Podcasts about beyond budgeting

Welcome back to Our Agile Tales as we continue our conversation with Bjarte Bogsnes, exploring case studies from his latest book, This Is Beyond Budgeting. The book distills nearly three decades of experience challenging traditional budgeting, targets, and control-based management.In this final episode of the series, we discuss with Bjarte what distinguishes business models (external interaction) from management models (internal organization). He introduces the Viable Map, inspired by the Business Model Canvas, to help management teams assess their management model against the 12 Beyond Budgeting principles, considering business environment from SUSO (simple, understood, stable, orderly) to VUCA and employees on a Theory X–Y scale. He emphasizes the need for coherence between values/purpose-based leadership claims and often “fixed” budgeting processes, calling mismatches “poisonous gaps.” He argues listed companies can adopt beyond budgeting, as markets want sustainable performance, and recommends starting by separating budget purposes—targets, forecasts, and resource allocation—implemented in parallel. He contrasts beyond budgeting's enterprise-wide focus with Agile's origins in software, shares disappointing and rewarding client experiences, and points listeners to bbrt.org and key books.Key topics and timestamps00:00 Welcome and Guest Intro01:09 Business vs Management Models01:59 Viable Map Framework05:16 Assessing Coherence Gaps08:02 Empowerment Needs Process Change09:40 Markets Wall Street Myths12:08 Why Beyond Budgeting Sticks14:34 Where to Start Separating Budgets17:45 Pilots vs Big Bang19:12 Disappointing Transformation Story21:20 Most Rewarding Successes23:06 Learn More About Beyond Budgeting25:20 Wrap Up and Next SeriesAbout Bjarte BogsnesBjarte Bogsnes is Chairman of the Beyond Budgeting Round Table, a former global finance executive, and a leading thinker in management innovation. He is the author of Implementing Beyond Budgeting and This Is Beyond Budgeting, showing how organizations can replace rigid, calendar-driven systems with models built on trust, transparency, and adaptability — creating companies that are both more responsive and more human.Follow Bjarte at:https://www.linkedin.com/in/bjarte-bogsnes-41557910/Music: https://www.purple-planet.comVisit us at https://www.ouragiletales.com/about

Von 0 auf 250 Millionen Euro Umsatz in zwölf Jahren - profitabel. Dr. Marco Vietor erklärt, wie Audibene mit Beyond Budgeting statt klassischer Jahresbudgets gesteuert wird: tagesgenaue Marketing-Entscheidungen, Grenzertragsanalysen statt Durchschnittswerten, und Mitarbeiter, die eigenverantwortlich auf Basis von Kennzahlen entscheiden. Was Sie lernen: Wie dynamische Steuerung ohne Chaos funktioniert  Warum Business-KPIs ohne Finanzkennzahlen in die Irre führen  Welche Systeme und welches Mindset Beyond Budgeting voraussetzt  Was andere Unternehmen übernehmen können, ohne gleich das komplette Framework zu implementieren  Für wen:   CFOs, Controller und Geschäftsführer in wachstumsstarken Unternehmen Weitere Ressourcen: Marco Vietor, Alexandra Katthagen: „Dynamische Unternehmenssteuerung bei Audibene", Controlling & Management Review 4/2025 https://www.springerprofessional.de/dynamische-unternehmenssteuerung-bei-audibene/51394844

Welcome back to Our Agile Tales as we continue our conversation with Bjarte Bogsnes, exploring case studies from his latest book, This Is Beyond Budgeting. The book distills nearly three decades of experience challenging traditional budgeting, targets, and control-based management.In this episode, we discuss with Bjarte  how target setting evolved at Equinor from 2005 onward through separating target setting, forecasting, and resource allocation, including allowing indicators without targets and emphasizing team-set, often more ambitious goals and relative “reality targets” versus peers. Bjarte says Beyond Budgeting adoption spans many industries, is stronger in Europe, and is equally relevant in the public sector, citing Norway's NAV contact centers eliminating cost budgets and a 12,000-inhabitant municipality using self-managed teams, continuous decisions, and stakeholder alignment while still submitting an external “budget.” He argues budgets embed distrust and predictability assumptions, making true agility impossible without Beyond Budgeting, challenges absolute annual financial targets, and advocates relative targets, holistic evaluation, and common incentives. Finally, he describes surveys by Boston Consulting Group and Bain & Company linking Beyond Budgeting to benefits like higher sales and leading financial planning practices.Key topics and timestamps00:00 Welcome and Guest Intro01:06 Evolving Targets at Equinor03:39 Who Adopts Beyond Budgeting05:14 Public Sector Breakthroughs05:41 NAV Pilot No Cost Budgets07:10 Municipality Self Managed Teams10:00 Funding Constraints Not Earmarks14:24 Why Budgets Block Agility18:24 No Budget No Targets22:09 Forecasting and Ambition23:28 Consulting Surveys and Benefits27:16 Wrap Up and Next EpisodeAbout Bjarte BogsnesBjarte Bogsnes is Chairman of the Beyond Budgeting Round Table, a former global finance executive, and a leading thinker in management innovation. He is the author of Implementing Beyond Budgeting and This Is Beyond Budgeting, showing how organizations can replace rigid, calendar-driven systems with models built on trust, transparency, and adaptability — creating companies that are both more responsive and more human.Follow Bjarte at:https://www.linkedin.com/in/bjarte-bogsnes-41557910/Music: https://www.purple-planet.comVisit us at https://www.ouragiletales.com/about

Von 0 auf 250 Millionen Euro Umsatz in zwölf Jahren - profitabel. Dr. Marco Vietor erklärt, wie Audibene mit Beyond Budgeting statt klassischer Jahresbudgets gesteuert wird: tagesgenaue Marketing-Entscheidungen, Grenzertragsanalysen statt Durchschnittswerten, und Mitarbeiter, die eigenverantwortlich auf Basis von Kennzahlen entscheiden. Was Sie lernen: Wie dynamische Steuerung ohne Chaos funktioniert  Warum Business-KPIs ohne Finanzkennzahlen in die Irre führen  Welche Systeme und welches Mindset Beyond Budgeting voraussetzt  Was andere Unternehmen übernehmen können, ohne gleich das komplette Framework zu implementieren  Für wen:   CFOs, Controller und Geschäftsführer in wachstumsstarken Unternehmen Weitere Ressourcen: Marco Vietor, Alexandra Katthagen: „Dynamische Unternehmenssteuerung bei Audibene", Controlling & Management Review 4/2025  https://www.springerprofessional.de/dynamische-unternehmenssteuerung-bei-audibene/51394844

Welcome back to Our Agile Tales as we continue our conversation with Bjarte Bogsnes, exploring case studies from his latest book, This Is Beyond Budgeting. The book distills nearly three decades of experience challenging traditional budgeting, targets, and control-based management.In this episode, we ask why Silicon Valley firms rarely appear in Beyond Budgeting case studies; Bjarte posits that these companies excel at technology innovation but fear management innovation, sometimes reinforced by IPO-focused CFOs, though being public is not a true barrier (Many Beyond Budgeting adopters are listed on Wall Street.) He explains Beyond Budgeting can improve performance in both good and tough times and cites Handelsbanken's long-term stability. The discussion covers Morningstar's self-management and the need for enterprise-wide coherence, then Haier's radical micro-enterprise model and rapid evolution.Finally, Bjarte details Equinor's (formerly Statoil) beyond budgeting journey since 2005 via “Ambition to Action,” integrating strategy, risk, actions/forecasting, indicators, and HR with a 50/50 split between “what” and “how,” emphasizing transparency, event-driven cadence, decentralized ownership, and holistic performance evaluation.Key topics and timestamps00:00 Welcome01:05 Why Silicon Valley Lags in Management Innovation04:11 Public Markets and Budgets04:53 Boom Bust and Stability06:40 Morningstar and Self Management08:48 Haier Radical Micro Enterprises13:00 Equinor Beyond Budgeting Origins16:32 Ambition to Action Framework20:11 Alignment Cadence and Transparency25:37 Holistic Performance Evaluation28:15 Wrap Up and ConclusionAbout Bjarte BogsnesBjarte Bogsnes is Chairman of the Beyond Budgeting Round Table, a former global finance executive, and a leading thinker in management innovation. He is the author of Implementing Beyond Budgeting and This Is Beyond Budgeting, showing how organizations can replace rigid, calendar-driven systems with models built on trust, transparency, and adaptability — creating companies that are both more responsive and more human.Follow Bjarte at:https://www.linkedin.com/in/bjarte-bogsnes-41557910/Music: https://www.purple-planet.comVisit us at https://www.ouragiletales.com/about

Welcome back to Our Agile Tales as we continue our conversation with Bjarte Bogsnes, exploring case studies from his latest book, This Is Beyond Budgeting. The book distills nearly three decades of experience challenging traditional budgeting, targets, and control-based management.In this episode, Bjarte discusses David Lloyd Clubs' Beyond Budgeting shift starting in October 2019 and how it helped during the 2020 pandemic through greater local autonomy and faster, more continuous funding decisions. He explains the core change of separating budget purposes into distinct processes for target setting, forecasting (as non-binding forecasts), and resource allocation, with more local decision-making and a revised cadence beyond annual budgets. Bogsnes addresses budget gaming by isolating it to target setting and using relative performance and transparency to encourage improvement while avoiding naming-and-shaming, emphasizing holistic performance evaluation when measures are absolute. The conversation also covers beyond budgeting relevance to the public sector via a pilot in Sogndal Municipality, Norway, and TDR Capital's role as a private equity owner encouraging portfolio companies to adopt beyond budgeting, including examples like Stonegate and BPP.Key topics and timestamps00:00 Welcome01:06 Pandemic Autonomy Lessons02:54 Separating Budget Purposes06:11 Funding Autonomy And Cadence07:28 Stopping Gaming With Benchmarks12:31 Transparency Without Shaming14:24 All 12 Principles In Practice15:05 Beyond Budgeting In Government20:04 Collaboration And Member Impact22:45 TDR Capital's Playbook25:41 How To Start The Journey27:15 Private Equity Differentiator28:11 Wrap Up and ConclusionAbout Bjarte BogsnesBjarte Bogsnes is Chairman of the Beyond Budgeting Round Table, a former global finance executive, and a leading thinker in management innovation. He is the author of Implementing Beyond Budgeting and This Is Beyond Budgeting, showing how organizations can replace rigid, calendar-driven systems with models built on trust, transparency, and adaptability — creating companies that are both more responsive and more human.Follow Bjarte at:https://www.linkedin.com/in/bjarte-bogsnes-41557910/Music: https://www.purple-planet.comVisit us at https://www.ouragiletales.com/about

Welcome back to Our Agile Tales as we continue our conversation with Bjarte Bogsnes, exploring case studies from his latest book, This Is Beyond Budgeting. The book distills nearly three decades of experience challenging traditional budgeting, targets, and control-based management.In this episode, we examine Beyond Budgeting through two case studies: Miles and David Lloyd Clubs.Miles is a Norwegian IT consulting company founded in reaction to command-and-control micromanagement. It operates without budgets and with minimal KPIs, guided by an evergreen financial ambition of maintaining a profit margin above 10%  without cascaded targets or bonus links. Employees enjoy wide autonomy, with transparency as the primary control mechanism: purchases and training costs are posted on the intranet for shared learning.Miles places strong emphasis on recruitment and cultural fit, taking at least ten references and interviewing for beliefs, values, and attitudes. Employees assess technical skills and can veto candidates. The company invests heavily in social cohesion, including spouse-only events, and practices servant leadership, with the CEO retitling himself “Chief Servant Leader.” Bjarte notes that Miles was essentially “born beyond budgeting” and has sustained its principles through growth by consciously resisting bureaucracy, including internal leadership succession.The second case study, David Lloyd Clubs, a high-end UK gym chain with around 300 clubs, represents one of the fastest Beyond Budgeting implementations Bjarte has seen: launched in October 2019 and fully budget-free by January 2021. The model helped the company not only survive COVID-19 but emerge stronger.Key practices included increased club autonomy, strong internal benchmarking, transparency, and local involvement in KPI selection. Central target setting was reduced, with emphasis on relative performance rather than detailed annual targets tied to bonuses.Ownership by private equity firm TDR Capital supported the shift, focusing on leadership and management improvement rather than cost-cutting.Bjarte attributes the speed to strong owner backing, a capable controller leading the effort, and a supportive CEO, while noting that mindset change takes longer than process change. HR played a key role in shifting performance evaluation toward relative measures and maintaining shared club-level bonuses instead of individual incentives.Key topics and timestamps00:00 Welcome01:07 Miles Overview02:47 Transparency Over Budgets04:15 Recruiting and Culture06:05 Servant Leadership06:46 Born Beyond Budgeting10:37 Sustaining Beliefs at Scale12:23 David Lloyd Clubs13:09 Rapid Rollout13:56 Benchmarking and Rhythm17:41 Why It Worked20:53 Relative Performance24:45 Transparency and Learning26:47 HR and Rewards28:15 Results and ConclusionAbout Bjarte BogsnesBjarte Bogsnes is Chairman of the Beyond Budgeting Round Table, a former global finance executive, and a leading thinker in management innovation. He is the author of Implementing Beyond Budgeting and This Is Beyond Budgeting, showing how organizations can replace rigid, calendar-driven systems with models built on trust, transparency, and adaptability — creating companies that are both more responsive and more human.Follow Bjarte at:https://www.linkedin.com/in/bjarte-bogsnes-41557910/Music: https://www.purple-planet.comVisit us at https://www.ouragiletales.com/about

Welcome back to Our Agile Tales, where we continue our conversation with Bjarte Bogsnes to go over case studies from his latest book, This Is Beyond Budgeting. His new book distills nearly three decades of real-world experience challenging traditional budgeting, targets, and control-based management.In this episode of 'Our Agile Tales,' we welcome back Bjarte Bogsnes, Chairman of Beyond Budgeting Round Table, to explore the principles and practices of Beyond Budgeting. Bogsnes shares his extensive experience and insights on how Beyond Budgeting can drive performance by empowering employees and promoting coherence across management processes. The conversation delves into Handelsbanken's unique approach to employee bonuses, performance reviews, promotions, and training, highlighting the bank's emphasis on long-term employee development and consistent management philosophies. This episode offers valuable lessons for companies looking to create more adaptive and human organizations.Key topics and approximate timestamps00:00 Introduction to Our Agile Tales01:20 Beyond Budgeting and Performance Reviews01:54 The Common Bonus Scheme03:29 Coherence in Management Processes05:46 Handling Non-Performance07:48 KPIs and Performance Enabling09:59 Sales Commissions and Career Paths16:49 Training and Onboarding at Handelsbanken20:58 Final Thoughts on Handelsbanken25:02 Episode Conclusion About Bjarte BogsnesBjarte Bogsnes is the Chairman of the Beyond Budgeting Round Table, a former global finance executive, and a leading thinker in management innovation. He is the author of Implementing Beyond Budgeting and This Is Beyond Budgeting, where he distills nearly three decades of real-world experience challenging traditional budgeting, targets, and control-based management.Bjarte's work demonstrates how organizations can replace rigid, calendar-driven systems with models built on trust, transparency, and adaptability. The result is creating companies that are not only more responsive but also more human.You can follow Bjarte Bogsnes at https://www.linkedin.com/in/bjarte-bogsnes-41557910/Our music is from https://www.purple-planet.com.Visit us at https://www.ouragiletales.com/about

Welcome back to Our Agile Tales, where we continue our conversation with Bjarte Bogsnes to go over case studies from his latest book, This Is Beyond Budgeting. His new book distills nearly three decades of real-world experience challenging traditional budgeting, targets, and control-based management.In this episode, we discuss the ingrained corporate budgeting practices, their inefficacies, and how to shift towards more adaptive, event-driven planning. The conversation also delves into the performance management debate and examines Handelsbanken's exceptional model, a bank that has successfully operated without traditional budgets, targets, or individual bonuses since the 1970s. Bjarte emphasizes the importance of separating accounting from forward-looking planning and highlights the impact of empowering employees and fostering transparency in achieving organizational success.Key topics and approximate timestamps00:00 Introduction to Agile Tales01:08 Challenges with Traditional Budgeting02:04 Separating Accounting from Forward Planning03:49 The Importance of Dynamic Management05:47 Rethinking Performance Management09:42 Case Study: Handelsbanken13:50 The Origins of Handelsbanken's Approach17:59 The Evolution of Beyond Budgeting20:46 Handelsbanken's Unique Management Model29:30 Episode ConclusionAbout Bjarte BogsnesBjarte Bogsnes is the Chairman of the Beyond Budgeting Round Table, a former global finance executive, and a leading thinker in management innovation. He is the author of Implementing Beyond Budgeting and This Is Beyond Budgeting, where he distills nearly three decades of real-world experience challenging traditional budgeting, targets, and control-based management.Bjarte's work demonstrates how organizations can replace rigid, calendar-driven systems with models built on trust, transparency, and adaptability. The result is creating companies that are not only more responsive but also more human.You can follow Bjarte Bogsnes at https://www.linkedin.com/in/bjarte-bogsnes-41557910/Our music is from https://www.purple-planet.com.Visit us at https://www.ouragiletales.com/about

Welcome to a new season of Our Agile Tales. We have brought back Bjarte Bogsnes, Chairman of Beyond Budgeting Round Table, and is a popular international business speaker and Beyond Budgeting coach. He is an award-winning author and long-time champion of more adaptive human organizations. In this series of episodes, Bjarte reflects on 25 years of management innovation and the evolution of Beyond Budgeting far beyond its financial origins.Our episode starts with a refresher on what Beyond Budgeting is, and why it is so often misunderstood as "just a finance thing." From there, we explore how deeply traditional management assumptions shape behavior, trust, and decision-making inside organizations. Bjarte uses metaphors, real-world examples, and decades of experience to explain why many well-intended Agile and Lean transformations stall or fail if they don't address and rethink the management processes. We dive into Theory X and Theory Y, the hidden damage caused by fixed targets and calendar-driven planning, and how separating targets, forecasts, and resource allocation can fundamentally change behavior. Throughout the episode, Bjarte makes the case that true business agility requires coherence and alignment between leadership principles and management systems. Without this alignment, successful long-term transformations will not be achieved.Key topics and approximate timestamps00:00 – Introduction to Our Agile Tales01:52 – Why Beyond Budgeting is not about finance—and why the name still matters04:30 – Challenging traditional management assumptions: trust and predictability07:10 – Leadership principles vs. management processes: where companies break coherence10:00 – Why Agile and Lean need Beyond Budgeting to scale at the enterprise level13:21 – Theory X and Theory Y: how beliefs about people shape management models16:40 – The problem with combining targets, forecasts, and resource allocation18:30 – Gaming, sandbagging, and unintended consequences of budgeting systems20:24 – What's wrong with traditional targets—and how relative targets change behavior23:10 – Moving from calendar-driven planning to business- and event-driven rhythms26:00 – Continuous decision-making as a Beyond Budgeting version of continuous delivery28:29 – Closing reflections and broader implications for adaptive organizationsAbout Bjarte BogsnesBjarte Bogsnes is the Chairman of the Beyond Budgeting Round Table, a former global finance executive, and a leading thinker in management innovation. He is the author of Implementing Beyond Budgeting and This Is Beyond Budgeting, where he distills nearly three decades of real-world experience challenging traditional budgeting, targets, and control-based management.Bjarte's work demonstrates how organizations can replace rigid, calendar-driven systems with models built on trust, transparency, and adaptability. The result is creating companies that are not only more responsive but also more human.You can follow Bjarte Bogsnes at https://www.linkedin.com/in/bjarte-bogsnes-41557910/Our music is from https://www.purple-planet.com.Visit us at https://www.ouragiletales.com/about

