Dandy People > Blog > Agile Leadership

Category: Agile Leadership

Stay High Performing while Working from Home. Tips and Tools from an Agile Coach

Written by
Written by
Mia Kolmodin

We asked Paolo Damelio, one of our experienced Agile coaches at Dandy People, to share some of his best tips and tools on how to maintain sustainable and High Performing Teams, now that many of the team members are working from home.

Hi Paolo! What are your thoughts on the situation right now?

This is a challenging time for everyone. For us as individuals, for organizations and for the collaboration inside teams as well as cross-team and cross-organization. And it is a challenge that, I believe, will take us to a place we only could have dreamed of just a few months ago. There is no going back to where we were before.

(more…)

Chef istället för agil coach

Written by

Ofta när jag kommer in som agil coach för att stödja i en agil transformation har organisationen så fullt upp med det dagliga arbetet att man knappt mäktar med att tänka förändring. Förhoppningen är att den agila coachen gör förändringen åt organisationen, men om så skulle vara fallet så försvinner ju också förändringen när den agila coachen försvinner. Ett annat sätt att jobba är att göra förändringen i befintliga roller. Under åren  som jag jobbade med agila transformationer som anställd, hade jag en chefsroll som plattform för förändringsarbetet. Jag experimenterade med nya former, utmanade mina kollegor, coachade mina team och utbildade både mig själv och organisationerna i det agila mindsetet. Samtidigt skedde förändringen. 

-Management teamet som tog sig från att jobba med sina egna agendor till gemensam tavla med backlogg, retrospektiv och självorganisering utan avdelningschef.

-De individuella utvecklingssamtalen, som efter ett antal iterationer skedde gemensamt i teamen med respekt för både teamets uppgift och individens utveckling.

-Organisationens gemensamma dag i varje sprint där alla la tid på lärande och utveckling, antingen genom att lära sig själv eller lära ut till andra.

Att engagera mig som interimschef innebär alltså att jag tar på mig samma operativa arbetsuppgifter som ordinarie chef skulle ha haft. När jag satt mig in i det dagliga, ser jag snabbt var det skaver och vilka experiment som skull kunna provas för att ta ett steg i utvecklingen mot en mer agil organisation. Jag är då med och tar ansvar för de möjligheter till lärande experimentet medför och gemensamt tar vi sedan även nästa steg. Så småningom när transformationen har stabiliserats och förändring har blivit en del av den dagliga rytmen är det också dags för mig att kliva av interimstjänsten. När det tillfället blir kommer att visa sig, kanske faller det sig naturligt att ha en chefstjänst mindre då. 🙂

https://dandypeople.producks.dev/our-servies/agile-manager-interim/

Agile Transformational Leadership in a Nutshell – Free Poster

Written by

We are living in a world with a higher pace of change and complexity than ever before. Our conventional ways of leading and organizing are struggling hard to stay relevant in this new environment. Therefore, there is a need to think differently and structure ourselves differently to meet the needs of today.

We need to be more flexible with short lead times and able to make quick decisions at the right level, where they have the latest and most relevant information. In this leadership poster, we have captured Transformative Leadership which is a type of leadership that enables Agility in the organization.

FREE Download of the Agile Transformational Leadership poster (PDF) >

Join our Training based on this Poster

If you are interested in becoming a Transformational leader in an Agile environment you are welcome to join our one-day Agile Transformational Leadership training. At this moment only in Swedish, but we’d love to run it in English too in your city or company. Teachers are Mia Kolmodin and Björn Sandberg.

Learning Organization

A learning organization is the best way we know to meet these demands and to handle the volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity (VUCA) of the world of today and tomorrow.

A way to handle this is by task management and developing the organization to be a true learning organization. Start with the prerequisite for empowerment and gradually start to work with emergent strategies. 

The foundation for making this possible is a leadership based on the understanding of motivation.

Theory X and Y Leadership

Agile Leadership is characterized by the understanding that people are more motivated by intrinsic motivation compared to extrinsic motivation. This is also closely related to the X and Y leadership theory by Douglas McGregor. 

Theory X – extrinsic motivation – emphasizes the importance of strict monitoring, external rewards, and even punishment.
Theory Y – intrinsic motivation – highlights well-being and encourages people to approach tasks without direct supervision.

In the Leadership Shift model below you will find where X-leadership and Y-leadership lives.

A leadership shift is needed

The Leadership shift happens when we shift gear from conventional leadership, which many times has served us well, to transformational leadership, to secure the organizational result in a fast-changing and highly complex world.

The Leadership Shift Model illustrates and maps common leadership styles and the effect they have on the organizational result. 

(more…)

My Leadership Canvas

Written by

Why we do things is the underlying foundation of our motivation and development. And when you work in an organization and in a team you need to feel that the organization’s and team’s purpose, vision, values, and mission is connected to your own foundation. “My leadership canvas” is a way to see if this is aligned and act as guidance in your personal development. 

