Three ways to understand the Leading with Outcomes universe

My 3-day training Leading in a Transforming Organisation went really well last week, can’t wait to do it again1! Inevitably, the question of what relates Agendashift, Leading with Outcomes, The Deliberately Adaptive Organisation, etc came up, and while my answers were reasonable enough, I realised I still had a bit of work to do. So here we are with not just one, but three ways of joining the dots:

Perspective: Values-based, Outcome-oriented2, RelationalCurriculum: Patterns, Approaches, Tools Framework: Metaphor, Model, Method1. Perspective: Values-based, Outcome-oriented, Relational

Essentially the sequence of my books, this progression is the most historically accurate:

Values-based: For me this began with a system of nine values abstracted from the Kanban Method, identified first in a 2013 blog post3 and expanded on in my first book Kanban from the Inside (2014). Not needing to limit myself to writing about principles and practices, nor even only to Kanban, I enjoyed expanding on those values and demonstrating how other frameworks could – with that values-based perspective – be seen as complementary.

Outcome-oriented: Our big “What if”: What if we put agreement on outcomes before solutions? Followed by How do we keep outcomes in the foreground? and How do we connect the two in a learning process? Around that concept and via a lot of collaborative experimentation, we developed a real alternative to managed change, which the world knows is woeful for anything interesting – so no shortage of motivation there! Agendashift (2018, 2021) describes the engagement model; Right to Left (2019, audiobook 2020) takes that outcome-oriented perspective to the Lean-Agile landscape as a whole. A fourth book (a commission) written for the dialogic/generative OD audience is near completion.

Relational: In both Agendashift and Right to Left there are clues that I am beginning to think in terms of mutual relationships. And inspired by Weick, the perspective shifts from organisation (something easily regarded as static) to organising (something active). More recent than the books, the Leading with Outcomes training material goes on to describe organising as “Finding relationships between things; In and through those relationships, helping their participants realise their potential”. A fifth book is at the planning stage.

2. Curriculum: Patterns, Approaches, Tools

Informed this time by the sequence of the four Leading with Outcomes Modules:

Leading with Outcomes: Foundation Inside-out Strategy: Fit for maximum impact Outside-in Strategy: Positioned for success Adaptive Organisation: Business agility at every scale

As described recently in Picturing Foundation (May), Foundation’s job is to introduce these key patterns:

Ideal, Obstacles, Outcomes – the IdOO (“I do”) patternRight to Left – working backwards from key moments of impact and learningMeaning, Measure, Method – derived from the IdOO pattern, an ideation pattern

Foundation also introduces two complementary and long-established approaches to strategy, inside-out and outside-in, which start (respectively) with the internal experience and capability of the scope in question, or with its customers, suppliers, competitors, and other aspects of its business environment. A third approach, the relational approach, is the one taken in the final module.

Into the patterns plug the tools4, tool selection influenced by context and approach. Some tools are approach-specific; others such as Celebration-5W, 15-minute FOTO, and so on appear in multiple modules. In Foundation meanwhile, we simplify the tools so as not to distract from the patterns.

3. Framework: Metaphor, Model, Method

More concretely: Wholehearted, The Deliberately Adaptive Organisation, Agendashift, with the middle one of those taking a more central role.

Wholehearted – the metaphorical coming together of wholeness and “heartedness” as we think about organisation and leadership. In 2018, during the writing of Right to Left, this usage was inspired by the architect and father of the patterns movement, the late Christopher Alexander:

A thing is whole according to how free it is of inner contradictions. When it is at war with itself, and gives rise to forces which act to tear it down, it is unwhole. The more free it is of its own inner contradictions, the more whole and healthy and wholehearted it becomes.

The Timeless Way of Building, Christopher Alexander (1980, OUP USA)

Long story short, Wholehearted became the name of our mission statement and part of Agendashift’s branding (“the wholehearted engagement model”). Today, the concept appears in two of the four modules of the Leading with Outcomes training curriculum; Leading with Outcomes: Foundation opens with it. All that time, I have made a point of keeping wholehearted aspirational, exploring some of its implications but taking care not to ruin it by defining it as a process or some other model.

The role of organisational model (or should I say “model of organising”?) is taken by The Deliberately Adaptive Organisation5, which is roughly sketched out in the closing chapters of the 2021 second edition of Agendashift and much better developed in the final Leading with Outcomes module, Adaptive Organisation: Business agility at every scale. It began as a Lean-Agile and outcome-oriented interpretation of Stafford Beer’s Viable System Model, the structure into which other favourite models could be plugged in. It has since become a radical “re-presentation” of it, stripping the model of anything that could be regarded either as vestiges of implementation detail or part of the systems practitioner’s process, and emphasising strongly meanwhile its relational aspects. Further, and in the interests of accessibility, we limit its scope to organisations (Beer’s original model is more abstract) and engage with it progressively (a high-level “top view” comprising just three “spaces”, more detailed “inside views” for each space, and a “side view” that exposes the relationships between organisational scales).

