Category: Agile
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Stuck in the Middle
The state of employee engagement is a severely under-discussed issue IMHO. I've written before (in the context of the importance of bringing people with you through periods of transformation and change) about the stark statistics that show just how poor engagement levels are amongst workers globally. Gallup have famously done some excellent research in this area…
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Google Firestarters 27 – Crossing the River By Feeling the Stones
Last week was the 27th Google Firestarters and we were fortunate enough to have as our only speaker someone who I've been wanting to have speak for a good while – Simon Wardley. At Firestarters we always try and vary our themes and speakers to incorporate the most provocative and interesting viewpoints from within the…
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Carlson’s Law
“In a world where so many people now have access to education and cheap tools of innovation, innovation that happens from the bottom up tends to be chaotic but smart. Innovation that happens from the top down tends to be orderly but dumb.” (Carlson's Law: source) Thanks to Stefan for mentioning 'Carlson's Law' (originated by…
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Aligned Autonomy
In my transformation work I often end up advocating for the role that greater autonomy can have in helping (large) businesses to move faster and be more manoeuvrable. This is particularly true in the context of small, multidisciplinary teams that can act as the engine for real change. If those teams are going to iterate…
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Agile Resourcing at ING
In the book I talk a lot about how agile thinking and principles (and not just Agile doing) can be applied in the service of supporting fundamental change in the organisation. To enable a far more responsive, customer-centric way of working. To enable a shift away from the entrenched processes and practices that are holding…
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Personalising Purpose
We hear so much about brand and organisational purpose but I think that the nuances of how we bring this to life are often lost. In Accelerate, John Kotter (who also wrote Leading Change of-course) talks about purpose in the context of change and the difference between the idea of a 'burning-platform', and fear-driven change…
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The Unit of Delivery
There’s a great interview with Tom Loosemore (Group Director of Digital Services at the Co-Op and ex-Govt Digital Service) talking about the digital transformation of public services in the latest issue of Offscreen magazine. One of my favourite quotes from it is the one above. It’s less and less surprising to me that my work…
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The Map is not the Territory
'…in our march to simplify reality with useful models…we confuse the models with reality. For many people, the model creates its own reality. It is as if the spreadsheet comes to life. We forget that reality is a lot messier.' A good reminder from Shane Parrish about the limitations of models and how easy it is to forget…
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Hockey Stick Dreams, Hairy Back Reality
Reading this sobering FT piece recently about how (unfortunately) UK productivity growth has again fallen short of OBR forecasts reminded me of the classic McKinsey idea of hockey stick dreams and hairy back reality. The OBR forecasts over the years have followed the classic pattern repeated again and again in many businesses' strategic planning processes of…
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Frozen Accidents, and Predicting The Future
I rather liked the idea of ‘frozen accidents’, expounded here by Shane Parrish. He quotes from physicist Murray Gell-Man who believed that the things we observe in the world are the result of both a set of fundamental laws, but also random accidents – the unforeseen occurrences which create the opportunity for new possibilities but…