Download the canvas here

WHY statement

To resonate further with your purpose in everything you do you can start by formulating your own WHY statement. The method is from Simon Sinek’s book “Start with why” where you can get deeper into the significance of starting with why.

To find your WHY statement you can follow these guidelines:

  • Simple and clear
  • Only one sentence
  • Languages ​​that resonate with you
  • Resonate both with work- and private life
  • Write several until you find the right one

As an example, my WHY statement is: “I empower myself and the people around me so we can become the best people that we can be”.

(more…)

Avoid losing your most valuable employees

Written by

When the pace has been picked up and everyday life spins at its highest pace the increase of sick leave caused by stress will increase. And those affected are your most valuable loyal employees that turn themselves inside out to deliver at work and in their private lives.

Sick leave due to stress of unhealthy work environments has increased to the double in the past ten years and is now the most common reason for sick leave in Sweden, and women are overrepresented in the statistics.

Facts from Försäkringskassan:

  • Sick leave due to stress has increased by 359% in the years 2010-2017
  • 25% of those that have been burned out is at risk of relapse, which means that 1 in 4 people fall back into sick leave
  • 10% of elite athletes are on sick leave due to stress
  • Stress-related illness costs Sweden 70 billion in socio-economic losses every year
Isabelle Svärd talking at Agila Sverige about her own signs of stress in 2017 and how she used agile tools as a tactics when returning to work life.
Video can be found here. (In swedish)

Once a person has been burned out, it can take up to 10 years to recover, it is one of the longest recovery periods, even longer than some cancer diagnoses. Therefore, it is extremely important to detect and slow down this development in time. As a fellow human being and as a leader, it is important that you see signs of unhealthy stress.

These are some examples of signs of unhealthy stress.

Aggressive tone and behavior
Aggressiveness and short tone are signs that the brain has turned on its flight and fight behavior, to protect against dangers, and should be taken seriously. Sit down in a quiet room alone with the person and describe how you experience their behavior, without judging it, and then ask how the person is feeling.

Sleep problems
If a person repeatedly shares that they have slept poorly, have difficulty falling asleep or wake up very early in the morning and cannot fall back asleep, these are signs that the stress has gone way to far. When a person doesn’t sleep, it  means our natural recovery system has stopped working.

Stomach problems, weight gain or weight loss
When flight and figh behavior is activated, several of our physical functions are turned off. Including the stomach and metabolism. If a person complains of stomach problems or has increased or decreased weight quickly, it may be due to prolonged stress.

Concentration problems
Just like above, the brain’s capacity will be gradually reduced. One behavior that can be noticed is if someone starts to forget about meetings, tasks or doesn’t contribute in the same way as before.

(more…)

Recovery and reflection as part of the workday is conditions for lasting a worklife

Written by

Our health is the most important thing we have. Our health is something that we as people, leaders, colleagues, employees and employers should hold as our highest priority. It is not enough to offer a wellness allowance, there must be room for wellness, reflection and recovery during work hours.

My work causes me both stress, anxiety and feelings of not being enough. And how is it right that I need my private time to compensate for that? I believe that my work hours should include everything I need to be able to do my job in the best possible way. For me, this means that I need space between meetings to process what has been said and time to prepare for the next meeting. I need time alone for my thoughts and reflections to be able to work out the best solution to a problem, create a good setup for the next meeting, or think about how to handle a situation.

As a leader, I owe those that follow me to think before I act. I owe them to be prepared for a meeting, to reflect on situations before I make decisions and think trough how I will handle a conflict. I also need space to learn new things, to read about research and new methods of leadership, team and psychological safety. This is important for me to be able to do my job, in the way that I want to do it.

I also need time when the brain can recover and turn off all impressions and thoughts. Where I have the opportunity to connect to my body that carries me through my work day. For me, it is yoga, which I often practice at lunchtime or before I go home. For you it might be a walk in the park, a horse back ride, a run around the nearby lake or to walk your dog. The important thing is that you know exactly what you need to have a sustainable work situation. Regardless, we all need recovery as part of our work day to be able to get through it, and the next day, and the next.

(more…)

Another framework won’t bring you agility

Written by

Agility is about adapting and delivering value. More and more organisations are discovering that they either need to get on the agile train or fall hopelessly behind. 

Many of them turn to frameworks to adapt agile ways of  working. But what they get is another framework that will sit  on top of  the others and cause more confusion and frustration. What they need is to focus on the real problems like organisation, leadership  and culture. I’m going to use SAFe as an example in this text (there are other frameworks trying to solve this out there but I know more about SAFe).

A framework with a clear hierarchical role chart, process arrows, planning cycles and new roles is a way of satisfying the controlling part of an organisation. And it is exactly this part that we need to remove, if we want to be truly agile. To dare go down the agile road you need trust from leaders and in many organisations that is the exact thing they are lacking. So their own fear of losing control drives them to turn to things their recognize, roles and hierarchy, processes and planning, things that are feeding the controlling needs and is satisfying their own fears.

