Podcast appearances and mentions of steve denning

Capitalism fosters widespread prosperity. But we must acknowledge a set of emerging hazards associated with corporate management practices, and take proactive measures to mitigate such risks.The hazards that have transformed capitalism over time are vividly described in Aberrant Capitalism: The Decline and Revival of Customer Capitalism, authored by Hunter Hastings and Steve Denning and published by Cambridge University Press. In this episode of The Value Creators podcast, Hunter shares capitalism's journey from an external orientation, where customers and their needs were the focus of business activity, to a more internalized orientation, where management processes, methods and measures became the focus. The customer-centric approach of the first great corporations of the nineteenth century reflected the vision and purposes of owner-entrepreneurs using their own capital. But over time, these entrepreneurs left, and a debt and equity finance model took over in the twentieth century. Success became synonymous not with happy and satisfied customers but with stock market performance and shareholder value. This shift represents an undermining of the original animating spirit of capitalism. However, Hunter expresses guarded optimism about the emergence of new business models in the twenty-first century, embodied by companies like Apple and Amazon, which prioritize direct customer engagement and long-term growth over short-term financial gains. Despite this optimism, the conversation acknowledges the challenges and risks associated with contemporary capitalism, including dehumanization of labor, data privacy concerns, social media's impact on mental health, and the rise of monopoly power. Hunter emphasizes the importance of preserving the positive aspects of capitalism while addressing these issues, calling for a reassertion of the values that underpin the system. Hunter concludes with a call to action for readers to engage with the ideas presented in the book and work towards a capitalism that prioritizes customer value, innovation, and societal well-being while remaining vigilant against its potential pitfalls.Resources: Connect with Hunter Hastings on LinkedIn.Check out the book Aberrant Capitalism.Buy the Book on Amazon: Aberrant Capitalism (Elements in Reinventing Capitalism)Aberrant Capitalism on the Cambridge University Press

Vi diskuterar vad som händer med de företag som genomfört en agil transformation men inte fått ut den effekt de önskade. En trend just nu är att göra sig av med agila coacher och att det finns en viss besvikelse över uteblivna effekter av stora satsningar. Så vad är nästa steg? Är det dags att sluta prata agilt och hitta något nytt? Innan podden med Marie Froment vill jag passa på att tipsa om ett inspelat webbinarium med Marie om Organisationer i förändring. Det hittar du på vår hemsida Sonder.se där du också kan anmäla dig till vårt kommande live webbinarium den 26 april. Artikeln av Jurgen Appelo som vi nämner i podden: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/agile-dying-its-dissolving-jurgen-appelo-f9are/ Artikel på samma tema av Steve Denning: https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2024/02/29/how-to-become-agile-without-the-agile-labels/?sh=34ac8a676620 Sonders hemsida: https://www.sonder.se/

In this episode, Peter and Dave discuss an article by Steve Denning published in Forbes titled "Why the World's Most Valuable Firms Are so Agile." They explore Denning's observations about the agile mindset and characteristics exhibited by highly successful companies. The discussion revolves around the relationship between adopting an agile approach and organizational performance, as well as the potential correlation or causation between agile ways of working and the exceptional valuations of these firms.This week's takeaways:Keep an eye on Steve Denning's work.Focus on financial performance.Avoid using the term "agile" and focus on the outcome you are trying to achieve.Resources:Why The World's Most Valuable Firms Are So Agile- https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2024/02/26/why-the-worlds-most-valuable-firms-are-so-agile/?sh=1094bb1d794cHave your own take on whether an agile mindset truly powers the world's most valuable firms? Let us know at feedback@definitelymaybeagile.com.  Subscribe today to gain a fresher outlook on embracing organizational agility without the buzzwords.

