I believe that it achieves more than that.

Wholehearted will help you understand your organisation differently. It will also help you engage differently with its challenges and your organisation to meet them better. And the result? The liberation of its decision-making and communication capacity. On its own, that is no small thing, but consider the second-order effects. What new possibilities might be enabled?

A long list of thank you’s

First, I must thank Patrick Hoverstadt (UK), Dave Snowden (UK), and Gervase Bushe (Canada), who for the purposes of the book represent the systems, complexity, and dialogic/generative organisation development communities, whose work I am brave (or perhaps foolhardy) enough to bring together here. Patrick’s help was invaluable when I first created what would become the springboard for this book, a sketchy and now superseded version of the Deliberately Adaptive Organisation that I included the final chapter of the 2021 second edition of Agendashift. Dave meanwhile, well known for the Cynefin framework, was developing his Estuarine Mapping approach, one element of which appears in the final chapter. Also as a result of the Agendashift second edition, Gervase commissioned and edited my fourth book, Organizing Conversations, which was published only last year in the BMI Series in Dialogic Organisation Development. It is fair to say that the development of that book and this one overlapped, and while I have no regrets about the delay to this one (it benefited, no doubt), I’m grateful to Gervase for his patience.

Next, I must thank those who gave this work an early platform or who supported it (and me) in other ways: Prachi Arora (India), Ryan Behrman (UK), Jens Benke (Germany), Chris Combe (Australia), Dan Davies (UK), Morten Elvang (Denmark), Ann Gambles (UK), Markus Hippeli (Germany), Peter Coesmans (Netherlands), Heidi Helfand (US), Klaus Leopold (Austria), Steve Morlidge (UK), Annette Nolan (Sweden), Noopur Pathak India), Priyank Pathak (India), Andrea Place (UK), Daniel Ploeg (Australia), Adrian Reed (UK), Martin Rosén-Lidholm (Denmark), David Spinks (UK), Katie Taylor (UK), Ian Vellosa (Switzerland), Stan Wade (UK), and Andreas Wittler (Germany).

Specifically to the book’s content, I am hugely grateful for input, feedback and encouragement from Ricardo Alvarez (Switzerland), Dickson Alves de Souza (Brazil), Karen Beck (UK), Olivier Bertrand (Canada), Kyle Byrd (US), Greg Brougham (UK), Michael Ciccotti (US), John Coleman (UK), Nariman Dorafshan (Iran), Marika Gartelius (Sweden), Philippe Geuenet (UK), Ivaylo Gueorguiev (Bulgaria), Leif Hanack (US), Cat Hicks (US), Johan Ivari (Sweden), Simon Jaillais (France), Elizabeth Jones (US), Russ Lewis (UK), Craig Lucia (UK), Thomas Lissajoux (France), David Michel (UK), Matt Mitchell (Australia), Zak Moore (UK), Silke Noll (New Zealand), John Obelenus (US), Anna Panagiotou (Switzerland), Dustin Parham (US), Kert Peterson (Canada), Alex Pukinskis (Germany), Karl Scotland (UK), Badre Srinivasan (India), Nader Talai (UK), Daniel Shern Tee Walters (Australia), Matthew White (UK), Sarah Whitely (UK), Mushon Zer-Aviv (Israel), Mushon Zer-Aviv (Israel), and Teddy Zetterlund (Sweden). Many of you have read multiple drafts, the early ones rough and incomplete. It can’t have been easy, and I admire your perseverance! From that long and truly international list, a special mention to Mushon, who helped inspire the Constraints Club exercise (Chapter 6).

Finally, and for the fifth time now, I must thank my amazing wife Sharon. “Without whom” doesn’t begin to cover it!

Agendashift roundup, March 2025

So that was March – Wholehearted pre-released on LeanPub, spring and autumn cohorts announced, and the release of a new version of Leading with Outcomes: Foundation. Intense! Normal blogging service will be resumed shortly, but expect more activity around the first two shortly.

Wholehearted is due out in print and on other platforms on April 16th, a date which I may bring forward. You can find the relevant links to Amazon, Kobo, Apple, Google, and LeanPub here, and the e-book formats are available for preorder. For the print edition, Amazon is making it unnecessarily difficult to preorder, but I’ll save any write-up on the publishing process until later.