When introducing a framework like SAFe you are forced to focus on roles and planning cycles instead of culture, organisation and leadership. To get the right people in these roles is not an easy task an one that is impossible if there are no people with an agile mindset in the organisation. When people without agile mindset take on these roles what we get is another gant chart and detailed planning that will not adapt to the changing needs of the customer.

(more…)

The change of one word can make your culture shift

Written by

When using the word resources, what do you think of? I think of nature’s resources and the money I have in the bank. Resources is by definition: means, a stock or supply of money, materials and other assets. How in any aspekt can people be considered resources?

The allocation of resources is a key element in traditional project management.  Resource allocation takes no considerations to human needs or changes. For that you will require a separate risk analysis and change management process. I think you understand where I’m going with this.

One of my agile coach friends started repeating to the managers in the organisation we were coaching ”People are not resources” ”People are people that have capacity to do things”. And this stuck.

We can not continue treating humans as numbers in a excel sheet if we want to accelerate our businesses. We have to start talking about them as people, humans, employees.  Today I correct and repeat. And I use the words that the organisation often have as well, the co-worker, the clients, the employees. It just has to be a word that describes the people for all our qualities and not just the number of hours we can produce.

(more…)

Leading yourself and others by trusting your why

Written by

We are exposed to an incredible number of impressions in one day. We are met by advertising on the way to work, pictures on instagrams and ads on facebook, emails about fantastic offers and news from all over the world. At work, we are often met by policies, attitudes, expectations of others and performance reviews. Not being able to sort in this and finding your own meaning and purpose can create stress, uncertainty and a feeling of being overwhelmed. The importance of being able to lead yourself, and others, to create a sustainable lifestyle has never been as big as now.

 

Your values ​​and your why

I see the personal leadership as something that needs to grow when you find your own values ​​and purpose. “Start with why” was founded by Simon Sinek, he says that organizations need to start by establishing why they exist before they can start talking about how and what they do. It is fully applicable to the personal leadership as well,  you need to find your own “WHY” before you know what to do and how.

To find your own WHY, you first need to know your values. What is most important to me? You can do this by listening inwards, by turning off all impressions and expectations from the outside world. To ignore the template that society is trying to put us all into and listen to yourself. There is much talk about meditation and that it is the only way to listen inward, but I think that when you do something that you love, whether it is to meditate, yoga, paint, walk your dog, ride or run, it is your opportunity to hear your inner voice . The one who says what you really like and value. The key is to listen and above all to trust what that voice is saying. Trust yourself, that you know best what is right for you.

Based on your values, the why is easier to find. My WHY statement is:
“I empower myself and the people around me so we can become the best people that we can be”.

Exercise WHY statement

To write your WHY statement, follow these guidelines:

  • Simple and clear
  • Only one sentence
  • Language you use yourself
  • Work both at work and in private
  • Write several until you find the right one

Safety and learning

To feel that your purpose is being fulfilled and developed, our sense of security and learning is important. The human instincts are the same today as they were in the stone-age and our brain is divided into three motivational systems. The model created by Paul Gilbert consists of the red threat system, the blue drive system and the green soothing system.

(more…)

X-team Silos Game – Découvrez comment fonctionne une équipe agile efficace

Written by

Équipes multidisciplinaires Agile

x-funktional teamLes équipes multidisciplinaires sont des équipes avec toutes les expertises néecessaires pour créer un produit et le mettre en production. Cependant, il ne suffit pas de rassembler un groupe de personnes différentes et de s’attendre à ce qu’elles agissent en équipe. Ce jeu essaie de montrer les conséquences du maintien d’une expertise et d’un rôle unique par les membres d’une équipe.

X-team silos game french

Instructions Préparatifs

Vous avez besoin de 48 morceaux de lego par jeu et par équipe, et ils doivent être dans 4 couleurs différentes, jaune, blanc, rouge et bleu. (more…)

Personal IKIGAI Canvas – A tool to facilitate personal growth to find happiness and the meaning of work

Written by

As leaders in the fast paced complex world of today you need to become a facilitators of growth. The ikigai canvas is such a tool that can be used to enable growth of people and in teams. It helps us see what makes us feel happy and what makes us grow as individuals, and if it is being done as a team activity, it helps us relate and understand others. When I created it I had in mind that it could be used in our professional life to coach people in their personal growth at work – and specifically to make them feel happy. Perhaps you can use it in your Agile team to facilitate this process, instead of having your yearly performance review 🙂

Ikigai canvas - free download

Download the free IKIGAI canvas here in high resolution (PDF) >

When work has meaning

I love when I get a new issue of the Harvard Business Review magazine, always inspiring and interesting, there is always lots of articles that grows my mind and gives me new perspectives. In the beginning of the summer, the issue focused on “When work has meaning”. One of the articles there made my brain think of the ikigai diagram that has been interesting me now the past 12 months or something. This connection in my brain made me starting to sketch on a canvas for personal development – perhaps something I could use for my self, as well as for us to use at Dandy People? (more…)

T-shaped Employees and how to grow it as an Agile Leader – one of the Patterns for successful Agile change

Written by

T-shape is about growing skills in people that might not be in within their core expert competence area. When coaching leaders, teams and organizations we’ve noticed that building T-shape is often a game changer that makes a big impact – but it might sometimes be more tricky than you think.

