So rapid is the pace of new developments, and so diverse the forms of competition, that many large corporations struggle to be agile enough to compete. Not surprisingly, the need for organizational agility sits high on executive agendas everywhere. MORE

The Leadership Caffeine™ series is intended to make you think and act. — What if everything that used to work for your business no longer did? The business challenge of this era for long established firms is much about escaping the powerful pull of the past. Approaches that worked so well for so long are […]. Art of Managing Leadership Caffeine Management Innovation Strategy Adaptability teams The New Leader MORE

This post combines two themes we see and hear a lot about in tech at the moment – namely 360° feedback and Agile Methodology. Specifically, is it possible to combine these two factors without derailing. Read more on the Talent Technologies website. Teams MORE

If software has eaten the world, then agile has eaten the software world. While initially designed to improve the responsiveness of software development teams, more recently agile has become the default team-based operational model for companies big and small, across industries and sectors, with the promise of a substantial and sustained spike in team productivity and efficiency. The bulk of this agile canon will teach your individual teams to deliver higher-quality code, faster. MORE

Agility perfectly describes what’s needed for you to survive and thrive. Being responsive just isn’t enough… you need to be agile. The dictionary describes agility as “nimbleness”; my own spin on the word is that it includes being responsive and mindful. You can only be truly agile when you are truly mindful. It takes a mindfulness to be an agile leader; in order to respond to what is happening around you, you must be present to it. MORE

Jon Younger is founding partner of the Agile Talent Collaborative (and partner emeritus at the RBL Group where he established the firm’s HR transformation practice. He is the author of 5 books including the new Agile Talent: How… Read More Jon Younger and Norm Smallwood on “Agile Talent”: Part 2 of an interview by Bob Morris. MORE

Welcome to my weekly round-up of recent top leadership and communication blog posts. As many of you know, each week I read and tweet several great articles and on Fridays, I pull some of my favorites together here on my blog. MORE

Originating from agile software development, the sprint has entered the business mainstream as an increasingly popular means to accelerate business model, product, or service innovation. They allow a company to be more agile and to more effectively adapt to digital disruption. Can you run fast and go deep at the same time? MORE

Last week, I was invited to speak as a panelist at Agile Carnival, Chandigarh where I expressed my thoughts on Agile as a method and as a mindset. Agility in our approaches is one of the most potent ways to deal with the challenges of a constantly changing world. MORE

. . . In this new reality, organizations are going to need to change how they change, to increase their organizational agility, to increase the flexibility of the organization, to create a culture of continuous change and simultaneously inhibit the appearance and for growth of the aforementioned change gaps. One way to do handle these challenges is to take a more agile approach to change. MORE

Bottom line: In an agile business environment where change is not only constant but rapid, we need agility in how we improve. The pace of change is accelerating and business leaders who are responsible for improvements need keep up with the pace. While plan-do-check-act methodology has been around for long, the time it took was way longer. For organizational improvements (and the personal ones), what do we need today? What would business expect from improvement initiatives? MORE

Or what about being more “agile.” Agile was originally a software technique, meant to shorten software development times and make the development team more accountable to customer needs. From there, everyone is adopting the concept of “agile.” There’s agile marketing, introduced by thought leaders at CMG. Can agile help you win more? In truth, factors like speed, agility and innovation aren’t all that valuable by themselves. MORE

The New Normal: Learning Agile Leaders Who Operate At The Enterprise Level These are real CEOs from real companies across vastly different industries, with different business models and different profit motives. Learning agile leaders really like this stuff. MORE

Company Culture Learning Sketch Notes Culture HR Leadership learning learning agility learning and development Learning Organization OD Peter Senge MORE

In a March 2013 Forbes article titled “The Five Dimensions of Learning-Agile Leaders,” Kevin Cashman stipulates that: “To succeed in our volatile, complex, ambiguous world, we have no choice but to master our ability to adapt and learn.” ” ClickToTweet 5 Dimensions for Agile Leadership He then goes on to list five dimensions that are necessary […]. MORE