So far the reception has been super encouraging; I’ve shared some of it here, including a video interview by LeanPub founder Len Epp. Mike Jones interviewed me last week for what I believe will become multiple podcast episodes, and Laksh Raghaven will have me on his podcast soon too. Per the calendar below, Adrian Reed has invited me back to Blackmetric’s BA community webinar series also. Similar invitations welcome!

To experience Wholehearted in a very different way, Leading in the Knowledge Economy (LIKE) begins April 30th, which is four weeks on Wednesday. At the time of writing, there are still a couple of early bird tickets available, and there are public sector / non-profit / NGO discounts available also (ping me for coupon codes if that’s you). Details in the blog posts and calendar below.

Finally, a reminder that “Office hours” / Ask Mike Anything (AMA) sessions take place on Thursdays at 2pm UK time. Our clocks changed yesterday, so that’s 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.

March’s top posts(Pre)released today – Wholehearted: Engaging with Complexity in the Deliberately Adaptive Organisation (March) Leading in the Knowledge Economy (LIKE): 7-week cohort-based training (March) Wholehearted: How it’s going and who it’s for (March) Leading with Outcomes: Foundation v3.1.2 (March) Meeting the context challenge (February)Upcoming30 April to 11 June, online, cohort-based – 7 weekly sessions, 2 hours each:
Leading in the Knowledge Economy (LIKE) – Spring 2025 cohort 27 May, 18:30 BST, 19:30 CEST, 1:30pm EDT | Blackmetric’s BA Community Webinar Series:
Webinar: Introducing the Deliberately Adaptive Organisation with Mike Burrows 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

Wholehearted: How it’s going and who it’s for

It’s time for an update, and let me begin with another video! Here I’m interviewed by Len Epp, co-founder of LeanPub, the platform on which Wholehearted: Engaging with Complexity in the Deliberately Adaptive Organisation has been pre-released:

(Wondering why there’s a cut halfway through? In my enthusiasm, I knocked over my microphone)

In case you missed them, here is the trio of March announcements, covering the LeanPub pre-release, the related cohort-based training, and supporting the latter, the latest version of Leading with Outcomes: Foundation:

(Pre)released today – Wholehearted: Engaging with Complexity in the Deliberately Adaptive Organisation Leading in the Knowledge Economy (LIKE): 7-week cohort-based training Leading with Outcomes: Foundation v3.1.2

And to the LeanPub edition, three highly encouraging responses on LinkedIn, all unsolicited:

“For those who have been working on building better organizations, a new book just came out – Wholehearted from Mike Burrows. …” – Alex Pukinskis “Can’t recommend Mike’s books enough, and this one is truly quite special. …” – Teddy Zetterlund (reposting Alex’s) “[A] must-read for anyone interested in transforming organisational design and strategy. …” – Rob Sanders

If you have engaged with any of those posts or are about to, thank you! I’m also getting invites for podcast interviews, meetups, webinars etc, and if you’d like to invite me to yours, don’t hesitate to ask. I’ll likely be appearing at least a couple of international conferences this year also.

Full release April 16th

The print and Kindle editions will be released on Amazon on April 16th, with the e-book available from that date on Kobo, Apple Books, and Google Play Books also. Google aside (which seems to be the slowest at completing its checks), the e-books are already available for pre-order, and the print edition will be too as soon as the cover is ready. You can track availability at agendashift.com/books/wholehearted.

Who it’s for

Really it’s for anyone who wishes that their organisation worked better – not only in process terms, but in terms of how different aspects of the organisation relate to each other. That includes how your part of the organisation relates to others, how it relates to its business environment, how aspects such as delivery and strategy relate to each other, how different scales of organisation relate to each other, and how leadership relates not only all of that but to many other aspects too. Role-wise, and especially in organisations large enough to have at least a few teams, those issues should concern leaders of many kinds and the practitioners (consultants, coaches, etc) who support them.