This is one of the 27 patterns for Successful Agile Change that you can download for free here >

When transforming to an Agile organization we often move from expert teams to cross functional teams. Growing t-shape is a way to enable the cross functional team to collaborate better and it helps them to work as a team instead of a group, meaning solving problems together instead of working as a mini-waterfall within the team. This helps the team become high performance and enables them to innovate and create better solutions.

Resistance to sharing competence and what to do about it

My experience is that organizations that have a strong expert culture may have more difficulties to become T-shape. Since you then might also need to change the culture from a hero culture to a team-playing culture, it can take some time. People might also struggle to keep their expert role since it makes them feel safe and perhaps it has also previously been the only way to make a career, get higher pay as well as also informal power. Changes might then be needed in how the structures are set up around roles and responsibilities before you start the coaching around T-shape.

In many organizations who want to enable high performance teams and T-shape, titels and roles are changed to simply “team members”, and instead we talk about competences, which is your T-shape. As a leader, you could support by help showing how the skill and performance of the team is more important than the expertise of individuals by perhaps celebrating as one team instead of highlighting individual performance.

Different leadership styles for developing skills in employees

In the Harvard Business Review I found this article that describes the research done on leaders and how they grow competence. According to their research there are 4 different leadership styles for developing skills in employees.

The different coaching styles of a leader: (more…)

Updated Free Agile Pattern Cards – Now with 5 more Patterns

Written by

Free Pattern cards for Agile Change - 5 new

Our popular free Pattern Cards for successful Agile Change are now updated with 5 more patterns, totally 27 cards.

So far over 500 downloads + handouts of 400 physical printed cards and reports from people using them shows they bring value and enable structured conversations in leadership teams no matter what type of organization.

Free Download of the Pattern Cards For Successful Agile Change (PDF) >

UPDATE:
– Stable Teams
– Reflection
– T-shaped People
– Distributed Decision Making
– Impediments Removal

Feel free to download and use them. Here you’ll also find examples of how to use them >

(more…)

Dags att kasta gamla synder på valborgsbrasan

Written by
  1. Idag på Valborgsmässoafton är det tradition att bränna upp det gamla och välkomna in det nya!

Det är i den andan jag själv vill se den artikel som Catrin Brodin tillsammans med ett tjugotal av oss som arbetar med förändringsledning har skrivit. Du hittar artikeln här. Vi sätter sökarljuset på vad som fungerar inom förändringsledning och vad som inte gör det – och helst borde ha slängts på valborgsbrasan redan för många år sen! Några konstigheter är det inte: Bristande stöd från ledningen, otydligt syfte och mål samt underskattning av hur stor insats det krävs för att förändra. Dessa fel återkommer lika envist som Valborgsafton självt.

Även i andra länder där det istället heter Walpurgisnacht eller Saint Walburga’s Eve hittar vi dessa problem. Två internationella undersökningar visar att nyckelfaktorerna för framgångsrik förändringsledning inte skiljer sig åt mycket eftersom det är samma utmaningar vi alla behöver hantera. IBM’s egen undersökning här ovan belyser vikten av ledarskap från de som sponsrar en förändring och en vision som delas av de som påverkas av en förändring. PROSCI som släppt sin Executive Summary of Best Practices – 2018 berättar att det nu är tionde undersökningen i rad där aktivt och synligt stöd för förändring från högsta ledningens sida toppar listan av framgångsfaktorer.

Kan en orsakerna bakom att det ändå brister vara att man underskattar komplexiteten i förändring och tror att det från ledningens sida räcker med att visa sitt stöd vid kick-off? Alla ni som använder agil metodik vet att det är ett ständigt utforskande och omprövande vartefter man lär sig nya saker. Kan det vara bra att ha ledningens stöd även längs med denna krokiga väg och inte bara i början? Dela gärna med dig dina tankar här nedan. Kom gärna och diskutera på något av våra gratis frukostseminarium om Agil Förändringsledning.

Presenting on Agile Days Instanbul 2018 – Customer Focus and an Agile Mindset to handle Complexity – Free Slides

Written by

I was very happy to get invited to Agile Days Istanbul as a speaker by my friend Ilyas Varol. The topic for the conference was Agile Leadership, and 500 curious participants joined.

Agile Days Istanbul Presentation

Ilyas har previously translated my Agile in a Nutshell to Turkish, and he told me he has during his trainings and talks here in Turkey probably been giving away hundreds of copies of the poster, making me a little bit famous i the Turkish Agile community… and making me just a little bit nervous 🙂

It was a great day with lots of interesting speakers and topics, as well as many great discussions. The conference had 3 tracks with both International speakers like  Tom Gilb, Joanne Perold and my self, and Turkish speakers. Turkcell with tales from their scaling adventure, with Chian Yildiz, Digital disruption & Leadership, with Gizem Moral Kunter and Assess your Leadership Mindset with Ilker Demirel to mention a few.