Do you use the power of storytelling to bring your business to life for your clients and customers?Gabrielle Dolan is considered a global expert in business storytelling and real communication.She is a highly sought after international keynote speaker and best-selling author of seven books. Her latest – Magnetic Stories – was a finalist in two categories at the 2021 Australian Business Book Awards, as well as three in the recent International Book Awards.Her client list is extensive, including the likes of Visa, Amazon, EY, Accenture, Telstra and Australia Post. The highlight of her career so far is meeting Barack Obama while delivering storytelling training for the Obama Foundation.Gabrielle is the founder of Jargon Free Fridays and her dedication to the industry was recognised when she was awarded Communicator of the Year for 2020 by the International Association of Business Communicators.In this episode of The Remarkable Project Gabrielle discusses why stories matter, what to consider when developing narratives of your own, and how real and relatable storytelling can be used by businesses to bring their customers closerRemarkable TakeawaysWhy some stories are stickier than others, and how their highlights can become shorthand for a particular point or position.How enhancing emotional connections and forging lasting memories through stories can add value to experiences, products and services alike, especially when human relationships are more precious than ever.The benefits of making an organisation's passions, purpose and values more than just words on a wall.Short, succinct, relatable and believable – the essentials of setting up a story for shareability.What leaders actively leaning into softer skills such as vulnerability and authenticity means for the way modern businesses communicate. Remarkable Quotes"Be really clear on your message, really succinct, and make your stories relatable…then they will be shared.”"You don't want to share a story and then act in the opposite way…that is where the authentic congruence comes in – you have to really believe in what you're saying."“Heal before you reveal…if it's something really recent and really raw, you probably don't want to be sharing it because you're probably too emotionally engaged in it for it to it to be effective.”Relevant References‘The Leader's guide to STORYTELLING: Mastering the Art & Discipline of Business Narrative' by Steve Denning [2005]‘The Story Factor: Inspiration, Influence, and persuasion through the Art of Storytelling' by Annette Simmons [2000]Connect with GabrielleFree storytelling starter kitCheck out her work website Explore more on her books Follow her on Instagram and TwitterReach out via LinkedIn

Houston Business Growth Podcast Episode 3: How To Achieve Greater Business Results, Scale Your Business More Effectively, & Build An Envious Corporate Culture Along The Way _____________________________________________ Host: Brian Webb Guest: Anthony Coppedge _____________________________________________ Description: LISTEN TODAY, as the host, Brian Webb, along with our guest, Anthony Coppedge, walk you through How To Achieve Greater Business Results, Scale Your Business More Effectively,  and Build An Envious Corporate Culture Along The Way.  Anthony is based out of Fort Worth, Texas where he leads the Agile Transformation for Digital Sales at IBM. He's held leadership roles at Fortune 100 enterprises and sub-$20 million revenue software startups. He's been applying the values and principles of Agile since 2009 and is literally one of a handful of early leaders in the Agile Sales and Marketing space worldwide. _____________________________________________ Helpful Links: The Age Of Agile by Stephen Denning Mastering Marketing Agility by Andrea Fryrear _____________________________________________   Podcast Sponsored By: SERVPRO® Disaster Recovery Team Houston Find and Follow our Sponsor, SERVPRO® Disaster Recovery Team Houston Web: www.disasterrecoveryteamhouston.com Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/servpro-disaster-recovery-team-houston/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SERVPRO9734 Intro Video:  https://youtu.be/YH1GXKrRUTU  _____________________________________________ Connect w/ Brian Webb Web: https://cmo.webbmarketing.solutions/ Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thebrianwebb/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thebrianwebb Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/brianwebb/ _____________________________________________ Connect w/ Anthony Coppedge Linkedin: https://linkedin.com/in/anthonycoppedge _____________________________________________ Click on this link for a full transcript of the podcast. _____________________________________________   Like what you hear? Want to Subscribe? Connect with Houston Business Growth Podcast on Apple Podcasts - Subscribe and leave us a review. Your participation helps us grow and reach more business owners and leaders just like you. _____________________________________________   Transcript: Brian Webb: Hey there, everyone. Welcome to the Houston Business Growth podcast. I'm your host, Brian Webb. This podcast is designed for entrepreneurs just like you that want to grow your business faster and make better decisions with fewer regrets. We're here to help you grow by bringing you tools, tips, and tricks, along with success stories and industry expert interviews that will help you to grow your business and your team while helping you to avoid the pitfalls and mistakes that cost you so much money and wasted time. So with no further ado, let's jump into today's episode.   Brian Webb: I am thrilled to death to have my good friend, long-time friend, Anthony Coppedge on the Houston Business Growth podcast today. I've known Anthony for about 25 plus years. And today's title is called, how to achieve greater business results, scale your business more effectively, and build an envious corporate culture along the way. Anthony, for those in our audience who don't know who you are and what you do, why don't you take a moment, introduce yourself.   Anthony Coppedge: I'm just this guy, you know?   Brian Webb: Yeah.   Anthony Coppedge: So I've known you so long. For those who don't know me, I am an [Agile 00:01:20] transformation lead at IBM, where I drive the transformation to agility, business agility, for digital sales. And so my background is in marketing, sales, entrepreneurship, business ownership, obviously, and software as a service business, as well as mom and pop and enterprise. So I have a pretty diverse background and I try to bring it all to bear.   Brian Webb: Awesome. Awesome. So I know you're going to be talking about what we've kind of named the title, how to achieve greater business results and scale, and build an amazing culture. I know that you're going to be talking to us about Agile. Why don't you tell our listeners exactly what Agile is, just to get us started today?   