Agile360 (a division of Entisys Solutions) has woven the principles of Extreme Leadership –Love, Energy, Audacity, and Proof–into their physical space and company culture in a deeply significant way. MORE

Collaboration Leading Organization Lean and Agile Sketch Notes Agile collaboration Lean power Simplicity sketchnoteMost re-organization efforts either focus on hard stuff (processes, strategy, structure, KPI’s) or on soft stuff (culture, values, relationships, feelings). MORE

Filed under: Agile , Innovation , IT Strategy , PMO , Portfolio Management , Project Management Tagged: agile , Innovation , IT project management and portfolio management , IT Strategy , PMO , Portfolio Management. Agile Innovation IT Strategy PMO Portfolio Management Project Management agile IT project management and portfolio management As a CIO, you have either made – or heard – recommendations to create an IT project management office. MORE

Susan David, author of Emotional Agility and psychologist at Harvard Medical School, on learning to unhook from strong feelings. Download this podcast. Managing yourself Psychology Stress Audio MORE

A key task for agile leaders is to build the organization's capacity to act over the short, medium and long term: Closing the implementation gap requires a strategizing approach, building momentum for change by making decisions and involving and enabling the teams who will implement them. Source: Linda Holbeche: The Agile Organization: How to Build an Innovative, Sustainable and Resilient Business. MORE

To succeed you need to be flexible, innovate, and be agile. The phrase OODA loop refers to the decision cycle of observe, orient, decide, and act — the approach favors agility over raw power in dealing with human opponents in any endeavor. The post How Agile Are You? MORE

Related: Toyota Kata Song – The Times They Are Changing (2011) – Agile Software Development and Deming Management Ideas – Webcast on the Toyota Development Process – Future Directions for Agile Management (2008). MORE

We are comfortable with what is predictable. This impacts our choices because we want to maximize the chances of success. Then, once in a while, we are thrown into situations where we have no control. It compels us to carve a way out and create a map as we go. We learn the most here. MORE

Leadership Leading Organization Lean and Agile Sketch Notes Effective Meetings Effectiveness Lean Work working out loudHere is what leaders often do – when faced with a complex situation at work, they add procedures, rules and structures to make things more complex. MORE

Jon Younger is founding partner of the Agile Talent Collaborative (and partner emeritus at the RBL Group where he established the firm’s HR transformation practice. He is the author of 5 books including the new Agile Talent: How… Read More Jon Younger and Norm Smallwood on “Agile Talent”: Part 1 of an interview by Bob Morris. MORE

The new book, Becoming Agile: How the SEAM Approach to Management Builds Adaptability illustrates the process of becoming an agile organization. Becoming Agile Eric Jacobson on Leadership and Management Leadership MORE

Most mature organizations have a built-in tendency to kill off anything agile, innovative, and entrepreneurial — which often is exactly what’s needed to stay ahead of today’s ever-increasing pace of change in the […] Increasingly, large organizations are finding their competitive landscape changing so quickly that they’re unable to respond fast enough to survive and thrive. MORE

PM College has upped its agile game over the last few months. We now have a full suite of offerings across a variety of agile approaches: Scrum , XP, Kanban , Lean, and different ways to combine them for success, including SAFe or agile certifications. As I reviewed our course offerings, I became curious and followed a link to the requirements for PMI’s Agile Certified Practitioner (PMI-ACP®) certification. Filed under: Agile , PMO. Agile PMO MORE

Their book, "ACCELERATING PERFORMANCE: How Organizations Can Mobilize, Execute, and Transform with Agility" demonstrates a research-backed approach to how organizations and leaders can drive transformation in a highly disruptive, ever-changing world. Source: Colin Price: Accelerating Performance: How Organizations Can Mobilize, Execute, and Transform with Agility. "Warm and fuzzy" works well for internet memes--not for management advice. . MORE