Information about the presentation

Organizations today need to find new ways to organize to faster deliver customer and business value. In this presentation I share with you some of the symptoms you might see if your’e not organized for complexity and without a customer focus, why this happens and what you can do about it.

Discover how you can get organized around customer value instead of in silos and around systems and how much more value and happiness you will get from this.

I also share some examples of activities and results from the clients we at Dandy People have been coaching the past years to do this transformation.

Target group: Curious Leaders, Management and Change Makers

This presentation in English was originally held at Agile Days Istanbul, April 2018, but its based on a Swedish presentation first presented at Sundsvall 42 in September 2017.

Flexibility in Agile and Activity based offices must be a perfect fit – or does it?

Written by

Agile team seatingThere is a an increasing trend in big companies and organizations to go Agile, and of course that is awesome in my opinion. What is really confusing though, is that many of the same companies and organizations also decide to change to activity based seating. This is really confusing in many ways, since it will bring contradictory behaviors than what you are looking for when working Agile, and in the short – and long run, make the company fail to go agile.

Recent posts in this series:

– Free Infographic  “Get seated for Agile”
– The Free Report “The Agile Activity Based Seating Report 2018”
– Free PP slides of the report
– Video of me presenting the report (Swedish)

The only conclusion I can do, is that there is not enough knowledge around how Agile seatings need to be – nor what the consequences of not being Agile when trying will be (costly and frustrating). Or perhaps it’s that the people that do the work (and know about this) and the people making these decisions are too far away from each other and don’t communicate in a good way. Either way, it’s a huge waste – and so unnecessary.

I have several times been contacted by people working in organizations where they have had Agile teams sitting and working together with good results – and out of the blue, usually over a weekend or over a holiday, their office space was changed in to activity based seating with clean desk – and clean wall policy. The team shows up on a Monday finding all their stuff that was put up on the walls in a cardboard box and their 2-3 computer screens gone… These people tell tales about how their colleagues went home after that day, refused to come back in weeks. Their delivery pace went down with below 50% of normal and quality of work and innovation went down the drain totally. Everything the team had fought for to build up was erased over night.

Flexibility in Agile and Activity based offices must be a perfect fit – or does it?

Organizations that decide to go with activity based offices probably have the best of intentions. I’m sure of that, people usually do. But I’m also sure they need better advisory. It might look as if the flexibility in both agile and activity based office works really well together (and this is an argument I’ve heard sales people for these solution use). And it might look like you will save a lot of money, not having as many seatings as before, and it might look like people will get to know each other a lot better when they move around every day, and you might think they will love their new updated beautiful workplace with special designed chairs for people who like to sit alone not seeing or being seen by any one else. But it´s all wrong – so wrong – at least if you want collaboration, innovation and high speed in your organization and culture. Flexibility is not always what you need after all. (more…)

Pattern Cards For Successful Agile Change – Free Download

Written by

Many times while coaching people we want to be able to quickly give people new perspectives, food for thought and bring people together around shared understandings and common goals. Thats why we created these pattern cards for successful Agile transformation, to enable engaging discussions. Please feel free to download and use them you too if you feel they can help you to create valuable dialogues too.

You can also purchase these decks of cards in our Online Shop >

EDIT: Updated Pattern Cards (May 8) with 5 additional patterns

– Stable Teams
– Reflection
– T-shaped People
– Distributed Decision Making
– Impediments Removal

Free Download of the Pattern Cards For Successful Agile Change (PDF) >

The different cards are visualizing patterns that we have seen to be the most important to succeed with Agile transformation and scaling Agile organizations.

patterns for successful Agile change

Suggestion of how to use the pattern cards

You can probably use them in many different ways. Here is how we have used them with leadership teams most of the times.

Group people in smaller groups, 3-5 people. Give them a time box of 10-15 min to prioritize the 5 cards they find would bring the most value to focus on in the next period (3 – 6 months perhaps). (more…)

Agile Leadership in a Nutshell – Free Poster

Written by

Let’s make 2018 the Year for a New Leadership

When Agile becomes something for the whole organization leadership needs to adapt to support Agile values and principles. Let the new year give energy to grow a leadership that supports an organization fit for the future. Let’s build an Agile Mindset that can change how leaders act in their daily activities, how they lead people and business, form organizations and governance.

French Translation of this poster >

Portuguese Translation of this poster >

Spanish Translation of this poster >

Free Download of the English Agile leadership in a Nutshell poster in High resolution (PDF)

EDIT 18/1: The poster is now updated to ver 1.1 with some spelling correction and some other great improvements. Thanks to all of you who contributed 😀

agile leadership poster low resolution

This poster is for me a way to visualize key concepts for how to lead with an Agile Mindset. At Dandy People we use it in our Agile coaching and training. We hope you as well can have use for it in your work. Please let us know if you have any feedback or questions on this poster.

