Single Day: Adaptive Organisation I
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Description
We'll be exploring what it means to lead in an organisation where change is happening wherever it's needed, at the pace it's needed, and engaging the people that are needed – the people whose energy, insights, and innovations you'll need.
On day 1 (Foundation) we look at how to develop and pursue strategy in the language of outcomes, introducing some key conversational and organisational patterns and tools. You'll be developing skills you can bring not only to set-piece strategy events such as reviews and workshops but use in everyday settings too.
On days 2 and 3 (Adaptive Organisation parts I and II), we will be exercising those skills further as we get to grips with a classic model of organisation made accessible and brought up to date, applicable to a wide range of organisations of all shapes and sizes. For any given organisational scale (day 2), what are the preconditions for business agility, and what gets in the way of that? Similarly, in what practical ways can we help the relationships between organisational scales (day 3) to be more healthy and productive? You'll be learning some of the “deep magic” of organising, and you won't look at organisations in quite the same way again!
Trainer - Mike Burrows
Mike works at the intersection of Lean-Agile, strategy, and organisation development in the pursuit of the ‘wholehearted’ organisation. He is the author of Agendashift: Outcome-oriented change and continuous transformation (2nd edition 2021), Right to Left: the digital leader’s guide to Lean and Agile (2019, audiobook 2020), and the classic Kanban from the Inside (2014). He is recognised for his pioneering work in Lean, Agile, and Kanban and in recent years his advocacy for participatory and outcome-oriented approaches to change, transformation, and strategy. Prior to his consulting career, Mike was global development manager and Executive Director at a top tier investment bank, CTO for an energy risk management startup, and later served as interim delivery manager for two UK government digital ‘exemplar’ services.
Package Options
This package is for 1 day: Adaptive Organisation I. All options include:
| Total Days | Package Options | Days from Overall Package |
| 1 |
Day 1 Day 2 |
|
| 2 |
Day 1 & 2 Day 2 & 3 |
|
| 3 |
Day 1,2 & 3 |
Day 2 Adaptive Organisation (I): Business agility at every scale
In Adaptive Organisation part I, what every leader needs to know about organising for adaptability:
- The three overlapping spaces of the Deliberately Adaptive Organisation
- Integrating strategy, delivery, and mutual trust-building
- Finding balance in relationships; managing complexity
For any given organisational scale – beginning with the scale and scope you most easily identify with and scaling up and down from there – what are the preconditions for business agility, and what gets in the way of that? Looking at your organisation (or any other), what constraints and freedoms operate? What elements should we expect to see? Between those many elements – people, teams, other organisational units of all sizes, the systems that exist at each scale, and so on – what relationships must be in place? How can we help those relationships become more balanced, more healthy and more productive for all who participate in them?
Prerequisites: Leading with Outcomes: Foundation is highly recommended.
1. Delivery, Discovery, and Renewal:
- Inside value creation's inner learning loop
- Turning intent into progress and turning experiments into intelligence and insights
- Reconciling Agile and business agility
2. Adaptive Strategy:
- Making organising commitments, autonomy at every scope and scale
- Understanding self and environment, creating and managing options accordingly
- Actively maintaining coherent identity, purpose, and values
3. Mutual Trust Building:
- Models of trust-building leadership
- The systemic role of trust
- Sensemaking – making meaningful progress in the presence of ambiguity
Sources:
- Viable System Model, Stafford Beer’s classic model for all organisations that have the drive to “meet the demands of surviving in the changing environment”; here it is the framework within which the other models and tools are integrated
- Complexity science – Cynefin and more
- Agendashift, Leading with Outcomes, Right to Left, and Wholehearted – outcome-orientation, leadership and strategy
- Lean-Agile (“Lean and Agile celebrated both separately and together”) and friends