Behind it all, there is some very well-regarded theory, most notably the Viable System Model (VSM). To managers and others who have worked inside organisations for long enough to participate meaningfully in their conversations, the way I approach it will seem easy, obvious, and natural, because in its own way, it is! However, to practitioners and researchers already familiar with the model, I make clear that this is not your grandfather’s VSM. First, it starts from a very different place, one that much better suits the modern (e.g. digital, digitally-enabled, or customer-focussed) organisation. Second, and no less importantly, it takes care to embrace rather than gloss over the way different people’s experiences of the organisation differ, taking an approach by which you can much better tap into the organisation’s adaptive capacity. The book’s subtitle, Engaging with Complexity in the Deliberately Adaptive Organisation, speaks to that and more.

As for the book’s main title, Wholehearted, that’s squarely on leaders, leadership, and the organisation’s expectations on both. Are they engaging with the right challenges? Are they inviting people into the process? Are they celebrating their successes? Those questions raise further questions, but be in no doubt that there is much at stake here. Ultimately, your organisation’s continued wholeness may depend on its answers.

Leading with Outcomes: Foundation v3.1.2

Yes, it’s the third of the three announcements I promised for this month.

The first was this:

Leading in the Knowledge Economy (LIKE): 7-week cohort-based training

The summer cohort begins on April 30th and we have Easter before that, so check it out now.

And the second:

(Pre)released today – Wholehearted: Engaging with Complexity in the Deliberately Adaptive Organisation

That was last Thursday, and today it sits at #3 on LeanPub. Can we get it to #1 before tomorrow?

Before the third announcement, a reminder: “Office hours” / AMA (Ask Mike Anything) restarts tomorrow after a two-week break. Join me on Zoom most Thursdays at 2pm UK time, i.e. 14:00 GMT, 15:00 CST. If you’re based outside of Europe, check times carefully; here, daylight savings time hasn’t kicked in yet. Call details will be published tomorrow morning on Slack and (for subscribers) at the Agendashift Academy.

Leading with Outcomes: Foundation 3.1.2

So to that third announcement, the release at the Agendashift Academy of the latest version of our Foundation module. Already well-tested in the classroom, it runs more smoothly than its predecessors, and now it’s available in self-paced video-based form.

Pattern-based rather than prescriptive, Leading with Outcomes: Foundation covers four key patterns:

Engage, Invite, Celebrate, a leadership model that features prominently in Wholehearted Ideal, Obstacles, Outcomes, aka the IdOO (“I do”) pattern, the strategy-related conversation pattern that’s at the heart of Organising Conversations (2024) and Agendashift (2nd edition 2021)Meaning, Measure, Method, our outcome-oriented ideation patternRight to Left, all about impact and learning, it’s the pattern that gave its name to my 2019 book and 2020 audiobook

This third announcement also relates to the first one. How do we squeeze 3 days of Leading in a Transforming Organisation into 14 hours of cohort-based training? We cheat, that’s how! Join Leading in the Knowledge Economy and get free access to the video-based material, Foundation included.

As you can imagine, it has been an intense few weeks. Not that it stops! Next week I have a private Train-the-Trainer / Facilitator (yes that’s a thing; the next public one is in June). And I need to get Wholehearted onto Amazon. I can’t wait to have a print copy in my hands!

Related Leading in the Knowledge Economy (LIKE): 7-week cohort-based training (March) (Pre)released today – Wholehearted: Engaging with Complexity in the Deliberately Adaptive Organisation (March) Engage, Invite, Celebrate: Leading “wholeheartedly” for innovation (July 2024)“Organizing Conversations” is now out (May 2024)

(Pre)released today – Wholehearted: Engaging with Complexity in the Deliberately Adaptive Organisation

Today, to coincide with the Kanban Edge conference in which I am participating as speaker and workshop host, I am thrilled to announce a prerelease of Wholehearted: Engaging with Complexity in the Deliberately Adaptive Organisation. If it shows as embargoed, ignore that!

I say “prerelease” – so far it’s only available digitally on LeanPub – but it’s done, including an awesome foreword by Benjamin Taylor which landed only this morning! For LeanPub fans, it will stay there indefinitely, and its publication in the coming weeks in print and Kindle formats won’t change that.

The Deliberately Adaptive Organisation made its first appearance in the final chapter of the Agendashift 2nd edition (2021). Although it drew some favourable comments at the time, I have to say that in Wholehearted, it has changed almost beyond recognition. You get to understand not only how organisations work (important if you want to understand their dysfunctions), you get to understand how they come to be what they are. There’s an idea there that can be taken further: how do organisations become what they are to each of their participants individually? If every experience of the organisation is different, how can we use that? Instead of glossing over those differences as the traditional modelling process must do, let’s recognise the vast untapped reserve of adaptive capability that they represent.