To Lead in Complexity

The basis for Agile leadership is that we need to have a leadership that works in complexity – that support flexibility, transparency, collaboration and authonomy to enable the “workers” to make smart tactical and operative decisions to reach well defined impact goals. There are several common leadership concepts that support this kind of leadership;

  • Catalyst Leadership
  • Management 3.0
  • Systems Thinking
  • Servant Leadership

Three leadership Styles

In the poster there are three leadership styles visualized;

  • Catalyst Leadership (Best for Agile)
  • Achiever
  • Expert

The infographic contains numerous of illustrations to visualize some of the behaviours of each leadership style. I believe (without perhaps any support from research) that you can change leadership style to become a Catalyst Leader if  you make this decision, practice and work on it. I also believe that the environment we live and act in shapes how we behave and what we might see as good leadership.

Agile Mindset and what it might mean in Reality

When you understand that Agile actually is a way of thinking, a mindset, and not a process ot tools, it usually unlocks the “next level” in your game. But many leaders might find it quite difficult to put the Agile mindset to practice in reality. What does it really mean for governance? How do we build organizations, create good salary models, plan our projects, grow our staffs knowledge, build teams…? I have covered just a tiny part of that in this poster, the list could go on forever I know.

Need Coaching and Training for Agile Leadership?
Coaching Agile Leadership

If you need help to reshape the leadership in your organization to support your Agile journey, let us know and we’ll happily join forces with you to coach and train your managers and every one else who can become leaders. (more…)

Team Self Selection workshop

Written by

Introduction

Last blog I wrote about how we coached and supported the management group to identify next steps in their agile transformation. One of the actions was to change the teams to become Feature teams. Teams who have all needed competences to deliver end customer value.  This blog I will describe how I facilitated the Feature team self selection workshop.

Overall agenda for the workshop

Each step of the workshop is described in a few more words under each heading in the blogpost. I described the overall workshop process with a flip chart that you can see below to make the workshop process easy to understand for all participants.

  • Presentation of Self selection boundaries
  • Product Owner present example deliveries from the backlog
  •  All prepare their own “avatar” with skills
  • Collaboration and self selection
  • Each new team validate towards boundaries
  • Each team identify concerns with their team setup
  • Repeat 4-7 until we reach our goal “Good enough for now, Safe enough to try”
  • Short retrospective

Presentation of Self Selection boundaries

We had a few rules to guide them in their self selection and collaboration efforts to identify Feature teams.;

  • Do what is best for the company
  • Go for teams that is close to equal in size, experience and competence
  • We want self managing teams able to deliver on the example backlog items
  • We want teams who learn how to collaborate and share knowledge to develop as a team over time

(more…)

Are you a Curious Leader?

Written by

Agilitet utanför IT

For all Leaders interested in building an Agile mindset and enable organizations fit for complexity and innovation.

Are you a Curious Leader?

During the fall of 2017 we at Dandy People have set up a series of seminars and meetups for Curious Leaders, exploring different areas of interests in what an Agile mindset and an Agile Transformation could mean in other areas than what usually might be perceived as Agile by many mainly involving IT and development teams.

We call this series “Curious Leaders” and we invite all leaders who’s interested in growing that Agile mindset and finding new ways of building strong and flexible teams and organizations fit for humans that can manage complexity and enable every day innovation and quality. This applies in any business or service who are digitized within the organization and sell digital services or products.

What does this really mean for leadership, organization, recruiting, procurement, business strategies, marketing, projects, deliveries and our ways of working and processes?

Don´t miss this great opportunity to learn from the best and become an organization for the future!

Free Seminars and Meetups for Curious Leaders

December 7 – Next Sessionbeyond budgeting free

For Curious Leaders – Beyond Budgeting

With Bjarte Bogsnes, Senior Adviser at Statoil

Bjarte Bogsnes has a long international career, both in Finance and HR, and has been heading up the implementation of Beyond Budgeting at Statoil. Bjarte is Chairman of Beyond Budgeting Round Table (BBRT).

We welcome curious leaders to this exciting seminar in Beyond Budgeting! The well known speaker, author & teacher Bjarte Bogsnes, Senior Advisor at Statoil, shares his insights in dynamic forecasting, no traditional budgets, the KPI trap & Statoil’s “Ambition to Action” model. Beyond Budgeting is also known as “Agile Budgeting”.
(more…)

Agile transformation in a fail safe environment – Prototyping Teams

Written by

This is a story how we used a two day workshop with a management group to help them find out next steps needed in their Agile Transformation.

We knew the client well and had been working with them for some time. It was now time to discuss their progress and potential next steps.

Background

They had Scrum teams up and running, each team with their own product owner. Each team covering one part of their product. Earlier they had discussed and identified their challenges and problems so they where known and a good input to the workshop.

The Workshop

Overall agenda for these two days:

  • Purpose, why
  • Vision
  • Experiencing Feature teams
  • LeSS introduction
  • Guiding Principles for the product organization
  • Prototyping new Agile teams
  • Decisions and next steps

(more…)

The Innovation Map – Go from a Snail to a Shark – Free Download

Written by

To be able to stay focused on what really matters you need to have a clear strategy. When companies are small it is not always easy to have a clear strategy and act on it, but it is usually a lot easier than in big companies. To be able to do innovation and also stay customer focused even in big organisations a clear vision and strategy is essential. And every one in the organisation needs to understand the strategy.

