Mike Burrows's Blog, page 6

Assessment template tidyup and an update on book 5

It has been quite a while since I’ve blogged about Agendashift’s suite of assessments, but I did a tidyup over the weekend, so here we are! One of those assessments is connected to book 5, so I’ll give an update on that too.

There are a lot of assessment tools out there, but we think ours are special. Many seek to teach, judge, or sell, and as I once said about maturity models, too often they say more about the vendor than the client. That makes them inauthentic, and not a great place therefore to start an honest conversation.

Our style guide (also the basis of a workshop exercise in which you write your own assessments prompts) gives a sense of where we’re coming from:

Inclusive

Sentences starting with “We” or “Our”Statements that most of your colleagues could embrace

(Simple) present tense:

Not impossibly out of reachThere may be signs of this happening already

Non-prescriptive:

Not specifying how this outcome will be achievedAllowing multiple realisations

That’s for background; none of that changes in my weekend update. I have simply renamed some of them and resequenced the menu.

If you are an Authorised Facilitator or Trainer, you have access to the full set. Filtered for English (EN) templates only, this is what the list looks like now:

If you are an Academy subscriber, you have access to the mini templates:

Aside: You can subscribe on a monthly basis and there’s a 1-week free trial, so it’s not a big commitment. And the video-based training module Inside-out Strategy (II): Fit for maximum impact to which you’ll have access gives a lot of insight into how we facilitate it. You could do the Foundation module first, leave part (I) of Inside-out Strategy until later (I’m in the process of switching them around anyway, so it’s not cheating), and you’d be well-prepared for your first small-scale test.

Back to the assessments, certain less-used templates have been demoted to the bottom of the list. Templates with language code “EN-old”, are retained only for the sake of old surveys. Language code “EN-simplified” has gone; that has been the preferred language for long enough, and I have merged it into EN. The old adaptability assessment from the 1st edition of the Agendashift book has also fallen into disuse; the idea was good at the time – re-use the delivery assessment, replacing “delivery” with “change” – but it is superseded by the stronger Deliberately Adaptive Organisation assessment.

On that last point, you can try the full-length version of the Deliberately Adaptive Organisation assessment by participating in our global survey, the data from which (anonymised, of course) is helping some really interesting PhD research. Below is the survey and some background on the research:

Survey: Adaptive Organisation Assessment Help our research: an “Organisational DNA test”

Further to that, watch out next year for book 5, Wholehearted: Engaging with the Complexity in the Deliberately Adaptive Organisation, which goes into the model that supports that assessment tool. Its first three chapters correspond to the model’s three “spaces”:

Delivering, Discovering, Renewing – the value-adding work of the organisation and the systems that support itAdaptive Strategising – guiding that work and bringing a sense of identityMutual Trust Building – opening up the preceding two spaces to each other, minimising the risk that their decision-making lacks adequate context

What if between those three spaces and between their constituent parts, their relationships were in healthy and productive balance? That’s the basis of Part I, Business Agility at Every Scale.

The first two chapters of Part II, Between Spaces, Scopes, and Scales, bring together some really practical organisational theory that you won’t find in one place elsewhere:

The Space Between – a window on the relationships between different levels of scaleOrganising without Reorganising – avoiding the big reorg, promoting self-organisation at scale

It finishes with:

What Lies Beneath – digging below the model’s mainly relational perspective to the level of constraints and affordances

I am very pleased with how it is turning out, but it’s not quite at the publication stage yet, and it will be a while before I announce timelines. Meanwhile though, if 1) you are experienced enough to guess from that overview that I’m in that tricky no man’s land between the systems and complexity worlds and 2) you find that thought more intriguing than horrifying, please get in touch!

Upcoming events6-7 December, Bengaluru, India:
Kanban India 2024 8-9 December, Bengaluru, India:
Leading with Outcomes: Train-the-Trainer / Facilitator (TTT/F) *

*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:

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.

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.