You don't need to budget to get ahead financially, you just need to change the way you think about money.   In this episode of the Registered Investment Advisor Podcast, Seth Greene interviews Lisa Chastain, Money Coach, Mentor, and Unshakeable Optimist, who shares her journey from a single mom struggling in a tough spot to building a six-figure business in just 10 months. Lisa talks about how emotions drive money decisions and why addressing your unconscious beliefs around money is crucial for success. She explains why traditional budgeting doesn't work, offering a transformative approach to managing finances that starts with shifting your mindset, not restricting your spending.   Key Takeaways: → How addressing emotional beliefs about money is the first step to financial success. → Why financial habits are often rooted in childhood experiences. → How it's important to uncover how early memories around money shape your decisions today. → How high net-worth individuals create and manage cash flow to allow for more freedom. → Why traditional budgeting restricts people and doesn't lead to long-term wealth.   Lisa Chastain is a Personal Finance Coach with over 20 years of experience offering independent financial advice to executives, professionals, and business owners. She has been featured in Cosmopolitan, CNBC, NBC News, MSN Money, O – The Oprah Magazine, Fortune, Forbes, Business Insider, Business Newsweek, and Entrepreneur Magazine, and is one of Las Vegas Women Magazine's people to watch. A best-selling author, Lisa is also the host of the Real Money radio show on VoiceAmerica, the second-largest online radio broadcaster in the nation, with over 3 million listeners. After burning through $100,000 and nearly going completely broke, Lisa was forced to reinvent herself. Her aspiration wasn't to own a mansion or drive a Ferrari; she wanted simple things, like so many of the women she now works with, such as savings, retirement funds, and a secure future for her family. Put plainly, she didn't want to have to stress about money any longer. In 2016, Lisa applied what she had learned and launched her business as a money coach, with a mission to help women manage their finances effectively without a budget, enabling them to live their best lives. She has now helped countless clients learn how to track their expenses without budgets, invest wisely, and make informed financial decisions, enabling them to escape the financial rollercoaster and achieve long-term stability.   Connect With Lisa:   Website: https://lisachastain.com/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/savvymoneywithlisa/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/savvymoneywithlisa LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lisachastain/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In dieser Folge nehme ich das frisch veröffentlichte Scrum Guide Expansion Pack kritisch unter die Lupe. Gemeinsam mit Jeff Sutherland, Ralph Jocham und John Coleman wurde dieses „Add-On“ zum offiziellen Scrum Guide vorgestellt – aber statt Klarheit bringt es für mich vor allem eins: Verwirrung. Darüber spreche ich in der Episode: Was das Expansion Pack eigentlich will – und warum es dabei scheitert Warum der Outcome-Fokus zwar wichtig, aber hier schlecht operationalisiert ist Wie neue Rollen wie „Adaptive Executive“ oder „Supporter“ eher für Chaos sorgen Wieso KI, Beyond Budgeting, Soziokratie & Co. nur „Name-Dropping“ sind Warum das Expansion Pack für Anfänger:innen brandgefährlich ist Und: Was ich mit der FRIDGE Method® anders mache Mein Fazit: Das Expansion Pack liefert wenig echten Mehrwert, überfordert die Praxis – und entfernt sich vom ursprünglichen Lean-Gedanken von Scrum. Für erfahrene Praktiker:innen vielleicht interessant, für alle anderen eher verwirrend. Hier kannst du tiefer einsteigen:

Beyond Budgeting: Why Modern FP&A Teams Are Ditching the Annual Plan Traditional budgeting is slow, rigid, and often outdated before the quarter even ends. In this episode of CPM Customer Success, we unpack why leading finance teams are leaving the annual plan behind and embracing a more agile, data-driven approach to planning. Join us as we break down: Why traditional budgeting processes are falling short How “Beyond Budgeting” unlocks agility, responsiveness, and smarter decision-making What role platforms like OneStream play in enabling rolling forecasts, scenario planning, and AI-powered insights We also spotlight two real-world success stories: A global water technology company, which consolidated systems and slashed load times An Auto Industry company, who unified finance processes and gained product-level visibility 12 days faster If you're tired of chasing accuracy in spreadsheets, and ready to elevate finance into a true strategic partner — this episode is your blueprint for change.

Cyril Lahaussois, DAF du Groupe Thuasne, partage son parcours et son approche innovante de la finance. Il revient sur son expérience en audit, son passage chez SKF et les défis du développement international. Il explique aussi l'adoption du Beyond Budgeting et son impact sur la gestion financière. Une discussion captivante sur l'évolution du rôle du CFO.Hébergé par Ausha. Visitez ausha.co/politique-de-confidentialite pour plus d'informations.

https://bit.ly/Beyond_Budgeting_Podcast

https://bit.ly/Beyond_Budgeting_Podcast

Jutta Eckstein is expanding the concepts of Agile to be a company-wide model, instead of a niche process for software developers. We chat with her about the book "Company-wide Agility with Beyond Budgeting, Open Space & Sociocracy" which she co-authored on this subject. For more details on the book and many free resources, see: www.agilebossanova.com Discuss this episode: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠discord.gg/XVKD2uPKyF⁠⁠

In dieser zweiteiligen Episode des Performance Manager Podcast spricht Jurate Keblyte, CFO der GRAMMER AG, über die Herausforderungen und die notwendige Transformation des Controllings in einem dynamischen Marktumfeld. Als weltweit führender Hersteller von Komponenten und Systemen für die Innenausstattung von Pkw, Offroad-Fahrzeugen, Lkw, Bussen und Bahnen bewegt sich die GRAMMER AG in einem wettbewerbsintensiven und sich ständig verändernden Umfeld, das eine flexible und zukunftsorientierte Finanzstrategie erfordert.   Jurate Keblyte gibt einen detaillierten Einblick in die aktuellen Digitalisierungsinitiativen bei GRAMMER und erläutert, wie sich die Anforderungen an das Controlling hin zu flexibleren Planungs- und Forecastingprozessen entwickelt haben. Sie beschreibt die Bedeutung moderner Reporting- und Planungstools sowie die Einführung von Self-Service-Anwendungen, die schnellere und fundiertere Entscheidungen ermöglichen. Ein weiteres Thema des Gesprächs ist die Umsetzung der "Beyond Budgeting"-Prinzipien bei GRAMMER und die daraus resultierenden Vorteile für das Unternehmen.   Die GRAMMER AG mit Sitz in Amberg ist ein weltweit tätiger Hersteller von Pkw-Innenausstattungen sowie von Fahrer- und Passagiersitzen für Nutzfahrzeuge, Lkw, Busse und Bahnen. Mit Standorten in über 20 Ländern steht das Unternehmen vor den Herausforderungen der digitalen Transformation und der Optimierung seiner Finanz- und Controllingfunktionen. 

In dieser zweiteiligen Episode des Performance Manager Podcast spricht Jurate Keblyte, CFO der Grammer AG, über die Herausforderungen und die notwendige Transformation des Controllings in einem dynamischen Marktumfeld. Als weltweit führender Hersteller von Komponenten und Systemen für die Innenausstattung von Pkw, Offroad-Fahrzeugen, Lkw, Bussen und Bahnen bewegt sich die Grammer AG in einem wettbewerbsintensiven und sich ständig verändernden Umfeld, das eine flexible und zukunftsorientierte Finanzstrategie erfordert.   Jurate Keblyte gibt einen detaillierten Einblick in die aktuellen Digitalisierungsinitiativen bei Grammer und erläutert, wie sich die Anforderungen an das Controlling hin zu flexibleren Planungs- und Forecastingprozessen entwickelt haben. Sie beschreibt die Bedeutung moderner Reporting- und Planungstools sowie die Einführung von Self-Service-Anwendungen, die schnellere und fundiertere Entscheidungen ermöglichen. Ein weiteres Thema des Gesprächs ist die Umsetzung der "Beyond Budgeting"-Prinzipien bei Grammer und die daraus resultierenden Vorteile für das Unternehmen.   Die Grammer AG mit Sitz in Amberg ist ein weltweit tätiger Hersteller von Pkw-Innenausstattungen sowie von Fahrer- und Passagiersitzen für Nutzfahrzeuge, Lkw, Busse und Bahnen. Mit Standorten in über 20 Ländern steht das Unternehmen vor den Herausforderungen der digitalen Transformation und der Optimierung seiner Finanz- und Controllingfunktionen. 

In dieser Episode von Data Science Deep Dive sprechen Mira und Wolf-Gideon über das Agile Fluency Model und dessen Bedeutung im Data-Science-Kontext. Im Fokus stehen die verschiedenen Stufen der Agilität sowie die damit verbundenen Vorteile und notwendigen Investitionen. Wolf-Gideon erklärt, wie man den optimalen Agilitätsgrad für ein Team ermittelt und welche Praktiken dabei relevant sind.    ***Links*** Buch von Henning Wolf und Wolf-Gideon Bleek (2010): Agile Softwareentwicklung: Werte, Konzepte und Methoden (ISBN: 978-3-89864-701-4) it-agile Webseite https://www.it-agile.de/ Mehr Infos zu Wolf-Gideon Bleek auf der Seite von it-agile: https://www.it-agile.de/ueber-it-agile/das-team/dr-wolf-gideon-bleek/ Manifest für Agile Softwareentwicklung https://agilemanifesto.org/iso/de/manifesto.html Agile Fluency Project (EN) https://www.agilefluency.org/ Artikel: The Agile Fluency Model - A Brief Guide to Success with Agile von James Shore & Diana Larsen (EN) https://martinfowler.com/articles/agileFluency.html Buch: Company-wide Agility with Beyond Budgeting, Open Space & Sociocracy von Jutta Eckstein & John Buck https://www.agilebossanova.com/ Feedback, Fragen oder Themenwünsche? Schreib uns gern an podcast@inwt-statistics.de

In this episode of the Mob Mentality Show, we are thrilled to have Diana Larsen, a leader in agility and team dynamics, join us for an in-depth conversation. Together, we explore the transformative power of mobbing, micro-retrospectives, and just-in-time learning for agile teams. **Micro-Retros:** - Discover how mobbing enhances the effectiveness of retrospectives. - Address common complaints about retrospectives, such as time consumption. - Learn how to integrate retrospectives seamlessly into the workflow. - Understand the benefits of starting small, learning frequently, and continuously improving. - Find the right cadence for short retrospectives, like using Pomodoro techniques or end-of-session reviews. - Debate the necessity of including all five steps of a retrospective in a mini-retro. - Explore the compound benefits of consistently "turning up the good" and building team confidence. - Compare immediate actions in mini-retros to the traditional retrospective action items. - See how natural, on-the-fly mini-retros can respond effectively to events. - Discuss the role and timing of scheduled umbrella retrospectives. - Examine system-level umbrella retrospectives, such as using Wardley Mapping for IT teams. - Explore the dynamics of inter-team umbrella retrospectives. **Just-in-Time Learning:** - Harness the power of just-in-time learning through mini-retros. - Learn how to embed learning into the work process rather than treating it as a separate activity. - Understand the importance of not delaying learning when it's most needed. - Build co-intelligence within your team. - Discover the immediate value of applying new knowledge. - Learn strategies for quickly scanning books to set the stage for later just-in-time application. - Discuss the value of knowledge that always applies and different types of knowledge. - Navigate known unknowns and unknown unknowns in learning. - Embrace a growth mindset and turn "I don't know" into a starting point rather than a barrier. - Contrast the roles of software journalists versus software engineers in team learning. **New Ways of Working and the Future of Work:** - Debate whether Agile is becoming fragile and outdated. - Explore the diffusion of Agile innovation with its pioneers. - Learn creative approaches to high-collaboration, creative work. - Looking ahead to new methodologies like Beyond Budgeting, Systems Thinking, and Wardley Mapping. - Discover the continuous improvement efforts of leading Agile practitioners. - Revisit Agile principles and values to compare and contrast with new movements. - Respond effectively to emerging movements in the Agile space. - Accept the limits of learning everything and seek insights from thought leaders. - Witness the birth of new movements and predict the next thought leaders in Agile. **Diana's New Books:** - Dive into the 2nd Edition of "The Agile Retrospectives Book" which has just been released. - Understand how this book serves as a catalyst for team learning and improvements. - Discover the significant changes and updates since the first edition, including a section on remote retrospectives. - Explore the meticulous re-analysis and updates made to every sentence and word in the book. - Learn about Diana's personal epiphany in her book "Lead Without Blame" and its focus on leadership, environments, and team responsiveness. **Diana's Upcoming Talks and Work:** - Get a preview of Diana's upcoming talks at the Agile World Conference and the XP Conference. - Learn about her participation in LinkedIn Live Events and the Agile Coaching Network as a panelist. - Gain insights into her ongoing efforts in coaching leaders and influencing the Agile community. Join us for this insightful episode filled with practical tips, expert advice, and forward-thinking strategies to enhance your team's Agile practices and continuous improvement journey. Don't forget to like, subscribe, and share to stay updated with the latest from the Mob Mentality Show! Video and Show Notes: https://youtu.be/ONrfef1nkwc 

Have you considered how enhanced leadership techniques can enable more agile market responses? Or how your team could manage uncertainty through innovative management models?In this episode you'll hear:Further exploration of leadership roles in Beyond BudgetingStrategies for fostering organizational adaptabilityTechniques for sustaining business performance in unpredictable marketsMethods to align corporate strategies with real-time market conditionsThis session offers practical strategies to help your team stay ahead in today's dynamic markets. Curious about how to implement these adaptive management techniques? Press play and shift your strategic approach from reactive to proactive!About Steve MorlidgeSteve Morlidge has 30 years of practical experience in designing and running performance management systems in Unilever, including three years as the lead of a global change project. He is a former chairman of the European Beyond Budgeting Round Table and now works as a management thinker, writer and speaker, drawing on his years of experience at the leading edge of performance management thought and practice. Steve Morlidge published Future Ready: How to Master Business Forecasting, John Wiley, 2010, ‘The Little Book of Beyond Budgeting', ‘The Little Book of Operational Forecasting', ‘Present Sense' in 2017, 2018 and 2020 respectively. ‘Zen and the Art of Organising Work: The Hidden Anatomy of Effective Organisations…Using Systems Thinking to Unlock Nature's Secrets' was published in April 2021 and 2023 saw the publication of ‘Cost Matters' and most recently he helped author ‘The Viable Map Workbook' which sets out a practical methodology to help people put the principles of Beyond Budgeting to work in organisations. He is on the editorial board of Foresight, a forecasting practitioner's journal published by the International Institute of Forecasting to which he regularly contributes. He is also a cofounder of CatchBull, a supplier of forecasting performance management software and sits on the advisory board of the Beyond Budgeting Institute. Steve completed his BA at Durham University and is a qualified management accountant (CIMA). He has a PhD from Hull Business School studying the application of systems concepts to the design of complex organizations and is a visiting fellow at Cranfield University and visiting Professor at BPP University. Outside work Steve has three children and is currently a proud grandfather times three. But he has never been able to sustain interest in anything long enough to call it a hobby which he likes to think is a sign of a restless enquiring mind…although his wife has a different interpretation. Links Full show notes: Unicorny.co.uk  LinkedIn: Dr Steve Morlidge | Dom Hawes  Website: Satori PartnersBook: The little Book of Beyond Budgeting by Steve Morlidge, use code UNICORNY25 for 25% off!Sponsor: Selbey Anderson  This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis: Podder - https://www.podderapp.com/privacy-policyChartable - https://chartable.com/privacy

Have you considered how enhanced leadership techniques can enable more agile market responses? Or how your team could manage uncertainty through innovative management models?In this episode you'll hear:Further exploration of leadership roles in Beyond BudgetingStrategies for fostering organizational adaptabilityTechniques for sustaining business performance in unpredictable marketsMethods to align corporate strategies with real-time market conditionsThis session offers practical strategies to help your team stay ahead in today's dynamic markets. Curious about how to implement these adaptive management techniques? Press play and shift your strategic approach from reactive to proactive!About Steve MorlidgeSteve Morlidge has 30 years of practical experience in designing and running performance management systems in Unilever, including three years as the lead of a global change project. He is a former chairman of the European Beyond Budgeting Round Table and now works as a management thinker, writer and speaker, drawing on his years of experience at the leading edge of performance management thought and practice. Steve Morlidge published Future Ready: How to Master Business Forecasting, John Wiley, 2010, ‘The Little Book of Beyond Budgeting', ‘The Little Book of Operational Forecasting', ‘Present Sense' in 2017, 2018 and 2020 respectively. ‘Zen and the Art of Organising Work: The Hidden Anatomy of Effective Organisations…Using Systems Thinking to Unlock Nature's Secrets' was published in April 2021 and 2023 saw the publication of ‘Cost Matters' and most recently he helped author ‘The Viable Map Workbook' which sets out a practical methodology to help people put the principles of Beyond Budgeting to work in organisations. He is on the editorial board of Foresight, a forecasting practitioner's journal published by the International Institute of Forecasting to which he regularly contributes. He is also a cofounder of CatchBull, a supplier of forecasting performance management software and sits on the advisory board of the Beyond Budgeting Institute. Steve completed his BA at Durham University and is a qualified management accountant (CIMA). He has a PhD from Hull Business School studying the application of systems concepts to the design of complex organizations and is a visiting fellow at Cranfield University and visiting Professor at BPP University. Outside work Steve has three children and is currently a proud grandfather times three. But he has never been able to sustain interest in anything long enough to call it a hobby which he likes to think is a sign of a restless enquiring mind…although his wife has a different interpretation. Links Full show notes: Unicorny.co.uk  LinkedIn: Dr Steve Morlidge | Dom Hawes  Website: Satori PartnersBook: The little Book of Beyond Budgeting by Steve Morlidge, use code UNICORNY25 for 25% off!Sponsor: Selbey Anderson  This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis: Podder - https://www.podderapp.com/privacy-policyChartable - https://chartable.com/privacy

The traditional approach to budgeting is broken. Worse. Budgeting builds dysfunction into business and into your marketing department. There is a better way.This week, we meet Dr Steve Morlidge, thinker, speaker, author of The Little Book of Beyond Budgeting and chair of the European Beyond Budgeting Round table.Traditional marketing budgeting limits a marketer's ability to adapt to rapid market changes. This inflexibility, combined with a focus on short-term targets, can lead to inefficient spending—where budgets are used up to secure future funds rather than drive meaningful growth. The conventional process also discourages innovation by penalising risk-taking, essential for breaking new ground in marketing strategies.Discover Flexible Budgeting Approaches: Learn how to move beyond the traditional, restrictive budgeting models to embrace more dynamic and adaptive financial planning strategies that align with fast-changing market conditions.Enhance Innovation and Risk-Taking: Gain insights into how shifting away from a rigid budgetary focus can encourage innovation and risk-taking in marketing strategies, leading to greater creative freedom and potential breakthroughs in the market.Optimise Resource Allocation: Understand methods to avoid wasteful spending and optimise marketing budgets, ensuring that resources are used efficiently to maximize impact and ROI in your campaigns.Steve has many answers... this epsiode might just hold the key to your future success?About Steve MorlidgeSteve Morlidge has 30 years of practical experience in designing and running performance management systems in Unilever, including three years as the lead of a global change project. He is a former chairman of the European Beyond Budgeting Round Table and now works as a management thinker, writer and speaker, drawing on his years of experience at the leading edge of performance management thought and practice. Steve Morlidge published Future Ready: How to Master Business Forecasting, John Wiley, 2010, ‘The Little Book of Beyond Budgeting', ‘The Little Book of Operational Forecasting', ‘Present Sense' in 2017, 2018 and 2020 respectively. ‘Zen and the Art of Organising Work: The Hidden Anatomy of Effective Organisations…Using Systems Thinking to Unlock Nature's Secrets' was published in April 2021 and 2023 saw the publication of ‘Cost Matters' and most recently he helped author ‘The Viable Map Workbook' which sets out a practical methodology to help people put the principles of Beyond Budgeting to work in organisations. He is on the editorial board of Foresight, a forecasting practitioner's journal published by the International Institute of Forecasting to which he regularly contributes. He is also a cofounder of CatchBull, a supplier of forecasting performance management software and sits on the advisory board of the Beyond Budgeting Institute. Steve completed his BA at Durham University and is a qualified management accountant (CIMA). He has a PhD from Hull Business School studying the application of systems concepts to the design of complex organizations and is a visiting fellow at Cranfield University and visiting Professor at BPP University. Outside work Steve has three children and is currently a proud grandfather times three. But he has never been able to sustain interest in anything long enough to call it a hobby which he likes to think is a sign of a restless enquiring mind…although his wife has a different interpretation. Links Full show notes: Unicorny.co.uk  LinkedIn: Dr Steve Morlidge |