Anthony Coppedge: Sure. Well, we all know that the adjective to describe something agile would be nimble or flexible, or to be able to iterate or change quickly. And that really is the heart of it, the lowercase A. But when people talk about upper case A Agile, what they're talking about is a movement that started in 2001 when they said, there has got to be a better way to deliver software. And so it started there, where they would look at things like ... Brian, I know we're both old enough, do you remember Windows 95?   Brian Webb: I do.   Anthony Coppedge: What was after Windows 95? What was the next OS they released?   Brian Webb: Wasn't it 98?   Anthony Coppedge: It was 98. And then after that, what was it?   Brian Webb: 2000?   Anthony Coppedge: Yep. And then after that XP.   Brian Webb: I'm being tested.   Anthony Coppedge: Did you notice that it took years to roll out a new piece of software back then?   Brian Webb: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.   Anthony Coppedge: So that's what these guys were up against. It took years. So they would have these beautiful Gantt charts that would describe all the dependencies and what it would take to make something. And it was always precisely wrong. I like Gantt charts for one reason only. I love the whooshing sound they make as the deadlines fly by. Because they're always precisely wrong.   Anthony Coppedge: So this group of leaders met and said, there's got to be a better way. And they wrote a manifesto and said, what if we just had a way to chunk that up into small bite-size bits, and rather than figure out everything up front, we figure it out as we go. And so that's the idea behind Agile.   Anthony Coppedge: It has since been applied to project management, human relations operations, to marketing, and now of course I'm leading it for sales. So Agile is a way of working, a new way of working which brings people together to where we're better together than apart. And we learn, test, and validate very, very quickly so that we deliver higher value at scale.   Brian Webb: I know that transforming a culture sounds dynamic, not static. What are some ways that entrepreneurs can encourage this kind of cultural transformation?   Anthony Coppedge: Well, first you have to be able to know your why. So, so many businesses think their why is profit. No, that's a by-product, right? If you deliver phenomenal value in whatever you do, you're going to make money if you there's an appetite for it, right? So if you think of the Venn diagram of, what are you great at, what does the world need, and can you get paid for it? Right in the middle of that is this ideal way of saying that's the offering you should have. Well, every business needs to be able to clearly articulate what that is. We exist for the purpose of, and we know we're successful when, and we will do these things to align our work, our efforts, our actions, and attitudes, to make sure that happens.   Anthony Coppedge: So for an entrepreneur, you wear all the hats, right? Chief cook and bottle washer. But when you're thinking about growing your business you have to think about the clarity you have of where you want to go, not the outputs you want to achieve, but the outcome of being in business and make that visible, transparent, shareable, and easily transferable to everybody else in the organization.   Brian Webb: That makes sense.   Anthony Coppedge: And that's the key to building the culture you want. The best way to invent your future is not to look at your past. The best way to invent your future is your future.   Anthony Coppedge: So we want to think of it, not like maps go, but more like GPS. Now for those over 25 in the room, you know what I'm talking about, but there was a day when I was in sales, where you would have a binder of maps. And if I wanted to follow this road in Houston, from the Northside to the Southside, I would, when I get to the edge of the map it'd say, turn to page 37, then I flipped to page 37. There's the rest of that map. And then, okay, turn to page 45. And then that's how you were able to navigate and take a portable map with you. And what I would do, Brian, like any entrepreneur, I would find the most efficient ways to get from client to client, from location, location. And I would know those. And so I'd highlight them in. So I was determining routes.   Anthony Coppedge: Well with GPS, we have dynamic real-time information, mostly from other cell phones. And if it sees that on I-45, that there are no cell phones moving, that's probably a traffic jam. And so it's going to try to route you around that. So GPS is more interested in the destination than the route. And as entrepreneurs, we need to be far more interested in the destination than the route.   Anthony Coppedge: We don't need to tell people how to get somewhere. We need to make sure they have the tools, the competence, and the clarity to know that we're going to support them as they discover the best ways to get there because they're closer to it than we are. And we need to trust them with the ability to take our business and add that value to clients. So we delegate not just responsibility, but we delegate authority. What we're trying to do is build out a culture that says it's built on respect, openness, courage, empathy, trust. And these are very, very difficult things for someone who's used to doing it all and controlling it all, because Agile is the antithesis of control.   Brian Webb: Wow. That's a mouthful. So let me ask you this. So Peter Drucker once said, culture eats strategy for breakfast. In today's radically different world, especially during and after COVID, what's the difference between employee management today compared to even just a year ago?   Anthony Coppedge: Well, it's hugely different. And I think everybody listening to this podcast would already have experienced what that feels like. But if we were trying to put some labels on it and describe it, it would be chaotic, uncertain.   Anthony Coppedge: So how do you know if your people are have what they need to get the job done? How do you know, not just what are they working on, but are they getting the right results? How do you know what the process is that needed to be identified? How do we have better communication so that people don't feel like they're on an island inside their homes as they work from home?   Anthony Coppedge: And we've all had to address this, IBM too. And so one of the things what's been helpful is, Agile focuses on building a communication centric organization. So we're real big on visualizing and communicating about where we are, where we're going, and what's in the way. And so, because we do that regularly, daily, it's small little increments of check-ins, not to inspect, but to understand that give us the ability to pivot, test, and move quickly, so that our reps, even though if they're working from home, still feel like they are a part of something bigger and they still have the benefit of the largess of the organization, their peers, and their management to help support them.   