That has implications for leadership. What does it mean for leaders to “create the conditions”, in particular to create the conditions for everything we might associate with business agility? Too often, that question is answered either with platitudes or with the assumption that all that is needed is a better-designed process. The former is of little help of course; try to scale up that latter kind of thinking and what do you get? Bigger and more complicated processes. Ouch. With a better appreciation of 1) how organisations work at different scales, 2) the dynamics that operate between scales, and 3) ways to change the organisation at what I call “human scale”, leaders can do very much better than that, and that’s good news for everyone.

And so, despite the book being anchored in a classic model from the 70s and early 80s – Stafford Beer’s Viable System Model – its sensibilities are very much of this age. Not only the digital age (significant enough in itself, as readers will discover), but an age that appreciates complexity, conversation, and change very differently. This is not your grandfather’s VSM! To make it work, both how the model is presented and how it is applied must change. A natural enough process (with a ring of familiarity even, if you know Agendashift or Leading with Outcomes), but – and despite my deep respect for the model – radically different.

I believe I have demonstrated that between the systems and complexity worlds lies a fertile land, not the minefield it sometimes appears to be. Receive the book in that spirit! Here it is again: Wholehearted: Engaging with Complexity in the Deliberately Adaptive Organisation.

Mike
March 6th, 2025

PS

Hopefully, it won’t have escaped your notice that this is the second of three announcements planned for this month. Tuesday’s announcement anticipated this one; the booking pages for the new cohort-based trainings actually contained spoilers in the shape of links to the book! And here they are again, together with the June TTT/F:

30 April to 11 June, online, cohort-based – 7 weekly sessions, 2 hours each:
Leading in the Knowledge Economy (LIKE) – Spring 2025 cohort 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

There are some early bird tickets available, so grab those while you can. For a 30% discount on block bookings of three or more places, ping me. For government, public health (eg NHS), and NGO employees, discounts are available from the first seat and increase to 50% for three or more.

Leading in the Knowledge Economy (LIKE): 7-week cohort-based training

A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned that there would be three things coming to fruition this month, and here’s the first. Beginning Wednesday, April 30th and running for seven 2-hour sessions, I’ve adapted the 3-day classroom training Leading in a Transforming Organisation for a cohort-based format, renaming it to Leading in the Knowledge Economy, or LIKE. If you’re wondering how three days fits into 14 hours, here’s how: as well as the Zoom sessions, we’ll be making use of the Agendashift Academy’s video-based material also for some light between-sessions study also.

What is it? Well, from the booking page:

We’ll be answering some important questions about leadership and organisation, questions that become increasingly critical as our organisations become more and more information-dependent. In a nutshell: What does it mean to be creating the conditions for business agility when the critical resources are communication capacity, decision-making capacity, and the context everyone needs to make good decisions?

This course will change two things for you: how you think about organisations, and how you engage with their challenges. Our main focus will be the digital-age (though not necessarily technology-centric) organisation, in which product development, customer-focused service delivery, and organisational improvement are becoming increasingly integrated. With that come challenges of context and scale which process-based approaches are ill-equipped to meet.

At its heart is the Deliberately Adaptive Organisation, a fresh, complexity-aware, and ground-up reconstruction of Stafford Beer’s Viable System Model. The diagnostic power of this classic model remains unrivalled, and to it we bring a truly 21st century approach. We work with rather than against the grain of two key realities: that everyone’s experience of the organisation is different, and that they see different possibilities emerging for it, possibilities they may already be motivated to help bring about. We’ll be turning the traditional change management paradigm on its head!

Training participants are typically a mixture of leaders and practitioners, all with an interest in going beyond process-centric approaches to organisation and improvement.

I’ve actually scheduled two of these; there’s one for each of the summer and autumn terms. Take your pick! And between those, the next online TTT/F:

30 April to 11 June, online, cohort-based – 7 weekly sessions, 2 hours each:
Leading in the Knowledge Economy (LIKE) – Spring 2025 cohort 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

There are some early bird tickets available, so grab those while you can.

