The challenges companies face today in the VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous) world call for Agile throughout the company. There are two challenges: companies in general are trying to survive intense disruption and companies with successful software departments are trying to expand Agile methods to the whole company, including the board and the legal structure of the enterprise. Both the VUCA challenge and the pressure to implement Agile beyond IT, demand guidelines for implementing company-wide Agility.

We discovered these needed guidelines in Beyond Budgeting, Open Space, Sociocracy, and Agile. Design Thinking, Lean Startup, Human Systems Dynamics, and Cynefin provide additional insights.

However, in talking with various experts about how to address the challenges companies face , we got answers from within that expert’s framework. For example,

• A Beyond Budgeting expert said, “Stop fixing the budget annually, because otherwise you won't have the flexibility to react to frequent market changes.”
• An Open Space expert said, “You need to make space for what you don’t know and can’t control, for totally new things to emerge. If people can follow their passion, you will be able to implement company-wide Agility, otherwise people will just do what they are asked.”
• A Sociocracy expert said, “You first need to resolve the power structure, because as long as you have a hierarchy defined as top-down you will not become agile.”
• An Agile expert said, “You need to start inspecting and adapting by using regular retrospectives in order to react flexibly, otherwise you will neither be able to learn from the market nor from within your company.”

All of these perspectives are true, but each perspective was always from within the discipline. We synthesized the approach into a wider perspective dubbed BOSSA nova: B = Beyond Budgeting, OS = Open Space, S = Sociocracy, A = Agile.

The synthesis leads to a new organigram that reflects all the sources of guidance to a value center. The new organigram focuses board/CEO, inspiration, and resource and legal considerations on the value center. The value center is thereby free to focus on the customer.

We discuss how to use Cynefin-type probes that enable everyone to apply this new strategy for implementing company-wide Agility in their own organization.

Business Agility is not just the new thing, or a way to increase efficiency. It is a very good response to the challenge of complexity and dynamics (or VUCA, if you like). But while Agile is mostly about transforming the operating system of an organisation, there is little about the changes of individual understanding and competence, apart from "learning how to operate the operating system". No wonder is there an ongoing complaint about people doing Agile, not being Agile, or about the lack of the Agile mindset.

In this talk, Bernhard presents the Complexity Compass, an effective starting point for anyone who wants to navigate complexity. This brand new approach includes a mental framework, a set of principles, activities and tools that encompass the essential basics that help you rise up competently to the challenge of complexity, both within an Agile operating system, and without.

Running a small business is no small task. Financial management, sales, hiring, managing people, and supporting existing clients are just a handful of activities a small business might address in a single day. So what happens when you use the Kanban Method to manage your business?

I’ll share my experiences while training, coaching, and evolving a small business using the Kanban Method. You’ll see how the Method quickly surfaced issues, revealed hidden opportunities for innovation, and how the business is using the Method to mature the services they offer.

Business agility is more than the sum of different organizational units that each implement their own chosen agile method on their own little island, constrained by 20^th century management. Nor is it a one-size-fits all model that is imposed from the top down. Business agility requires the engagement of the entire organization in a fundamentally new type of thinking. Especially when the (deep) divide between organizational silos risks being reinforced by the islands of agility formed by the, sometimes dogmatic, implementation of different agile methods in different parts of the organization. It also requires creativity and insight to overcome the relics of a 20^th century management system. Especially when the thinking that underlies division of labour, capacity utilization, and predictive control still runs very deep. Finally, it requires a new type of change that is resilient to setback.

This presentation reports on our experience with teaching and coaching business agility to a wide range of audiences without digressing into specific agile methods. On a tactical level, we discuss how we developed and use business simulations that engage and mobilize all levels of the organization (including higher level management) across all functions (not just IT, but also HR, Marketing and communications, Finance, Legal, Product management, …). We discuss simulations that allow participants to experience the basic concepts of flow, self-organization and active learning; not just simulations at the team level but also at a cross-team level and across the entire value stream (upstream and downstream). Simulations that are generic enough in order to speak to different parts of the organization, but specific enough as to realistically represent real-life work situations.

On a more strategic level, we discuss how to challenge the traditional linear, reductionist, local optimization thinking (“either-or” thinking) about agile and how to teach integrative, applied systems thinking (“and” thinking) as a new foundation for agile business. Using integrative thinking we will explain how the foundational concepts of flow, self-organization and active learning can be shown to build on each other in order to create a whole that is bigger than the sum of the parts. By setting aside any dogmatic discussions, it builds a common, deeper, understanding between practitioners of the different strands of agility. By using simulation, it allows to overcome the habitual 20^th century thinking and prepare for 21^st century business agility.

Learn how the gingerbread men are taking over the daily Stand Up and forever changing the mornings of teams everywhere.

Have your Daily Stand-Ups become stale? We’ll talk through the evolution of an idea that ended up demolishing monotony, obliterating anti-patterns and spawning smiles… and to think, it all started when my daughter and I were playing Candy Land!

We’ll talk through the implementation of a game board during one team’s stand up through the infectious adoption and evolution of its existence. You’ll hear how teams tackled some of their greatest impediments and helped build a zone of psychological safety all while having fun.

By the end of this session, you’ll be prepared to bring this back to your team and create your own success stories.

Lean and Agile practices are fundamentally changing the way we lead organisations. More and more business leaders are realising that old methods of management are being replaced by newer and better ones. That means business metrics are also evolving.

Business agility sounds great but as an executive what do I measure for success? If I focus on just one thing to track business agility as opposed to Agile adoption, what should it be?

In this presentation, Steven Mitchell, will discuss two examples of how he helped turn programs around with focus on the number one metric for business agility, and explore related themes to aid your company’s quest for greatness.

Steven Mitchell is an independent Lean & Agile Consultant based in Melbourne, Australia providing training, coaching, and consulting services.