Leading in a Transforming Organisation: Takeaways from Manchester

What was it? How did it go? What next? Where next?

What was it?

A three-day, in-person training, Leading in a Transforming Organisation: Engaging with complexity in the Deliberately Adaptive Organisation, which brings together roughly half of the Leading with Outcomes curriculum:

Day 1: Leading with Outcomes: Foundation – exploring what it means to lead in a transforming organisation, learning how to develop and pursue strategy in the language of outcomes and with high participationDay 2: Adaptive Organisation (I): Business agility at every scale – developing bottom-up a truly “every scale” model, the Deliberately Adaptive OrganisationDay 3: Adaptive Organisation (I): Between spaces, scopes, scales – attending to “between scales” issues barely dealt with in the frameworks or the literature

The Deliberately Adaptive Organisation is my 21st century take on a 20th century model, Stafford Beer’s Viable System Model. Fittingly, a fractal model of organisation meets a fractal model of engagement, the former approached in a relational and constraints-based way, the latter replacing the engineering approach more typically employed. These two aspects combine to make something accessible, complexity-friendly, and practical.

For an added bonus, Leading in a Transforming Organisation has by design enough experiential content that with some additional online learning it can serve also as an alternative to Leading with Outcomes Train-the-Trainer / Facilitator (TTT/F). At least a couple of participants attended with that purpose in mind.

How did it go?

A small sample of the overwhelmingly positive feedback:

Relevant to anyone with leadership responsibilitiesA helpful journey through the neglected responsibilities of leadership – with helpful tools to attend to those responsibilitiesA full learning experience – relevant, effective, great to share with othersBuilding on a journey throughout, in a practical, visual wayCan clearly see how this would apply to our organisationThis is the Leading with Outcomes masterclass

There were things I would change – in fact on day 3 we tested an impromptu change to how we finished each “chapter”, a change that I have since made to the materials for day 2 also. Quicker, more impactful, and more clearly setting off the two “interludes”, those being the opportunities to practice classic Agendashift exercises such as Good Obstacle, Bad Obstacle, 15-minute FOTO, and various ways to (per the second slide above) “Organise the strategy”.

I was pleased that after some post-London rework, certain themes came out much more strongly:

The value in a bottom-up understanding of organising – not that it doesn’t also work top down, but a bottom-up understanding is essential if you want to go with the grain of emergence and self-organisation or to promote those at non-trivial scalesThe question of How might we increase our decision-making capacity? came up repeatedly. Important again for reasons (i) of self-organisation (ref McCulloch), (ii) because the time will come when you don’t have enough of it, and (iii) because it reframes in an interesting and positive way concepts such as reducing waste (Lean) and minimising cognitive load (Team Topologies)The importance of context – not only in the senses (i) that it is folly to impose solutions from foreign contexts unquestioningly, or (ii) that context affects relationships, but (iii) in the sense that our delivery work and our strategic decision making will both suffer for lack of it – almost inevitably if we rest more than we should on formal structure, agreed process, and established communication paths

As anticipated in previous posts, Agile coaches were very much in the minority. Our hosts were the University of Manchester (a big thank you to Andrea Place for organising), several of the participants were members of staff with leadership and/or leadership development responsibility, and on day 1 we were joined by a senior leader from another university. It was fascinating to see the models, tools, and exercises applied not to a technology organisation but to a highly respected institution that celebrates its bicentenary next year. I find it very hard to believe that a process-based approach – process meant here in the Agile or Lean sense, not the OD sense – would have been anything like as successful.

What next? Where next?

With the event still fresh in my mind I updated the materials over the weekend. There are corresponding changes to be made to the shorter Adaptive Organisation Workshop, and they include changes to the What Lies Beneath string of exercises, whose blog post I have updated for reference already.

I won’t be re-recording the two-part online Adaptive Organisation module just yet (see Leading with Outcomes from the Agendashift Academy below for links). The existing version is still quite new, none of my most recent improvements invalidate in any way what’s there, and it’s more urgent that I re-record the much older Inside-out and Outside-in modules. Not only will it be good to realign those with the newer material, it will let me retire the old learning management system and thereby improve the Academy’s onboarding experience.

I’m hoping to run the three-day in-person event at least twice publicly in the UK next year. Very likely in London, and having taken it north to Manchester, I’m also looking at doing it somewhere between Bournemouth and Brighton on the south coast. Mainland Europe would be good too – Germany and/or Scandinavia seeming the most likely destinations. If you are interested in any of these options or any other (public or private), and especially if you can help get a group together (it doesn’t have to be large), let me know.

I intend to do the abovementioned 1-day Adaptive Organisation workshop in person a few times before I offer it online, in both cases only privately. Accordingly, introductory pricing (with further discounts for public sector, non-profit, etc) remains available until the end of January, possibly for delivery at a later date if you get your order in soon enough. Unless a longer trip can be made worthwhile, I’m looking to do it in the UK or in European destinations easily reachable from Manchester or East Midlands airports. If you’re suitably located and your organisation could use an organisational strategy exercise soon, there’s an opportunity here not to be missed.

Upcoming events

November:

23 November, online, 15:00GMT, 16:00CET, 10am ET:
Experience/practice session: The Agendashift Delivery assessment

December:

1-2 December, Bengaluru, India:
Kanban India 2023 3-4 December, Bengaluru, India:
Leading with Outcomes: Train-the-Trainer / Facilitator (TTT/F) 07 December, online, 15:00 GMT, 16:00 CST, 10am ET:
Free webinar/AMA: What if we put agreement on outcomes before solutions? 14 December, online, 15:00 GMT, 16:00 CET, 10am ET:
Free experience/practice session: The Outside-in strategy readiness assessment

I have pencilled in the afternoons (UK time) of the February 6th, 7th, 13th, and 14th (Tuesdays and Wednesdays) for the next online TTT/F. Booking page to follow; you will find some relevant links meanwhile on the Store page.

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 Adaptive Organisation, two parts: Part I: Business agility at every scale Part II: Between spaces, scopes, and scales Inside-out Strategy: Fit for maximum impact Outside-in Strategy: Positioned for success

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.

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

Agendashift: Serving the transforming organisation
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Agendashift  Academy: Leading with Outcomes | Trainer and Facilitator Programmes

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.