The traditional approach to budgeting is broken. Worse. Budgeting builds dysfunction into business and into your marketing department. There is a better way.This week, we meet Dr Steve Morlidge, thinker, speaker, author of The Little Book of Beyond Budgeting and chair of the European Beyond Budgeting Round table.Traditional marketing budgeting limits a marketer's ability to adapt to rapid market changes. This inflexibility, combined with a focus on short-term targets, can lead to inefficient spending—where budgets are used up to secure future funds rather than drive meaningful growth. The conventional process also discourages innovation by penalising risk-taking, essential for breaking new ground in marketing strategies.Discover Flexible Budgeting Approaches: Learn how to move beyond the traditional, restrictive budgeting models to embrace more dynamic and adaptive financial planning strategies that align with fast-changing market conditions.Enhance Innovation and Risk-Taking: Gain insights into how shifting away from a rigid budgetary focus can encourage innovation and risk-taking in marketing strategies, leading to greater creative freedom and potential breakthroughs in the market.Optimise Resource Allocation: Understand methods to avoid wasteful spending and optimise marketing budgets, ensuring that resources are used efficiently to maximize impact and ROI in your campaigns.Steve has many answers... this epsiode might just hold the key to your future success?About Steve MorlidgeSteve Morlidge has 30 years of practical experience in designing and running performance management systems in Unilever, including three years as the lead of a global change project. He is a former chairman of the European Beyond Budgeting Round Table and now works as a management thinker, writer and speaker, drawing on his years of experience at the leading edge of performance management thought and practice. Steve Morlidge published Future Ready: How to Master Business Forecasting, John Wiley, 2010, ‘The Little Book of Beyond Budgeting', ‘The Little Book of Operational Forecasting', ‘Present Sense' in 2017, 2018 and 2020 respectively. ‘Zen and the Art of Organising Work: The Hidden Anatomy of Effective Organisations…Using Systems Thinking to Unlock Nature's Secrets' was published in April 2021 and 2023 saw the publication of ‘Cost Matters' and most recently he helped author ‘The Viable Map Workbook' which sets out a practical methodology to help people put the principles of Beyond Budgeting to work in organisations. He is on the editorial board of Foresight, a forecasting practitioner's journal published by the International Institute of Forecasting to which he regularly contributes. He is also a cofounder of CatchBull, a supplier of forecasting performance management software and sits on the advisory board of the Beyond Budgeting Institute. Steve completed his BA at Durham University and is a qualified management accountant (CIMA). He has a PhD from Hull Business School studying the application of systems concepts to the design of complex organizations and is a visiting fellow at Cranfield University and visiting Professor at BPP University. Outside work Steve has three children and is currently a proud grandfather times three. But he has never been able to sustain interest in anything long enough to call it a hobby which he likes to think is a sign of a restless enquiring mind…although his wife has a different interpretation. Links Full show notes: Unicorny.co.uk  LinkedIn: Dr Steve Morlidge |

Organisationer idag har svårt att leverera strategiskt - på grund av bristande incitament för samarbete. I det här avsnittet gästas vi av Mia Kolmodin, agil coach, vd och grundare av Dandy People. Mia berättar om hur vi kan ta bort hinder för samarbete. Begreppet Beyond budgeting beskriver genom 6 processer och 6 principer som hjälper oss att hantera VUCA: snabbrörlig förändring och komplexitet.  Länk till Mias poster över Beyond Budgeting, som hon kallar Enabling Business Agility.

Have you ever wondered why even those with six-figure incomes can feel the money crunch at the end of the month? Join me, KJ, and my insightful sidekick, Mr. Aaron Banks, as we dissect the perplexing trend of affluent Americans tethered to the paycheck to paycheck lifestyle. Our latest episode of Money Conversations walks you through the maze of lifestyle inflation, the subtle pitfalls of 'keeping up with the Joneses,' and why budgeting is not just a practice for those on a tightrope of financial survival. We promise you'll walk away with practical steps to stretch your dollar further, regardless of the size of your paycheck.There's a sweet spot between earning and saving, and we're here to help you find it. Mr. Aaron Banks and I crack open the realities of a $100,000 yearly income, from the bite taxes take out to the monthly dance with expenses that can leave your wallet feeling light. We don't just stop at problems; we serve up solutions, discussing the power of compound interest, strategic budgeting, and the immense psychological rewards of watching your savings blossom. Whether you're aiming for a mortgage down payment or padding your retirement nest egg, we share personal stories and expert advice to keep you motivated on your journey to financial freedom.As the series wraps, we don't gloss over the rough patches. We empathize with the stress of inflation—how a trip to the grocery store can evolve from a pleasure to a pressure point. With an open heart, we reflect on the realities of credit card debt and the emotional toll it takes on American families. Our ongoing Money Talks series is your weekly dose of fiscal wisdom, aiming to arm you with the knowledge to navigate the choppy waters of personal finance. Remember, it's not about how much you earn; it's about how you manage, save, and invest. So, keep us dialed in, and we'll keep the insights coming.Don't forget to subscribe, like and share it with a friend or two!

Tema for denne episoden er Beyond Budgeting! i 2021 hadde vi besøk av Bjarte Bogsnes, litt av en bauta innenfor Beyond Budgeting. Det er få som kan mer enn Beyond Budgeting enn Bjarte. Men hva er det egentlig med Beyond Budgeting som er så spennende? Hvorfor er Beyond Budgeting og smidig som to gode kusiner? Hva er likheten? Er det noen forskjeller i det hele tatt? For det ligger enormt mye mer til Beyond Budgeting enn budsjettering. Faktisk er det norske navnet, som det en sjelden gang er, mye mer passende og beskrivende. Nemlig dynamisk styring! For i styring ligger organisering, ledelse, mål, verdier, hvordan vi kommuniserer med kunden, lønn og belønning ,og ja, økonomi.Så spenn deg fast for denne siste episoden av Smidigpoddens sommerspesial og la deg inspirere til en forrykende høst. Tusen takk til våre partnere som gjør Smidigpodden mulig, Sparebank1 Utvikling, Capra og Gnist.Sparebank1 Utvikling: https://sparebank1.dev/ Capra: https://www.capraconsulting.no/ Gnist: https://gnist.as/

Bjarte Bogsnes has worked with companies, from IKEA, H&M,Pernod Ricard, Volvo and Equinor (Scandinavia's largest company). His approach, “Beyond Budgeting” involves wholesale rethinking about budget approaches. In today's episode, Bogsnes rails against the “misery” and “borderline unethical behavior” in traditional budgeting within companies, as he talks about the seachange happening in businesses. He talks to Paul Barnhurst as he publishes his new book, This Is Beyond Budgeting: A Guide to More Adaptive and Human Organizations (2023).   The episode covers   Definition of beyond budgeting as an antidote to “serious problems with traditional management” How traditional budgeting gets “trust” and “predictability” wrong  Your answer to “Why are you budgeting?” shows the problems inherent in existing process How budget process are “borderline unethical” Equinor (Scandinavia's case study) change  Making organizations more adaptive and human in the process of transformation Don't start with rolling forecasting  How a Vinyl collection of 3,5000 is a unique musical passion  How Beyond Budget “will happen” in the next decade    Links    Bognes Advisory bogsnesadvisory.com   FT (case study of Ikea): CEOs forced to ditch decades of forecasting habits   Bjarte Bogsnes: This Is Beyond Budgeting: A Guide to More Adaptive and Human Organizations     Follow Bjarte Bogsnes on LinkedIn   YouTube video of the episode   Follow Paul Barnhurst on LinkedIn    Follow Datarails on LinkedIn   FP&A Today is brought to you by Datarails.   Datarails is the financial planning and analysis platform that automates data consolidation, reporting and planning, while enabling finance teams to continue using their own Excel spreadsheets and financial models.