Anthony Coppedge: So you don't have to see somebody working. You're looking for the fruit of that work. And anything that's not showing up, you're asking why, not what. There's the heart of really being a great manager inside an Agile organization. And in fact, Brian, I would say that traditional management looks at task management, activity metrics, quota attainment, as the way they understand quote unquote success. But what I would say, with Agile, we would look at it and say, how can I help you get what you need and what's in your way?   Anthony Coppedge: And so in Agile management, I don't want to inspect, I want to understand. In Agile management, I don't want to have activity metrics, I want to have outcome results. And I want to understand, are we delivering value, not, are we delivering stuff?   Anthony Coppedge: One of the easiest ways to see this is, look at the activities that someone says, yeah, I did all of these things and yet the business isn't moving forward. Pick an area in your business where you see that. And there likely is one. There's usually at least one person, larger companies are going to see it more common, where they're doing all the things, but the results aren't happening. Well, we shouldn't say, shame on you for not working hard enough. We should look at ourselves and say, shame on us for not trying to understand why that is. Because if I can understand that in COVID, people aren't answering the phones like they used to. They're literally not at the office. But they are responding to email. They're on LinkedIn. They are responding, but they're just doing it in a different channel. So having an activity quote of, did you make 50 calls a day? Well, that might be the wrong thing. But because we want to have busy-ness as an activity metric for success, we're having them actually be incredibly efficient at doing all the wrong things. That's not success. So we want to find new ways of doing that. And management in Agile is more about helping you with your career advancement and getting stuff out of your way. And that's it.   Brian Webb: So let me ask you this, when you're talking about metrics, what's important for Agile to measure? Or what kind of key performance indicators are focused on in an Agile organization?   Anthony Coppedge: Yeah. So you want to, first of all, visualize your mission, your vision, and your objectives. So I'm a big fan of OKRs or, objectives and key results. And the idea is to say, if we're supposed to be about this, then what are the things that we're going to focus on to get there? And let's go validate and see how that works.   Anthony Coppedge: So what you do is you empower people to be self-directed. And the measurements you look at are less about activity and more about outcomes. So there is both a sense of lagging indicators that you could check into to look for things based on the kind of business you have, that would be helpful to understand. But the more important question is to ask, why is that?   Anthony Coppedge: For example, it's not uncommon in the world of sales and marketing for people to be very busy looking at the click throughs and the open rates of things. But that's like true, but irrelevant, right? Because if they don't actually do something, I don't care how many people open my email. I don't care how many people click on my Facebook bot if it doesn't lead to something, right? I can have a false positive that shows, sure, I get lots of activity, but does it ever go anywhere? Well, then it's not success.   Anthony Coppedge: I once had a sales rep, a young sales rep say to me, "Hey, check it out, man. I got my stuff moved over this week and I'm visualizing my work and I made 400 calls this week and I made 400 calls the week before." And I said, "Great, how many leads did you get?" And he's like, "Well, none, but I made 400 calls." I'm like, that's not success, right? We actually are not paying you to make phone calls. What we're paying you to do is get results. That'll usually include phone calls, but I'm less interested in measuring the activity and more interested in understanding what's working, what's not, and where are you in that understanding continuum, so that I can train you if you need more training or I can demonstrate to you how to do something more efficiently, or you can show me our process is messed up, we're out of alignment, but this is where we are.   Brian Webb: We'll get back to today's episode in just a moment, but first, a quick word from our sponsor. Today's episode is brought to you by Team Meacham at SERVPRO's Disaster Recovery Team Houston.   Brian Webb: Whether you know it or not, your business needs an emergency response plan. We see it on the news all the time. Another business owner who experiences tragic loss due to fire, or extreme storms like hurricanes, or flooding. And we all hope it will never happen to us. But research shows that up to 50% of all businesses shut down after a major disaster. And if the property damage isn't bad enough, the business downtime and loss in revenue only makes it worse.   Brian Webb: So should your business be devastated from a fire, flood, or storm damage, how do you minimize the downtime and frustration of getting back to normal as soon as possible? Here's the answer. You need an emergency response plan.   Brian Webb: How do you achieve this? It's easy and it's free. Once you reach out to SERVPRO's Disaster Recovery Team Houston, one of their ERP specialists will set up a time to meet with you or someone from your team. When the specialist shows up, they will walk through your facility with you and make a concise profile document for your business outlining all of the critical information like, where the electric, water, and gas shutoff valves are located, along with the priority areas of your business and the primary points of contact. Wouldn't you prefer that when someone does show up to assist you in a time of crisis, that they already know what to do, where to go, whom to call, and how to get started? Of course you would.   Brian Webb: Additionally, imagine getting VIP service like three hour priority response time when you call. And the work begins on arrival to bring your business back to normal as quickly as possible. Before the SERVPRO Disaster Recovery Team Houston even shows up, they already have photos of your facility, they know where to park, and exactly who they should be dealing with.   Brian Webb: And guess what? It's free. No contracts, no catch.   Brian Webb: You really need to get this taken care of today. You want to be prepared in the event your business does experience fire, water, or severe storm damage. To make this happen. Simply call the SERVPRO Disaster Recovery Team Houston office at (281)-419-9796. Or even easier, simply text ERP to (832)-713-6881, and one of their specialists will reach out to you right away.   