Many organizations are interested in upgrading their organizational design so that they can be more adaptable to meet emerging customer needs and thrive in the competitive business landscape. The common questions are what design or blueprint to use and how to transform the organization to the new structures? These questions and the mindset behind them are deadly blocks for high performance. 

Organizations all over the world, in all kinds of industries have reached high performance. We have cracked the code on how to hack the organizational design to create high performance. The only way to create an adaptive emergent organization is to use an adaptive emergent process. We outline the key steps and shifts needed to initiate the evolution of high performance. These include a shift in the consciousness or mindset of the leadership to support the greater psychological safety needed to share decision making and run experiments. As a practical take-away, we offer the seven keys to Agile Transformation that can be applied at any stage of the journey to unlock success.

Your organization has moved to autonomous, self-organizing teams. Everyone is trained and coached on their new role. But what about managers? The role of a manager is _undefined_. Management is told, “Go figure out your new role” or simply “Stop micromanaging”. They are often still responsible for the outcomes, yet are stripped of authority. It turns out managers are people too - and their treatment is often inhumane and unhelpful for creating lasting change. Managers were seen as the glue that holds an organization together … now what happens? How can we all journey together?

We offer an alternate view, where Agile Transformation is understood as an evolution of organizational culture. Success depends on shifts in the behaviours of both staff and management. The Agile Mindset or Being Agile is a prerequisite for making structural changes. Jumping to advanced stages of evolution where there is high autonomy is a painful trap. An incremental and iterative (Agile) approach to shifting power away from managers to individual contributors is more effective.

The Agile Manifesto says “Build projects around motivated individuals.” What? Motivated people are a prerequisite for Agile and Scrum! Without motivated, energized people, self-organization is a recipe for disaster. Scrum makes the level of function of a team very visible so it can be improved. Many of us face situations where teams are not 100% passionate and motivated.

In this hands-on workshop, you will learn how employee disengagement is a common challenge. We outline practical steps to diagnose and create experiments to foster a higher performance work environment. Of course, part of the path to success is understanding some of the key traps that kill motivation. Key topics include Theory X-Theory Y, Gallup Engagement, and Red List. Get ready to unlock your teams!

Many of us dream of creating Agile Organizations. Where Agile practices and Agile mindset are reflected in the results across the whole organization. Yet the approaches that are currently used are not yielding the results we hope for. Instead there are culture challenges, resistance, leadership misalignment and mixed levels of engagement. A new approach is needed.

Learn a proven path to high-performance organizations that places culture and leadership at the centre stage. You will see how to look beyond process and scaling to understand a reliable way to introduce the Agile Mindset. Discover the common traps and blocks that prevent success and how to avoid them. Learn the “Consciously Approaching Agile” approach so that you are equipped to get deep and lasting results with Agile. Discover the new behaviours that you can demonstrate to foster organizational coherence and engagement that result in high performance.

Wave 2 of Agile is a way to understand the high-performance results that come from Being Agile. We know many in our industry have fallen into the trap or “Doing Agile” – where people lose sight of the objectives and lasting results.

Wave 2 is about Living Agile. It is how we show up. It is how we work with people and organizations to shape the Culture. It is living Mahatma Gandhi's truth:

“Be the change that you want to see in the world”.

When we focus on our own behaviour, we model Being Agile. This is the only way to invite the Agile Mindset. This is Wave 2 Agile. We stop creating conflict and resistance. We become the effective leaders and influencers of lasting change in our organizations.

“To be or not to be? That is the question.”

Many of us dream of creating Agile Organizations. Where we have not just Agile practices but an Agile mindset. And the passion and results that come with this. But the approaches we are using are not yielding the results we hope for. Instead we see culture challenges, resistance, leadership confusion and low engagement.

Learn a proven path to high-performance that places culture and leadership at the centre stage. When we use conscious leadership to approach Agile we get deep and lasting results. You will recognize and let go of patterns and habits that may be blocking your success. Often in our desire for success we create resistance by pushing, driving, evangelizing and selling. In their place, discover leadership behaviours that we may demonstrate to foster organizational coherence and engagement. So we may invite people, teams and organizations into growth and high performance.

The goal of Enterprise Agility is to have a nimble, flexible organization. To reach this end we need to have a clear decision-making process that supports autonomy and learning while achieving effective outcomes.

The Advice Process is easy to understand. Anyone in the organization can make a decision provided they get advice from everyone who will be meaningfully affected and people with expertise in the matter. The Advice Process helps organizations develop trust, ownership and learning to create a nimble organization. The Advice Process originates from corporate innovation as documented in “Joy at Work” and “Reinventing Organizations”

In this hands-on session you will learn how to use “Advice Poker” cards as a sense-making and education tool to explore how decisions are made and can be made. The Advice Process will be contrasted with other approaches such as consensus and traditional hierarchical decision-making. You will walk away with a powerful tool to invite greater levels of trust and ownership to allow Agile to scale.

When we simplify the Agile Manifesto’s “Individuals and Interactions over Processes and Tools” we get “People over Process”. Agile is about people. Join us for a deep dive into how to build safety and trust to drive engagement and results.

Sadly, many organizations are mired in organizational debt: mistrust, politics and fear. Changing the process won’t fix this. We need to go to the root of it - to find a way to talk about and shift to a healthier culture.

In this interactive workshop you will learn to see the dynamics of human systems and where to apply leverage to foster change using the VAST (Vulnerability, Authentic Connection, Safety and Trust) model.