Bio Bjarte Bogsnes has a long international career, both in Finance and HR. He is a pioneer in the Beyond Budgeting movement and has been heading up the implementation of Beyond Budgeting at Equinor (formerly Statoil), Scandinavia's largest company. He led a similar initiative in Borealis in the mid-nineties, one of the companies that inspired the Beyond Budgeting model. He has helped numerous other companies globally getting started on a Beyond Budgeting journey.  Bjarte is Chairman of Beyond Budgeting Roundtable (BBRT).  He is a popular international business speaker and Beyond Budgeting coach, and a winner of a Harvard Business Review/McKinsey Management Innovation award. Bjarte is the author of "Implementing Beyond Budgeting - Unlocking the Performance Potential", where he writes about his almost thirty years long Beyond Budgeting journey.  His new book “This is Beyond Budgeting – A Guide to more Adaptive and Human Organizations” with a foreword by Gary Hamel is just out. Bjarte is available for speaking engagements and select consulting work through Bogsnes Advisory.  Episode Highlights  04:33 New book ‘This is Beyond Budgeting' 07:40 Beyond Budgeting 16:25The issue with the current performance appraisal process 19:45 The case for change 31:00 Becoming braver 33:50 ‘Losing' control 49:10 Reflect on the risk picture  Books ·         This is Beyond Budgeting: A Guide to More Adaptive and Human Organizations by Bjarte Bogsnes This Is Beyond Budgeting: A Guide to More Adaptive and Human Organizations: Amazon.co.uk: Bogsnes, Bjarte: 9781394171248: Books ·         Implementing Beyond Budgeting: Unlocking the Performance Potential by Bjarte Bogsnes Implementing Beyond Budgeting: Unlocking the Performance Potential: Amazon.co.uk: Bogsnes, Bjarte: 9781119152477: Books ·         Maverick by Ricardo Semler https://www.amazon.co.uk/Maverick-Success-Behind-Unusual-Workplace/dp/0712678867 ·         Humanocracy by Gary Hamel et al https://www.amazon.co.uk/Humanocracy-Creating-Organizations-Amazing-People/dp/B08F2TCKWN ·         The Future of Management by Gary Hamel and Bill Breen https://www.amazon.co.uk/Future-Management-Gary-Hamel/dp/1422102505  Websites ·         Beyond Budgeting Institute https://bbrt.org ·         Bogsnes Advisory (Bjarte's consulting firm) https://bogsnesadvisory.com  Social media ·         LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bjarte-bogsnes-41557910/ ·         Twitter:  @bbogsnes  Guest Intro (Ula Ojiaku) Hello and welcome to the Agile Innovation Leaders podcast. I'm Ula Ojiaku. On this podcast I speak with world-class leaders and doers about themselves and a variety of topics spanning Agile, Lean Innovation, Business, Leadership and much more – with actionable takeaways for you the listener. Ula Ojiaku Hello, Bjarte. Thank you for being my guest on the Agile Innovation Leaders Podcast, it's a great honour. I remember meeting you for the first time last year in Copenhagen at the Beyond Budgeting Roundtable, and you kindly accepted. So thank you for being here today. Bjarte Bogsnes Thank you for the invitation. Ula Ojiaku Great. So could you tell us any experience that you might have had growing up, that would have led to where you are today? Bjarte Bogsnes Well, the author Douglas Adams, he once wrote that: “I might not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I ended up where I needed to be”, and that's basically the story of my life because it was in no way given that we should sit here today and talk about Beyond Budgeting, because my career started in a very different place. I'm a finance guy by education and after I finished my business studies, I joined a company called Statoil, it's today called Equinor, it's Scandinavia's largest company, it's an energy company, and my first management job in this company, the year after I joined, was actually Head of the Corporate Budget Department. So I have been heading up more budget processes in my career than I want to be reminded about in that job and in many other Finance Manager jobs in different, you know, jobs. I've been working abroad quite a lot for the same company. So I used to be a big fan of this way of managing, there is actually an interview with me from the company magazine at the time where I'm praising the brilliance of budgeting, and I hope that there are no more copies around. And another reason I like that quote from Adams is that I come from a teacher family. My parents were teachers, my sister was a teacher, so I was in the way, the black sheep in the family because I went for Business Studies. But these days I really feel that I'm back in the fold, because I feel that that is what I'm doing now, teaching, and trying to make a positive difference, just like my parents and my sister did. Ula Ojiaku So teaching, it seems like it's a full circle, but you wouldn't have gotten here without, you know, still going through that process of working in business. Bjarte Bogsnes No, I think I'm very glad I have that background because it means that I know what I'm talking about. I know most of the fix in the budget book and some of them are quite nasty, and so when I would discuss with managers, finance people and others then, I mean, I know the arguments, and I know how to respond. Another important part of this journey was that I am one of the few finance persons, I believe, who has also worked in Human Resources. I was heading up the HR function in a large European company for some years, and that experience was also a big eyeopener for me when it comes to the leadership, the people side of Beyond Budgeting, which is just as big as the kind of finance process side. Ula Ojiaku Nice. Now, I mean, we will be getting to talk about your book, which is This Is Beyond Budgeting, that was released this February, 2023. Congratulations! Bjarte Bogsnes Thank you. Ula Ojiaku What I noticed was that the difference between This is Budgeting, I mean your, your second book and, Implementing Beyond Budgeting, which preceded this, this is actually a quicker read, you know, smaller, it seems like it was condensed and it was done on purpose. Could you tell us about this book, the main message? Bjarte Bogsnes Yes. Now, first of all, I mean, that is a correct observation. This is a shorter book, on purpose, and the simple reason is that we need to reach people, busy people, with limited time to read, and they don't have time to read bricks. So, yes, it is a shorter book, it is recapping some key messages from my earlier books, but there's also a lot of new stuff in it. I have learned a lot since the other book you've shown was published back in 2016. I've written a lot, I've worked with a lot of great organisations. So, again, a lot of new learning also. And I really do hope to reach, I did reach a number of executives, managers with my previous book, and I know, because of nice feedback from many of them. But there are so many more of them that still needs to hear this message. So that is why it's the shorter one. And I'm also very grateful and happy that Gary Hamel agreed to write the foreword. I mean, he is such an inspiration when it comes to management innovation and has been for such a long time. I mean, hearing Gary speak is simply mind-blowing. I mean, he is dynamite as a speaker and I think he's written a great foreword, and there are also some, quite some nice endorsements from important people in the agile community and kind of borderline agile community, Rita McGrath, Dave Snowden and Julian Birkinshaw, Jos de Blok, the founder of Buurtzorg. So I'm also very happy that these people took the time to read it and write these nice endorsements. Ula Ojiaku Indeed, we will go into some key points in the book for the listeners or viewers, they would have to buy it to go through it, to know what it's all about. But can you tell us, because there might be some people listening to this that don't know, what Beyond Budgeting is all about. Bjarte Bogsnes No, that's obviously an important question and let me start with saying that Beyond Budgeting is a somewhat misleading name, we know. It was, Beyond Budgeting was invented, developed 25 years ago, and back then there was nothing called agility, agile, or business agility, so if that label had been around at the same time, maybe that would've been the name of this. But it is basically about business agility. And, as the subtitle in my book states, it's about creating organisations that are more adaptive and more human, and Beyond Budgeting is very much about changing traditional management. But at the core of traditional management, you find not just the budgeting process, but also the budgeting mindset, built on the assumptions that the world is predictable and plannable and that you can't trust people. These are assumptions that we really challenge in Beyond Budgeting, because it isn't true. So if you want to change traditional management, you need to do something with the elephant in the room, the budgeting process. And that is something that, if you look at Agile, I think Agile has kind of avoided that elephant throughout all these years. It's been regarded as something unavoidable, a lower business, which isn't true, because more and more companies are skipping this way, or managing. And talking about Agile, I'm a big fan of Agile, but what I'm going to say now is not criticising Agile, but I think it would also help to explain what Beyond Budgeting is. I think part of the success of what I call early Agile has to do with its birthplace in software development, and how teams are working. And I think in those early years, I think what executives in big companies, what they observed and heard about Agile was better projects, faster projects, more value, more engaged people, and who can be against that, wonderful, I love it, come on guys, Agile is great. Then for obvious reasons, companies started to scale Agile, right? And at one level it kind of reaches the executives and has consequences, implications for these guys' beliefs and behaviours. And then it isn't that it wasn't that fun anymore. I think that's one reason why scaling Agile has been difficult. Another reason is that you can't scale Agile using the same language and tools and frameworks that did wonders back in those days. I mean, for executives who don't play rugby and don't know Agile, they might think that Scrum is some kind of skin disease, or Slack is about laziness or that Sprint is about running faster, or continuous delivery is about 24/7. Right? So, I mean we need a language here that these guys can understand and relate to, and Beyond Budgeting is providing that language. They might still disagree, but they understand what we are talking about. And the last issue here is that, again, Agile was not designed as a way to run an enterprise. So when you try to scale it, these holes in Agile become visible, like how do you manage resources?  How do you do forecasting? How do you evaluate performance? How do you reward? Right? And these are the holes that Beyond Budgeting is filling, because, again, Beyond Budgeting was designed from day one as an Agile way of running an organisation. And that is why we never talk about scaling agile, because it comes scaled, it is scaled, right? But this is also why Beyond Budgeting in Agile is such a beautiful fit, and why so many companies on Agile transformation journeys are reaching out to us because they reach these insights and learnings and understand that there can be no true agile transformation without Beyond Budgeting. Ula Ojiaku That's an excellent overview of Beyond Budgeting. And I understand, you know, in Beyond Budgeting, there are 10 principles, and there is the leadership principles, if I may say, and then the management processes. Do you want to talk a bit more about this, please? Bjarte Bogsnes Yeah. So there're actually a 12 principles, and you're right, six of them are on leadership and six of them are on management processes, and if you look at what Beyond Budgeting is saying about leadership, it is not necessarily that unique. There are many other great communities and models out there saying similar things about leadership, right? Talking about purpose and autonomy, transparency, values, and so on. But very often these models and communities haven't reflected very much, it seems like, about what kind of management processes are needed to activate these leadership intentions, because what is often the case in organisations is that they might have the best intentions on the leadership side. They say the right things, they write the right things, but that doesn't help if the management processes are expressing the exact opposite use. Classic example, it doesn't help to talk loud and warm about how fantastic employees we have on board, and we would be nothing without you, and we trust you so much, but not that much. Of course, we need detailed travel budgets, right? This is hypocrisy, and people notice and the words become hollow, because the management processes has a different message. So that is why there is a strong focus in Beyond Budgeting on coherence between the two, between what is said and what is done, right. So I think that is one and very important aspect with Beyond Budgeting. The other is that, as I mentioned earlier, I don't think any other community out there has cracked the budget problem. The budgeting process is something that everybody complains about. It's maybe the most loathed corporate process out there, followed by performance appraisals, but again, it's kind of been left untouched until Beyond Budgeting came and offered great alternatives to this quite outdated way of managing because, it is fascinating, there are not too many other technologies applied in companies today that are a hundred years old, but that is the age of budgeting invented in 1922 by James O McKinsey, the founder of McKinsey Consulting, right. And I never met Mr. McKinsey, but I don't think he was an evil man. I actually think he had the best of intentions. I mean, he wanted to help organisations perform better. This was management innovation a hundred years ago, and it probably worked a hundred years ago, because the world was completely different, the quality and the capability, competence of people were very different, but today things have changed and that is something that our leadership and management models must reflect. Ula Ojiaku Okay, there's something you said, you know, the two things or two activities, that are probably most loathed in organisations would be the budgeting process and the performance appraisal. And you've talked a bit about the budgeting. So, for the performance appraisal, what exactly about it doesn't sit well with people? Bjarte Bogsnes Oh, that list is long. First of all, I mean, it's just like budgets, as I will come back to, has different purposes, so has the performance appraisal, I mean, one purpose is meant to be learning and development, that's a positive one, but another purpose is to determine rewards, right. So, if you are my manager and I'm coming in to a performance appraisal with you and if my mind is mainly on the reward side, the last thing I want to share with you is where I have learning and development needs, right? I want to brag about all my successes and how great I am and so on, and vice versa. So, kind of combining this in one process, with one outcome is meaningless, and also this focus on rewards and, which very often is about individual bonus, which is one of the problems in traditional management that Beyond Budgeting is strongly against, we believe in common bonus schemes, driven by joint performance instead of individual performance. So it is typically an annual event, right, an annual stunt, it's meaningless to talk about feedback and development once a year, that needs to happen much more continuously, right? So, I think budgeting is a bigger problem, it makes more damage, by all means. But performance appraisals come and the whole low performance management notion, it does almost as much damage. And by the way, that is a label I really dislike, performance management, right? Think about it. What are we really saying? Aren't we saying that if we don't manage your performance, there will be no performance, right? That is not a very positive message, and I also think there's quite a lot of illusion playing out here. I think our ability to manage performance, among knowledge workers in today's people and business realities is actually quite limited compared to what managers and HR people and some finance people often tend to think. So it's an awful label, and, you know, we need to stop thinking about managing people, we need to start thinking about how we can create conditions for people to perform, how we can enable performance, not managing performance. Ula Ojiaku That's a great point Bjarte. So what's the solution? What is the solution that Beyond Budgeting is going to offer? And the next one following it would be, how do we apply this? Bjarte Bogsnes Oh, most people actually who are blank on Beyond Budgeting, when they hear about this, they like it, they see that this makes sense. It's only common sense in a way, this is about taking reality seriously, and it is addressing so many of the pain points they experience working, especially in big companies. But then of course the next question is, well, how do we get started? And we have two general recommendations here. The first one is about the case for change, which simply means that the whole organisation, or as many as possible, has to understand that all those complaints about traditional management, including budgeting, the time it takes, the gaming, the narrow performance language, the outdated assumptions. I mean, these are more than irritating itches, right? These are symptoms of a big and serious problem, namely that this way of thinking, this way of managing originally meant to help organisations perform better is today doing the opposite. It has become more of a barrier than a support for getting out the best possible performance, and the more there is a common understanding of what kind of problems the organisation is trying to solve, the easier everything afterwards is. Because if you are unclear about that, I mean, how can you make your choices about alternatives, right? But the clearer the case for change, the better the problems are defined, the easier it is when you have a choice of design, should we go this way or this way? Well, which solution would best solve the problems they are trying to solve? So the case for change has to be created, a solid one, then getting started. We know that many, having seen the Beyond Budgeting principles for the first time, might feel this is a bit overwhelming, right? With all these bold ambitions around leadership, these major changes towards the traditional management processes. I mean, it is a mouthful, it is quite a comprehensive leadership and management model. And if some are kind of a bit scared, I can understand that. If that is the case, we have a very simple, tested, practical, logical way of getting started, which is more budget-oriented than Beyond Budgeting itself, but it is a great way to get started, and it is simply about asking a very simple question, namely, why do you budget? Right? What's the purpose of a budget? And most people that I've asked that question, when they have thought a little bit about that question, they actually realise that there are more than one purpose with a budget in a typical, and when I say budget, I mean more than project budgets, more than cost budgets, I'm talking profit loss, cash flow, balance sheet budgets, the whole finance definition. And the purpose of these budgets are the following. First, companies make budgets to set targets. It could be financial targets, sales targets, production targets, right? So that's one purpose. Second, companies and organisations use these budgets to try to understand what next year could look like in terms of profit and loss cashflow. So it is a kind of forecast of what next year could look like. So, that's the second purpose. The third purpose is resource allocation. The budget is used as a mechanism for handing out bags of money to the organisation on operational costs and on invests, and it might seem very efficient, practical to solve all three purposes in one process and one set of numbers. But that is also the problem, because what happens if we move into the budgeting process in a company, and upstairs finance want to understand next year's profit and loss and they start on the revenue side asking responsible people, what's your best number for next year? But everybody knows that what I'm sending upstairs will most likely come back to me as a target for next year and often with a bonus attached to it. And that insight might do something to the level or numbers submitted, and I think you know, which way those numbers will go, namely down. Moving to the cost side, operational cost investments. The same people, other people are asked, what's your best numbers for next year? But everybody knows that this is my only shot at getting access to resources for next year, and some might also remember that 20% cut from last year and that insight and that memory might also do something to the level of numbers submitted. And I can see you're smiling a bit, and a lot of people do. Ula Ojiaku I'm smiling because I'm just kind of thinking of incidents in past, you know, in past organisations that it has happened. You know, you just sandbag it and give a very high number, knowing that there might be a challenge. Bjarte Bogsnes And you're in good company when you're smiling, but at the same time, I mean, this is actually quite a serious problem, not just because it destroys the quality of numbers, but even more because it actually stimulates behaviour, which I would call at least borderline unethical. The road-balling, the gaming, the sandbagging, the resource hoarding, I mean, all the kind of behaviours that we wouldn't like to see between colleagues. At the same time, I'm not blaming anyone for behaving like this, right? Because then people are just responding to the system we have designed for them to operate in. So if we want to change behaviours, it's not about fixing people, it's about fixing systems, which again, will change behaviours. So that's the problem, three different purposes in one process, in one set of numbers. Fortunately, there is a very simple solution. We can still, and in many cases, should still do these three things, but we should do them in three different processes because these are different things. A target, that's an aspiration, it's what we want to happen. While a forecast is an expectation, it's what we think will happen whether we like what we see or not, right? Brutally honest, the expected outcome. And last but not least, resource allocation is about optimisation of what is often scarce resources. When we then have separated, then a target can be more ambitious than a forecast, which it typically should be. But the most important thing is that that separation opens up for big and important improvement discussions. We can now improve each of these in ways impossible when it was all bundled in one process and one set of numbers. So we can have great discussions around targets. How do we set better targets that really inspire and motivate people, without people feeling stretched? How can we set targets that are more robust against the volatility, the uncertainty, the complexity, and the ambiguity out there? Forecasting, how can we get the gaming and the politics out to the forecasting? And we don't need a million details here, we are looking at the future. There's uncertainty, which is a big difference on looking at the past through accounting, where details and decimals make sense and is often required. But looking at the future, there is uncertainty and that must have implications. So this isn't a good example of, in this stuff, we have to leave behind that accounting mindset that is applied for describing the past recounting, right? When we look at the future, then we need to accept the ambiguity, the complexity, and not just accept it, but embrace it. And last but not least, resource allocation. How can we find better and more intelligent, more effective ways of managing cost than what a certain Mr. McKinsey could offer us a hundred years ago, under very different circumstances? And this is the important discussion, that separation of purposes that just enables these improvement discussions. And in these discussions, having these discussions that is a kind of not scary organic backdoor into those 12 principles, especially in your leadership, right? Target setting, what really motivates people? Resource allocation, again, do we need detailed travel budgets, if we say we trust people? So, again, it is pure logic. I have yet to meet a CEO, a CFO, that didn't come up with that list of three purposes, didn't understand, when helped a little bit, that that's problematic, and didn't see that there are much better ways when you can improve each one separately. And last but not least, we can also then do something with the cadence, with the rhythm of each one. So now we can organise each of the three: target setting, forecasting, resource allocation, on a rhythm that not just reflects the kind of business we're in, but also the kind of purpose, right. So you would set targets or chase targets much less, I mean, not that often as you would change your forecast, and resource allocation is something that you would do all the time, right. So, and also another beauty of this approach is that when people tell me it's impossible to operate without the budget, then my response is, having explained this, that here we still do what that budget try to do for us, but because we have separated, we can do each one in so much better ways, right? And when people say, well, the bank want a budget, the reason why banks ask for budgets is that they have never really realised that there was something else to ask for. So if you can tell the bank, I won't give you a budget, but I will give you my targets and my reliable forecasts, the bank will be more than happy. So I'm spending a little bit of time on this because it is the more finance-oriented part of Beyond Budgeting, but it is a great way to get started. And I helped so many companies over the years and with the big majority, this is where we started out and what we observe over and over again, is in having those improvement discussions the first year, people are a little bit cautious about how radical shall we be, but then it turns out that things work. And what was scary today is not scary tomorrow because it did work, which means that the appetite for being braver increases, so we typically see that organisations get braver along the way, and when it comes to targets, some, after some years of setting better targets, actually decide to skip targets, right? They realised that they are absolutely able to create direction, create motivation, evaluate performance without traditional targets, some even skip forecasting. I haven't heard anyone skipping resource allocation yet that you need to have, but my point is that people and companies tend to get braver. And a final important message, very few companies that have embarked on a Beyond Budgeting journey go back, very few. I don't need one hand to count the number, and the few who did go back, the reasons fall in two categories. Either a flawed implementation, typically, an unclear, weak case for change, or starting only with rolling forecasting. The other typical reason has to do with a significant change in top management at the very early part of the journey. That's actually something I've experienced myself. Ula Ojiaku Great explanation, Bjarte. So you mentioned, you know, about separating the budget into three distinct parts, the target, the forecast, the resource allocation. Now at the organisations where you've implemented this, did you get any resistance from, you know, the top level leaders, managers, because you know, traditionally whoever has the budget, who controls the money, tends to wield power in any organisation. Was there any resistance? Bjarte Bogsnes Well, I think there has been maybe more fear and confusion than outright resistance, even if the resistance sometimes is hidden behind those two. And of course, one word that keeps coming up over and over again when I discuss Beyond Budgeting with people is the word control, right? The fear, and the context is of course the fear of losing control, but the interesting thing with that word is that, when I ask people to be a bit more specific to define what they mean with control, after people have said cost control, actually many go quiet. They struggle with defining what they are so afraid of losing, and that is quite interesting. And if you look at Oxford Dictionary's definition of control, it is the power to influence people's behaviour or the course of events which, again, then for an organisation typically means controlling people and controlling the future. And again, those are the two assumptions that we challenge in Beyond Budgeting, because it is about not trusting people and thinking that the future is predictable and untenable and on control, what I often tell these people is that, yes, you will lose control, but the control that you lose are the bad controls. What you will get more of is good controls, and I wouldn't call that losing control. And one example of a good control in Beyond Budgeting is transparency, right? And let me give you one classical example of how it can be applied, ad this is a real example from a Swiss's pharmaceutical company called Roche, quite big, and they are today on a Beyond Budgeting journey, but some years ago they did a very interesting experiment around travel cost. In the pilot, they kicked out the travel budget, and most travel groups and regulations, and replaced it with full transparency. So with a few exceptions, everybody could see everything. If you travelled, to where did you fly, sleep, eat, cheaper, expensive, open for your colleagues to see and vice versa. And guess what happened with travel costs in that pilot? We'll Go Down Costs came down through a very simple self-regulating control mechanism. This was about tearing up pages in that rules book instead of doing the opposite. At the same time, we need to remember that transparency is a very powerful mechanism. It has to be applied with wisdom. So if it becomes naming and shaming, it doesn't work. And that is why I would always recommend companies to position transparency more from a learning perspective than from a control perspective. I mean, how can we learn from each other if everything is secret? And that control, that shock control effect, you would get in any case as a nice side effect. But again, it must be applied with wisdom. It is fascinating that the biggest fear managers have is to lose control, but what they haven't understood is that a lot of these controls are nothing but illusions of control. Ula Ojiaku That's very interesting. And another thing that I know that some, or if not most of the listeners will be wondering is, okay, you've talked about how, and in your… in both your books… actually the Implementing Beyond Budgeting and your latest one, This is Beyond Budgeting, you did mention something about “you can't get rid of Command and Control via Command and Control”. And in that part of the book, you were saying something that in terms of implementing it - it's something that you recommend the organisations do themselves. Can you elaborate on this? Cause someone, you know, might wonder, is it that you are against getting consulting help? Bjarte Bogsnes So, consultants and Beyond Budgeting. I think what you refer to is, I have a chapter about implementation advice, and one of these is that nobody can do this for you. And what I mean with that, and I explained this in the book, is that, I mean, I'm not saying that companies shouldn't ask for external help, and I'm offering external help, but what they typically should ask for is some inspiration, some guidance on implementation, connections to other companies that have implemented this, but it is not something that an organisation can delegate to consultants. This is not something consultants can do for you. You have to be in the driver's seat, and the more transformation- oriented your ambitions are, the more the executives need to take this role themselves. And I'm saying this because implementing Beyond Budgeting can be anything from a more cautious improvement of finance processes to a radical organisational transformation, and anything in between. And the higher your ambition levels, the higher the ownership in the organisation has to be. When it comes to the consultants, and I also write about this in my book, this is something that has happened just over the last few years, that is that the big consulting companies have gotten seriously interested in Beyond Budgeting. That was not the case before. And the reason for it is that their clients are getting interested, asking for it. And so most of these would like to work with us in some form or shape. Ula Ojiaku Sorry to interrupt, Bjarte. So by ‘us', you mean the Beyond Budgeting Institute)? Bjarte Bogsnes Yeah. Yes. They want to work with the Beyond Budgeting advisory, the Beyond Budgeting Institute. And again, we are not naive. I mean, we come from different places, we might have different agendas here, but at the same time, these companies, they have channels and muscles that we don't have to the same extent, at least not yet. So we have actually decided to say yes to work with them, because we would rather help them and their clients succeed than to stand on the outside and watch them fail, right? So, we have been working, are working with a number of big companies, together with some of these big consulting companies. Ula Ojiaku That's great. And if I may just point to, because you spearheaded this in Statoil, now known as Equinor, and actually this was, I read this in your Implementing Beyond Budgeting book that your approach was based on two principles, no fixed implementation schedule, and no consultants. So how did that work, not having an implementation schedule. Bjarte Bogsnes Well, if we take the first implementation in Borealis back in the mid-nineties where we had a chance to do this, before there was anything called Beyond Budgeting, this company that was partly owned by Statoil, then, I mean, this wasn't an issue because there was no consultants. Even if we had wanted consultants, there was no one to reach out to. So then it was quite easy.  In Statoil, later Equinor, it was more about the fact that I had that implementation experience from Borealis, which kind of, I became some kind of an in-house consultant. And again, as I said, I'm not saying that companies shouldn't use consultants, but you have to use the right ones and use them in the right way. Ula Ojiaku Okay. Thanks for clarifying. Okay, it seems like, you know, Beyond Budgeting would be something that we should seriously consider implementing in our organisation. What else should we be aware of?” Bjarte Bogsnes Well, I think it is important for everybody, also executives to understand that Beyond Budgeting changes work and how you work in a positive way, and for executives, I mean, the role becomes more strategic, more longer term. It's more about coaching, it's less about micromanagement, and maybe most important, there's a new credibility between what is said and what is done, right, which the organisation will notice. When it comes to other functions like finance, it also has a very positive effect. The job becomes much more business-oriented, less annual stunts, more forward-looking, less backwards-looking, more cooperation with other functions like for instance, human resources. And I can't think of a single finance person in Equinor that wants to go back to the old days and the time before 2005. And I think that provides an indication as well. And another key message is that what we have been talking about today, it will happen. It will happen. I don't care if it will be called Beyond Budgeting, or business agility or whatever, that is not important. But in 15, 20 years time, maybe earlier, when we look back at what was mainstream management in 2023, I think we will smile, maybe even have a laugh, just like we today smile about the days before the internet or before the smartphone. And how long ago is that? It's not that long ago. So organisations have a choice here, they can choose to be early movers or vanguards, understanding that you can get just as much competitive advantage out of management innovation as you can get from technology innovation. Or they can choose to be laggards, dragged into this as one of the last ones or anything in between. And every year you wait, competitors will be ahead of you. And I don't think that choice should be very difficult, and again, it should b. easier to make today, when so many organisations are embarking on a Beyond Budgeting journey. It was a bit tougher and a bit more scary 25 years ago when, when this started out, right. But again, it will happen. Ula Ojiaku I'm going to ask you a question I ask all my guests. What books have influenced you and would you recommend to the audience? Bjarte Bogsnes Well, many, many years ago, when I was an ardent budget supporter and believer, I read Maverick by Ricardo Semler, the former CEO of Semco, and I was mind-blown, simply mind-blown. It, kind of yeah, it really, really moved me, even if I kind of didn't have the chance to adopt any of that thinking before, many, many years later. Lately, again, I've mentioned Gary Hamel, and his co-author, Michele Zanini, they have written great books. The last book Humanocracy is a great one, and, a previous one by Gary Hamel, The Future of Management is also a book that I really like and I recall giving that book to the CEO of Statoil quite early on the journey, and he liked it so much that he gave it as a Christmas present to the rest of the executive committee. Ula Ojiaku Thank you, and of course I would add to the list This is Beyond Budgeting. If someone wants to get in touch with you, what's the best way of getting to you? Bjarte Bogsnes Yeah, then I will think about this as getting in touch with us, and when I say us, I mean that there is a core team of five, six people who are kind of driving this. And we have a website called, bbrt.org. That will give you more information about the Beyond Budgeting Roundtable, which is a global network of companies interested in this and individuals interested in this. And that is where you can sign up as company member, individual member. And I also recommend to subscribe to our newsletter, and if you're curious about this guy and all of this then I made that difficult decision a few years ago to leave Equinor, to start Bogsnes Advisory to be able to work full-time with this. And so I have my own small simple website called bogsnesadvisory.com And on bbrt.org you will also find a list of more books that I can highly recommend on this topic. Ula Ojiaku That's great. Are you on social media, Bjarte? Bjarte Bogsnes I am, I'm on LinkedIn, Twitter, and the only thing I write about is this stuff. There are no cats and dogs and grandchildren or anything, so that's why it's highly appreciated if somebody wants to follow me. Ula Ojiaku So any final words for the audience in terms of an ask? Is there something you want them to do? Bjarte Bogsnes Reflect a little bit about the risk picture here, because there is a very compelling risk picture, right? If you are afraid that it won't work in your organisation, well, what's really the downside risk? Because if you're right, if it doesn't, you can go back to the old way tomorrow. Not the single soul in the company would've forgotten how to budget as one example, and compare that minimal downside risk with that huge upside potential performance-wise. And I'm saying when this is working, not if it's working, as we have seen in so many organisations. So a very compelling risk picture. I think that is worth reflecting on as well. Ula Ojiaku Well, it's been great speaking with you, Bjarte. Thank you so much for those wise words and the advice, and I would again say to you, the audience, please go grab your copy of Bjarte's book, This Is Beyond Budgeting, which is now out. And I hope we'll definitely have another opportunity to have a conversation and speak about Beyond Budgeting, since you don't want to talk about any other thing. Anyway, so thank you again, Bjarte. It's a pleasure having you on. Bjarte Bogsnes Thank you, Ula. Thank you very much for the invitation. Ula Ojiaku That's all we have for now. Thanks for listening. If you liked this show, do subscribe at www.agileinnovationleaders.com or your favourite podcast provider. Also share with friends and do leave a review on iTunes. This would help others find this show. I'd also love to hear from you, so please drop me an email at ula@agileinnovationleaders.com Take care and God bless!   

Eingefahrene Traditionen und eine Das-haben-wir-schon-immer-so-gemacht-Mentalität: Viele Unternehmen folgen noch der traditionellen, aber veralteten „Command & Control“-Philosophie. Heißt im Klartext: Vorschriften, Kontrolle und strenge Hierarchien mit Top-down Entscheidungen. In der aktuellen VUKA-Welt kein tragbares Führungsmodell mehr. Stattdessen braucht es moderne Alternativen. Aber nicht nur modernere, sondern auch bessere. So eine, wie unser Gast im aktuellen LeaderTalk mitentwickelt hat. Prof. Dr. Franz Röösli hat mit seinen Co-Autoren ein adaptives Führungsmodell geschaffen, das auf 12 Prinzipien basiert. Aus der Praxis für die Praxis. Und genau darüber spricht Röösli mit Georgiy Michailov, Managing Partner bei Struktur Management Partner. Die beiden diskutieren Themen wie Werteverständnis oder wie wichtig die richtige Personalwahl und Vertrauen in die Mitarbeitenden sind. Sie sprechen aber auch darüber, was hinter Beyond Budgeting steckt und warum man sich dringend vom klassischen jährlichen Planungsprozess abwenden sollte. Außerdem verrät Röösli, warum richtige Irritationen ein Zeichen von moderner Führung sind.