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Published on November 18, 2024 04:06

Agendashift roundup, October 2024

Just a short one this month. “Real life intrudes”, as they say; our daughter just spent two weeks in the children’s hospital and was very unwell for longer than that, so it is just as well that I had done that clearing the decks exercise beforehand! Glad to report that’s she is better now than she has been for a while.

From classic Lean-Agile to Outcome-Oriented Enterprise Agility: The 10-year Journey

That’s the name of a webinar recorded last week in celebration (a couple of weeks late) of the 10th anniversary of the publication of my first book, Kanban from the Inside. The discussion ranged over all four books and the upcoming “book 5”. Many thanks to hosts Albena Georgieva and Nora Pavlova of Businessmap (formerly Kanbanize) and everyone who participated in the Q&A. Congrats also to Stuart Gibbons who won a copy of Organizing Conversations (his choice – he could have had any one of the four). Enjoy!

Introducing Kanban through its values (January 2013) Towards the wholehearted organisation, outside in (May 2018) ‘Right to Left’ works for Scrum too (July 2018)A taste of my own medicine: Why “Organizing Conversations” took two and a half years to write (June 2024) Engage, Invite, Celebrate: Leading “wholeheartedly” for innovation (July 2024) It only took me ten years (September 2024)Upcoming events6-7 December, Bengaluru, India:
Kanban India 2024 8-9 December, Bengaluru, India:
Leading with Outcomes: Train-the-Trainer / Facilitator (TTT/F) *

*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:

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.

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.

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Published on October 18, 2024 08:26

Engage, Invite, Celebrate – it was there all along

In July, I posted Engage, Invite, Celebrate: Leading “wholeheartedly” for innovation, which takes us from a Christopher Alexander quote that has inspired me for a number of years to Engage, Invite, Celebrate, a nice little leadership model:

Engaging on the right challenges – attending to all that makes the organisation unwhole, i.e. to what makes it in any way disconnected, incomplete, unbalanced, incoherent, or otherwise dysfunctional; attending also to what might lead to a sense of unwholeness in the future – opportunities missed, for exampleInviting people to participate – not only for their perspectives and ideas but for the integration (i.e. making whole) that happens when you bring people together Celebrating their initiative – amplifying the organisation’s capacity to innovate, not only in terms of enhanced products and services but in terms of the organisation’s own development also

It’s hardly an accident that things worked out this way, but I just noticed that I was only a hairsbreadth away from Engage, Invite, Celebrate years ago. Here, from the Agendashift 2nd edition (2021) are the three “jobs” that I suggested that an engagement model should do:

To structure and support the work of change agents like you – not just external facilitators, consultants, and coaches, but leaders, managers, and other employees whose remit or desire involves encouraging some strategic kind of change to come to lifeTo help the organisations concerned engage their staff meaningfully in change-related work, inviting the level of participation necessary, and sustaining the expectation of further success as outcomes are achieved and momentum is builtWith and through their staff, to help keep the different parts of these organisations engaged with each other, all of them enjoying the best chance to thrive even as they change at different speeds

Look again at that second job:

To help the organisations concerned engage their staff meaningfully in change-related work, inviting the level of participation necessary, and sustaining the expectation of further success as outcomes are achieved and momentum is built

So close! Since then, I’ve changed the focus of Engage and the tone of Invite, but that’s to be expected if I’m going from a change paradigm to a leadership model. I didn’t use the word Celebrate there, but arguably, that’s where the meaning has changed the least. “Further success” implies past success, and what do we do when we’re working Right to Left (2019), anticipating and working backwards from those key moments of impact and learning, reviewing our work most-complete first? We begin with what we’ve most recently achieved, celebrating it. It was there all along!

While we’re here, please note the time of today’s webinar, The 10-year Journey: From Classic Lean-Agile to Outcome-Oriented Enterprise Agility. It begins later than recent blog posts have suggested, at 17:00 BST, 18:00 CEST, 12noon EDT.