For a 30% discount on block bookings of three or more places, ping me. For government, public health (eg NHS), and NGO employees, discounts are available from the first seat and increase to 50% for three or more.

I’m also open to doing this privately, and for organisations considering adding LIKE or other Leading with Outcomes trainings to their internal leadership development curriculum, we even provide a path to self-sufficiency via our Authorised Trainer and Facilitator programmes.

That’s it for now – watch out for announcement #2 later in the week!

Leading in the Knowledge Economy (LIKE): 7-week cohort-based training

A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned that there would be three things coming to fruition this month, and here’s the first. Beginning Wednesday, April 30th and running for seven 2-hour sessions, I’ve adapted the 3-day classroom training Leading in a Transforming Organisation for a cohort-based format, renaming it to Leading in the Knowledge Economy, or LIKE.

If you’re wondering how three days fits into 14 hours, here’s how: as well as the Zoom sessions, we’ll be making use of the Agendashift Academy’s video-based material also for some light between-sessions study also.

What is it? Well, from the booking page:

We’ll be answering some important questions about leadership and organisation, questions that become increasingly critical as our organisations become more and more information-dependent. In a nutshell: What does it mean to be creating the conditions for business agility when the critical resources are communication capacity, decision-making capacity, and the context everyone needs to make good decisions?

This course will change two things for you: how you think about organisations, and how you engage with their challenges. Our main focus will be the digital-age (though not necessarily technology-centric) organisation, in which product development, customer-focused service delivery, and organisational improvement are becoming increasingly integrated. With that come challenges of context and scale which process-based approaches are ill-equipped to meet.

At its heart is the Deliberately Adaptive Organisation, a fresh, complexity-aware, and ground-up reconstruction of Stafford Beer’s Viable System Model. The diagnostic power of this classic model remains unrivalled, and to it we bring a truly 21st century approach. We work with rather than against the grain of two key realities: that everyone’s experience of the organisation is different, and that they see different possibilities emerging for it, possibilities they may already be motivated to help bring about. We’ll be turning the traditional change management paradigm on its head!

Training participants are typically a mixture of leaders and practitioners, all with an interest in going beyond process-centric approaches to organisation and improvement.

I’ve actually scheduled two of these; there’s one for each of the summer and autumn terms. Take your pick! And between those, the next online TTT/F:

30 April to 11 June, online, cohort-based – 7 weekly sessions, 2 hours each:
Leading in the Knowledge Economy (LIKE) – Spring 2025 cohort 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

There are some early bird tickets available, so grab those while you can.

For a 30% discount on block bookings of three or more places, ping me. For government, public health (eg NHS), and NGO employees, discounts are available from the first seat and increase to 50% for three or more.

I’m also open to doing this privately, and for organisations considering adding LIKE or other Leading with Outcomes trainings to their internal leadership development curriculum, we even provide a path to self-sufficiency via our Authorised Trainer and Facilitator programmes.

That’s it for now – watch out for announcement #2 later in the week!

Agendashift roundup, February 2025

In short: it has been a busy week, and an exciting March in store!

This week was Train-the-Trainer / Facilitator (TTT/F) week. Intense in a good way, with lots to discuss – not just the Leading with Outcomes material and how to use it, but the real-world organisational challenges it inevitably surfaces and how they might be approached differently. Per my recent messaging of “not everyone attends with the aim of becoming a Facilitator or Trainer”, half the attendees came just to participate and learn.

The next one will be in June:

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

Next week is Kanban Edge 2025, which I’m told is officially sold out. Congratulations Helen, David, and Glaudia! Watch out next week though for the first two of three exciting announcements; the third will come later in the month.