Blog Business Coaching C-Level Career Coaching Tip Ways & Tips Agile Angry Flexible Hide Malaise Nimble Stay or GoIt's like YOGA for your career. MORE

Nice collection of agile “objection” answers, though I’d be a bit kinder to the resisters. RT @bobsarni, HT @brown_note) Agile Doesn’t Work For…: Ever run across these guys? Filed under: PMO Tagged: agile , Bob Sarni , Craig Brown , Mythbusters , Organizational Change , resistance to change. PMO agile Bob Sarni Craig Brown Mythbusters Organizational Change resistance to change MORE

Learn from those Essential Lean IT & Agile Books A list like this is subjective of course; I found a good criteria though: people I introduced to those Lean IT & Agile books explicitly engage in further conversations or take actions to apply those practices. 1-A bit […] The post 4 Essential Lean & Agile Books appeared first on 2020 IT Leader. Digitally Confident Agile Business Value CIO Lean Lean IT MORE

Reader Submission agile workingWe've Moved! Update your Reader Now. This feed has moved to: [link] If you haven't already done so, update your reader now with this changed subscription address to get your latest updates from us. link]. MORE

Nice collection of agile “objection” answers, though I’d be a bit kinder to the resisters. RT @bobsarni, HT @brown_note) Agile Doesn’t Work For…: Ever run across these guys? Filed under: PMO Tagged: agile , Bob Sarni , Craig Brown , Mythbusters , Organizational Change , resistance to change. PMO Craig Brown agile Mythbusters Organizational Change resistance to change Bob Sarni MORE

The key to navigate through uncertainty is to focus inwards on developing agility in skills, learning and mindset – all of which are completely in our control. Leadership Learning Self Growth Sketch Notes agility future of work learning self development MORE

There is a term for people that learn and are able to capitalize on it: “learning agility” Leaders who are agile learners are quick thinking, decisive, curious, intuitive and take (what others might call) risks. Agile leaders are exactly what we need in our organizations that are getting bigger, flatter, and more complex. Be reflective: Set aside time daily to reflect about what you’re learning in your quest to become more agile with your new experiences. MORE

Leadership Leading Organization Learning Sketch Notes Discipline learning learning agility learning and development Learning Organization Peter Senge MORE

You hear a lot about “agile innovation” these days. Teams using agile methods get things done faster than teams using traditional processes. Agile has indisputably transformed software development, and many experts believe it is now poised to expand far beyond IT. MORE

Bodies are agile. Organizational leaders try to increase speed and agility by removing layers from pyramids. Think of organizations as human bodies, not hierarchical pyramids. Pyramids house the dead. But removing layers –… Continue reading → Communication Culture Success Teams Leadership Development Organizational Development organizational success MORE

Authentic Leadership Leading Change Values-Based Leadership business Business Agility leadership The 2012 World Economic Forum Annual Meeting had a discussion session titled “Leadership Models Across Generations.” ” The purpose of this discussion was to identify “what leadership traits inspire and engage both younger and experienced generations.“ MORE

Did you know that these top performers used agile techniques more often than other organizations? This use of agile, iterative, and incremental methods drove better organizational agility. In turn, this better agility allows for faster and more effective responses to competitive, technological, regulatory, or other external challenges. Agile principles have a been a lifesaver on a number of my projects and programs. MORE

Holacracy is a fundamentally different “operating system” for organizations. Holacracy revolutionizes how a company is structured, how decisions are made, and how authority is distributed. Perhaps the best-known examples of companies who have adopted Holacracy are Zappos and David Allen Company. “No MORE

The same principle applies to agile adoption. I’ve found that while agile is supposed to get an organization away from “command and control,” it’s often implemented from the top down, with a catechism, and all heretics are burned. Someone, somewhere, gets the bright idea to go agile…and everyone has to follow along. Of course, agile is just like any other change program from which you expect transformative results. MORE