Related Engage, Invite, Celebrate: Leading “wholeheartedly” for innovation (July 2024) ‘Right to Left’ works for Scrum too (July 2018) Towards the wholehearted organisation, outside in (May 2018)Upcoming events10 October, 17:00 BST, 18:00 CEST, 12noon EDT, webinar hosted by businessmap:
The 10-year Journey: From Classic Lean-Agile to Outcome-Oriented Enterprise Agility 6-7 December, Bengaluru, India:
Kanban India 2024 8-9 December, Bengaluru, India:
Leading with Outcomes: Train-the-Trainer / Facilitator (TTT/F) *

*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:

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.

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.

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Published on October 10, 2024 07:08

Agendashift roundup, September 2024

In this edition: Into the fourth quarter; Ten years and more; Top posts (and book 5 clues)

Into the fourth quarter

Earlier this month I posted Clearing the decks and several people were kind enough to reach out in response. As I said at the time, nothing bad was happening, but I did feel the need to create some wiggle room, which I’m now enjoying.

Cancelling the upcoming LIKE and TTT/F trainings does have implications for the Leading with Outcomes Authorised Facilitator and Trainer programmes. For the time being, it is no longer a prerequisite to take one of these trainings; you can subscribe to those programmes directly from the Agendashift Academy’s Store page now. In fairness to those who have attended one of those trainings previously and didn’t take up a discounted subscription at the time, ping me for a discount code and you can have the first year of Facilitator for free or the equivalent amount off Trainer. For attendees of the in-person TTT/F in India – last years’s and the upcoming one – the same applies, and there is India-specific pricing also. Again, ping me.

I’m still doing speaking engagements (both of the October events are free, by the way), and there will likely be some additions. After those changes, my calendar now looks like this:

October

8-9 October, Online:
Project to Product Summit 10 October, online, 17:00 BST, 18:00 CEST, 10am EDT:
The 10-year Journey: From Classic Lean-Agile to Outcome-Oriented Enterprise Agility

December

6-7 December, Bengaluru, India:
Kanban India 2024 8-9 December, Bengaluru, India:
Leading with Outcomes: Train-the-Trainer / Facilitator (TTT/F) Ten years and more

September saw a very nice milestone: it has been ten years since the publication of my first book, Kanban from the Inside (KFTI). There are of course some things I’d do differently were I to write it again (which I won’t!), but I remain very proud of it. Moreover, its approach of using some central perspective to integrate ideas from a diverse range of sources is one that I keep using. For KFTI that central perspective was that of a values model; later books developed an outcome-oriented perspective, and book 5 has a central, organising framework, the Deliberately Adaptive Organisation.

More about that anniversary here:

It only took me ten years

Thinking about this end of that ten-year period, I will add that although this year’s release Organizing Conversations took two and a half years to write – a long time for a comparatively short book – I don’t regret the delay that this commission brought to what will now be my fifth book. Not only does the delay mean that its ideas are that much better developed, there are some important distinctions brought out in Organizing Conversations that I wouldn’t have thought much about otherwise.

I do now have a complete first draft of book 5, but it won’t be published until next year – sorry! Meanwhile, let me recommend Organizing Conversations and also Right to Left, the latter available also as an audiobook narrated by yours truly. Of my four past books (see my new Amazon Author page for the UK, the US, and Germany), those are the two that together best describe where I will be coming from. And for more clues, see the posts below that I’ve marked with an asterisk, and join me at one of those abovementioned events!

Top posts (and book 5 clues) Clearing the decks (September) Your organisation in 5 networks (November 2022)* It only took me ten years (September) Better user stories start with authentic situations of need (October 2016) What Lies Beneath (Spoiler: Constraints) (October 2023)*

*Book 5 clues! These likewise, and they all look set to appear in the top 10 for the year:

From Flow to Business Agility (January) Agile’s Great Rebalancing: My next book’s take on the Agile manifesto (April) Engage, Invite, Celebrate: Leading “wholeheartedly” for innovation (July) Help our research: an “Organisational DNA test” (May)

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.