Brian Webb: We hope that you never experience a disaster that adversely affects your business. But if you do, don't you deserve to know that you can worry less by knowing that you're in the best hands possible? Of course you do.   Brian Webb: Again, call (281)-419-9796, or simply text the letters ERP to (832)-713-6881. You'll be so glad you did.   Brian Webb: So I have a question. I was once taught the principle of the BAT. And BAT is an acrostic. B stands for behavior, A stands for attitude, and T stands for technique. Behavior, in this particular scenario that we're talking about would be making calls, right? Attitude is, if you don't have the right attitude about three things, one, yourself, two, your organization, and three, the products or services that you sell, you're probably going to suffer. And then technique is obviously just getting better and better.   Brian Webb: So I would imagine the entrepreneurs and business leaders listening to this episode will agree that at the end of the day, especially the business owners, one thing that they care the most about is, how many leads did you close? How did you drive revenue? At the same time, I know that doing the right behaviors is usually the best way to predict the outcomes you want to achieve. How do you weigh those two important variables in Agile?   Anthony Coppedge: That's a tension to manage, that's not a problem to solve.   Brian Webb: That make sense.   Anthony Coppedge: Right? So COVID, right? We're all still in this right now. And so one of the things I've heard from salespeople is people aren't picking up the phone, and/or when they do get ahold of them, there are companies not sure how this thing's shaking out or when it's shaking out. The whole world's in flux. We want what you have. We just might not want to buy it right now. We need to see how things work, right? So what we would do is, we would take that feedback and go, so our Q4 might not be as great as we would normally have it be, but welcome to COVID.   Anthony Coppedge: What we are more interested in then is, what kind of Q1 pipe are we building? What kind of Q2 pipe are we building? We're deferring some things, but what we're doing is adding value and we're showing we care and we're responsive and listen. We understand their pain. We want to solve that for them. So when we do that, we're okay with deferring the sale. Not because we don't care about hitting numbers. We're more interested in saying, how do we know if we're adding good value? And do they trust us as a trusted source to come back to us when they are ready to buy? That's more valuable. Because what you want to look at is not the short term closes, right, Brian? You want to look at the lifetime value.   Brian Webb: Absolutely.   Anthony Coppedge: So, in many businesses, once you get them to buy more than once, their lifetime value goes up by an exponential amount. So if you can get them to be a repeat customer or to expand from one offering or services into two or more, their LTV can go up five, six hundred percent, right? So what you want to do is have that long-term view and that client centric view, which is at the heart of Agile. I want to deliver value to my client.   Anthony Coppedge: So let me make this real simple. When I ask my sellers to make calls or to generate leads, what I'm not asking them to do is hit a number. Instead, what I'm saying is, how can you separate the wheat from the chaff so that those people most closely aligned to what we do and the way we do it, to really exponentially help their business be better. How could you get excited about identifying, ding, ding, ding, this person's going to be blown away by what we can do for them. And you are not disinterested in the rest, but you focus disproportionately on those who are a good alignment. And now you're not worried about getting leads, you're not worried at all. What you're now excited about, and that's that B thing, behavior, attitude, right? Now you're looking at, I can't wait for when this is going to make a huge impact on your business. I'm so excited. That is a client centric sales viewpoint, not a, I need to hit my quota because I want to get paid viewpoint.   Brian Webb: Right, right. Yep. Absolutely. Let me ask you this, what are some of the key benefits of having teams and departments working in Agile together?   Anthony Coppedge: So that's one of the fundamental things, is that we are better together than apart. And we all know this to be true. But think about your compensation model for your different people, including sales. A lot of it is focused on individual contributors. And there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. But what would happen if you also said that in addition to your individual compensation, we want to think about how we incentivize the team getting better. How do we build a culture where a rising tide floats all the boats and everybody wins? And I'm not talking about taking the work that I do and carrying the load of five other people who are slacking. That's not what I'm talking about. I am saying when everybody contributes, we should all benefit together. And so what motivates then is the sharing of learnings, the sharing of insights, so that people are motivated and want to. Not just for the paycheck, but because they see the value of learning and benefiting from others as well.   Brian Webb: I would imagine this last question that we have for today, or that I have for today rather, I know the answer to it, but I want to hear what you have to say specifically for our audience, but what kind of company or companies would benefit from an Agile transformation of their culture, their systems, their processes?   Anthony Coppedge: If you want to be focused on delivering exceptional value and you can't wait to delight and surprise your clients, you probably ought to take a look at Agile. And even in spaces where it might not be as intuitive. People are like, Agile doesn't work everywhere. No, you're right. It doesn't. But it could probably work around the areas where it doesn't work.   Anthony Coppedge: I had someone said, a surgeon, if I'm doing the surgery, there's no way that can be Agile. You're correct. As an individual contributor during the surgery, you are the expert. But I bet it took a lot of people to coordinate getting everything ready for that surgery to even happen. And I bet the post-op's going to require a bunch of people. And I bet the insurance follow-up is going to require a bunch people. There's probably plenty of room for Agile there, even though you're the expert in your domain, right?   Anthony Coppedge: So the idea of anywhere where we can say, we're better together, and we can scale up narrowly what works and scale down broadly what doesn't, there's the real value of having your business become far more effective over time by making those small iterative improvements to make big impacts.   Anthony Coppedge: Brian, when I lead my kickoff training, when I first talk to sellers, I say, so I want to introduce you to Agile. Let me ask you a question, how many of you will be thrilled if I increase your quota today by 50%? And of course nobody's hands goes up, right? Like, what?   