agilityIRL Blog | Agile-Driven Education, Coaching and Consulting

May 11, 2018

All Are Welcome

Welcome to our new website! We want to thank our partners at Iceberg Web Design for all the work that they did to get us to this point. They worked with us (a questionable decision on their part) to really understand the spirit of agility – In Real Life (agilityIRL) and our mission “To end...

icebergUncategorized

November 28, 2017

Micro & Macro Agility

You’re going through your day as you always have for so many years, you go to perform a task that requires a little extra exertion, and you fall to the floor. The presenting cause is evident to the first responders—you’ve suffered a cardiac episode. The cardiologist diagnoses you as having arteriosclerosis and schedules you for...

jimAgility

November 21, 2017

Your Methodology Thinks You’re Dumb Or Why You Should Consider a Framework

I mean it – your methodology does think you’re dumb. It doesn’t trust you, doesn’t believe that you can think for yourself, and doesn’t want you to inspect and adapt based on your current circumstances. A methodology is a prescribed series of steps that must be completed to encourage the successful completion of a goal....

icebergAgility

November 7, 2017

Leading Organizational Change from the Middle-Out

There is a myth that organizational change, which is to say, cultural change, will be successful only if it is done top-down, led by the CEO, and has broad, if not total, buy-in. This is wrong. The most successful organizational changes occur from the middle-out, by a motivated and enlightened leader of some smaller organization...

jimLeadership, Organizational change

October 24, 2017

The Case for Organizational Agility

Over the course of my career, I have created nine new organizations at various levels (four were my own companies); I have renovated four others that were under-performing; and I have redesigned two that were performing well enough, but were not properly tooled for the challenges headed their way. From my experience, I can tell...

jimUncategorized

October 10, 2017

Separating Signal from Noise – Part Two

To continue from Part 1… We are constantly being peppered, assaulted really, with things competing for our attention, and there is no sign that the universe is going to let up on us. I am generally regarded as someone who is technologically progressive, but you will not find me on any social media other than...

jimLeadership, Management

September 26, 2017

Separating Signal from Noise – Part One

There are two clues that someone doesn’t know what they’re talking about. The first is that they use an excessive number of variables and factors to explain the problem. The second is that they turn a legitimately complex situation into something overly simple—this is probably the most common way of demonstrating ignorance of the subject...

jimLeadership, Management

September 12, 2017

Do You Hire Smart People?

Regardless of the type of organization that I serve, I see a number of phrases that seem to be common. Every company hires only “the best and brightest”, every organization claims their people to be their “most valuable asset” and every entity declares, “Our people make the difference”. Beyond the fallacy that everyone hires only...

mikeLeadership, Management

August 29, 2017

Leaders in Organizational Agility

Based on our decades of experience in creating organizational agility in real life, there are six properties that organizations that are leaders in agility will possess. First, those organizations that are leaders in agility, don’t merely meet their customer’s requirements, they produce products/services that create customer requirements to which competitors must respond, because this is...

jimLeadership, Management

1 2 3