Agile Amped Podcast - Inspiring Conversations

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Phil Abernathy on KPI Madness and Maze Runners Mar 10, 2017

Show notes

Phil Abernathy is an Agile Leadership Coach as well as the founder and CEO of Purple Candor. His talk at the first-ever Business Agility 2017 conference is called "Structuring Your Business for Agility". Phil walks us through the maze of systemic organizational structures and processes of today's businesses. Seeing IT's successes with Agile, business and leadership are pulling it in and layering it on existing structures without realizing that they are setting themselves up to fail. With the KPI madness that gave rise to heads of innovation and service, Phil imagines "we will have a head of Business Agility". And at the bottom of all these heads is a single person, a Bob or Mary, who is completely lost. In this maze there are maze runners: individuals who know the bureaucracy and processes so well, they "know how to chase the work through the maze to get it done". Phil commiserates that "we still stick with the manufacturing, industrial era models to run in the knowledge-based economy" - but change is happening. With Agile, leaders are finally able to see the maze for what it is and, Phil believes, we're all in a good place to do something about it.SolutionsIQ Chief Technical Officer Evan Campbell hosts at the inaugural Business Agility 2017 in New York City.About Agile AmpedThe Agile Amped podcast series brings Agile news and events to life. Fueled by inspiring conversations, innovative ideas, and in-depth analysis of enterprise agility, Agile Amped provides on-the-go learning – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe!Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www2.solutionsiq.com/subscribe...Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook

Todd Little Helps Leadership, Business and IT Speak the Same Language Mar 10, 2017

Show notes

Agile leadership consultant Todd Little shares with Agile Amped the challenges he's seen in leadership as well as how to grow Agile across the organization. The major challenge impeding widespread adoption of Agile in an enterprise is the fact that business and IT don't have a shared language to facilitate communication and collaboration. In his experience Todd thinks that business and leadership are interested in the gains of agility but then they inadvertently create structures that run counter to this goal. Todd advocates strongly for moving toward forming partnerships, shared ownership, agreeing on a shared language, and identifying constraints and costs associated with change.

SolutionsIQ's Kat Conner hosts at Business Agility 2017 in New York City.

About Agile AmpedThe Agile Amped podcast series brings Agile news and events to life. Fueled by inspiring conversations, innovative ideas, and in-depth analysis of enterprise agility, Agile Amped provides on-the-go learning – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe!Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www2.solutionsiq.com/subscribe-to-agile-amped-youtubeFollow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook

Author Stephen Parry Says: Don't Implement - Grow! Mar 09, 2017

Show notes

Author of "Sense and Respond: The Journey to Customer Purpose" Stephen Parry has a simple imperative: "Don't implement, grow." Organizational change isn't something you can implement, it's something the organization has to grow into. Management is so focused on "implementing the mechanics, and doing nothing with the dynamics". But Stephen advises, "You cannot implement an adaptive organization, you can only grow one."Stephen also touches on some of the other pressures impeding organizational change, for example, the legal implications: an employee's bonus may be affected by a change in role. In this case, the business can offer the bonus anyway as a motivator to get the employee bought in -- but few organizations are brave enough to do that. Stephen is also working with universities to look at the nature of the psychological change with Lean and Agile.SolutionsIQ's Kat Conner hosts at Business Agility 2017 in New York City.About Agile AmpedThe Agile Amped podcast series brings Agile news and events to life. Fueled by inspiring conversations, innovative ideas, and in-depth analysis of enterprise agility, Agile Amped provides on-the-go learning – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe!Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www2.solutionsiq.com/subscribe...Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook

Talent Advisor at IBM CIO Isabella Serg on Agile HR and "the War for Talent" Mar 08, 2017

Show notes

Isabella Serg got her start in Agile HR in financial services and insurance in Australia. That's where she learned that agility and adaptability aren't just an IT or delivery thing. Today, as Talent Advisor at IBM CIO, Isabella focuses on "how to improve people, talent, leadership practices to develop great Agile leaders and attract, develop and retain great Agile talent." This objective requires bringing an Agile mindset to the HR function -- and indeed to all parts of the organization. Isabella is certain that non-IT teams need to be Agile as well to improve their responsiveness. IBM is leveraging organizational agility as a market differentiator because, as Isabella points out, "The war for talent is here... [Incoming young people are] really looking for great leadership, great culture, and great learning and development opportunities." And this culture centers around the behaviors instilled by leadership. The most important driving focus, regardless of your organizational function (HR, IT, etc.), is "putting the customer at the center of everything we do."SolutionsIQ Chief Technical Officer Evan Campbell hosts at Business Agility 2017 in New York City.About Agile AmpedThe Agile Amped podcast series brings Agile news and events to life. Fueled by inspiring conversations, innovative ideas, and in-depth analysis of enterprise agility, Agile Amped provides on-the-go learning – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe!Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www2.solutionsiq.com/subscribe...Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook

Bill Joiner, Leadership Agility and Agile Companies Outperforming Competitors Mar 07, 2017