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.

View more on Mike Burrows's website »

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Published on September 30, 2024 05:17

It only took me ten years

Let me quickly mention that last week’s post, Clearing the decks, prompted some subscribers to get in touch. Thank you, I was touched! Sincerely, all is well here – I’m just glad of some extra headspace and flexibility. If I can be nerdy about it, it’s always good to open up options – to improve one’s capacity for independent action, one might say

Anyway… It’s ten years to the month since the publication of my first book, Kanban from the Inside, which I believe can fairly be described as a Lean-Agile classic. Since then, I’ve published two editions of Agendashift, then Right to Left in both written and audiobook form, and Organizing Conversations came out just a few weeks ago. That last one prompted me finally to ask Amazon to sort out my Amazon Author page so I have everything properly in one place at last! Here it is for the UK, the US, and Germany (three of the four books are available in translation).

In celebration of that 10-year milestone, I’m doing a webinar with my friends at Businessmap (formerly Kanbanize) the week after next:

10 October, online, 17:00 BST, 18:00 CEST, 10am EDT:
The 10-year Journey: From Classic Lean-Agile to Outcome-Oriented Enterprise Agility

In the past few days, I reached another milestone, the first complete draft of book 5, Wholehearted: Engaging with Complexity in the Deliberately Adaptive Organisation. There’s still a long way to go on that (it won’t be published this year), but we have plenty to talk about. Join us! Bring your questions!

From my Amazon Author page – which only took me 10 years to get set upRelated: It’s 10 years since the post that changed my career (January 2023) What I really think about Kanban (April 2022) “Organizing Conversations” is now out (May 2024) A taste of my own medicine: Why “Organizing Conversations” took two and a half years to write (June 2024) It’s out! Right to Left: The digital leader’s guide to Lean and Agile (August 2019)

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.

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Published on September 24, 2024 05:54

Clearing the decks

For reasons I can’t yet go into (don’t worry, nothing bad), I find myself needing to clear the decks for the next few weeks. In particular, the in-person training in Southampton in October and the online TTT/F in November need to go.

That would seem to create a problem for those looking to gain access to the assessment tools and the Leading with Outcomes workshop and training materials, so here’s the deal. For the time being:

If you want to subscribe to the Facilitator programme, you can – the link is here That subscription is upgradeable to the Trainer programme, but you’ll need to complete the self-paced training first (it’s included in Facilitator, or you can subscribe to just that part on a monthly or yearly basis and upgrade when you’re ready)Past attendees of Leading in a Transforming Organisation or TTT/F can get their first year of Facilitator free – ping me for a discount codeThat applies also to December’s TTT/F in India. Effectively your first year of Facilitator – already significantly discounted for India – is included in the cost of your training, and you can put that discount towards Trainer, where India-specific pricing applies also

I haven’t yet updated the Store page; that remains the place to go for further information on these programmes.

Coming up very soon

This section looks a little different from the usual events calendar, not only because of the above news, but because I’m mentioning some events put on by friends of ours.

Most urgently, my friend Russ Lewis tells me that in conjunction with BAI UK, the Open University hosts the Business Agility Conference UK 2024: Leading through Complexity at their Milton Keynes campus on September 25th, i.e. next week. Two pre-conference workshops are available on the 24th, one led by Dave Snowden (Cynefin) the other by Simon Dodds (Health Care Systems Engineering). The purchase of one of these workshop places includes complementary admission to the OU conference track. If you wish to make a block booking (5 or more places), I can put you in touch with the organisers.

Slightly less urgently but still soon, I’m a featured speaker at the Project to Product Summit, a free online conference that will take place on October 8-9 (I’m speaking on the 8th). It’s the first of its kind I think and it looks to be an interesting event.

Overlapping with that, my friends Karl Scotland and Jim Benson are teaming up on October 9th for Make Strategy Visible – The X Matrix and Obeya. I can’t be there, but some of this stuff is already being integrated into Leading with Outcomes (more on that in due course), and I look forward to hearing all about it. Interesting that all three of us were in our different ways Kanban pioneers, and look where it took us!