Brian Webb: Of course.   Anthony Coppedge: But then I talk for a couple of minutes and I say, so let me ask another question, how many of you think it's reasonable that if we work together, we could all get 1% better a week? And of course the vast majority or almost all the hands go up and I say, great.   Brian Webb: Sure, everyone that's reasonable, anyway.   Anthony Coppedge: If you took two week vacation in a standard tier, in 50 weeks you'd be 50% better.   Anthony Coppedge: Now you ask any CFO, any CMO, any COO, any CEO, hey, what would 50% better do to your bottom line, to your customers, into your ability to scale your business? And they would be going nuts for that. Well, there's the idea, right? It's not that we're suddenly so much better, it's that we're continuously improving to get exponentially better over time. And what it requires is that commitment to clarity, the ability to have a shared set of values and a set of principles that align us so that the work we do is not just the work we could do, but the work we should do.   Anthony Coppedge: And I'll leave you with this. I remember talking to a senior executive once when I was talking about the idea of breaking it up into small bite sized chunks of one week at a time to improve, right? And this person looked at me and he says, Anthony, are you telling me we get to tell them what to do every week? And I looked at him and I said, no, they get to tell us what to do every week. There's the difference.   Brian Webb: It's a complete pivot. Yeah. It's a complete pivot altogether. Let me ask you this, and this is my last question, but for those in the audience who are just now even hearing about Agile with a capital A, what would be a first or a next step? Meaning, perhaps 30 minutes ago, that word was not even necessarily as an Agile with a capital A in their vocabulary, or certainly in their sense of what they need to be doing with their business. It wasn't a priority. And imagine the listeners that are hearing this, they're understanding something, they're seeing fire for the first time, what would be a first step for them to take to start moving in that direction for implementation?   Anthony Coppedge: I think we do best when we talk to our peers first. So I would ask my peers, my friends, hey, does anybody know somebody doing anything Agile with their business? Because what's going to help is for you to see a contextually relevant example. So if you are aware of that, that would be the first place to start because people talk to people and that's probably easiest way to learn.   Anthony Coppedge: For the podcast listeners who I'm pretty confident are going to be avid readers as well, I would throw out the book, The Age of Agile by Steve Denning. Remember I told you about that group that got together and wrote the Agile manifesto? Well, Steve has since gone on to talk about business agility, not just software agility. And The Age of Agile is a very practical read that helps kind of explain the thinking behind it. I would point to that as a next step resource. And then if you have specialty, like Agile marketing, that would be Mastering Marketing Agility by Andrea Fryrear. And there's lots of different domains where you can see this. Do a search for it on Amazon and you're going to find a ton of books. There's no lack of content. It's a multi-billion dollar industry.   Brian Webb: Okay. Well, Anthony, I know that we're all better off for having had this conversation with you here today. For those that might want to connect with you online, where's the best place for them to either connect or follow or reach out to you?   Anthony Coppedge: Well, I would point most people to my website, but the truth is, I've really enjoyed connecting with people on LinkedIn. And if you want to follow and see what I say before you connect with me, that's a total viable option. It's very easy to do. You just go to linkedin.com/AnthonyCoppage. And I'm sure you'll have a link somewhere, Brian. But I love connecting with people on LinkedIn. It's my favorite social platform. So that's where I would point people to.   Brian Webb: And again, someone who's known you, Anthony, for two and a half decades, I would be one to urge our audience to do that. Anthony is always a source of encouragement. He's always a source of insight. And I just want to say thank you for being on our show today, Anthony.   Anthony Coppedge: Thank you, my friend.   Brian Webb: Thank you for listening to today's episode of the Houston Business Growth podcast. As always, we're here to help you grow your leadership and your business by making better decisions with fewer regrets. If you've enjoyed the show, please let us know by subscribing to the show and leaving us a review. You can subscribe to this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Spotify, or anywhere else you listen to your favorite podcasts. Again, thank you for listening. We'll see you on the next episode. _____________________________________________ Tags: Houston Business, Houston Business Growth, Houston Business Growth Podcast, Brian Webb, entrepreneurs, Houston, sales, marketing, leadership, Servpro, Randy Meacham, Susan Meacham, Disaster Recovery Team Houston, Extreme Team Meacham, Anthony Coppedge, Agile, IBM

Chief Boatswains Mate Steve Denning (Ret.) talks the nighttime race to rescue nineteen people, fourteen of them children, from a capsized boat at the entrance to the port of Los Angeles/Long Beach, the struggle to conduct a search beneath an overturned hull, commanding a Coast Guard station as its Officer in Charge, rescuing and repatriating dozens of Haitian migrants after weeks at sea, breaking in coxswain at Station Barnegat Light and signing his letter as the crew runs to the sound of a SAR alarm, lessons in boat handling and seamanship from a Surfman mentor at Tillamook Bay, balancing risk to a boat crews with the demands of missions at sea, stopping a boat in a high speed and uncontrolled spin in one of his first cases, crewing black hulls and working CG-6P lanterns, deploying for counter drug patrols on more than forty naval ships with PACTACLET, managing the demands of family with those of military service, applying officer discretion during a boarding that didn’t feel right, meeting Davey Jones and Neptune’s court at the equator, and intercepting arms, munitions, and suspected mercenaries aboard a boat bound for South America. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/theyhadtogoout/support

*This spotlight is an excerpt from our 2019 interview. It's not easy to deliver more value from less work. Steve Denning, author of The Age of Agile, argues that even global giants don't have to be born agile in order to become agile. Listen to this episode of the Talent Angle to understand how organization can harness the power of their teams, customers and networks to deliver value on a larger scale than ever before. 