I dagens episode diskuterer Joanna og Merete podcast-reisen så langt, med en aldri så liten recap av gjestene vi har hatt så langt, og hva vi tenker rundt temaene de har representert og belyst. Ikke mindre enn sju veldig dyktige gjester har bidratt med tanker og erfaringer fra alt fra Beyond Budgeting, via medarbeiderfokus og ledelse, til merkevarestrategi - for å nevne noen få. En perfekt oppsamlingsepisode om du ikke har tålmodighet til å høre på alle, med andre ord! PS: Husk å rate oss der du hører på podcast, og ikke nøl med å ta kontakt om du har ris, ros, generelle tilbakemeldinger eller ønsker kontakt for å diskutere noe spesifkt innen CX! Du finner oss på Linkedin: Joanna Carr og Merete Medle - eller på joanna@ncxn.no eller merete@ncxn.no Ukens CX stilling finner du dessuten her: https://www.finn.no/job/fulltime/ad.html?finnkode=290960528

Bio Dave West is the Product Owner and CEO at Scrum.org. In this capacity, he engages with partners, and the community to drive Scrum.org's strategy and the overall market position of Scrum. Prior to joining Ken Schwaber and the team at Scrum.org he was Chief Product Officer at Tasktop where he was responsible for product management, engineering and architecture. As a member of the company's executive management team was also instrumental in growing Tasktop from a services business into a VC backed product business with a team of almost 100. As one of the foremost industry experts on software development and deployment, West has helped advance many modern software development processes, including the Unified process and Agile methods. He is a frequent keynote at major industry conferences and is a widely published author of articles and research reports. He also is the co-author of two books, The Nexus Framework For Scaling Scrum and Head First Object-Oriented Analysis and Design. He led the development of the Rational Unified Process (RUP) for IBM/Rational. After IBM/Rational, West returned to consulting and managed Ivar Jacobson Consulting for North America. Then he served as vice president, research director at Forrester Research, where he worked with leading IT organisations and solutions providers to define, drive and advance Agile-based methodology and tool breakthroughs in the enterprise. Email –  Dave.west@scrum.org Twitter - @davidjwest LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidjustinwest   Interview Highlights Growing up with dyslexia 03:10 & 10:20 Water-Scrum-Fall 07:40 Psychological safety 15:40 Lilian the rockstar - 'who have you helped today?' 18:55 Is 'project' a taboo word? 21:53 'Humble and Kind' - not just for country music 44:30 Books ·         Head First Object-Oriented Analysis and Design by Dave West, Brett McLaughlin and Gary Pollice https://www.amazon.co.uk/Head-First-Object-Oriented-Analysis-Design/dp/0596008678/ ·         The Nexus Framework for Scaling Scrum by Dave West, Kurt Bittner and Patricia Kong https://www.amazon.co.uk/Nexus-Framework-Scaling-Scrum-Continuously/dp/0134682661 ·         ARTICLE: Why Kindness Matters by Dave West https://www.scrum.org/resources/blog/why-kindness-matters ·         Thank You for Being Late by Thomas L Friedman https://www.amazon.co.uk/Thank-You-Being-Late-Accelerations/dp/0141985755 ·         Scrum: A Pocket Guide by Gunther Verheyen https://www.amazon.co.uk/Scrum-Pocket-Companion-Practice-Publishing/dp/9087537204 ·         The Professional Scrum Series by various authors https://www.amazon.co.uk/s?k=the+professional+scrum+series&crid=1WVNY1VHR0QAQ&sprefix=professional+scrum+series ·         Zombie Scrum by Christiaan Verijs, Johannes Schartau and Barry Overeem https://www.amazon.co.uk/Zombie-Scrum-Survival-Guide-Professional/dp/0136523269 ·         The Professional Agile Leader: The Leader's Journey Toward Growing Mature Agile Teams and Organizations (The Professional Scrum Series) by Ron Eringa, Kurt Bittner, Laurens Bonnema, foreword by Dave West https://www.amazon.com/Professional-Agile-Leader-Growing-Organizations-dp-0137591519/dp/0137591519/ Episode Transcript Ula Ojiaku (Guest Intro): Hello and welcome to the Agile Innovation Leaders podcast. I'm Ula Ojiaku. On this podcast I speak with world-class leaders and doers about themselves and a variety of topics spanning Agile, Lean Innovation, Business, Leadership and much more – with actionable takeaways for you the listener. It's my honour to introduce my guest for this episode. He is Dave West. Dave is the CEO of Scrum.org and prior to joining Scrum.org as CEO, he led the development of the Rational Unified Process, also known as RUP with IBM. He was also Chief Product Officer for Tasktop Technologies and Managing Director of the Americas at Ivar Jacobson Consulting. He is a widely published author of several articles and research reports, as well as the books The Nexus Framework for Scaling Scrum and Head First Object-Oriented Analysis and Design. In this conversation, Dave talked about growing up in the council estates, being raised by his grandparents who were of great positive influence in his life, especially his grandmother. He also talked about navigating the challenges of being dyslexic, especially as a student in secondary school with the silver lining being that he got introduced to computers. Dave also gave his perspective on one of the ongoing “agile wars” quote unquote, on the concept of projects and whether they still have a place in agile or not. Without further ado ladies and gentlemen, my conversation with Dave, I am sure you would find it very, very interesting, relevant and insightful. Thanks again for listening. Ula Ojiaku So we have on this episode of the Agile Innovation Leaders podcast, Dave West, who is the CEO of Scrum.org. Dave, it's a pleasure to have you on this show, thank you for making the time. Dave West Oh, well, thank you for inviting me. I'm glad we've finally managed to make the time to do this. It's great to talk to you. Ula Ojiaku Yes, well, the honour is mine. Let's start by talking about, you know, getting to know about the man, Dave. Can you, you know, tell us a bit about that? Dave West Yeah, I'll try not to bore your audience. So I was brought up on a council estate in a little town called Market Harborough, just outside Leicester. I lived with my grandparents, and which has definitely, my grandmother's definitely shaped who I am, I think, which is fantastic. So I got into computers, sort of a little bit by accident. I'm dyslexic and I found school, particularly secondary school, very challenging. I don't know if any of your audiences had a similar experience, but, you know, I went from a very protected environment and secondary school is a, oh my gosh, it's like an experience that could scare any human being. And so my dyslexia really was a challenge there and there was a teacher at secondary school called Phil Smith. He drove a sports car, he was sort of like that young, you know those teachers that you remember from school that are the good looking young ones. And he ran a computer lab and it had, you know, RS236, it had these really old computers, well, now we would look at them, they were brand new at the time, computers and some BBC model As and some other things. And I helped him and he gave me a lot of time in the lab and it was my sort of like escape. So I got very into computing and helped him and helped other teachers who were rubbish, I'm not going to lie, with computing. So that allowed me then, you know, I went through, managed to survive school, went to a further education college called Charles Keene where I studied, well I did a computing course, so not traditional A'levels and all of that. And then got into Huddersfield that was a poly at the time, became a University whilst I was there. And I think that that gave me a great opportunity, it was a fantastic university, it was a very practical course. My dyslexia became less of an issue because of, you know, word processing and I'd be honest and, you know, the ability for it to read back, even though it was an awful read back, it was like listening to say, you know, to like an old fashioned Stephen Hawking, you know, sort of, and then got me a job at Commercial Union, which then led to me doing a Masters, which then led me to move to London, all this sort of stuff. The adventure was great. The thing about, I guess, my journey is that it, I was driven at a certain point, I became very driven by the need to improve the way in which we delivered software development at that time, and that led me through my Masters and, you know, Object-Oriented and then to a company called Rational Software where I became the Product Manager for RUP, the Rational Unified Process. Now for the agilists listening, they're probably like, oh, boo hiss, and that's totally legit. It was in fact, that's when I first met Ken Schwaber and he told me I was an idiot, which turns out he was right. Ken Schwaber the creator (of Scrum), who I work for now. Anyways. Ula Ojiaku I mean, who wouldn't know Ken Schwaber if you're a self-respecting agilist.  Sorry, go on please. Dave West Yeah, he's an interesting character for sure. Anyway, so I was the RUP Product Manager and I realised I went to this large insurance company in the Midwest and it's a huge organisation and I met this lady and she said, I'm a use case. I said, what do you do? She said, I'm a use case specifier, and meet my friend, she's a use case realiser and I'm like, oh, no, that's not the intent. And so I realised that there was this process that I loved, and I still definitely love elements of it, but was fundamentally flawed in terms of helping actually people to work together to work on complex problems and solve them. So that, you know, and I'd written a book and I'd done some other things on the way to this point, but this point really did make me realise that I was going wrong, which was a little scary because RUP was incredibly popular at that time, and so then that led me to work with Ivar Jacobson, tried to bring in Scrum to the unified process, spent more time with Ken Schwaber who'd finally realised I may still be an idiot, but I was an idiot that was willing to listen to him. Then I ended up at Forrester Research, running the application development practice, I became a research director there, which was super interesting, because I spent a lot of time looking at organisations, and I realised a really fundamental problem that I think probably will resonate with many that are listening to this podcast, that people were doing Scrum yeah, Scrum was incredibly popular and people were doing Scrum, but they were doing it in an industrial context. It was more like Water-Scrum-Fall. And I coined that term in a research document, which got picked up by the, InfoQ and all these magazines, it became this sort of ‘thing' – Water-Scrum-Fall. You know, they were doing Scrum, but they only liked to plan once a year, and there's a huge planning sort of routine that they did. They were doing Scrum, but they rarely released because the customers really don't want it - it's incredibly hard and dangerous and things can go horribly wrong. And so they were doing Scrum, but they weren't really doing Scrum, you know. And so that was super interesting. And I got an opportunity to do a number of workshops and presentations on the, sort of like the solution to this Water-Scrum-Fall problem with Ken, I invited him and we did this very entertaining roadshow, which I'm surprised we weren't arrested during it, but we were, it was a really interesting experience. I then decided like any good practitioner, I had to do a Startup. So I went to Tasktop working with Mik Kersten and the gang at Tasktop, and the great thing about Tasktop was it was a massive fire hose of doing Scrum, trying to make payroll, learning about everything around delivering a product in a market that wasn't really there and that we had to build. And it was just fantastic working with a lot of OEMs, a lot of partners and looking at, and then we got funding. We grew to five teams. I was running product and engineering. And Ken was continually talking to me through this time, and mentoring me, coaching me, but I realised he was also interviewing me. So he then said to me, one day, Dave, I don't want to be the CEO of Scrum.org anymore. I'd like you to be, when can you start? Ken doesn't take no for an answer, and I think that's part of the success of Scrum. I think that his persistence, his tenacity, his, you know, sort of energy around this, was the reason why Scrum, part of the reason him and Jeff, you know, had different skills, but definitely both had that in common, was successful. So I then came and joined about seven years ago Scrum.org, to run Scrum.org and it's an amazing organisation Ula Ojiaku And if I may just go back a bit to what you said about your time in secondary school, you said you were dyslexic and apart from the fact that you discovered computers, you had a horrible experience. What made it horrible for you? Dave West I think it was, you know, there's no support network, there's nobody checking in on you, particularly at secondary school. At primary school, you have a teacher that you're in the same room, you've sort of got that, you're with the same kids, but you go, you know, you, you go from one lesson to another lesson, to another lesson and if you're a little bit, well for me, you know, reading and writing was incredibly difficult. I could read and write at that point. I was about nine and a half, 10 when I finally broke through, thanks to an amazing teacher that worked with my primary school. And, but I was way, way behind. I was slower. I, you know, and teachers didn't really, it was almost as though, and I'm sure education's very different now, and both my children are dyslexic and they go to a special school that's designed around this, so I know that it's different for them, but the teaching was very much delivery without inspection and adaption of the outcome, you know, just to make it a bit agile for a second. So you go through all this stuff and I wasn't able to write all the stuff down fast enough. I certainly wasn't able to process it, so because of that, it was pretty awful. I always felt that I was stupid, I was, you know, and obviously I relied on humour and I was a big lad, so I didn't have any bullying issues, but it was very, very challenging. And I found that I could be good at something with computers. And I sort of got it, I understood how to write, you know, BASIC very quickly and maybe even a little Assembly. I knew how to configure machines, it just seemed natural, it certainly helped my confidence, which, you know, maybe I'm a little too confident now, but definitely had an impact on my future life. Ula Ojiaku That's awesome, and I'm sure there are people who would be encouraged by what you've just said, so I wanted to begin there. Thanks for sharing. Now, what about, what do you do when you're not working? Dave West What do I do when I'm not working? Well, I'm a, that's a hard question. Gosh. So I have a nine year old and a six year old, and two boys, so, you know, sometimes I'm refereeing wrestling matches, you know, I'm definitely dealing with having children, I was late to life having children. I'm 52 and I have a nine year old and a six year old. I thought that, you know, a single lifestyle, a bachelor lifestyle in Boston and, you know, loving my work, writing books, you know, doing this traveling the world was going to be survive, and then I met the most amazing girl and, who persuaded me that I needed to have children, and I thought, well, I really like you, so I'd better. And it's been an incredible adventure with these children. They've taught me so much, the most important thing I think they've taught me is patience. And it's making me a better human being, and many of those traits, just to bring it back to Agile for a second, are things that we need to build better into the way that we turn up at work because you know, the project, I think it was called Aristotle, the Google big project where they looked at the successful teams, they found a number of traits, but one of those traits that was so important was psychological safety, right? And that requires you to attend every interaction with a mindfulness, not of doing things that you want to do to yourself, which is that sort of golden rule, but that platinum rule, do unto others as they want be done unto. And, and I think that is so, so important and crucial, and it's something that I aspire to, I don't always succeed every day as a human being, you know, whether it's at the checkout at the supermarket or whether it's waiting in line, particularly at the moment in an airport, and it's just, you know, something that I think in an agile team is so important because that safety is so, so required to create that environment where transparency happens, to create that environment where you can have those honest conversations about what's happening next, or what's happened previously where you're running those retrospectives, where you're trying to really plan when there is not enough knowledge to plan. You know, those sort of things require that kind of environment to be successful. So, you know, though, yes, I spend my life either working or really spending it with my children at the moment because of the age they're at, I think it's helping me, the time I'm spending with my children is helping me be a better human being and be a better Agilist.  Ula Ojiaku There's something you said, you know, about psychological safety and being kind, it just reminded me that, you know, of that, the need for also to be respectful of people, because when you are kind and you're showing people respect, they would, that brings down the barriers and makes them, you know, more inclined to be open and to participate. What do you think about that? Would you say there's a link between respect and kindness, I know we're being philosophical right now… Dave West Well actually, yes, but no, it's incredibly practical as well. I think that kindness, so I've written quite a lot about kindness, because it's a trait that we, as a community, our professional Scrum trainer community, manifests and lives. It's something that we actually interview for when you join our community, and the reason why we do that, isn't because we're a bunch of hippies that just like kumbaya, want everybody to hold hands and be nice to each other, I mean, that would be great as well and who doesn't like a good rendition of kumbaya, it's a great song, but it's because we believe that kindness, ultimately, is beneficial to both parties, particularly the person that's being kind, because it creates, not only does it create levels of karma, but it creates that transparency, it creates that opportunity to learn that you may not get, if you go in in a very confrontational way and people don't intentionally be confrontational, but it's so easy for it to happen. You know, it's so easy for you to question, because, you know, somebody says something you're like, well, I don't agree with that, and that instantly creates an environment or a connection that is, you know, confrontational, you're in this position, it spirals, blah, blah, blah. So, but you can, instead of saying, I don't agree with that say, hey, well, that's interesting, let me have a look into that, and you're inquisitive. And if you try to approach everything with that sort of like kindness model, and I don't mean always being nice. Nice is different to kind, nice is like faking, I think, sometimes, you know, it's funny, you don't have to be kind to be nice, but you have to be nice to be kind if you understand what I mean. So you can fake niceness, niceness is part of being kind. So, you know, if you approach it in the right way, where you care about people and you care about what they're bringing to the table and you care about the environment that they're in, whether it's just simple things like checking in more frequently, you know, whether it's actually making time in this very scheduled life that we live now with zoom call after zoom call, to check in with the team, or the person that you're talking to, to see how are they turning up today? How has their day been? And I think that's, you know, super, super important. The other important element of kindness that comes out is this helping others element, you know, my gran, God rest her soul, Lilian, she was a rockstar on so many levels. And she used to say to me, when I came home from school, particularly from elementary school or primary school, I think we call it in England, right? She'd say things like, not what have you done today, I mean, sometimes she said that, but she'd say, who have you helped? Who have you helped? I'd be like uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, and she said it enough that I realised it's important, you know, it's important that you spend time with others, help them in their tasks, you know, because I think you can learn so much and build those relationships, build that safety that is so, so important to really develop. We work in complex environments, right, that's the whole point of agility. Complex environments require people to collaborate, they require people to look at things in different ways. They really benefit from diversity, diversity of mind, diversity of experience, diversity of skill. And you bring that together, but you can only bring all these different parts together when you have an environment that allows for it, and traditional project management techniques, fabulous as they were for building bridges and tunnels and everything like that, didn't allow that, they don't encourage that. They encourage people to be focused, to be efficient, to be managing to that model. And I think we have to step away from that and work in a slightly different way where kindness, psychological safety, trust, respect, use the word respect. And I think it's, you know, obviously it's a Scrum value, but it's crucial to effectively allowing independent people with diverse perspectives to work together in an effective way. And to be honest society doesn't have enough of that in general. I think we've definitely moved away from respect and trust. We don't trust in our governments, we don't trust in our institutions, we don't trust in our fellow human beings and we've become very much focused on ourselves and our individual needs. And the reality is there's no such thing as a self-made person, you're only there because of the success of previous generations. As you drive to work on a car, on a road that has been built by others, that's been funded by others, you know, so this idea that you are in it alone, you know, is completely wrong, and I think sometimes we bring that to the work and it creates an environment that is not as successful. Ula Ojiaku True, true. No, thanks for that, Dave. I completely agree. Now there are people back to this project program that feel like, you know, the word project in agile is a taboo, almost a swear word. What's your perspective on this? Dave West I don't think it's a swear word, I don't think it's taboo. I think, you know, Mik's book is a fabulous book and he's a fabulous person, but he was using it to emphasise the fact that, you know, that we have become too focused on this, you know, investment paradigm, this organisation paradigm, this structural paradigm of the project and that, ultimately, the idea of a product, this idea of a cohesive set of capabilities that's packaged in some way that has a clear boundary, that has a clear set of customers, that has some clear value, is a much better way of aligning your people and your investments. And so he was emphasising that, and obviously he emphasised the idea of value streams being the mechanism that we deliver value in this construct to these people in this packaging of products, and it's a great book and I recommend everybody should read it. Ula Ojiaku I have mine here. Dave West No, that's good. Yeah. I was fortunate enough to be involved in the development of the book a little, working with Mik, providing a lot of feedback and I think it's a great book. However, the idea of a project doesn't go away and all of that work that we did, that organisations that I respect deeply like the PMI and, you know, that even, dare I say, things like Prince2, all of that work, isn't wrong. It's just, we need to look at it from a different lens. The idea that complex work is there changes certain things, the fact that requirements and understandings and appreciation of what we're doing emerges over time, that is just a truth, and that was true of projects as well. We just need to build in the mechanisms to be better able to deal with that. The fact that we would invest hundreds, if not thousands of hours planning things that ultimately fell apart when some underlying assumption changed and then we'd create a change order to deal with the chaos that that created need to be, we need to step away from those ideas. Do we still have projects? I think yes, sometimes you will have something that has a, you know, put a man on, or hopefully it's not a man, hopefully it's a woman, but a woman on Mars. I don't trust men on, I think it'd be much more successful if it was a woman, but, anyway, or person. Men get old, they don't grow up, right? Isn't that the saying, but anyway, so putting that person on Mars is a project, right? It has a definitive, you know, plan, it has an end goal that's very clearly underside. It's very likely that we're going to build a series of products to support that, you know, there is, I don't think we need to get tied up so much on the words, project and product. However, we really need to step back a little bit and look at, okay, you know, like treating people as resources, breaking up teams and reforming teams continuously, treating people as fungible or whatever that is, they're just unrealistic. It's not nothing to do with project or product, they're just silly, you just can't deal with this. The fact that teams take time to form, you know, the fact that, you know, the most successful agile teams I've ever seen are teams that have a clear line of sight to the customer, clear understanding of what they're trying to do for that customer, have guardrails, have an enabling management structure that provides support to deliver that value to that customer. As long as you think about those things and you don't get so tied up with the dance or the routine of project management that you forget that, then I'm not concerned. You know, there's this big thing about, oh, should project managers be Scrum masters? I don't know, it depends on the project manager. Sometimes project managers make very good product owners because they take real clear ownership of the outcomes and the value that's trying to be delivered. Sometimes, you know, they make great Scrum masters because they care very much about the flow of work, the team dynamics, the service to the organisation, the service to the business, and they want to act in that way. And sometimes you just want to get stuff done and work in a team, as a developer on that increment. You know, I don't know, you know, people are like, oh, because, and I think this is the fundamental problem, and you've got me onto my soapbox here and I apologise, but the thing that I see over and over again is the use of agile in an industrial, mass production oil and mass production way of thinking about the world. So what they do is that it isn't agile or project management that's at fault. It's the paradigm that's driving the use of agile or the use of project management. You can do agile in a very waterfall way, don't get me wrong or a very industrial way, I almost don't want to use the word waterfall, but this idea of, you know, maximizing efficiency. I mean, gosh, the word velocity has been as synonymous of agile forever when ultimately it's got nothing to do with agility, you know, it's a useful mechanism for a team to help them run a retrospective sometimes. But it isn't a mechanism that you use to plan, you know, the capacity of your organisation and all this sort of idea,  what they're trying to do always is use an industrial, you know, sort of mindset in an agile context, in a context that doesn't support an industrial mindset or a traditional mindset. And that drives me mad because I see agility being used to deliver work rather than value, I see agility basically being missed, sort of like, almost jimmied in with a crowbar into these massive projects and programs where you've got fixed scope, fixed budgets at the start. They don't actually know what they're trying to achieve, but you've got all these contracts in place that describe all this stuff, very detailed up front. And then they say, we're going to use agile to do it, and you're like, okay, what are we, you know, what happens if the first sprint uncovers the fact that the product goal was fundamentally flawed? Oh well, we can't change that because the contract says, well, hang on a minute, what are we in this business for? Are we actually trying to deliver value to customers and help them solve a particular problem to deliver? Or are we trying to do something else? And they're like, no, we're trying to deliver on the contract. Oh, but isn't the contract a mechanism that describes that? Maybe, but that's not why we're here. And that's when it starts getting, going wrong, I think,  that industrial mindset that I just want, tell me what to do, give me a job, let me sit down, just give me that change order and I will start work. It's just wrong. And for certain types of project, and certain types of product and certain types of problem, you know, it probably works really well if we're building the 17th bridge or we're, you know, doing those sort of things. But the reality is in the digital age, that most knowledge workers, who are the people that really benefit from agile the most, that aren't working in that way, they're working with very changeable environments, very changeable customer understanding very, you know, it's a little bit more complex. Ula Ojiaku True, true. And what you're saying reminds me of my conversation with Dave Snowden, he's known for his work on complexity theory, Cynefin, and if it's in a complex adaptive environment, you know, you need to be agile, but if it's a complicated problem or a simple problem, so complicated is really about, you know, breaking it down into a series of simple problems but it's still sequential and predictable, you could use, you know, the traditional waterfall method, because nothing is going to change, it's really putting all those pieces together to get to a known end state, and so I am of the same mindset as you, in terms of it's all about the context and understanding what exactly are you trying to achieve, what's of value to the customer and how much of it do we know and how much learning do we have to do as we get there. Dave West Exactly. I'm obviously not anywhere near as smart as somebody like a Dave Snowden who just, I think he has forgotten more things than I've ever understood, but yeah, I mean he's an amazing thought leader in this space, but the challenge and he talks a little bit about this sometimes, or I think he does, is that we don't always know what's complicated or complex or the amount of unknown. And this is, you know, this is the classic sort of entrepreneur. Entrepreneurs aren't necessarily working in complexity, they're working in unknown. But the nature of complex unknown is really tricky because you may discover that something that you thought was known is not known, and then you then have to change how you approach it. So the reason in Scrum, what we do is we deliver frequently and that, ultimately, and we deliver the most valuable things or the things that will give us the most value, thus that uncovers those misunderstandings early in the process. Ula Ojiaku Yeah, completely true. And just to build on what you said in terms of understanding or realising that your product goal was wrong, you're working on the wrong thing. Sometimes you might have to also kind of say goodbye to the project or pull the plug. It depends. Dave West Yeah. And that's incredibly hard, sorry, just to lean into that. It's very hard because you've got people that are there and you've invested time, you know, there's the sort of classic fallacy of sunk costs, all that stuff, but the reality is it's not a fallacy of psychological sort of like sunk energy. You've invested all this time and money and effort and motion to get where you're at and then you're realising it's wrong. It's incredibly hard to step away from that. And so what you do, and you see this with startups all the time is, you know, you pivot, you pivot, you pivot, you pivot, you pivot, but you don't really pivot, what you're doing actually is trying to find a way to get all that investment that you've spent to be useful to deliver some value, you know, and whether it's repackaging or whatever, so that you can say, oh, that's okay when actually, and you can spend as much time doing that as you did the original thing, and now you are even worse, in a worse situation and it's hard. Ula Ojiaku Yes. Completely agree. So there's something you said about, you know, you gave an example of people doing, if I will use your term, Water-Scrum-Fall, in their delivery. And sometimes, you know, they go into detailed requirements, you know, specification, and this is, and they write an iron-clad contract that would, you know, kind of specify all these requirements have to be met, and whilst from the delivery perspective, in terms of the teams who actually do the work, it's they are, they get it, they want to be agile, but it's always these constraints. And whenever we, as an agile coach, you know, you go into the root of the matter. It's the typical root causes of why there is this inflexibility it's either, you know, the leadership and/or, you know, the business or their clients not wanting, you know, having that traditional expectations, any advice on how to effectively deal with this sort of blocker? Dave West I think it's very difficult, particularly when it's like outsourced or you've got, you know, that sort of it's contract-based as opposed to internal in terms of commitments. So it's not budgeted it's actually contracted. And when, when that happens it's very difficult, because you know, you've got the deal because you know how to do stuff and you've done it before, and you've got all that experience with the customer of course, so it's well, because you've done it before and you've invested all this experience, you must tell us exactly what it is that we are going to do. And the reality is the customer themselves doesn't know what they want, really. And until you actually get into the process, it's very difficult. I think one of the big things that's going to happen over the next few years, and we're starting to see some of this with things like Beyond Budgeting, the new procurement contract models that the US is, is perpetuating with 18F and the work of the central government. It would sort of stop during the previous administration, but it's now back, you know, how do you do agile contract management, what does it mean? Speaking from personal use, you know, of external companies to do work for Scrum.org, we pay for sprints. We define a clear product goal that we evaluate continuously, that's measurable. We, you know, we have a product owner from Scrum.org embedded in the Scrum team, even if the Scrum team or in the Scrum team, so of course, if the product owner, they are part of the Scrum team, but even if the Scrum team is predominantly a third party. So we do things like that to, and because you can't just fund one sprint at a time. It's very, you know, these people have got to pay mortgages and you know, they've got payroll to hit, so you have to negotiate a number of sprints that you would do it that allows them the flexibility to manage those constraints whilst being realistic, that at the end of a sprint review, you may discover so much stuff, or even during a sprint, that questions everything, and requires a fundamentally, you know, shifting of the backlog, maybe a change to the backlog, assuming that the objective and the product goal is still valid. You know, so putting those things in place, having those honest conversations and partnership conversations with the client is crucial. And the, you know, service companies that serve Scrum.org are a little bit luckier because we actually come at that from a, we know that we don't know what we want, whereas most clients, it's a lot harder to get them to say that. We know what we'd like to achieve, so the other thing that's important and I think that OKRs are maybe part of this, we have a thing called EBM, Evidence Based Management, which is a sort of like an agile version of OKRs. The OKRs and if defining the outcomes that you're trying to achieve and how you're going to measure them up front, validating them continuously, because it's possible you're wrong, but it's a much less of a scary prospect than not describing anything at all, or just having some very highfaluting goal. So getting very clear and precise in what you're trying to achieve and actually investing the time up front to work out what that means, and getting everybody on the same page around that can really help solve those problems long term, because you build to that, and that ultimately becomes the true north that everybody's working to. So when you have those moments of oh, that's not what we thought then, you know, that's okay, because you are validating against at least something, you have some level of structure in all of this. Ula Ojiaku So let's get to some other questions. What books have you, you know, read that you would say have kind of impacted the way your outlook on, or view on the subject of agile agility or anything else, what would you recommend to the audience? Dave West So the books that really changed my life around thinking about this in a different way, there was a few. The one that actually has nothing to do with agile that made me step back from the way I was looking at the world was Thank You for Being Late by Thomas Friedman. That book really sort of like reinforced the fact that the world is incredibly complex and is, you know, he's famous for The World is Flat, you know, the sort of like global supply chain thing, which we are all very aware of and it's fundamentally having a huge impact now on prices and inflation and the like because of, you know, it's been such a mess over the last two and a half years. So that changed my outlook with respect to the world that I'm living in, which I thought was quite interesting. In terms of straight agility, you know, I'll be honest, there's Scrum – A Pocket Guide that taught me professional Scrum, that's Gunther Verheyen's book that I'd never really thought about Scrum in that way. And then I have to plug the series, The Professional Scrum Series from Addison, well, it's Pearson now, sorry. There are some great books in there, Zombie Scrum is absolutely fabulous. And actually, coming out on the 17th of June is a new book about leadership, The Professional Agile Leader: The Leader's Journey Toward Growing Mature Agile Teams and Organizations. I just read that, so I did not remember it, but it's by three people I adore, Ron Eringa, Kurt Bittner and Laurens Bonnema. They're awesome, you know, had lots of leadership positions, written a great book. I wrote an inspired forward just in case anybody's checking that, you know, that confidence thing certainly came back after middle school, right. But that's a really interesting book that talks about the issue that you highlighted earlier, that leadership needs, we've spent a lot, we've spent 25 years teaching Scrum to teams. We need to spend the next, probably 60 years, teaching Scrum to leaders and trying to help, and it's not just Scrum, it's agile, hence the reason why this isn't just about Scrum, you know, whether it's Kanban, whether it's Flow, whether it's Spotify Model, whether it's whatever, but the essence of that, you know, empiricism, self-management, you know, the continuous improvement, the importance of discipline, the importance of being customer centric, the value of outcomes and measures against outcomes, the value of community and support networks, you know, all of this stuff is crucial and we need to start putting that thing, you know, whether it's business agility, whether you call it business agility, you know, all organisations, I think the pandemic proved this, need to be more agile in responding to their market, to their customers, to their employers and to the society that they contribute to. We get that. Leadership needs to change, and that's not a, you're wrong and awful, now sort of old leadership bad. No, it's just the reality is the world has changed and the more mindful leaders step back and say, oh, what do I have to do differently? Now, my entire team is remote, my, you know, my work is hard to plan, the fact that we, you know, our funding cycles have changed, our investment models have changed, you know, stepping back a little bit. So this professional, agile leader book I do recommend. Obviously I had the benefit of reading it before it became a book and it's very, very good and fun to read. Ula Ojiaku Awesome, we will put the list of books and links to them in the show notes, so thank you for that. Now, is there anything you'd like to ask you know, of the audience? Dave West Oh gosh, I don't know. I mean, my only sort of like, if it's sort of closing, if we've unfortunately come to the end of our time together and I, you know, I did waffle on, so I apologise for using far too much of it. But I guess the question I, and we talked a little bit about this, but you know, this sort of, there is a propensity in our industry, like every industry, and every moment, and every movement to become very inward looking, to become very like my way is better than every other way, you know. And obviously I'm very into Scrum and I apologise, I accept that I am. But I'm not arrogant enough to believe that it is the only way of solving complex problems. I'm also not arrogant to believe that it is sufficient. You know, I love the work of the Lean UX, Agile UX, we loved it so much we worked with Jeff and Josh to build a class together. I love the work of Daniel Vacanti and in professional Kanban and the Kanban community in general, I love, you know, I love the work of the professional coaching organisations and what they're really doing to help me be a better human being dare I say. You know, the point is, as you sit at this moment in time, you as an agile practitioner, have the opportunity to draw on many different disciplines and many different experts to really help to create that environment. That can allow agility to thrive and value to be delivered. And I think the only thing that's getting in the way of you doing that, or the only thing that was getting in the way of me doing that, and it still does sometimes is uberous arrogance and just a lack of, I don't know, not willing, not being willing to step out of my comfort zone and accept that my predefined ideas and my experience, my diversity that I bring isn't necessarily always right and to be more humble and to be more kind. I know it's a country song, you know, humble and kind, right, which I'm, you know, obviously I live in America, so I have to like country music, it's mandatory, but if you can be a little bit kinder and to do what my gran asks, right? Not what did you do today, but who did you help? What did you learn? How are you going to be better tomorrow? If we can do all of those things, then not only are our projects and teams and products better, but our lives better, and maybe society could be a little bit better. Ula Ojiaku Those are great words, Dave, thank you so much for those. One last thing, are you on social media? How can people get in touch with you? Dave West Well you could always dave.west@scrum.org if you want to ping me on this thing called email. If you are under 30, it's this thing that old people like, it's called email. If you're younger and cooler, I do not have a TikTok account, I don't totally know what it is. My son says we need it. I'm not a totally sure that we do, but it's not about clocks as well, who knew that, what was all that about? Ula Ojiaku Well, just like Apple isn't the fruit… Dave West Isn't about fruit, how annoying is that as well? Anyway, and so many misconceptions in the world, right. Anyway, but, and M&Ms aren't Smarties, I know I get it. But anyway, sorry, David J. West is my Twitter handle, you know, but, you know, whatever, LinkedIn, you can always find me on LinkedIn, just do Dave West Scrum.org and you will find me on LinkedIn. Love connecting, love talking about this stuff, maybe a little too much. You know another saying that my gran used to say, “you've got two ears and one mouth, shame you never used it like that, David”. I was like, yes, gran, I know, yeah. She also didn't by the way, just for the record anyway. Ula Ojiaku Oh gosh, your grandma Lilian sounds like she was one awesome woman. Dave West Rockstar, rockstar. Ula Ojiaku Well, thank you so much, Dave. It's been a pleasure and I thoroughly enjoyed having this conversation with you, actually more learning from you and I hope sometime you'll be back again for another conversation. Dave West I would love that. Thank you for your audience. Thank you for taking the time today. I appreciate it. Let's stay in touch and I hope that we'll see maybe in person again soon. Ula Ojiaku Yeah, that will be wonderful.