Karl and Jim’s training is being held in person in Brighton. Stay over just one night, and the next day it’s Lean Agile Brighton, on the 10th. I spoke at the inaugural event in 2018 while I was writing Right to Left (see Right to Left: a transcript of my Lean Agile Brighton talk) and it was a lot of fun.

Having cleared the decks for November, that takes us to December. I have literally lost count of how many times I have visited India, and I keep coming back:

6-7 December, Bengaluru, India:
Kanban India 2024 8-9 December, Bengaluru, India:
Leading with Outcomes: Train-the-Trainer / Facilitator (TTT/F)

Can’t wait! There’s the possibility of doing TTT/F in Pune also, and if you’re thinking of joining me for that in either location, don’t forget the deals mentioned earlier.

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.

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.

View more on Mike Burrows's website »

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Published on September 17, 2024 12:43

Agendashift roundup, August 2024

In this edition: Book 5 update; Heads up on some forthcoming changes; The Great Consolidation: What it means and how it went; Top posts

Book 5 update

For the uninitiated, book 5 is Wholehearted: Engaging with complexity in the Deliberately Adaptive Organisation, which I hope to publish early next year. It’s “book 5” to distinguish from “book 4” – a very different book – and their development overlapped. Again, if you missed it, book 4 is Organizing Conversations: Preparing Groups to Take On Adaptive Challenges and it’s available both in print and on Kindle.

Last month, I was pushed to the limit on completing chapter 4 as planned because I was also updating the preceding chapters to take into account the great response to this blog post:

Engage, Invite, Celebrate: Leading “wholeheartedly” for innovation (July)

It being the holidays (our disability-adapted accommodation on a farm in the Peak District was perfect for us, by the way), I didn’t make a firm commitment on when I would finish chapter 5 (“Organising without reorganising”, previously advertised as “Organising at human scale”). Nevertheless, there’s a decent chance that I’ll get it out to my review team today. That leaves just chapter 6 (“What Lies Beneath”) and, um, everything else. These things take time…

As mentioned last month, the blog post most relevant to chapter 5 is this one:

Your organisation in 5 networks (November 2022)

From networks we go to Adaptive Space (Michael Arena), Teaming (Amy Edmonsdon), Dynamic reteaming (Heidi Helfand) and more. And here’s a blog post for that final chapter, chapter 6:

What Lies Beneath (Spoiler: Constraints) (October 2023)

Heads up on some forthcoming changes

in the next 10 days or so, watch out for an update on not just the calendar below but some exciting changes not only to content but also access to the assessment tools and other Agendashift / Leading with Outcomes resources. If the delay to the online TTT/F is a problem for you meanwhile, drop me a line and we’ll see what we can work out.

Meanwhile:

8-9 October, Online:
Project to Product Summit 22-24 October, Barclays Eagle Labs, Southampton, UK:
Leading for Innovation in the Knowledge Economy (Southampton) (formerly Leading in a Transforming Organisation)*11-14 November, four 4-hour sessions online, afternoons UK time:
Leading with Outcomes: Train-the-Trainer / Facilitator (TTT/F) *6-7 December, Bengaluru, India:
Kanban India 2024 8-9 December, Bengaluru, India:
Leading with Outcomes: Train-the-Trainer / Facilitator (TTT/F) *

*Offers:

TTT/F and LIKE events include free one-year membership of the Leading with Outcomes Authorised Facilitator programme, upgradeable to Authorised Trainer at any time.If you’ve attended a TTT/F before, you can re-attend the online one for free. I can’t make the same offer for in-person training, but for the Southampton one at least, there are generous discounts for past attendees of either kind of training.There are generous discounts also for employees in the public, educational, and non-profit sectors, etc. Ping me for coupon codes!The Great Consolidation: What it means and how it went

What it means: the Agendashift Academy is off the Kajabi platform and running completely on Circle, which has hosted most of our self-paced training content for some time now. I had a DNS-related glitch when rehearsing the move a couple of weeks prior to the main event, but everything went smoothly on the day. Old community.agendashift.com links redirect automatically to academy.agendashift.com, so there’s no great need to update your bookmarks.

