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It is essentially re-wording an assumption or set of assumptions in a way that is put more like a question, or something that needs to be tested, eg. we believe this particular set of assumptions to be true, and we will know if we are right if X happens.

What is organizational agility in 2022? After a year of learning, this updated definition starts where it often helps to start — with what agility is not. It's not the agile industrial complex. It's not a single vendor transforming the organization. It's not re-labeling what you already do, choosing predictability over uncertainty, or old-fashioned micro-management dressed up in new clothes. As Klaus Leopold puts it, "agility is not a team sport; it is a company sport." Pithy one-liners like "harnessing change for competitive advantage" leave too much room for interpretation, so this piece offers something more substantive: a working definition that captures what organizational agility looks like (constructive collaboration between people with diverse perspectives), what it feels like (more humanity, authenticity, leadership, engagement, and care for current and future revenues), and how each of those breaks down into concrete behaviors. Treat it as a template — modify, delete, resequence, and clarify what agility means for your context.

What is organizational agility, really? It's a question people throw around constantly without aligning on what the words actually mean. This piece pushes past pithy one-liners ("an organization's ability to harness change for competitive advantage") to offer something more substantive: a working definition that captures what real organizational agility looks like, feels like, and what it's not (in a word — bs). It's about creating an adaptable organization that drives disruption through more effectiveness, more frequency-of-impact, more flow, less drag, and sustainability of work. It feels like more humanity, authenticity, leadership, engagement, and current-and-future-revenues — each of those broken down into concrete behaviors. Plus an honest reflection on the gap between executives understanding delivery problems (70% of people convinced) and actually fixing them (20% convinced), and why "we're already agile" is the death knell for real change.

We talk constantly about "maximizing value" in agility — but what actually is value? This post draws sharp lines between value and the things often mistaken for it (inputs, activities, unreleased outputs), explores the multiple perspectives value can flow from, and explains why forecasting value is always relative, context-sensitive, and only truly realized when something gets used.

A direct message to executives: you already know there are many reasons to pursue agility — but kicking the can down the road, diluting its effects, or arranging agility within each function won't get you there. Complexity calls for simplicity, not best practice. So why not inspire your people to move with you?

What got you here won't get you there. Marshall Goldsmith's line cuts to the heart of why executives need a different playbook for the 2020s than the one that guided managers a century ago. Everyone has heard the stories of firms that got disrupted out of business — and as W. Edwards Deming put it, "survival is optional." This piece offers five tips for leaders who want to actually let agility take root: be customer-centric and look hard enough to find the problems (naked transparency is ugly, but if there are no problems, you're not looking); don't impose agility, because installed agility without continuous improvement isn't agility anyway; keep the plumbing clean by treating every work item as a bet, making small parallel bets, and finishing before starting; be careful with measurement (and consider how you'd measure the number of inspired people); and invite people in instead of telling them what to do. Be ruthless about value, compassionate about people.

What is organizational agility? After getting debugged by attendees at a PAL-E workshop in London, this piece offers two evolving definitions — a non-climate-change version and a climate-change version — to capture what agility looks like, feels like, and aims to do. Both share a core: the ability to drive disruption through more effectiveness, more frequency-of-impact, more quality, more learning, fewer impediments, more flow, more efficiency, and more sustainability. Both are about small cognitively-diverse cross-skilled cross-functional teams. Both feel like more invitation and less imposition, more sincerity, more psychological safety, leaders embracing uncertainty, and (yes) more fun. The climate-change version goes further — adding caring about planet earth, shared purpose that isn't all about customers and money, and engagement with society itself. A required skillset for the 21st century, regardless of specialty or function.

Why do so many executives struggle to genuinely embrace agility — and why does so much Scrum and Kanban end up sub-optimal as a result? This post introduces a five-step journey for 21st-century executive leadership, from "apprentice" to "custodian-of-the-culture," and argues that change agents need to stop preaching, start nudging, and meet executives exactly where they are.