Are you familiar with the boiled frog analogy? If you place a live frog in a pan of boiling water, the frog will immediately jump out. Smart. Right? However, if you place a frog in a pan of room temperature water, and all other conditions are comfortable, it will settle in. And if all other...Read More

I worry that the Agile Movement is suffering from what I have come to call the “specialist syndrome,” and I worry about it growing into a plague. When I teach my class, “Design for Organizational Agility,” I talk about an organizational disease called the “specialist syndrome.” When what someone is doing and how they are...Read More

A Special Message to Leaders of Organizations Providing Internal Services within a Larger Organization If you are leading an organization that provides internal services within a larger organization (e.g., a company’s internal organizations such as IT, Accounting, Tax, HR, Legal, Facilities, etc.), whether you realize it or not, you are in a competitive situation. And...Read More

Productivity…What is it? Productivity is defined as outputs divided by inputs. Measuring the productivity of an organization is done the same way. For example, the productivity of a business is defined as sales divided by expense, or revenue divided by costs. It is this equation that led Gary Hamel to coin the term, “denominator manager.”...Read More

There are multiple parties with a stake in the success of any organization. Businesses, for example, all have at least these five: customers, employees, owners, vendors, and the various communities to which they belong. Now, allow me to put forth a principle: When an organization (a government, a business, a union, a charity, a religion,...Read More

Before we talk about “customer service,” we must first define who a customer is. Who is a Customer? Agile individuals, agile organizations define their customer as anyone who depends on your work to do theirs. This may be an external customer, an internal customer, or your teammate in the next office. Anyone who depends on...Read More

  Work life doesn’t have to suck. I don’t care what kind of organization you lead — I don’t care what kind it may be, how big it may be, what you do, or where you may be in some larger hierarchy — you can make that organization that you have the good fortune to...Read More

In a previous post, “Focus, Dude!”  we identified one of the rules of agile leadership: focus. There are things you can do something about things you cannot – it’s important to distinguish between the two and treat them differently. One critical mental discipline that agile leaders practice is being proactive. If you’re waiting for a...Read More

One of the first rules of agile leadership is focus. There are things you can do something about, and there are things you cannot, and you need to distinguish between the two and treat them differently. Of all the things that may be of concern to you, you need to distinguish between those things that...Read More

The organizational traits that make any place a great place to work are not many. They are not complicated. They are universally applicable. There are five, and they are: People feel that they are doing valuable work. Whether their work puts them in the limelight, or keeps them behind the scenes, people need to see...Read More