For the last few months we have been using the Circle’s inbuilt subscription system, and if you have an older subscription, you can almost certainly save some money by switching. Get in touch if that might be you. And if you’re not already a subscriber, what are you waiting for? Check out (pun intended) the Store page now!

Top posts Engage, Invite, Celebrate: Leading “wholeheartedly” for innovation (July) From Flow to Business Agility (January) Agile’s Great Rebalancing: My next book’s take on the Agile manifesto (April) Your organisation in 5 networks (November 2022) What Lies Beneath (Spoiler: Constraints) (October 2023)

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.

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.

View more on Mike Burrows's website »

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Published on August 30, 2024 03:43

Further to last week’s roundup

Further to last week’s roundup, two announcements:

Advance warning of service disruption tomorrow (Tuesday, August 6th)Foundation 3.0 releaseAdvance warning of service disruption tomorrow

As I mentioned in the roundup, I intend to complete the consolidation of the Agendashift Academy’s two learning platforms onto the newer this week. Fingers crossed it will all be done tomorrow, but it will involve some downtime.

The gist of what’s happening:

The newer platform, which today lives at community.agendashift.com, will take over the domain of the old one, academy.agendashift.comLinks and bookmarks will automatically redirect, as will certain vanity URLsAffected internal and external links that I control will get updated over time, minimising redirects and hopefully improving search engine performance

None of that is difficult, but because domain mappings take time to propagate around the world, some disruption is inevitable. I’ll begin tomorrow morning (UK time) and post another update when it’s done.

Foundation 3.0 release

Leading with Outcomes: FoundationDeveloping and pursuing strategy in the language of outcomes

Remember last month’s big post, Engage, Invite, Celebrate: Leading “wholeheartedly” for innovation? I mentioned in the roundup that it was triggered by some fruitful conversations in Berlin and London in June and that it is prompting changes to all my active projects. One of those is the Leading with Outcomes material, and today, as part of that, I’ll be releasing to authorised trainers a slicker, flatter, and more wholehearted version 3.0 of the deck and workbook for Leading with Outcomes: Foundation.

The Foundation module is the first item on the agenda for both Train-the-Trainer / Facilitator (TTT/F) and Leading in a Transforming Organisation. There are two of the former and one of the latter in the calendar, so you can experience it for yourself soon:

30 September to 03 October, four 4-hour sessions online, afternoons UK time:
Leading with Outcomes: Train-the-Trainer / Facilitator (TTT/F) 22-24 October, Barclays Eagle Labs, Southampton, UK:
Leading in a Transforming Organisation (Southampton) 8-9 December, Bengaluru, India:
Leading with Outcomes: Train-the-Trainer / Facilitator (TTT/F)

If you’ve attended a TTT/F before, you can re-attend the online one for free. I can’t make the same offer for in-person training, but for the Southampton one at least, there are generous discounts for past attendees of either kind of training. Likewise for employees in the public, educational, and non-profit sectors, etc. Ping me for coupon codes!

In time for TTT/F and Leading in a Transforming Organisation I will also be updating the Inside-out Strategy and Adaptive Organisation modules, respectively. Announcements on those will follow over the coming weeks.

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.

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.

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Published on August 05, 2024 08:09

Agendashift roundup, July 2024

In this edition: Engage, Invite, Celebrate! Summer reading and writing; Autumn programme; The Great Consolidation

Engage, Invite, Celebrate!

