Learning Fast & Small - Nourishing Company-wide Agility in a Skeptical Environment

1 @AgileBossaNova | agilebossanova.org1
Jutta Eckstein | @juttaeckstein
Deepti Jain | @agilevirgin
http://agilebossanova.org
@AgileBossaNova | #agilebossanova
Learning Fast & Small:
Nourishing Company-wide Agility
in a Skeptical Environment
Company-wide Agility with BOSSA nova
http://tinyurl.com/AgileBossaNova

2 @AgileBossaNova | agilebossanova.org
Goal for the Workshop
 Learn how to bring a culture of experimentation into your
company

Agenda
 Welcome & set the stage
 Defining the context
 Values for company-wide agility
 Challenges for company-wide agility in your company
 A new perspective
 Using probes
 Next steps & wrap-up

WHAT? CHALLENGES

Reflect & Discuss
 What are the consequences
and impact for (your)
organization(s) of VUCA etc
from the perspective of:
– Entrepreneur
– Employee
– Client
– Shareholder
– Top management?

Reflect & Discuss
 From your preferred
framework (entrepreneur,
employee, client, or
shareholder):
– What‘s the difference
between doing agile
versus being agile?
– What kind of activities are
involved in continuous
innovation?

Reflect & Discuss
 What has in your context supported or hindered
company-wide agility (agile beyond IT) and what was
difficult along the way?
 Come up with top challenge in your group

Beyond Budgeting
 Beyond command & control
– Toward a management model that is more empowered and
adaptive
 Separate the 3 budget purposes
– Targets
– Forecast
– Resource allocation
 Relative
 Rolling
 Dynamic

Open Space
 Self-organization
– Everyone is invited to suggest and work on any idea
 Passion bound by responsibility
– Self-responsible for learning and helping others learn
– Passion follows the overall strategy
 Empowerment
– Anything can happen inspired by anyone

Sociocracy
 Equivalence
– Shared decision-making by consent
– Feedback embedded in the structure: double linking

4 Truths
HSD - https://www.hsdinstitute.org

Cynefin
Kurtz, C.F. & Snowden, D. (2003): The new dynamics of strategy: Sense-making in a
complex and complicated world In: IBM Systems Journal, Vol.42, No.3, p.462-483.
Available also online: http://alumni.media.mit.edu/brooks/storybiz/kurtz.pdf

Discuss & Create
 What are the different perspectives in your organization?
 Draw the organigram for at least one organization
showing the synthesis of perspectives

Discuss
 What is the primary organizational characteristic
(strategy, structure, or process) for your top challenge?

Eager to Experiment

Is Trust Cheaper?

Is Trust Cheaper?
 Background:
– Traditional travel expense procedures are burdensome and
assume people can’t be trusted.
 Hypothesis:
– Such procedures cost more than they save and are
demoralizing.
 Experiment:
– Pre-survey and audit. Try for three months in a few units
with other units as controls. Post-survey and audit.

Discuss & Create
 Look at your top challenge
– Revisit your reflections on your top challenge and any
necessary details
• What is your challenge and what is it not?
• What might be the source of the difference?
 Pick a probe that you might use to explore that challenge
– If necessary modify the probe for your existing challenge
– Or invent a whole new probe

Design a Probe
 Name of the Probe:
– <...>
 Background:
– <Define the context>
 Hypothesis:
– <Define what you expect to happen>
– <Observable impact>
 Safe-to-fail experiment:
– <Define what do you want to try and how you can (dis) prove
the hypothesis>

Reflecting on the Probe
 Our results were largely not as the hypothesis predicted.
 We believed <hypothesis>
– But found while <activity>
– That <insight>
– And rejected this idea.
 Had we tried <x>,
– We might have discovered this
• <sooner, more cheaply, &/or more safely>
Source: Mike Burrows, Agendashift

Publish to Your Peers
 Publish in the LinkedIn group:
– http://tinyurl.com/AgileBossaNova
 Based on the experiment results and comments of our
peers,
– What are the next questions to explore?
– What changes (if any) do we want to implement?

Reflection Time
 What will you do on Monday?
– What will you try?
– Let us know what you did try and publish your experience!
• http://tinyurl.com/AgileBossaNova

BOSSA nova for Nourishing
Company-wide Agility

BOSSA nova for Company-wide Agility
 Never stop…
– …trying
– …learning
– …changing

Many Thanks and… Stay in Touch:
PicturesbyKatjaGloggengießer
Jutta Eckstein | @juttaeckstein
Deepti Jain | @agilevirgin
http://agilebossanova.org
@AgileBossaNova | #agilebossanova
Company-wide Agility with BOSSA nova
http://tinyurl.com/AgileBossaNova

Learning Fast & Small - Nourishing Company-wide Agility in a Skeptical Environment

Learning Fast & Small - Nourishing Company-wide Agility in a Skeptical Environment

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