Entrepreneurship is action. It's a process in which the actions of the entrepreneur are decisive. In the final podcast episode of 2019, Hunter Hastings suggests eight action steps you can take for the betterment of your business in 2020 and beyond. 1. Conduct an Empathic Diagnosis The entrepreneur's first job is to understand the customer, their hopes and fears, their goals and wants, and their feelings. There's a skill for that, and a method. The skill is empathy — the ability to feel what the customer feels. The method is empathic diagnosis. The secret is not to ask the customer what they want or what they need, but to ask them how they feel. They can tell you that, but they can't tell you why. That comes in step 2. To ask them how they feel, use the contextual interview tool. Think of it as a conversation with a customer whose feelings you are aiming to identify via a discussion in context. Look for responses that have “feeling” words — painful, frustrating, boring, annoying. Success! You've hit an emotional seam you can mine. Now dig in to understand their goals, and the means they choose to achieve those goals. After the interview, you can collate the dissatisfactions, the emotional pain points, and the functional failures. Then you can curate these inputs into functional, cognitive, and emotional components of a potential new solution — that is, new features (functional), new beliefs about what's possible (cognitive), and better feelings about the experience (emotional). You now have a first building block for the design of a service or innovation that has high potential for facilitating new and higher value for the customer. 2. Construct a Means-End Chain to Generate Insights about Hidden Customer Motivations The output of your empathic diagnosis provides the basis for your next step. The goal is to generate an understanding about the motivations of the customer that they can't quite explain themselves. People do not have introspective access to their motivations. Motivations are unconscious. People don't know what Rory Sutherland calls the real why that explains their actions. Smart entrepreneurs can find out this real why, using our means-end chain tool. Take an easel pad or a wall and mark out the links as different levels, starting at the contact point at the bottom and advancing one by one to the highest value at the top. Use sticky notes to populate each level with the appropriate customer responses from the empathic diagnosis. Then join the most pertinent items together that link each level — at this contact point, they perceive these features and attributes, that generate this functional benefit and this emotional benefit, all of which are logically and causally linked to the pursuit of the highest value. Recalculate this sequence a few times until you are confident you've identified the strongest route to the highest value the customer is seeking when he or she is in your space. You now have an insight into the customer's hidden motivations, and you can use it to build a strong brand. 3. Build a Strong Brand with Our Brand Uniqueness Blueprint Building a strong brand provides you with a financial machine — a capital asset that can generate customer revenues reliably over time, because it meets customer needs and solves customer problems better than any alternative. The brand uniqueness blueprint (see Mises.org/E4E_30_PDF) helps you identify the two parts of your brand foundation: who is it for? — that is, whose problem are you solving, whose needs are you meeting? The term for this is relevance. And how are you solving that problem in a superior fashion? — that's differentiation. Use our brand uniqueness blueprint by clicking the link. You'll find an instructions template, an example using a real brand, and a blank template you can use for your own brand. If you want to send us a completed blueprint for your own brand via our Mises for Business LinkedIn page, we'll be glad to give you our comments. 4. Complete a Resource Uniqueness Inventory. Our first three action items have been directed at your customer understanding and embedding that understanding in your brand blueprint. Let us turn to your firm's capabilities. You want these to be unique to your purpose, just as your brand is. Austrian economics focuses you on individualism, and that includes your own individual experience, knowledge, and skills. Our fault often lies in underestimating our own unique resources. One answer to this fault is to conduct an inventory or an audit. In 2019, Dr. Stephen Phelan gave us a resource-based theory of entrepreneurship, under the acronym PROFIT, standing for Physical Resources, Reputational Resources, Organizational Resources, Financial Resources, Intellectual and Human Resources, and Technological Resources. Steve's list is at Mises.org/E4E_18_PDF. You can use it to organize your understanding of your own resources. 