When it’s your job to “create the conditions” for an adaptive, innovative, and resilient organisation, where do you start? What’s your agenda? That was the focus of this month’s big blog post and much of this month’s roundup will link back to it, so let’s start there:

Engage, Invite, Celebrate: Leading “wholeheartedly” for innovation

The rest of this month’s most-read posts are all referenced by that:

From Flow to Business Agility (October 2023) Agile’s Great Rebalancing: My next book’s take on the Agile manifesto (April 2024) Towards the wholehearted organisation, outside in (May 2018) What Lies Beneath (Spoiler: Constraints) (October 2023) Help our research: an “Organisational DNA test” (May 2024)

The Leading in a Transforming Organisation trainings in Berlin and (especially) London last month really helped to crystallise something. It is prompting some changes in all my active projects, in particular the Leading with Outcomes training material, the writing of my next book, and the Agendashift home, Wholehearted, and (per the image below) Framework pages. Updates on some of those below, and watch this space – there’s something happening here!

We keep asking these questions (and you can too) – leadership principles, meta-strategies for high-engagement transformation.1. What if we put agreement on outcomes before solutions?2. How do we keep bringing outcomes to the foreground?3. Where – and where else – should we be engaging?

Summer reading and writing

Book 4, Organizing Conversations: Preparing Groups to Take On Adaptive Challenges is of course recently out. If you haven’t yet read it, it’s short enough that you can easily add it to your summer book pile. It doesn’t have many Amazon reviews yet but at least they’re all five stars! Do please add yours!

Meanwhile this month on book 5, Wholehearted: Engaging with complexity in the Deliberately Adaptive Organisation, I have written the fourth of six chapters, The Space Between. I’m fascinated by what happens between different levels of organisation – between teams and their team-of-teams, for example – and find this space frustratingly under-explored in the literature. I can’t help thinking that many scale-related problems and, more generally, a lack of organisational agility both relate to that neglect. And process-centric approaches are ill-equipped to fix them!

As for “Engage, Invite, Celebrate”, that new chapter and, as of last week, the preceding three chapters all finish with a reflection with that title and that structure. It means that the reflective thread that already runs through the book is more explicitly anchored in the kind leadership described in my post. Definitely a change for the better.

Chapter 5 will be called Organizing at Human Scale. For an insight into where it begins, check out this post:

Your organisation in 5 networks (October 2022)

The language has changed a bit in the two years since that was written, but the idea stands. Then from networks of people we go to flexible webs of organisational scopes. Teaming (Edmondson), Dynamic Reteaming (Helfand), and Team Topologies (Skelton & Pais) are a selection of my references. I will enjoy dipping back into those over the summer holiday period.

Autumn programme

I mentioned that there will be changes to the Leading with Outcomes training material, and my autumn schedule makes those quite urgent. Including two conferences, here’s what my calendar looks like:

30 September to 03 October, four 4-hour sessions online, afternoons UK time:
Leading with Outcomes: Train-the-Trainer / Facilitator (TTT/F) 8-9 October, Online:
Project to Product Summit 22-24 October, Barclays Eagle Labs, Southampton, UK:
Leading in a Transforming Organisation (Southampton) 6-7 December, Bengaluru, India:
Kanban India 2024 8-9 December, Bengaluru, India:
Leading with Outcomes: Train-the-Trainer / Facilitator (TTT/F)

If you’ve attended a TTT/F previously, you might like to re-attend the online one for free. I can’t make the same offer for in-person training, but for the Southampton one at least, there are generous discounts not only for repeat attendees but for past TTT/F attendees also. Likewise for employees in the public sector, educational sector, non-profits, etc.

The Great Consolidation

Just a heads up: I intend to complete the consolidation of the Agendashift Academy’s two learning platforms onto the newer one next week. It will involve some downtime, tentatively scheduled for Tuesday next week. I’ll post updates while it’s happening.

That’s it for July – have a great August! We’ve found some suitably accessible accommodation equipped with the hoists & stuff our daughter needs so we’ll be taking some time away together for the first time in a long while. Can’t wait.

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.

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.

View more on Mike Burrows's website »

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Published on July 31, 2024 02:28