Show notes

Leadership development expert and author of "Leadership Agility" Bill Joiner discusses the need for exactly that as the business environment continues to change and accelerate. Research shows that companies that are more agile outperform other companies. Further Agile companies require Agile leadership, so it is in the C-suite's own best interest to invest in Business Agility. Bill has also found that the key lever in increasing Business Agility is what he calls leadership agility -- particularly, the culture of leadership in a company.In his book, Bill writes that leaders move through 3 stages in developing agility: Expert, Achiever and Catalyst. Unfortunately, the majority of today's leaders are early in their development path because the previous century rewarded (and continues to reward) Experts and Achievers. Joiner's work focuses on helping leaders move through Expert to Achiever to Catalyst, and he is optimistic that the day will come when leaders will act with an Agile mindset, aiming not just for the target but through it. However, the change requires leadership to look at themselves and evolve their approach to be more like a Catalyst.SolutionsIQ Chief Technical Officer Evan Campbell hosts at Business Agility 2017 in New York City.About Agile AmpedThe Agile Amped podcast series brings Agile news and events to life. Fueled by inspiring conversations, innovative ideas, and in-depth analysis of enterprise agility, Agile Amped provides on-the-go learning – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe!Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www2.solutionsiq.com/subscribe...Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook

Bjarte Bogsnes' Beyond Budgeting & Management Innovation Mar 06, 2017

Show notes

Bjarte Bogsnes wrote the book underpinning the Beyond Budgeting movement - literally. "Implementing Beyond Budgeting – Unlocking the Performance Potential" captures his experiences helping organizations go "beyond budgeting". Bjarte reminds us that "Beyond Budgeting is and has always been about much more than budgets." The name is a little misleading because the purpose of beyond budgeting isn't necessarily to get rid of budget but to change traditional management where you find the budgeting process and the budgeting mindset. Beyond Budgeting is a much broader, "comprehensive, coherent management model that addresses both management processes and leadership principles."

Which brings to the fore the concept of management innovation: exploration and testing in management models. The paradox is that executives love product innovation but are scared of management innovation because it requires a change in them. This change, however, is where real competitive advantage lay in today's markets.

SolutionsIQ Chief Technical Officer Evan Campbell hosts at Business Agility 2017 in New York City.

Jason Hall Shares Lithespeed's Peer-Based Recognition Program Mar 02, 2017

Show notes

Lithespeed's Jason Hall understands that keeping employees engaged and happy is important. Toward this end many organizations have reward systems: bonuses, shares, company lunches, even massages and boxed chocolates (thanks, Google!). But Jason highlights for us the fact that these rewards are doled out according to a hierarchical meritocracy: someone, whether a VP or senior manager, is deciding whether and who deserves recognition. While Jason thinks this is great and he has no beef with a meritocracy approach per se, but it doesn't reinforce team-based collaboration.

Jason shares his experience at Lithespeed where they experimented with different rewards/recognition programs. First they tried a token- or penny-based system before landing on their "Recognize at Lithespeed" program -- a peer-based system that, Jason says, "hits the nail on the head": real-time recognitions that people email to each other rather than waiting til the end of the quarter, for example, which was the previous token-based model.

SolutionsIQ's Josh Fruit hosts at Business Agility 2017 in New York City.

Kicking off Inaugural Business Agility 2017 with Evan Leybourn Mar 01, 2017

Show notes

Let's get the community together and come up with a definition of Business Agility. But, according to business transformation leader and author Evan Leybourn, "having a nebulous set of common ideals, principles that form Business Agility gives us a common banner to work [under]... If we try to narrow it to something, we actually lose the power of this movement, the power of changing how organizations work" and inadvertently exclude something of value. Leybourn reminds us that delivery used to be the constraint to agility. Today, that constraint has moved to the business side: the PMO, Finance, HR, and in the structure of the organization. Business Agility applies the Agile mindset to the entire organization, enabling the enterprise to be competitive in the market.

Leybourn also shares his three domains of agility, which are interlinked and do not form a hierarchy:1. Technical agility: Agile in software - e.g., paired programming, DevOps2. Process agility: Scrum, Kanban3. Business Agility: Leadership, organization structure and processes

SolutionsIQ Chief Technical Officer Evan Campbell hosts.

Geoff Watts talks about Product Mastery-From good to great Product Ownership Feb 02, 2017

Show notes

Being a product owner is far more than just backlogs and Kano analysis, and Geoff Watts knows this. In this episode we discuss his newest book " Product Mastery-from good to great product Ownership" and why he feels its what's needed for Product owners today. He's challenging PO's to be DRIVEN. As an acronym, D.R.I.V.E.N. is Decisive, Ruthless, informed, Versatile, Empowering and Negotiable. We also speculate a bit on his prediction on the future needs of product owners in the coming decade.

The Agile Amped podcast series connects the community through compelling stories, passionate people, shared knowledge, and innovative ideas. Fueled by inspiring conversations with industry thoughtleaders, Agile Amped offers valuable content – anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe at YouTube, iTunes or SolutionsIQ.com.

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The 3 Laws of Agile with Steve Denning Jan 04, 2017

Show notes

Steve Denning is a thought leader par excellence in the Agile industry. With six successful business books and 600 articles on Forbes, which collectively deal with radical changes is leadership, management and storytelling, Steve has been a vocal proponent for Agile for years. In this Agile In-Depth podcast, SolutionsIQ's Howard Sublett discusses with Steve the 3 Laws of Agile and how simplicity is the strongest weapon to combat complexity. Steve is also promoting the upcoming inaugural Business Agility conference, which SolutionsIQ and Agile Amped will be onsite to capture!

Here are some sound bites to whet your appetite:

"We are moving towards a world I think where... Agile will simply be management, and the normal way to run a company will be Agile."
Instead of scaling the organization up... it's de-scaling the work down to small pieces, small teams, small batches, small cycles... (In this way) you can in fact handle some very large, complex problems."
"An obsession with delivering value to the customer... and giving everyone a clear line of sight to the ultimate end user."
"Culture is a verb, not a noun."
"The biggest risk is on-boarding people at the senior level... If they are not on the same page, then the organization is heading for immediate problems."

Further Resources