The model loses none of its diagnostic power, but method-wise, there’s a gap. Taking the place of typical systems practice (as-is modelling, diagnosis, and perhaps to-be modelling, etc), we have Agendashift, and it’s a fundamental change. Bypassing the modelling step and resisting the urge to scope things down, we integrate many organisational perspectives, participants bringing experiences from all of the organisational scopes and scales with which they identify, from whole organisation down to sub-team – “Everywhere all at once”, you might say6. While exploring the model situationally to the depth appropriate to the event (anything between a 2-hour assessment debrief and 2-3 days of in-depth training7), participants are developing organisational strategy in the language of outcomes, producing a form of strategy highly amenable to testing.

The Leading with Outcomes universe

To finish, let me draw attention to this post’s title: Three ways to understand the Leading with Outcomes universe. It could just as easily have identified Agendashift instead – it is after all the longest-established of the brands mentioned here! I’m not saying that I won’t continue to describe Leading with Outcomes as “Agendashift as leadership development”, or to use the two terms interchangeably. Neither do I have any plans to rebrand the Agendashift Academy! But especially in relation to the Deliberately Adaptive Organisation, Agendashift as the method to complement the model (replacing more traditional methods, moreover) seems important somehow. Funny how clarifying the relationship helps clarify the things it relates. Who knew

Notes

1Melbourne, Australia in October (see calendar below), and there are discussions about putting one on in Manchester in November or early 2024. It comprises one day of Foundation and two of Adaptive Organisation, making three in total. Ping me if interested, or in having one at a city near you.

2While I was planning this post, I initially called this first section Organising Concepts: Values, Outcomes, Relationships. I had forgotten just how important the -oriented of outcome-oriented is, and totally deserved the ensuing confusion! Our direction given by the outcomes we have chosen (for now) to pursue, solutions emerging from the people closest to the need and the opportunity. Outcome-driven (meaning target-driven or perhaps solution-driven in disguise) it is not. That way lies dysfunction. See Avoiding the disaster that is ‘solution-driven’ (June 2023).

3Introducing Kanban through its Values (January 2013)

4See agendashift.com/resources and specifically agendashift.com/asessments for the three approach-specific assessment tools.

5The name is inspired by Kegan & Lahey’s Deliberately Developmental Organisation – see their book An Everyone Culture (2016).

6See the white paper Everywhere all at once: Introducing the Deliberately Adaptive Organisation, an accessible, situational, and complexity-aware presentation of the Viable System Model.

7Between those extremes there is room for a 1-day Adaptive Organisation workshop. If you’re based in the UK or not too far away and might be interested in having one at your organisation, the first one or two will be on favourable terms. Again, ping me if interested.

Upcoming events

With me (Mike Burrows) unless otherwise indicated.

June:

27 June, online meetup, 18:00 BST, 19:00 CEST, 1.00pm EDT:
Between spaces, scopes, and scales: What the scaling frameworks don’t tell you

July:

06 July, 18:30 BST, Nottingham, England:
Between spaces, scopes, and scales: What the scaling frameworks don’t tell you 11 July, online, 15:00 GMT, 16:00 CET, 10am ET:
Free webinar/AMA: Where to start? Where next?

Later:

12-20 September, online, Tuesday & Wednesday afternoons (UK time):
Leading with Outcomes: Train-the-Trainer/Facilitator (TTT/F) 4-6 October, Melbourne, Australia:
Leading in a Transforming Organisation 09 October, Melbourne, Australia:
Kanban Australia 2023 09 November, online meetup, 11:30 GMT, 12:30 CST, 06.30am ET:
Between spaces, scopes, and scales: What the scaling frameworks don’t tell you 1-2 December, Bengaluru, India:
Kanban India 2023

TBC:

November or early 2024, Manchester, UK, Leading in a Transforming Organisation – as held recently in London and soon in Melbourne and comprising one day of Leading with Outcomes: Foundation and two days of Adaptive Organisation

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 four modules in the recommended order:

Leading with Outcomes: Foundation Inside-out Strategy: Fit for maximum impact Outside-in Strategy: Positioned for success Adaptive Organisation: Business agility at every scale (parts I and II, a certificate for each)

Individual subscriptions from £24.50 per month, business subscriptions from £269 per month, with discounts available on both kinds of plan for employees and employers in the government, healthcare, education, and non-profit sectors.

For public training events, see our Events calendar. These are discounted for subscribers when the event is operated by us.

To deliver Leading with Outcomes yourself, see our Authorised Facilitator and Trainer Programmes. Our next TTT/F trainings take place in September (online) and December (Bengaluru, India).

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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.