There is a research done by Harvard Business School saying only 5% of the employees know about their business strategy. This is really scary for anyone running a business, and something everyone in a position to make strategic decisions needs to take really seriously. If people in the organisation don’t know about, or understand the vision or the strategy, how can they then make tactical and operational smart decisions making the business go in the right direction? There is only one answer to that question, they cant.

A Collaboration and Visualization tool to make Strategy Transparent

This fall I’ve been doing a talk around the topic “Customer Focused with an Agile Mindset” where I talk about how leaders of organizations need to grow an Agile mindset and make a strategic decision to become customer focused to be able to survive in the fast moving complex world of today, and how that can be done. The Innovation Map is one of the slides of my talk and I’ve been getting a lot of great feedback on it. Something many people feel is missing today is a holistic overview of the different strategies the organization have, and to be able to use it in their daily work making sure they are on the right track.

The Innovation Map is a great tool to be able to visualize what strategic initiatives the organisation have, or perhaps don’t have. Also it can be used to visualize the initiatives TOGETHER, ACROSS the organization. In this way when involving more people we can easier see the full picture of where we are going, and what we can do about it. By involving the people working front line with the customers knowing about their needs as well as those that can create the solutions to help the customers and not only management, you grow both an understanding of what the business strategy is – AND – you get their valuable knowledge of what the customer needs are and what can actually be possible to do or not do today and in the future. Then it will be up to management to prioritize the strategy based on different business scenarios.

Download the FREE Innovation Map Now (.pdf)

innovation map

Debt in any level will eat your business

(more…)

Agil transformation utanför IT – Kvällsevent för nyfikna ledare hos Dandy People

Written by

Agilitet utanför ITI veckan hade vi vårt första öppna kvällsevent på Dandy People med temat “Agil transformation utanför IT”. Ämnet engagerade många och platserna fylldes snabbt upp.

Gemensamt utforskade vi vad det innebär att vara Agil och när man har nytta av att agera Agilt. I små grupper fick deltagarna sedan bläddra i kortleken vi har skapat med mönster (patterns) för lyckat Agil transformation och välja de 5 som man trodde skulle skapa mest effekt i den egna organisationen. Det var inte helt lätt att välja bland de 20-tal korten, många reflekterade över hur olika dom hade valt, att det kunde skilja så mycket mellan olika bolag vad som behövde komma till för att möjliggöra ett Agilt arbetssätt.

Som avslutning diskuterade vi deltagarnas egna frågeställningar i en Lean Coffee och efter det gemensamt mingel. Det blev många givande och spännande diskussioner.

Stort tack alla som deltog och delade med sig av sina erfarenheter och frågeställningar. Vi hoppas vi ses på nästa event igen under hösten 🙂

Den här kvällen var ett litet smakprov på innehåll från Joel Ståhls kurs Agile Change Management.

Pattern Cards and feedback

Culture as Strategy – Dandy Friday at Dandy People

Written by

This Friday we had our first “Dandy Friday” with our team, continuing to build the best possible place to work together. We talked about our company culture and did an assessment together, finding out who we are and discussing how we feel about that. We have a human, collaboratively culture as well as a creative and innovative culture. We are fast in adapting to new things and external factors like our clients is equally important to us as how our employees are feeling and doing. We also have a start up culture and we want to go fast.

We also watched the Ted Talk (illustrated) with David Marquet, “Turning the ship around” and reflecting about leadership and how to become a Catalyst Leader. Catalyst Leader is a role at Dandy People since we want to mobilize brainpower in our Dandys and we want every one to grow and become leaders them selves, just like we want to help our clients in the same way. Only someone who are an Catalyst Leader can get the role.

Our strategy is to create the best culture possible. No other strategy is needed 🙂

If you haven’t watched the movie you should.

Here you can read about what we did at our conference using the Business Strategy & Tactics Dialogue Board:

The Lean Business Strategy & Tactics Dialogue Board – Free Download

Agile Change Management in a Nutshell – Free Poster

Written by

The updated version 1.1 of the poster “Agile Change Management in a Nutshell” is now available for free download! This poster is the latest addition to the “In a Nutshell” series!

The Agile Change Management in a Nutshell poster is available for free download here >

Portuguese >
Spanish >
You are welcome to share this link and print as many posters as you want.

Free Agile Change Management Poster

While many change management methodologies contain proven methods based on substantial experience and research, not enough is done to cater for the highly complex nature of change where you can’t simply “plan-and-execute” and get it right the first time. An iterative approach with rapid feedback and gradual learning is therefore suggested here.

Similarly, lean or agile methods risk being not deep enough if only focusing on basic PDCA. We want to include best practice in defining the problem to be solved together with assessment of the change capability of the people and organization going through the change. To assert that improvement has happened beyond a shadow of a doubt in a high-variation environments, statistical significance between baseline and new performance data should be established.

