Business Agility Leadership Coaching (BALC) emerged as a consequence of asking leaders and managers across HSBC how they wanted to improve their agile leadership. Our proposed solution hit a sweet spot because we were 100% oversubscribed at the start and interest just kept growing during the three months of the structured learning events. The 'secret […]
Contrary to popular belief, managers are not there to ‘make difficult decisions’. What makes a decision difficult usually, is a lack of information. What makes a decision dangerous is the lack of knowledge of how to use that information. If a manager selects one item from a list of choices or approves an initiative instead […]
Agile Delivery means putting value in your customer’s hands in weeks not years. It also means being able to change your mind about what you want to deliver, as often as the market demands.
The Shu Ha Ri Agile learning metaphor Agile learning is crucial to agile transformation. And, nobody tells the Shu Ha Ri learning metaphor better than Alistair Cockburn as I discovered listening to his Sushi-slicing version whilst in France last year. As I was in France, I was inspired to write a Chef version of Shu […]
There is a workplace evolution underway, lots of people are signalling it. Dan Pink came-up with the label ‘Motivation 3.0’ in Drive; Jurgen Appelo followed suit with ‘Management 3.0’; and many of us speak of a move towards a Lean or Agile enterprise. Earlier this year, Frederic Laloux published Reinventing Organisations in which he not […]
Most ways of working still rely on functional hierarchy, where managers make decisions and workers do the work. Managers know they can't change this work structure, but they can transform its effectiveness without asking for permission and without needing a budget. Before exploring the changes that transform the way people work, we need to recognise […]
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 […]
I gave this talk Starting Lean - Running an Agile Enterprise to a group of founders of mostly small businesses. You can view and download the slides from the link. The talk is based on Ash Maurya's book, called Running Lean, a firm favourite because it's so practical. Think of this as Lean Startup applied […]
