In my time in corporate America, I’ve come to learn that many of the largest companies in the world are frighteningly awash in operational, security, financial, and decision-making problems. There is a shocking lack of data- and evidence-based choices being made at all levels of organizations, but especially at the top - where decision makers are, by definition, furthest removed from gemba and have the least access to primary source material. The thousands of internal challenges and opportunities for improvement can be severely daunting. Leaders with the best of intentions are under constant and immense pressure to solve all of these problems all at once, and they struggle to decide not just on where to start but where the finish line may be. As a result, we set aside our own advice and valuable practices in an effort to do something, ANYTHING, about the immensity and urgency of the...

Continuing the series on “Stewarding Emergence”, today I wanted to cover one of the more common obstructions to emergence - inequity.

If you’re unfamiliar with inequity (or equity), the popular illustration of kids looking over a fence will probably do it more justice than any words I can muster.

In the context of emergence, inequity is both limiting and useful. You can probably guess how it is limiting - fewer voices, fewer ideas, less diversity, less innovation. Fewer and less sound bad, but it’s important to remember that inequity doesn’t prevent emergence - something will emerge. It may be a dictatorship, it may be a revolution, it may be an echo chamber, it may be the most innovative idea the one person able to participate has ever had, it could even be the most amazing idea in the universe.

Inequity is an obstruction because it reduces your odds of achieving a novel...

Most investors in “agile transformations” dramatically underestimate the extent to which cultural change is necessary to achieve the outcomes they imagine. Culture change is the greatest limiting factor of agility. Agile communities and practices lift the rug under which organizations sweep their workflows, behaviors, and beliefs, point to challenges and ask: “Will you change your culture here?” Let’s look at some examples…

There are 1,000 people in Department A. It fits the “command and control” stereotype perfectly. Its leader has established a strong chain of command, and its culture works hard to maintain and reinforce the structural integrity of the chain. The leader has chosen agility as a strategy for generating more innovation. Agilists quickly lift the rug, point to the conduit of ideas which flow through 1 person at the top, and ask: “Will you change your culture here? If...

As a friend was facilitating in our last dojo, I sensed we were getting longer and longer grace periods added to our timeboxes. Through a quick check-in, we discussed what prompts a facilitator to be overly cautious with timeboxes. It’s a common fear - fear of shutting down “good” conversations, fear of interrupting, fear of disappointing participants who may miss out or not get to contribute, etc. What struck me as a participant was that we needed the timebox in that moment to enable emergence for us.

I’m defining “emergence” in this context as "the properties or outcomes of a convening group that cannot be predicted or created in advance”. Our dojo had never come together as a dojo before. While all of us work together and often closely, we have not had this intentional, focused space of learning, sharing, and being with each other. Our high level of safety as a group was still...

My friends and I have started a dojo. What that means and to what ends, we are still imagining. Most are new to the concept, though I have a fair amount of experience hosting, facilitating, and participating in dojos. Leading up to our first meeting, we knew we wanted to have a few consistent themes:

• Facilitation practice (made possible with liberal use of Liberating Structures)
• Topics that relate to our work (agile coaching - in its broadest possible terms)
• Interactive experiences that allow everyone to learn, share, and practice each session

In our first meeting, we hoped to define our intentions better. I had planned to offer the Purpose to Practice (P2P) technique sprinkled with 1, 2, 4, All, with each dojo participant having the opportunity to practice facilitating the group using 1, 2, 4, All for a particular segment of P2P, but I didn’t have a plan for how to begin and I...

This post will be a little different than previous posts. I’ve decided to move away from longer-form articles (1,000+ word range) to more digestible and insightful articles in the <500 word range in an attempt to encourage my posting more frequently. Despite that last sentence, I’m also trying to be more concise in my writing.

A key principle in agile software development is committing your code early and often. It helps you validate your ideas more quickly and at lower risk, since each idea is smaller and tested before committing. It also helps others on your development team integrate your changes more easily. The result is a better, more stable, more resilient codebase for everyone. It has dawned on me these could be equally valuable concepts and outcomes for this site.

As a result of this new approach, many ideas won’t be fully fleshed out, won’t represent my current...

Feedback is hard. For everyone involved.

Humans, as it happens, are notoriously worse at feedback than our friends the empaths and telepaths. I know that’s true because you can’t disprove it; and, if you ask me, you’re starting to sound a little judgmental about the whole thing already. Of course, now I feel bad because I just made a bunch of probably unfair assumptions about you when all I was really trying to do was share my opinion, which I know doesn’t matter but I like to feel appreciated sometimes. And, now I haven’t heard anything else you’ve said because all I can hear is my guilt, disappointment, and anger.

So, awesome start to this article on feedback…

“Don’t walk behind me; I may not lead. Don’t walk in front of me; I may not follow. Walk beside me and just be my friend.” - Anonymous

An old story suggests that Sigmund Freud used to walk with patients in the pre-couch...

If you’ve spent any time in management, corporate training, or pretty much anything associated with the “agile” label, you’ve heard about servant leadership. I believe it started out with the best of intentions. Something about considering the people you lead - their values, health, growth, and success. If we look at the Greenleaf origin story (Herman Hesse’s novel Journey to the East), it stems from an unassuming servant named Leo. He was just one servant of a league of servants on a journey. It wasn’t until he disappeared one day that the other servants realized he was much more to them than just a peer or colleague - he was their leader. Without Leo, all the other servants deserted each other and their journey. As if to emphasize the point, Leo doesn’t even show up until 20+ pages into Hesse’s book.

What images come to mind when you think of servants or followers? Maybe the people...

Imagine you’re a student in the Pythagorean School in 500 BC. When you’re not frolicking in the waves of the Ionian Sea, enjoying some ouzo and dolma for dinner, or carefully tracing a diagram of a lyre to calculate its exact volume and resonance, you come upon a profound discovery: the world is round.

That is, it’s not flat. It’s definitely not flat. Based on everything you know about geometry, trigonometry, and physics, whatever else the world may be or was that day, it’s definitely not and wasn’t flat. Pretty exciting stuff! For one, you can collect on your longstanding bet with Skepticles and maybe rub his nose in it a little bit. Two, you have established a new fact in the world, which doesn’t happen very often when you think about it.

But wait… did you really establish a fact?

Perception and facts are tricky things. They are not mutually exclusive, but they are...