At Dandy People we have therefore combined the best parts of both approaches into what we label Agile Change Management and condensed it into one poster. At the center is the Agile Change Process which is made up of an outer circle representing a change that is needed. It contains both a people track and a system track as both dimensions are needed for change to happen quickly and ensure return on investment. The inner circle is the iterative discovery of what actually works in terms of bringing people and system to work in a new and improved way. The poster is based on concepts from Lean, Agile, DMAIC and the Standard by ACMP.

Change Management - Mia o Joel

Free to download, use and share

(more…)

The Lean Business Strategy & Tactics Dialogue Board – Free Download

Written by

This is a dialogue board, created to facilitate good discussions around business strategy and tactics in a startup. At Dandy People we are using it to start up our consulting business, but it can be used by any type of organisation, or part of an organisation that wants to improve their customer focus, culture, leadership and take action as a team.

Building in Illustrator

At Dandy people we like to build our new business in a way that involves and inspires the people in our organization. To facilitate the discussions we wanted to have on our first mini-conference 2 months after starting up our shop, and after hiring 2 new people, I did this Lean Business Strategy & Tactics Dialogue Board. Off course we had already done som strategy and tactics work already before we started our company, but we felt that we wanted to be transparent and bring our new Dandys onboard with the idea of the company to enable them to feel as involved and motivated as possible. And off course, they are smart and experienced people, so why shouldn’t they be able to help us improve and grow? And I can just say that it worked like a charm 😀

Free download of the board here (as high resolution PDF) >

The Lean Business Dialogue Board

Feel free to use the board if you want, also we would be happy to facilitate the workshops with you and your team if you feel a need for that. Thats kinda what we do at Dandy People 😀

The board consist of 3 areas:

    • Business Strategy
    • Culture and People
    • Tactics

(more…)

Undrar du om man kan upphandla Agilt inom LOU? Här har du svaret på under 3 minuter (video)

Written by

Den Agila upphandlingskonferensen Lyckade upphandlingar
Den 21a februari höll vi vår andra konferens, “Lyckade upphandlingar” för att sprida ljus över hur vi kan upphandla Agil utveckling även inom LOU. Förra våren anordnade vi (agilakontrakt.se) en konferens i Köpenhamn och nu var vi i Stockholm. Vi blev ganska precis 50 taggade personer, både jurister, kunder i offentlig sektor, folk från upphandlingsmyndigheten (yes!), leverantörer och konsulter som hade samlats för att bli inspirerade, dela med sig och ta del av erfarenheter och kunskap kring Agil upphandling.

Först vill jag bara säga att anledningen till att jag engagerar mig i den här frågan inte alls är att jag kan upphandling – eller LOU, men däremot har jag lång erfarenhet av hur man med Lean UX och Agil metodik skapar digitala tjänster och produkter som löser riktiga problem, och det är den möjligheten jag vill skapa – speciellt när det gäller stora komplexa lösningar där det verkar omöjligt för många i dag att göra rätt. Jag ser år ut och år in alldeles för många upphandlingar göras i dag i Sverige där man inte ger projektet eller programmet den möjligheten, möjligheten att hitta och förstå vad de verkliga behoven och problemen är och tillsammans lösa dom. Jag har själv blivit drabbad av den typen av projekt, även lyckats vända ett par av dom till att faktiskt få arbeta Agilt och leverera värde. Men det är frustrerande, väldigt frustrerande, och väldigt, väldigt kostsamt och onödigt. (more…)

Lean UX i Agila Team – Sluta bygg snabbt, bygg rätt och snabbt.

Written by

På grund av att många försöker få med “allt” I en IT-upphandling, är det endast 40% av det som byggs som gör nytta i digitala tjänster och produkter. Lean UX hjälper oss att bara bygga de 40% i stället för allt.

Att arbeta med Lean UX är ett bra sätt att kunna identifiera vad vi behöver bygga, och prioritera rätt löpande. Men hur funkar det egentligen med Lean UX och Agila team?

Mina nästa kurser inom ämnet under våren 2016: https://crisp.se/kurser/kurstyper/product-discovery-med-lean-ux

Jeff Gothelfs kurs för managers i Lean UX som kommer under våren 2016: https://crisp.se/kurser/kurstyper/lean-ux-in-the-enterprise

Upphandling med Lean UX och Agila kontrakt för upphandling med minskad waste: https://crisp.se/kurser/kurstyper/certifierad-agil-bestallare

Vill du att jag kommer och föreläser på ditt företag, eller hos din kund? Hör av dig!

Related Training
Shopping basket
Our Trainings
Gratis Seminarium – Med kunden i fokus och ett Agilt mindset – Favorit i repris
Gratis Seminarium – Med kunden i fokus och ett Agilt mindset – Favorit i repris
Target Group: Ledning (oavsett nivå eller avdelning), Alla som vill arbeta kundfokuserat, UXare som vill hitta effektivare sätt att arbeta tillsammans
Teachers: Mia Kolmodin
Läs mer och boka din plats