Leadership and Data – A Filtered Experience
“As organizations (and societies) grow larger and more complex, the people at the top (whether managers or analysts) depend less and less on firsthand experience, more…
Category: Leadership
“I intend to …, and …”
I was co-training an Agile for Teams workshop with Rob Myers last week. This group had been trying to do Scrum, with some success. Our…
“We don’t expect a perfect Sprint. We expect a perfect effort.” – i.e. Commitment
As I train and coach Scrum across the country, I’m often struck with the power how certain words can create a sense of fear in…
This Cognitive Bias kills our ability to thrive in complexity
Does this sound familiar? I was a Program Manager for over a decade, during which time I must have facilitated dozens of “project post-mortems”, a…
80/20 Facilitation (or, all the study on facilitation most people need)
In response to my recent post on developing your skills in 2016, several people mentioned facilitation as a skill they want to grow. As with…
Turn The Ship Around – A View Into Agile Leadership
Note: This post is adapted from some posts that I originally created on Adobe’s blog while I was an employee there. I recently finished reading former…
Scrum as an agent of culture change
Peter Drucker invented most modern management practices. He was an in-demand coach to hundreds of top leaders in the world’s largest organizations. When he suggested that “culture…
Scrum as an agent of culture change part 2
In part one of this series, we defined culture. We also described why it is both critical and hard to work on. Finally, we left…
Reinventing Organizations Video now with Korean subtitles
Thanks to Hahn Ryu of D.CAMP, our video describing Frederic Laloux’s book Reinventing Organizations and its application for lean and agile adoption is now available…
The Context for Agility
Some people learn best by reading. Others prefer video. So, I’ve created a video of my blog post: The Future of Agile, Changing the World of…
On Human Capital – HR and Agile
Human capital is just one of an organization’s intangible assets. It is basically all of the competencies and commitment of the people within an organization…
The future of agile: changing the world of work
I gave a presentation at the Scrum Gathering in Phoenix AZ about the historic context of Agile and Scrum, and where we are headed next.…
Laloux Cultural Model and Agile Adoption
I had invested years of my life in a ground up, large-scale agile adoption. The early years of the adoption seemed to go at breakneck…
The Power of 3 Words
Some of the most significant messages people deliver to one another often come in just three words. When spoken or conveyed, those statements have the…
20 Common Logical Fallacies – Don’t Be a Victim!
Faulty thinking is part of life. We’re not perfect, nor do we think perfectly. It is, however, helpful to identify faulty thinking in our own…
Life Change Starts with Clarity
There are moments where each one of us have wished for significant life change – this could be related to our current circumstances, our jobs,…
The Value of Planning Together
If you’ve taken part in any of our Scrum classes, then you know we highly value the power of face-to-face communication. The emergent power of…
Viktor Frankl’s Meaning Triangle for Organizations
Viktor Frankl was an incredible human being, having survived the Holocaust and establishing logotherapy, a type of psychotherapy. His book, Man’s Search for Meaning, details…
3 Requirements for Creating a Culture of Leadership & Innovation
Innovation begins with the heart… a heart of leadership The Hay Group, a global management consulting firm, released their findings that identify which organizations have the…
Org Structure, Software Architecture, and Cross-functional Teams
Some 46 years ago, Melvin Conway wrote, “Any organization that designs a system (defined broadly) will produce a design whose structure is a copy of…