Finally, last week I was in brain dump mode at Morten Elvang’s Agile Strategy Meetup, squeezing way more than I should into a 30-minute speaking slot, plus another 30 minutes for questions. It’s not as polished as my keynotes, but the recording can be found here along with PDF, links, references, etc:

Agile Strategy Meetup: Meet Mike Burrows on Strategy (February 2025)Top posts

February’s most-read posts:

Meeting the context challenge (February 2025)Help our research: an “Organisational DNA test” (May 2024) From Flow to Business Agility (January 2024) What Lies Beneath (Spoiler: Constraints) (October 2023)I’m really enjoying Challenge Mapping (June 2020)Upcoming06 March, London, UK:
Kanban Edge 2025 30 April to 11 June, online, cohort-based – 7 weekly sessions, 2 hours each:
Leading in the Knowledge Economy (LIKE) – Spring 2025 cohort 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

This week, next week, next month

This week

Tomorrow, at the kind invitation of Morten Elvang, I’m speaking at the Agile Strategy meetup:

18 February, Online, 16:00 GMT, 17:00 CET, 11am ET, Agile Strategy Meetup Group:
Meet Mike Burrows on strategy

My brief is to answer two questions:

What is your view on strategy and its role and importance in an organisation. Any new trends or developments?What advice do you have for people on how to best engage in the topic of strategy in their organisation?

Strategy, organisation, and engagement – my kind of gig!

Then this Thursday at 14:00 UK time (that’s 13:00 CET and 9am ET) and every Thursday except for the following two Thursdays when it clashes with other things, it’s “Office hours”, aka AMA, for “Ask Mike Anything”. The Zoom link is available via the Academy, via Slack, and for mailing list subscribers, I’ll include it in today’s email.

Next week

The next online Leading with Outcomes: Train-the-Trainer / Facilitator – the first since the one I did in person in India last December – begins a week on Monday on February 24th, spanning four consecutive afternoons UK time, beginning at 13:00 GMT, 14:00 CET, 8am ET, each session lasting no more than four hours.

As the weeks have counted down I’ve blogged about it a couple of times:

Four weeks until the February TTT/F Two new TTT/F options (and an extra 15% off)

I won’t repeat what I said there except to say that please use coupon code BLOG15 for 15% off any of the ticket options – Facilitator, Trainer, or TTT/F Only. Book here:

24-27 February, four 4-hour sessions online, afternoons UK time:
Leading with Outcomes: Train-the-Trainer / Facilitator (TTT/F)

We currently have a cozy quorum, definitely room for more!

March

The reason that there’ll be no office hours the following week is that I’ll be in London for Kanban Edge, where I’m speaking:

06 March, London, UK:
Kanban Edge 2025

I’d love to see you there! That won’t be it for March though – there are three things coming to fruition which I’ll announce separately in due course. Watch this space!

Two new TTT/F options (and an extra 15% off)

The next online Leading with Outcomes: Train-the-Trainer / Facilitator – the first since the one I did in person in India last December – begins a week on Monday on February 24th, spanning four consecutive afternoons UK time, beginning at 13:00 GMT, 14:00 CET, 8am ET, each session lasting no more than four hours.

Since I blogged recently about what’s new content-wise this time round, I’ve made some changes to ticketing options. The default option, the Facilitator ticket, still saves you £479 (your first year’s subscription) on the Leading with Outcomes Facilitator programme. This gives you access to the assessment tools, workshop materials, and so on. For access to training materials you can upgrade that at any time to a Trainer subscription, but if you know that’s what you want from the off, a Trainer ticket will save you a further £100.

In the abovementioned blog and elsewhere, I have said that not everyone who attends TTT/F does it with the intention of becoming a Leading with Outcomes Facilitator or Trainer. If that’s you, or if you’d like to check things out first, there is now a TTT/F Only ticket that comes without the above subscriptions. I do however throw in a regular Academy subscription, giving you access to the video-based, self-paced training material for your own study. Bargain!

As a valued reader of this blog, when making your booking, please use coupon code BLOG15 for 15% off any of the above-described options – Facilitator, Trainer, or TTT/F Only. Book here:

24-27 February, four 4-hour sessions online, afternoons UK time:
Leading with Outcomes: Train-the-Trainer / Facilitator (TTT/F)

Also in the calendar:

18 February, Online, 16:00 GMT, 17:00 CET, 11am ET, Agile Strategy Meetup Group:
Meet Mike Burrows on strategy 06 March, London, UK:
Kanban Edge 2025

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:

Foundation module: Leading with Outcomes: Foundation Inside-out Strategy: Part I: On the same page, with purpose Part II: Fit for maximum impact Adaptive Organisation: Part I: Business agility at every scale Part II: Between spaces, scopes, and scales Outside-in Strategy: Part I: Positioned for success Part II: A platform for performance

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
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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.