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Business Agility in a sensibly short book

The Agile for Managers series recognises managers as experts of their organisations. Managers are crucial for improving effectiveness. This book tells them how.

3 Key Questions for Managers

Smart managers want answers to three key questions:

How can we make better decisions right now?

Business Agility helps managers improve today’s operations by making better-informed and more powerful decisions

How can established firms transition to the digital age?

It helps managers create the conditions to improve organisational effectiveness

What is happening to organizations and why?

And draws from 
evidence-based research to help managers develop their professional competence

"Russ' book gave me great insights in how middle management can find value in being adaptive to their constantly changing environments"

Abraham Schoots

Founder, Lithe Transformation

About Agile for Managers

A practical guide for smart managers, who want to know how to increase business agility to improve operational effectiveness. 
This thought-provoking look at way large, established organizations operate gives managers the power to make better-informed decisions and select the appropriate control mechanisms for every activity.
The author provides the tools and techniques, and trusts readers to apply their resourcefulness and expertise to work-out how to use them.
Russ Lewis, Author of Agile for Managers
Managing Tensions not People (trailer)

Agile specialist Russ Lewis

Author Russ "The Agiliser" Lewis is an acknowledged specialist in the Digital and Agile Transformation of large organisations.  
He is an organisational coach, mentor, and consultant; coaching executives, working with leadership teams, and helping managers at all levels to improve their organisations with their teams.
He holds a master's degree in "organizational agility" and is completing his doctoral research into the role of Managers in the digital age.
An early adopter of Agile methods and service-based architectures, Russ designed, built, and led the team that developed Transport for London’s contactless fares billing system. His software systems have supported functions within Best Western Hotels, British Telecom, Toyota, and the Metropolitan police. His one-week kick-start for agile development assured the success of scores of teams. He has rescued countless IT projects and improvement programs and designs and leads large-scale business agility and digital transformations.

6 Agile Focus Points for Managers

Using business language throughout and moving at pace, I provide a big-picture, insightful look at the way large, established organisations struggle to operate as they should. 

Together, we build a vision of the operating model so you can lead the most important improvements for your areas of the organisation. 

1. Running and changing the business

The lens described in chapter 1 reveals crucial new information. That gives you the power to match each situation with the appropriate control mechanism, making your responsibilities easier to manage, and more likely to succeed

2. Making investment decisions that increase profit

Factoring the “cost of delay” into decision-making will help you balance the need to reduce costs, with the financial implications of that view. It is super-easy to do this when you know which data to compare

3. Decision-making as an improvable process

Experience and “gut instinct” feature in the digital age, just not as much as in the past. Systematising decisions, as described, will increase the speed and quality of the services you deliver, and help you manage its continual improvement

4. Preventing inexcusable wastes

Feedback mechanisms are easy to build and simple to operate. It is a wonder they are so often overlooked or misunderstood as they are guaranteed to protect your sources of profit, both existing and exploratory

5. Amplifying customer value

There's more to a business than can be seen or measured. As managers shape the work context, they are ideally positioned to amplify the capabilities needed to increase the flow of value to customers

6. Not your grandfather’s workplace

Investigates the emerging role of the manager as leader of business agility improvement. I propose three ways managers can transform their organisations today

Business Agility for Managers 
of the Digital Age

Managers need powerful decision-making tools and appropriate controls to make organisations more effective and efficient. Business Agility depends on the leadership of managers.
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February 21, 2021
Engagement Model
Russ Lewis
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Engagement Model for Digital Transformation / Agile Adoption Consultancy template for improvement and organisational development work A proven approach used by external consultancy firms. This engagement model is appropriate for internal improvement initiatives and Centres of Excellence. As an embedded coach or improvement lead, it’s important to realise you are effectively providing a consulting service […]

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October 6, 2021
What does focussing on culture mean to XYZ Consulting?
Russ Lewis
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We have some mid-tier consultants in at the moment who are "focussing on culture." Since we don't separate culture from delivering value to customers, I asked what that meant in practice. Apparently: "A generic scheme of manoeuvre could involve a diagnostic that looks at things like empowerment, psychological safety, collaboration, purpose, customer centricity… then based […]

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April 28, 2023
Collaboration versus simplification for organisational change
Russ Lewis
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One of my favourite books on organisational change is ‘Who Moved my Cheese?’ It’s short, and mice looking for cheese to eat is an appealing analogy. It’s a model for managers because it covers four theoretical outcomes of change. Those outcomes are: what happens if I (or we) do, or don’t make this change, what […]

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Copyright Russ Lewis 1994-2025
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