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

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

“Change” used to happen to other people. Our forbearers would be born, go to school, grow up and, upon completing their schooling, either begin work on the family farm or in the family craft shop, or get a job at or factory where they would work until they retired. These times are past, of course....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

Perhaps you’ve seen the equation we’ve adopted at agilityIRL as a shorthand definition of organizational agility: Organizational Agility = Process Agility x Cultural Agility The multiplication sign reminds us of two very important things.  First, it reminds us that process and culture are interdependent.  Second, it reminds us that anything times zero is zero. In fact, an...Read More

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 what your station may be in some larger hierarchy — the conditions that give rise to resistance to change (or put another way, the conditions that are creating...Read More