Bio  Evan is the Founder and CEO of the Business Agility Institute; an international membership body to both champion and support the next-generation of organisations. Companies that are agile, innovative and dynamic – perfectly designed to thrive in today's unpredictable markets. His experience while holding senior leadership and board positions in both private industry and government has driven his work in business agility and he regularly speaks on these topics at local and international industry conferences.    Interview Highlights  01:10 Nomadic childhood  08:15 Management isn't innate  14:54 Confidence, competency and empathy  21:30 The Business Agility Institute  31:20 #noprojects  Social Media/ Websites:           LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/evanleybourn/          Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/eleybourn          Twitter: @eleybourn          Websites: o   Business Agility Institute https://businessagility.institute/  o   The Agile Director (Evan's personal site): https://theagiledirector.com/          Books/ Articles                   #noprojects: A Culture of Continuous Value by Evan Leybourn and Shane Hastie https://www.amazon.co.uk/noprojects-Culture-Continuous-Value/dp/1387941933          Directing the Agile Organisation: A Lean Approach to Business Management by Evan Leybourn https://www.amazon.co.uk/Directing-Agile-Organisation-approach-management-ebook/dp/B01E8WYTQ6          Out of the Crisis by W. Edwards Deming https://www.amazon.co.uk/Out-Crisis-Press-Edwards-Deming/dp/0262535947          The Goal by Eliyahu Goldratt https://www.amazon.co.uk/Goal-Process-Ongoing-Improvement-ebook/dp/B002LHRM2O          Sooner, Safer, Happier by Jonathan Smart, Jane Steel et al https://www.amazon.co.uk/Sooner-Safer-Happier-Antipatterns-Patterns/dp/B08N5G1P6D          Dare to Lead by Brene Brown https://www.amazon.co.uk/Dare-Lead-Brave-Conversations-Hearts/dp/1785042149          Article: Evan's Theory of Agile Constraints https://theagiledirector.com/article/2017/04/27/evans-theory-of-agile-constraints/ Episode Transcript  Ula Ojiaku (Guest Intro): Hello and welcome to the Agile Innovation Leaders podcast. I'm Ula Ojiaku. On this podcast I speak with world-class leaders and doers about themselves and a variety of topics spanning Agile, Lean Innovation, Business, Leadership and much more – with actionable takeaways for you the listener.  Ula Ojiaku  I am honoured to have with me Evan Leybourn, he is the founder and CEO of the Business Agility Institute, an international membership body that champions and supports the next generation of organisations. I am really, really pleased to have you here. Thank you for making the time Evan.  Evan Leybourn  Thank you Ula, I'm looking forward to this.  Ula Ojiaku  Awesome, now, so I always start with my guests and I'm very curious to know who is Evan and how did you evolve to the Evan we know right now today?  Evan Leybourn  I suppose that's a long one, isn't it? So I'm Australian, I was born in a small country town in the middle of nowhere, called Armadale, it's about midway between Sydney and Brisbane, about 800 kilometers from both, about 200 kilometers inland, and moved to Sydney when I was fairly young. Now I've spent my entire childhood moving house to house, city to city. So  the idea of stability, I suppose, is not something that I ever really had as a child. I'm not saying this is a bad thing. I don't, I had as good as childhood as any, but it's, I love moving, I love new experiences and that's definitely one of the, I think drivers for me in, when I talk about agility, this idea that the world changes around you. I think that a lot of that early childhood just, disruption, has actually put me in a pretty good place to understand and deal with the disruption of the world and then so, well, we've got COVID and everything else right now. So obviously there is a big, there are issues right now, and disruption is the name of the game. I started my career as a techie. I was a systems administrator in Solara Systems, then a programmer, and then a business intelligence data warehousing person. So I've done a lot of that sort of tech space. And, but you mentioned like the Business Agility Institute and this is the organisation I work now, but probably have to go back to 2008 when, I've been using agile, capital A agile, Scrum and XP, primarily a little bit of FDD in a data warehousing business intelligence space. And in 2008, I got promoted to be an executive in the Australian Public Service. And this was, I think, my first exposure to like, before that I'd run teams, I'd run projects, I knew how to do stuff. And like being a first level leader or project manager, it's, everything is personal. I don't need process, I don't need all those things that make organisations work or not work as the case may be, because when you've got seven people reporting to you, like that's a personal form of management.  So when I became a director, this was, I think, my first exposure into just how different the world was when, well the world of business was. And, I'll be blunt, I wasn't a good director. I got the job because I knew what to do. I knew how to, like, I could communicate in the interview how to like, build this whole of governments program, and that isn't enough. I had this assumption that because I was good at X, I would be good at being a leader of X and that's not the case. And so I actually, there's a concept called the Peter principle, being promoted to your level of incompetence. And that was me. I, it's, that's literally, I didn't know what I was doing, and of course, no one likes to admit to themselves that they're a fraud. It took my boss at the time to tell me that I was arrogant, because, and, and that actually hurt because, it's like, I don't see myself as arrogant, it's not part of my mental model of myself. And so, that push, that sort of sharp jab at my ego, at my sense of self was enough to go, hang on, well, actually, maybe I need to look at what it means to be a leader, what it means to create that kind of skillset, and I had this idea at the time that this thing that I'd been doing back as a techie called agile, maybe that might help me with, help me solve the problems I was facing as an executive – coordination, collaboration, not amongst seven people, but amongst like five, six different government agencies where we're trying to build this whole of government program and long story short, it worked. And this was sort of my first ‘aha moment' around what we sort of now would call, or what I would now call business agility, though definitely what I was doing back in 2008 was very, a far cry from what I would think of as good business agility. It was more like agile business, but that's what sort of set me up for the last, almost 15 years of my career and helping and advocating for creating organisations that are customer centric with employee engagement, engaged people, that idea of, we can be better if we have, take these values and these principles that we hold so dear in a technology space and we make that possible, we make that tangible in a business context. So it's a bit rambly, but that's kind of the journey that got me to where I am.  Ula Ojiaku  Not to me at all. I find it fascinating, you know, hearing people's stories and journeys. Now, there's something you said about, you know, you, weren't a good director, you knew how to do the work, but you just didn't know, or you weren't so good at the leadership aspects and then you had a wake up moment when your boss told you, you were coming off as arrogant. Looking back now and knowing what you now know, in hindsight, what do you think where the behaviours you were displaying that whilst it wasn't showing up to you then, but you now know could be misconstrued as arrogance?   Evan Leybourn  So let me take one step. I will answer your question, but I want to take it one step before that, because I've come to learn that this is a systemic problem. So the first thing, I shouldn't have been given that job, right. Now, do I do a good job? Eventually, yes, and I grew into it, and I'm not saying you need to be an expert in the job before you get it. Learning on the job is a big part of it, but we as a society, see that management is innate. It's something that you have, or you don't, and that's completely wrong. You don't look at a nurse or a doctor or an engineer and think, I can do their job. No, you think if I go to university and train, I can do that job. I don't think we look at a janitor and go, I can do their job without training. And a janitor is going to receive on the job, like it might be a couple of days, but they're going to receive on the job training. There was a study by, I think it was CareerBuilder, 58% of managers receive no training. We just have this assumption that I'm looking at my boss, I can do their job better than them. And maybe you can, but better isn't the same as good. Like, if they've reached their levels in competence, yes, you could probably be better, but not good. And so I think the skills of management are, it's an entirely different skillset to what, the thing that you are managing. And so I was good at, I was Director of Business Intelligence, so I was good at business intelligence, data warehousing systems. I didn't have the skills of management, no, running a thirty-five million dollar P&L, coordinating multiple business units, building out those systems and actually designing the systems that enabled effective outcomes. And so I think, I'm going to touch on two things. The first is, people and I, definitely, should have invested in learning how the skills of management before I became a manager. Not so that you're perfect, not so that you're an expert manager before you start, because you will learn more on the job than you ever will, from anything before you, before you do that job. But I didn't, it's the, I didn't know what I didn't know. I didn't know I was a bad manager. I was completely blind to that fact. I knew that outcomes weren't happening and that I was struggling, but half the time, it's a, why won't people listen to me? Why wouldn't they do what I say? Right, which, okay, yes, definitely not servant leadership material, but I didn't even know servant leadership was a thing. Right, so that's the point. At a minimum, I should have known what it took to be a manager, the skills that were going to be required of me. I should have made some investments in building that before I took that job, which is now the second point as to, they shouldn't have given me the job. And, again, this goes to that systemic problem.  I forget who like, there was like a Facebook, like, or a Reddit, like screenshot tweet, meme thing. And I saw it like six or seven years ago, and it stuck with me ever since. It was ‘God save us from confident middle-aged white men'. And I wasn't middle-aged, I was the youngest director in the public service at the time, but I definitely was confident. And for those of you not watching the video, I am white. So, the privilege and the assumption, I carried confidence into the interview, of course I can do the job, I run this team, I know how to do, like I know business intelligence and I know how to design business development systems, and it's like, sure it's a different scale, but it's the same thing. And because I came across as confident, because I thought I could do the job. I thought it was just what I was doing before, plus one, right. But it wasn't, because sure, I could do the plus one part, but that was 30% of the role. I was completely missing everything else. And so that's that other systemic problem, which I have learnt, sadly, over the last decade and a half, in terms of just, we overvalue confidence, then empathy, we overvalue confidence over skill. And I had one, I was empathetic. I didn't have, and, but I was weak at the skills, the management skills, I should have had all three, competence, confidence and empathy, but we value in interviews, as hiring managers, we interview confidence a lot more than the other two. And that is, I think the, one of the real systemic problems we have in the world, especially in tech, but just generally in the world.  Ula Ojiaku  Awesome. I mean, I was going to ask you, you know, what were those skills, but you've kind of summarised in terms of competence, confidence and empathy. So, well, I'm glad to hear the story had a happier ending, because you definitely changed course. So now knowing, again, what you now know, and you're speaking to Evan of 2008, what are the things, before going for that job, would you have told him to skill up in to be prepared for management?   Evan Leybourn  So, let me get very specific. So confidence, competence, empathy for me, those are the, so  this is something that I came up with, or I don't know where this idea emerged from, it's something that I've carried with me for the better part of a decade. For me, those three attributes are my measures of success. If I can have all three, that's what can make me successful. Now in terms of, going deeper than some of the specific skills that we need, that I needed, so the first one, emotional intelligence. Now, I know that's broad and fuzzy, but there were many times, and many times since I'm not saying I'm perfect and I'm not perfect now. This last week, there have been challenges where it's like I've misobserved, and I wish I had seen that, but being able to understand when you're not hearing somebody, when they're talking to you and you're listening, but not hearing, and so the emotional intelligence to sort of read and understand that there's a gap, there's something missing between what is being said and what is being processed up there in the little grey cells. The other one that, a couple, I'll call it emergent strategy. So, this idea of the three-year plan is completely ridiculous, it's been wrong for 30 years, but we don't develop enough of the counter skill, which is being able to take an uncertain environment, where there's insufficient information and ambiguity, make a decision, but design that decision with feedback loops so that, you know the decision is probably, right, that strategic decision is probably wrong, so rather than sort of run with it for three months and then make another decision, it's designed with these feedback loops, so it's, the next decision is better because you, it's the whole strategic system is designed to create those loops. And that was a key skill that I was missing, in that, this is the government, like I was a Prince 2 Project Manager, an MSP programme manager. I knew how to build the Gantt charts, and I was also an agilest, like I've been doing Scrum for the past five years, but like Scrum at a team level and agility at a business level was not something that many people had even thought about. And so, all of the programme level strategy was not agile. Again, this is 2008, and so we had this,  if I had known how to build an emergent, adaptive strategy, a lot of the challenges, the systems level challenges would have been resolved. And I could go a long time, but I'll give you one more.   So, I'm going to say communication, but not in the way that I think many people think about it. It's not about like conveying ideas or conveying messages, but it is that empathetic communication. It goes with that emotional intelligence and so forth, but it's the ability to communicate a vision, the ability to communicate an idea, and intent, not just the ability to communicate a fact or a requirement, like those are important too, but I could do those, but I had a large teams of teams across, not all of them reported to me, this was a whole government program. So there were people who reported to the program, but their bosses were in a completely different company, government department to me. And so I needed to learn how to align all of these people towards a common vision, a common goal beyond just a here's your requirements, here's the Gantt chart for the program. Please execute on this 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, right, which, sure, they did, but it's, they would, what's the saying? I think it was Deming, give someone a measurable target and they will destroy the company in order to make it. And you give them these, it's like, they will do like what that Gantt chart says, even if the world changes around them and it's the wrong thing to do, and we know, we've learned a lot better as a world, the idea of program level agility is pretty standard now, but 2008, it definitely, wasn't definitely not in government, definitely not in Australia. So, if I had been able to communicate intent and vision and get them aligned to that vision, and not just aligned to a Gantt chart, we would have been a lot more successful, we'd have a lot more buy-in, a lot more engagement. So, there's more, a lot more, but those would be, I think, some of the three that I would say really, really learn before you get the job.   Ula Ojiaku  Well, thanks for that. I'd like to just dive in a bit more, because you said something about the designing, you would have benefited if you knew how to design, build and adapt, that adaptive emerging strategy. How do you do that now? What's the process for doing this?   Evan Leybourn  So let me jump to the present. So, I run the Business Agility Institute. We're a fiercely independent advocacy and research organisation. We've been around for about four years, we don't do consulting, we're funded by our members primarily. Now, one of the very first publications that we put together was something called The Domains of Business Agility. It's not a framework, it doesn't tell you how to do it, it's not like Scrum or SAFe or Beyond Budgeting. Actually, Beyond Budgeting is not quite, if Bjarte heard me call Beyond Budgeting a framework, I'd be in trouble. It's, I think of it, I call it the ‘don't forget' model, because if you're going to change an organisation, these are the domains that you can't forget. The customers at the centre. Around that I would call the relationships, the workforce, your external partners, your vendors and contractors and suppliers, and your Board of Directors, because they represent ownership of the business. Around that are the nine, what I think of as ‘what's domains', right? These are the things that you need to focus on, right, there's leadership domains, individual domains, and so forth. One of them is strategic agility, otherwise known as adaptive strategy or emergent strategy. Now, one of the reasons that is one of the core domains of business agility and has been since 2018, I think, when we first published this, is because this is one of the fundamental capabilities for an organisation to not survive, but to thrive in uncertainty. Now, there are different approaches and, like, there's a whole bunch of different frameworks and approaches to BS, like four quadrant matrixes and tools and canvases. I'm not going to go to any of that, because A, all the tools are fine, right. So, find the one that works for you, Google will be your friend there, but what I want to do is, however, just look at what the characteristics of all those tools, what do they have in common? And I mean, I do that by really telling a little bit of a story. We, one of the things that we run is the Business Agility Conference in New York. It did run every March in New York city until 2020, well actually it ran in 2020. I know the exact date COVID was declared a pandemic because I was literally onstage, because I had to tell our delegates that this was now officially a pandemic, and if you needed to leave early to get flights and so forth, because we had delegates from Denmark and Switzerland, then please feel free to leave and all that kind of thing. Now, this isn't about the conference, but it's about what was happening before the conference. So you had this emergent problem, COVID-19, starting in China, hitting Italy, and I think it was like February 28 or March 1st, thereabouts, the first case hit in America, and it was California, I think it was Orange County, it was the first case. And what happened was we started to see companies change. Now, I describe it, well, sorry, these aren't my words, I'm stealing this from a comic I saw on Facebook at the time, we saw companies responding and companies reacting. Now, this is the difference between strategic agility and non strategic agility. So what was happening, so the first company pulled out from the conference, travel ban, our people can't attend. Within a week we'd lost about 50% of our delegates, right. Now, remember all we know at this point, this isn't the COVID of today, right? All we knew was there was a disease, it was more contagious than the flu, it was deadlier than the flu and it had hit America, right. We didn't know much more than that. We certainly didn't imagine it would be two years later and we're still dealing with it. I remember thinking at the time it's like, all right, we'll have a plan for like September, we'll do something in September, we'll be fine by then, and a famous last words. But companies had to make a decision. Every company didn't have a choice, you were forced to make a decision. Now, the decisions were, like, do I go to a conference or not? Right. Do I ban travel for my employees? Do we work from home? But that decision came later, but there was a first decision to make and, you know what, there's no, there was no difference between companies, those companies that responded and reacted made the first decision the same, right. It's what came next, right. Those companies that were reacting, because every day there was something new that came up, a new piece of information, more infections, a new city, new guidance from the World Health Organisation or the CDC, and companies had to make decisions every single day. And those that were reacting, took the information of the day and made the decision. Those that were responding, took the decision they made yesterday, the new information, looked at the pathway that was emerging, that's that emergent strategy out of it and made the next decision. And so those strategic decisions that they were making as an organisation were built on the ones that came before, rather than discreet decision after decision after decision after decision. And so what ended up happening is you had those companies who were able to build a coherent strategy on insufficient information that grew and adapted and emerged as new information emerged, were better able to respond to the pandemic than those that were chaotically making decisions. And you could see that in something as simple as how quickly they could start working from home, or how quickly they made the decision to work from home, because those that responded, they had this thread of strategy, and so they were able to make the decision to work from home much faster, and then they were able to execute on that much faster. Whereas those that were not, did not. And I think of this as going to the agile gym, or business agility gym, no company was prepared for the pandemic. No company had a strategy paper of, if there's a worldwide pandemic, these are the things that we're going to do. But those companies that have practiced emergent strategy, right, in their product, in how they engage with the marketplace, they'd sort of, they'd taken concepts like lean startup and adopted some of those practices into their organisation. Those who had been to the agile gym, they knew how to respond. They weren't prepared for the scale of pandemic, no one had done emergent strategy at that scale, but they knew, they had the muscle memory, they knew how to do it, and so they just scaled up and operated in that new context. And it's like literally going to the gym, it's, if I build up my muscles, I mean, I definitely don't go to the gym enough, but if I did, right, I could lift more weights. So if a friend goes, hey mate, can you help me move a fridge, right, I'm able to do that because I have the capabilities in my body to do that. If I don't go to the gym, which I don't, not enough, right, and my mate goes, hey, can you help me move a fridge? It's like, I can help, but I'm not going to be that much help. It's, I'll stop it from tilting, right. I'm not going to be the lifter, right. So, the capabilities of that business agility enabled that emergent strategy or the responsiveness during a pandemic, even though no one was prepared for it. And that's kind of really what I see as organisations as they adjust to this new world.  Ula Ojiaku  Now you have this book, actually you've authored a couple of books at the very least, you know, there's #noprojects – A Culture of Continuous Value and Directing the Agile Organisation: A Lean Approach to Business Management Which one would you want us to discuss?   Evan Leybourn  So #noprojects is the most recent book, Directing the Agile Organisation is definitely based on my experience, it's drawing upon that experience back in 2008, I started writing it in 2009. It is out of date, the ideas that are in that book are out of date, I wouldn't suggest anyone reads it unless you're more interested in history. There are ideas, so sometimes I'll talk about the difference between business agility and agile business, where business agility is definitely, it's creating this space where things can happen properly through values and culture and practices and processes. But also it's very human, it's very focused on the outcomes, whereas agile business is more, how do we apply Scrum to marketing teams? And so my first book is unfortunately much more agile business than business agility.   Ula Ojiaku  Okay, so let's go to #noprojects then. There is a quote in a review of the book that says, OK, the metrics by which we have historically defined success are no longer applicable.  We need to re-examine how value is delivered in the new economy. What does that mean, what do you mean by that?   Evan Leybourn  So, the reason I wrote the #noprojects book, and this predates the Institute. So, this is back when I was a consultant. I've run a transformation programme for a large multinational organisation and their project management process was overwhelming. Everything was a project, the way they structured their organisation was that the doers were all contractors or vendors, every employee was a Project Manager. And so what ended up happening was they've got this project management process and it would take, I'm not exaggerating nine months, 300 and something signatures to start a project, even if that project was only like six weeks long. There were cases where the project management cost was seven to eight times the cost of the actual execution. Now that's an extreme case, certainly, and not all were that ratio, but that was kind of the culture of the organisation, and they were doing it to try and manage risk and ensure outcomes, and there's a whole bunch of logical fallacies and business fallacies in that, but that's another matter altogether, but what was happening is they were like, I'm going to focus in on one issue. I said there were many, but one issue was they valued output over outcome. They valued getting a specific piece of work, a work package completed to their desired expectations and they valued that more than the value that that work would produce. And I've seen this in my career for decades, where you'd run a project, again, I used to be a Project Manager, I'm going back like Prince2, you've got this benefits realisation phase at the end of the project. The Project Manager's gone, the project team is gone, the project sponsor is still around, but they're onto whatever's next. Half the time benefits realisation fell to the responsibility of finance to go, okay, did we actually get the value out of that project? And half the time they never did it, in fact more than half the time they never actually did it. It was just a yes, tick. And for those of you who have written business cases, the benefits that you define in the business cases are ridiculous half the time, they pluck it from the air, it's this bloody assumption that, hey, if we do this, it'll be better. I've seen business cases where it's like, we will save $10 million for this organisation by making like page reloads, half a second faster. So every employee will get three minutes back in their day, three minutes times how many employees, times how average salary equals $10 million. It's like how are you going to use that three minutes in some productive way? Is that actually a benefit or are you just trying to upgrade your system, and you're trying to convince finance that they need to let go of the purse strings so that you can do something that you want to do. So if we actually care about the value of things, then we should be structuring the work, not around the outcome, sorry, not around the output, but around the value, we should be incrementally measuring value, we should be measuring the outcome on a regular basis. Agile, we should be delivering frequently, measuring the value, and if we're not achieving the value that we're expecting, well, that's a business decision, right. What do we do with that piece of information? And sometimes it may be continue, because we need to do this, other times it may be, is there a better way to do this? And once you're locked into that traditional project plan, then sure, you might be agile inside the project plan, you might have sprints and Scrum and dev ops and all that kind of stuff, but if you can't change the business rationale as quickly as you can change the technology like the sprint backlog, then what's the point?  Ula Ojiaku  So you mentioned something and I know that some of the listeners or viewers might be wondering what's business outcome versus output? Can you define that?   Evan Leybourn  So, there is a definition in the book, which I wrote like six years ago. So I'm going to paraphrase because I don't remember exactly the words that I wrote, but an output is the thing, the product, the tangible elements of what is created, right. In writing a book, the output is the book. In this podcast, the output is the recording, the podcast that we're doing right now, the outcome and the impact is what we want to achieve from it. So, the output of the podcast is we have a recording, but if no one listens to it, then why? The outcome is that, well, the ultimate outcome is changing hearts and minds. Well, at least that's why I'm here. We want to create some kind of change or movements in, well in your case with your listeners, in the case of the book, the readers, we want to create a new capability, a new way of looking at the world, a new way of doing things. And so the outcome is, hopefully measurable, but not always. But it is that goal, that intent.   Ula Ojiaku  Exactly. So, I mean, for me, outcomes are like, what they find valuable, it's either you're solving and helping them solve a problem or putting them in a position, you know, to get to achieve some gains. Now let's just, are there any other books you might want to recommend to the audience, that have impacted you or influenced you?  Evan Leybourn  Yep. So I'm going to recommend three books. Two are very old books. So the first book is Deming, or actually anything by Deming, but Out of the Crisis is probably the best one, the first one, otherwise The New Economics. Deming is coming out of lean and manufacturing and the Japanese miracle, but he might've been writing in the eighties, seventies, but it's as agile as it gets, right. His 14 points for managers reads like something that would emerge from the Agile Manifesto, right. So I definitely love, I will go to Deming quite regularly in terms of just great concepts and the articulation of it.  The other book that I recommend for the idea, I have to admit it's a bit of a hard read, is The Goal by Eliyahu Goldratt. The Theory of Constraints, and if you Google Evan's Theory of Agile Constraints, and I think we're almost out of time, so I don't really have time to talk about it, but it's the Theory of Constraints, both in a practical sense as to how you actually optimise a process, but it also applies when you're looking at it from a holistic metaphorical standpoint, because I like to say, there is a constraint to agility in your organisation. You're only as agile as your least agile function, and it's not it IT software anymore, it's some other part of your business. You might have a sprint that can create a potentially shippable product increment every two weeks, but if it takes you three months to get a hiring ticket, or nine months get a budget change approved or six weeks to, until the next project control board, you're not, your agility is not measured in weeks. Your agility is still measured in months. Yeah. So Theory of Constraints, the book's a bit hard to read, it's definitely dated, but the concept is so powerful.   Evan Leybourn  So the last one that I'm going to recommend is, Sooner Safer Happier by Jon Smart. It's a relatively recent book. I, it's the book I've read most recently, which is partly why it's on the top of my mind. It is a very powerful, it really touches to the human sense of agility. It's in the title - Sooner Safer Happier, sooner is a technical value, right. Safer, happier, right? These are more than that, these are human values, these are human benefits. I know I said  three, but I'm just going to add a fourth, one more for the road. It comes to what I was talking about early in terms of my own experiences as a leader. And the book didn't exist at the time, but Dare to Lead by Brené Brown. Growth mindset is a bit of a buzzword these days, and there are definitely more mindsets than just growth and fixed. There are different kinds of mindsets that we hold, but just as a way of getting people to understand that you don't have to have all the answers, that you don't have to be right. So the reason I was arrogant, I was called arrogant by my boss at the time was because I didn't have a growth mindset. I didn't know I was wrong, or I didn't know what I didn't know. And it took some poking to make myself realise that I need to open up and I needed to be willing to learn because I didn't have all the answers. And the assumption that as a manager, as a leader, you're meant to have all the answers is a very toxic, cultural, systemic problem. So I think Brené Brown and the growth mindset work Dare to Lead is such a powerful concept that the more we can get people sort of internalising it, the better.  Ula Ojiaku  So thank you for that. How can the audience engage with you? Where can they find you?   Evan Leybourn  Yep. So, LinkedIn is probably the easiest way. I'm just Evan Leybourn, I think I'm the only Evan Leybourn on the planet, so I should be fairly easy to find. Otherwise, look at businessagility.institute We have a very comprehensive library of case studies and references, research that we've published, the models, like the domains that we have a new behavioural model that's coming out fairly soon, and you can always reach me through the Business Agility Institute as well.   Ula Ojiaku  Okay. And for like leaders and organisations that want to engage with the Business Agility Institute, would there be any, are there any options for them, with respect to that?  Evan Leybourn  So individuals can become individual members, it's 50 bucks a year, that's our COVID pricing. We cut it by 50%, at the beginning of COVID, because a lot of people are losing their jobs and we wanted to make it possible, easier for them to maintain as members. That gives you access to like, full access to everything. We publish books as well, so you can actually download full eBooks of the ones that we've published, and also obviously supports us and helps us grow and helps us keep doing more. We are however primarily funded by our corporate members, so it's what we call journey companies, those companies who are on the journey to business agility. So TD bank and DBS bank, for example, are two of our members, Telstra in Australia. So there is value in corporate membership and I'm not going to do a sales pitch if you are, if you want to know more, reach out to me and I'll definitely give you the sales pitch.  Ula Ojiaku  Awesome. Well, thank you so much. These will be in the show notes, and I want to say thank you so much, Evan, for making the time for this conversation. I definitely learned a lot and it was a pleasure having you here.   Evan Leybourn  Thank you. I really appreciate being here.   That's all we have for now. Thanks for listening. If you liked this show, do subscribe at www.agileinnovationleaders.com or your favourite podcast provider. Also share with friends and do leave a review on iTunes. This would help others find this show. I'd also love to hear from you, so please drop me an email at ula@agileinnovationleaders.com Take care and God bless!   

