Business Transformation Requires Transformational Leaders
Leadership and teaming skills are front and center in times of rapid change. Meet today’s constant disruption head on with expert guidance in leadership, business strategy, transformation, and innovation. Whether the disruption du jour is a digitally-driven upending of traditional business models, the pandemic-driven end to business as usual, or the change-driven challenge of staffing that meets your transformation plans—you’ll be prepared with cutting edge techniques and expert knowledge that enable strategic leadership.
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Eric Willeke’s look at whether we’ve missed a turn somewhere on the path. Perhaps we need to gene-splice some deliberate characteristics into our next incarnation of Agile. Forget whether we’re picking the right approach: Are we asking the right questions? Are we even asking questions? Do we know what we want to be? Are we even Agile for the right reasons?
Matt Ganis, Michael Ackerbauer, and Nicholas Cariello tee up our CBTJ discussion directly from where the “What will it take?” question leaves off. They look at the challenges and missteps associated with Agile, beginning with adoption, which relies on expectation setting. And there’s no expectation setting without education. Can it be that simple? Occam’s razor says, “Probably.”
Cutter Consortium Senior Consultant Masa K. Maeda schools us in some hard-hitting, data-driven food for (evolutionary) thought. He helps us understand what we should be looking for when considering an agility path. It’s no simple checklist or algorithm. Maeda’s outline makes us take a holistic look at our environment; at our choice of primordial soup, as it were. The good news is that we are not completely afloat in the flotsam of the universe. We can choose how we evolve.
This CBTJ issue takes us on an evolutionary journey of Agile. In a rather normalized bell curve, we start with fundamentals and progress through more advanced concepts. We then ease back with practical steps forward and wrap up with a cautionary send-off. The good news is that you’re free to take the journey, or wait for the asteroid. Your call.
The COVID-19 pandemic has altered the risk landscape for businesses around the globe. Enterprises are learning firsthand whether the business resilience and business continuity plans they put in place are proving successful or not. In light of this crisis, it’s crucial now more than ever to reevaluate your risk management process and ensure you are well prepared for what may lie ahead. As an executive, this involves adapting your leadership and facing the current crisis head-on with a proactive approach to risk management.
Jeff Doolittle helps us to set out on our own path to disruption. He suggests the most drastically disruptive action: don’t do Agile. At the very least, don’t do Agile the way too many others are doing Agile. Doolittle invokes the same line of thinking that started our thought experiment to begin with — what has Agile become? Has it grown in unintended ways? Have we lost what it is supposed to be? What else is there if not Agile? Should we completely abandon Agile? Wouldn’t that be disruptive!
Bob Galen picks up on this issue's evolution theme and goes back to basics. When pursuing Agile, which comes first: the chicken or the egg? Clearly not making breakfast, Galen takes aim at whether teams or leadership “goes Agile” first. He gives us a taste for what it must look like to have teams come first and what seasonings to pepper leadership with so that leadership and teams can be “Agile-y” effective together.
“How can I tell that they’re working if I can’t see them?” It is a common complaint, based on a centuries-old style of working that we now need to move past. My rejoinder usually is, “When you CAN see them, how do you know they’re not shopping Amazon or playing solitaire?” But, in the days of unplanned, unusual work from home (WFH), this question deserves a closer look. In this Advisor, I’ll make use of decades of remote working, and managing remote workers, in the IT industry, but these same principles apply to many kinds of work.