Shane Hastie & Simon Powers discuss why people matter most in organisational change
It’s no secret that organisational change is hard. But why? That’s the question Shane Hastie, Lead Editor for Culture & Methods, sought to answer in his recent InfoQ Culture Podcast where he interviewed our CEO and Founder, Simon Powers. In this podcast, Simon speaks about his new book Change: A Practitioner’s Guide to Enterprise Agile…
Read MoreWhy an internal coaching capability is essential if your business is to succeed
A coach’s role is to bring out the best in others helping them to discover and harness their potential and equip them with tools and strategies to make agility work. Organisational agility needs skilled agile coaches to establish cross-functional teams and agile leadership, and to transform organisational structures and culture. By developing an internal…
Read MoreChange. Chapter One. By Simon Powers
“When the rain falls, it won’t fall on one man’s house” — Bob Marley Why read this book? “He who has a ‘why’ to live for, can bear almost any how.” Friedrich Nietzsche On a cold September night in 2014, I lay in bed and listened to the wind blowing through the forest trees. It…
Read MoreA guide to organisational coaching styles
The need As projects get more complex and require larger numbers of people to work on them, and as innovation continues to be paramount in all product and service development, the need for different personalities to collaborate and produce real results is higher now than ever before. Demanding that people work together and deliver innovative…
Read MoreHow to Change Culture
How to Change Culture There are many models for discussing Culture change that are useful in opening the conversation with leadership. Models I have found useful include: The Schneider Model Frederic Laloux model based upon spiral dynamics The Sahota model These models give us the ability to see where things are now and where we…
Read MoreIgnore the Hierarchy!
Hierarchy is one of the defining cultural properties of modern civilisation. It is part of a reinforcing loop that encourages conformity and includes leadership and structure. From experience, I know that you cannot change culture directly. In the Enterprise Agility Masterclass (EAM) we use the AWA model which defines levers we can adjust, and iterate small…
Read MoreHistory of Organisational Change – Podcast
In this episode, Tim and Simon talk about the history and patterns of organisational change, the role that agile plays, and why the way we think about our own identity changes over time and is changing now. The context of this conversation stems from a module in our 3 day Enterprise Agility Masterclass. The module…
Read MoreAn Agile Tale – Destined to Fly
At what stage do you think a caterpillar knows it will one day be something else? Even if it knows it is destined to transform, do you think it realizes that one day it will flutter over the same ground it currently crawls along, and that many will consider it the most beautiful of creatures…
Read MoreWhat is an Agile Coach?
This post follows on from What is Agile? If you didn’t read that, then please it read it now. Otherwise, this post What is an Agile Coach isn’t going to make a whole lot of sense. OK, let’s begin. What is an Agile Coach? The word ‘coach’, like the old stage coaches, can be taken…
Read MoreCoaching skills for agile coaches
I’ve noticed that the word ‘coaching’ is often used to describe anything from teaching to professional coaching, and everything in between. So how much of what we do as agile coaches or ScrumMasters is really coaching – and how much of it should be? The Agile Coaching Institute’s coaching competency framework[1] defines eight competencies: agile-lean…
Read MoreThe Cynefin Review Pt 1
Cynefin – The Sense Making Framework – Part 1 This is a new series on Cynefin and the Sense Making Framework that shares what I learnt on the 4-day course with David Snowden and Tony Quinlan. There are many other articles and official works which will give you a more formal view on the framework and I…
Read More5 internal tools for large scale organisational change
Abundance Living in abundance is a choice. Abundance is a state of mind. When you live in abundance or have the feeling of living in an abundant world, something changes in your output such that the very decisions you make create harmony and optimism in those around you. This is very much likely to bring…
Read MoreCourse review – Scaling Agile and Organisational Change
Earlier on this year, I ran a 2 day course on Scaling Agile and Organisational Change. As far as I know, this is the only course to cover the major scaling frameworks and give some guidance as to when, what and most importantly why to use each one. We started the day with a slightly…
Read MoreAgile adoption strategies for large corporates
Everyone is different. Organisations are also different. The personality of an organisation is its culture. When we look to improve an organisation, it is the culture that needs to change. Applying different out of the box tools doesn’t work, because every culture is slightly different. We call this starting place, the context in which we…
Read MoreWhy Scale Agile? – Part 1
Visibility of progress has the net result of better financial outcomes that are derived by three types of behaviour. These are risk reduction, ability to direct progress and to increase trust between those paying for the work and those doing the work. Risk reduction The contract game whereby the supplier of services and procurer of…
Read MoreWhat is Scaling Agile?
This article covers what I think about when I think of scaling Agile, what it really means, why is it so hard and how to make it easier. Who am I? My name is Simon Powers, I am the founder of Adventures with Agile1, the global community of practice for scaling agile and organisational change….
Read MoreAWA event – John Coleman – 25th November 2014 – Practical session
Yesterday, we held the 2nd Adventures with Agile event and it was another huge success. John Coleman flew over from Ireland to give the presentation and a huge thanks is in order to him for this, and for presenting and running the workshop. I was slightly disappointed in the number of people who said they…
Read MoreAgile will change the world
As the foreword in Scott Ambler’s book says ‘The process wars are over and Agile won’. Agile is now being adopted in the largest organisations and the smallest all over the world. It’s no longer a question of ‘if’, it’s just a question of ‘when’. If you don’t become more agile, then you have more…
Read MorePersonal Motivation
Having watched Dan Pink’s video on motivation, I thought I’d try out the concepts on colleagues and friends. I have asked about 10 (ish) people what motivations they have and seen how they fit into the three categories of Autonomy, Mastery and Purpose. What I have discovered is that these 3 groups help enormously to…
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