In this episode we speak with Claudia Melo, Jutta Eckstein and Steve Holyer about the Agile Sustainability capability and how it can help your teams create a better world. Jutta Eckstein (https://www.jeckstein.com/) works as an independent coach, consultant, and trainer. She is trained as a pollution control commissioner on ecological environmentalism. Jutta has helped many teams and organizations worldwide to make an a Agile transition. She has a unique experience in applying Agile processes within medium- sized to large distributed mission-critical projects. Jutta has recently pair-written with John Buck a book entitled 'Company-wide Agility with Beyond Budgeting, Open Space & Sociocracy' (dubbed BOSSA nova). Besides that, she has published her experience in her books 'Agile Software Development in the Large', Agile Software Development with Distributed Teams', 'Retrospectives for Organizational Change', and together with Johanna Rothman 'Diving for Hidden Treasures: Uncovering the Cost of Delay in your Project Portfolio'. Steve Holyer is an experienced trainer. coach, facilitator and consultant helping organizations unleash value and deliver results. He is also a frequent international speaker and a thought-leader on Scrum and Agile software development. He serves as advocate and mentor for companies, leaders and change agents looking for a better way of working using Agile practices in a productive, fulfilling, and fun way. Steve learned his craft serving as a Scrum Master with multiple teams and organizations, so he knows how to change an organization from the inside. From international Swiss business to emerging markets in South Africa, Steve understands and shows how to apply Scrum and Agile principles in specific cultural contexts. Since 2000, he has been based in Zurich. Switzerland. Claudia Melo is a technology leader building high-performing agile teams, taking big ideas and bringing them to life, and helping teams successfully navigate through change and innovation. She brings over twenty years of global experience in developing new digital solutions. digital transformation, consulting, technology/business strategy, evidence-based research & working with senior leadership executives. She was previously Director at Loft, Enterprise Agile Coach with the United Nations in Vienna. and Thought Works' CTO for Latin America, where she also played a Global Head of Tech Learning Development role. Since 2016, she has been working on ICT for Sustainability, aligned to the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Claudia received her Ph.D. in Computer Science (Agile Team Productivity) from the University of São Paulo (USP), in collaboration with the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU). She is passionate about community building and impact, contributing through volunteering, public speaking, teaching, mentorship, research, books, and industry reports in Latin America, Europe, US, and Scandinavia. In 2015, she received the USP Outstanding Thesis Award and, in 2016, cited as "Mulheres Inspiradoras" by ThingOlga in Brazil. She is also an advisory board member in Computer Science for Insper. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/comparativeagility/message

In this episode, the conversation continues with Jutta Eckstein, an independent coach, consultant and trainer, based in Germany. In the first part, she shares-Her origin story as a product engineerTransition from an engineer to a coachThe importance of listeningWe continue the conversation with: In her initial explorations with organizations, one pattern she found isThe understanding for leaders to introspect and understand their own responsibilitiesThat it is not always only technical aspects, but also the social aspectsHow having a common purpose helps in aligning team members togetherAlso creates a better buy-in and the work she had done with Diana Larsen on the book liftoffHow she finds and manages time to do so many things - liking her job and what she does!Doing what she feels is importantThe advice she got from Alistair Cockburn - what is the maximum money you want to make in a year?Making time to help others, not for money, at least immediatelyHow she reconciles different perspectives she gets from her network - by keeping some ME time, doing yoga, exercises etc and not forgetting self careHer thoughts on sustainability - that is her current passion as the planet is on fireSocial, environmental and economic pillars Diversity, inclusion, accessibility, equity Carbon footprint, wasteHolistic picture of the product: is or product improving lives everywhere or in a limited areaThe carbon impact of products during their lifecycle is more during the usageHow to find a balance between consuming more computing resources and the carbon footprintSome career tips in the area of IT and sustainabilityJutta Eckstein works as an independent coach, consultant, and trainer. She has helped many teams and organizations worldwide to make an Agile transition. She has a unique experience in applying Agile processes within medium-sized to large distributed mission-critical projects. Jutta has recently pair-written with John Buck a book entitled Company-wide Agility with Beyond Budgeting, Open Space & Sociocracy (dubbed BOSSA nova). Besides that, she has published her experience in her books Agile Software Development in the Large, Agile Software Development with Distributed Teams, Retrospectives for Organizational Change, and together with Johanna Rothman Diving for Hidden Treasures: Uncovering the Cost of Delay in your Project Portfolio.Jutta is a member of the Agile Alliance (having served the board of directors from 2003-2007) and a member of the program committee of many different American, Asian, and European conferences, where she has also presented her work. She holds a M.A. in Business Coaching & Change Management, a Dipl.Eng. (MSc.) in Product-Engineering, a B.A. in Education, and is trained as pollution control commissioner on ecological environmentalism.links: https://www.linkedin.com/in/juttaeckstein/ https://www.jeckstein.com/https://www.agilebossanova.org https://jeckstein.com/sustainability

In today's Work Matters, host Thomas Bertels welcomes Niels Pflaeging. Niels is a well-known speaker, consultant, and author of "OpenSpace Beta" and "Leading with Flexible Targets."His open-source Beta Codex Network grew out of the Beyond Budgeting movement and expanded into a broader framework to drive transformation from alpha - top down, command and control - towards beta - decentralized, cell-based, agile ways of working.He discusses the proliferation of outdated management models and how the underlying mental models hinder an organization's ability to make change.From there, Niels unpacks what we can learn from pioneers such as Southwest, Toyota, and Handelsbanken. And lastly, he puts Beta in the context of "The Big Quit" and shares how command and control models stifle potential, human motivation, and the joy of work. He reveals how management's role is to create conditions for work to succeed and that leadership functions best when it hires great people - and gets out of the way.

In this episode, Jutta Eckstein, an independent coach, consultant and trainer, based in Germany, shares Her origin story of starting as a product engineer, with an interest in software developmentStarted as a trained teacher and when the need for teachers dropped, went on to study product engineering and studying Pascal - and completely falling in love with software developmentAlso getting trained as pollution control commissioner, when she could move from street protests to actually working to keep pollution under controlHer early experience with Pascal and Assembler, and Smalltalk being her all time favoriteBeing part of the professional communities such as OOPSLA, and getting an orientation on the techniques and practices that got crystallized as Agile practicesHer transition from an engineer to a coach : discovering her strength based on a trigger by her project managerMoving into areas of architecture and design and becoming a team coachThe difference between a consultant and coach rolesStudying business coaching and change management, to get a formal understanding and foundationHow that enabled developing connections with people across various industriesMy task is not to create the right mindset, my task is coming with the right mindset myselfThe importance of listening, coming with experience, and working with expertsStarting with a retrospectiveStarting with a few questions: clients having prior experience with changeWhy do you think it will be successful this timeWhat hinders you from starting nowIf she discovered anything surprising in these initial explorations… her response of a pattern she sees.. In the next episodeJutta Eckstein works as an independent coach, consultant, and trainer. She has helped many teams and organizations worldwide to make an Agile transition. She has a unique experience in applying Agile processes within medium-sized to large distributed mission-critical projects. Jutta has recently pair-written with John Buck a book entitled Company-wide Agility with Beyond Budgeting, Open Space & Sociocracy (dubbed BOSSA nova). Besides that, she has published her experience in her books Agile Software Development in the Large, Agile Software Development with Distributed Teams, Retrospectives for Organizational Change, and together with Johanna Rothman Diving for Hidden Treasures: Uncovering the Cost of Delay in your Project Portfolio.Jutta is a member of the Agile Alliance (having served the board of directors from 2003-2007) and a member of the program committee of many different American, Asian, and European conferences, where she has also presented her work. She holds a M.A. in Business Coaching & Change Management, a Dipl.Eng. (MSc.) in Product-Engineering, a B.A. in Education, and is trained as pollution control commissioner on ecological environmentalism.links: @JuttaEckstein | https://www.linkedin.com/in/juttaeckstein/ | https://www.jeckstein.com/| https://www.agilebossanova.org | https://jeckstein.com/sustainability

One hundred years ago, James McKinsey, the founder of the well known consulting company, published "Budgetary Control" - and his framework was quickly adopted everywhere. But in today's VUCA world, the budgeting process has increasingly become an obstacle as organizations try to increase agility. In this episode of Work Matters, Thomas Bertels welcomes Bjarte Bogsnes. A pioneer of the Beyond Budgeting movement, he headed up its implementation at Equinox and Borealis. Bjarte is the founder of Bogsnes Advisory, winner of a Harvard Business Review/McKinsey Management Innovation award, and author of "Implementing Beyond Budgeting - Unlocking the Performance Potential." In our discussion, Bjarte shares the principles, advantages, best practices, and challenges to implementing Beyond Budgeting from his decades long journey.

“There's no leading without following. We are only a leader because somebody is following us." Jutta Eckstein is a coach, consultant, and trainer who has helped many teams and organizations worldwide making an Agile transition. In this episode, we discussed ideas from her book “Company-wide Agility With Beyond Budgeting, Open Space, and Sociocracy”, also widely known as the BOSSA nova. Jutta started by sharing today's company challenge in terms of collision of values between shareholder, customer, and the employee, and she provided a suggestion how to align the values better. She then broke down BOSSA nova and explained each concept and principles of Beyond Budgeting, Open Space, Sociocracy, and Agile. Jutta also shared the four values of BOSSA nova and how they also relate extrinsically to sustainability. Listen out for: Career Journey - [00:06:24] Writing BOSSA Nova - [00:08:34] People-Customer-Shareholder Value - [00:12:04] BOSSA Nova - [00:14:54] Beyond Budgeting - [00:24:16] Open Space - [00:32:56] Sociocracy - [00:37:58] Agile Values - [00:44:04] Transparency - [00:49:50] 3 Tech Lead Wisdom - [00:52:22] _____ Jutta Eckstein's Bio Jutta Eckstein works as an independent coach, consultant, and trainer. She has helped many teams and organizations worldwide to make an Agile transition, especially with medium-sized to large distributed mission-critical projects. Jutta has recently pair-written with John Buck a book entitled Company-wide Agility with Beyond Budgeting, Open Space & Sociocracy (dubbed BOSSA nova). Besides that, she has published her experience in her books Agile Software Development in the Large, Agile Software Development with Distributed Teams, Retrospectives for Organizational Change, and together with Johanna Rothman Diving for Hidden Treasures: Uncovering the Cost of Delay in your Project Portfolio. Follow Jutta: Website – https://jeckstein.com/ Twitter – @JuttaEckstein LinkedIn – https://linkedin.com/in/juttaeckstein Our Sponsors Mental well-being is a silent pandemic. According to the WHO, depression and anxiety cost the global economy over USD 1 trillion every year. It's time to make a difference! Learn how to enhance your lives through a master class on mental wellness. Visit founderswellbeing.com/masterclass and enter TLJ20 for a 20% discount. The iSAQB® Software Architecture Gathering is the international conference highlight for all those working on solution structures in IT projects: primarily software architects, developers, professionals in quality assurance, and also system analysts. A selection of well-known international experts will share their practical knowledge on the most important topics in state-of-the-art software architecture. The conference takes place online from November 14 to 17, 2022, and we have a 15% discount code for you: TLJ_MP_15. DevTernity 2022 (devternity.com) is the top international software development conference with an emphasis on coding, architecture, and tech leadership skills. The lineup is truly stellar and features many legends of software development like Robert "Uncle Bob" Martin, Kent Beck, Scott Hanselman, Venkat Subramaniam, Kevlin Henney, and many others! The conference takes place online, and we have the 10% discount code for you: AWSM_TLJ. Like this episode? Subscribe on your podcast app. Follow @techleadjournal on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram. Pledge your support by becoming a patron. For episode show notes, visit techleadjournal.dev/episodes/106.

“Business agility is about finding the constraints in the system” – Evan Leybourn, Business Agility Institute founderWhere do most teams and departments in an organization encounter constraints? They encounter it in management, the budgeting process driven by finance and the performance management process driven by HR. When management and finance are about control, teams are constrained and the organization cannot be adaptive. E.g. no (or not enough) budget to hire the people when they need it, get the equipment and supplies in time, have the flexibility to try things out, etc. In this podcast series, we explore with Bjarte Bogsnes how beyond budgeting enables an organization to achieve business agility. Though this journey isn't for the faint of heart, companies like Tesla and Equinor (formerly StatOil) are doing this today – and are being very successful at it.

“Business agility is about finding the constraints in the system” – Evan Leybourn, Business Agility Institute founderWhere do most teams and departments in an organization encounter constraints? They encounter it in management, the budgeting process driven by finance and the performance management process driven by HR. When management and finance are about control, teams are constrained and the organization cannot be adaptive. E.g. no (or not enough) budget to hire the people when they need it, get the equipment and supplies in time, have the flexibility to try things out, etc. In this podcast series, we explore with Bjarte Bogsnes how beyond budgeting enables an organization to achieve business agility. Though this journey isn't for the faint of heart, companies like Tesla and Equinor (formerly StatOil) are doing this today – and are being very successful at it.

“Business agility is about finding the constraints in the system” – Evan Leybourn, Business Agility Institute founderWhere do most teams and departments in an organization encounter constraints? They encounter it in management, the budgeting process driven by finance and the performance management process driven by HR. When management and finance are about control, teams are constrained and the organization cannot be adaptive. E.g. no (or not enough) budget to hire the people when they need it, get the equipment and supplies in time, have the flexibility to try things out, etc. In this podcast series, we explore with Bjarte Bogsnes how going beyond the budgeting constraints helps an organization achieve business agility. Though this journey isn't for the faint of heart, companies like Tesla and Equinor (formerly StatOil) are doing this today – and are being very successful at it.

“Business agility is about finding the constraints in the system” - Evan Leybourn, Business Agility Institute founder.Where do most teams and departments in an organization encounter constraints? They encounter it in management, the budgeting process driven by finance and the performance management process driven by HR. When management and finance are about control, teams are constrained and the organization cannot be adaptive. E.g. no (or not enough) budget to hire the people when they need it, get the equipment and supplies in time, have the flexibility to try things out, etc. In this podcast series, we explore with Bjarte Bogsnes how going beyond the budgeting constraints helps an organization achieve business agility. Though this journey isn't for the faint of heart, companies like Tesla and Equinor (formerly StatOil) are doing this today - and are being very successful at it. 

“Business agility is about finding the constraints in the system” - Evan Leybourn, Business Agility Institute founder.Where do most teams and departments in an organization encounter constraints? They encounter it in management, the budgeting process driven by finance and the performance management process driven by HR. When management and finance are about control, teams are constrained and the organization cannot be adaptive. E.g. no (or not enough) budget to hire the people when they need it, get the equipment and supplies in time, have the flexibility to try things out, etc. In this podcast, we explore with Bjarte Bogsnes how going beyond the budgeting constraints helps an organization achieve business agility. Though this journey isn't for the faint of heart, companies like Tesla and Equinor (formerly StatOil) are doing this today - and are being very successful at it. 

In this episode I speak with Jutta Eckstein & John Buck about the Bossa Nova framework. This integrated approach combines Beyond Budgeting, Open Space, Sociocracy and Agile to improve company wide agility. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/comparativeagility/message

It's that time of year again...budget time! It's time to get real about your goals for the new year and where you are going to put your efforts! So do you have your plan down? Let's talk about it!!!

This month I was lucky enough to talk with Steve Morlidge to talk about the Beyond Budgeting. He is an expert in Beyond Budgeting, a financial method that searches for a lot of the same anti fragile outcomes as the Agile manifesto. Why is this important? Yearly budgets are inefficient and wasteful. Trying the forecast your budget for the year is like trying to forecast your roadmap for the year. It will most likely change with new information, so moving to “just enough” planning is less wasteful. Yearly budgeting encourages bad behaviour. Forcing people to allocate dollars before they know what they need it ends up with them asking for too much at the beginning and madly spending before the EOFY. Here is What You Will Learn The six pillars of change. Understand the six pillars that will support your organisation to this more Agile financial method. The Beyond Budgeting iterative method. See the cycle that manages failure within boundaries and allow for a greater opportunity for growth and learning. Sign Up Now You can get your free Comparative Agility account today and begin on your team's Continuous Improvement journey. About Steve Morlidge Steve Morelidge is the author of ‘The Little Book of Beyond Budgeting: A New Operating System for Organisations' and ‘The Little Book of Operational Forecasting' in 2018. As well as being the Development Director for CatchBull, he currently a member of the Beyond Budgeting Institute's core team. About Simon Hilton Simon Hilton is an Agile Coach and Teacher that has worked in and guided Agile transformations across a diverse range of organisations. Simon is an empathetic leader and instructor that has trained thousands of people as in Agile mindset, frameworks and transformation. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/comparativeagility/message

Joe Krebs speaks with Jutta Eckstein about Beyond Budgeting, Open Space and Sociocracy to enable company-wide agility. Jutta shows the synergies to Business Agility and how an agile mindset, driven by the Agile Manifesto is essential for successful company-wide agility.