5. Imagine a Future Value Experience That Your Resources Can Deliver. Whom shall I serve? One way to answer this question is to imagine a future experience that customers will value. Mark Packard showed us how to do this by activating customer value as a learning experience in five steps (see Mises.org/E4E_44_PDF). Predicted value — it's a picture you generate in the customer's mind with your value proposition.Relative value — it's a calculation the customer makes compared with alternatives.Exchange value — getting the customer to actually exchange dollars for your offering.Experience value — the act of consumption in which the customer actually experiences value.Value assessment — the customer conducts an assessment of value retrospectively. Looking back on the cycle, was the experienced value greater or less than the predicted value? Was it better or worse than the alternative, perhaps a brand that the customer abandoned in favor of yours? Does it feel like the experience was worth the dollars given in exchange? This is a place to identify a measurement of the value you have generated — but be careful: it must be a measurement of feelings and perception, which is a tricky measurement proposition. When imagining the new value experience you are trying to facilitate, make sure to imagine every stage in the sequence and how you can best stimulate each one. 6. Initiate an Innovation Project to Deliver on the Imagined Value Experience. Innovation is the indispensable fuel of entrepreneurial success. The customer is continuously changing — rebalancing their preferences, seeking improvement in their circumstances, looking to feel better about their current situation. Dynamism on the part of the entrepreneur is mandatory. Curt Carlson gave entrepreneurs the formula for managing innovation systematically. He uses the formula he calls N-A-B-C. N stands for identifying the customer need. The A is your approach — your business model, your uniqueness, your capability of delivering, your technology, your logistics, the complete package of commercially fulfilling the need. The B is benefits per costs, in Curt's language — what Mark Packard identified as relative value to the customer. The C represents competition and alternatives. It's imperative for entrepreneurs always to understand the alternatives the customer has available to them. Download the knowledge graphic of the N-A-B-C formulation at Mises.org/E4E_37_PDF. 7. Conduct a Time Inventory, Then Cut It. One of the most important ways Austrian economics helps entrepreneurs is with a strategic appreciation of the role of time. Production, the process of delivering a value proposition to the customer, takes time. The entrepreneur assumes the cost of time while the customer values time in their own subjective way and may seek alternatives that offer better time value. We are just beginning to understand how valuable time is to the customer — look at the success of just-in-time restocking systems, same-day delivery and overnight global distribution. Steve Denning told us that time is now a strategic weapon of the entrepreneur — and a strategic dimension on which competition takes place. The customer wants speed, so the entrepreneur must manufacture speed. A good step for the entrepreneur is to conduct a time audit. Examine all your processes that take time. Then imagine ways to reduce that time. Look at time from the viewpoint of the customer — where in the service experience would they welcome time reductions or time savings? How could you deliver them? Make time part of your innovation program. Give time back to your customers. 8. Identify the Next Innovation That Makes Life Easier for the Customer. Austrian economics always looks at business from the customer's viewpoint. It sees that the overarching strategy that defines the digital era from a customer perspective is making things easy. Easier by a factor of 10X or 100X. Online purchasing is easier. Overnight delivery is easier. Cloud computing is easier. Subscription models are easier. Customers today are permanently dissatisfied with the degree of difficulty of getting things done, because they've seen how much easier things can be in so many arenas, so many parts of the landscape. Entrepreneurs are competing to make things easier for them. So, here's an exercise you can conduct. Imagine a way in which you can make things easier for your customer. Your empathic diagnosis might reveal several ways. Then imagine how your system could deliver the increase in ease — by a 10X or 100X factor. Then imagine a piece of digital intelligence or AI that might be able to implement the improvement for you. Then search for it on Github or elsewhere. You don't have to develop the technology — you just need to imagine what it can deliver in increased ease for your customer. Summary In summary, Austrian analysis suggests these eight action items for improving your business by improving your understanding of your customer and your delivery of new and better solutions for them. All eight are practical and depend mainly on imagination. They cover empathic understanding, branding, resource assembly, value learning, innovation, costs, convenience, and time. We hope that we have provided valuable content for you to think about as you make your business more Austrian in 2020. Let us know. Additional Resource Download "8 Austrian Actions for 2020": Mises.org/E4E_46_PDF.

In an attenuated Christmas Eve podcast, Hunter Hastings highlights four of the useful principles he covered during 2019. Customer Sovereignty — Which Means Putting Your Customer First. The economists call it customer sovereignty — the principle that it is the consumer who ultimately decides which businesses are successful and which are not, as a result of their purchasing (or not purchasing) entrepreneurial offerings. Stephen Denning calls it The Law Of The Customer. John Rossman calls it Customer Obsession. Entrepreneurs who understand the leverage of customer sovereignty do everything they can to know and understand their customer's goals, values and feelings. They seek out negative emotions — disappointments, unease, a feeling that things could be better — because these are the inputs for designing new offerings that customers will welcome to make their lives better and relieve their unease. The method of Austrian Economics in this regard is empathy. It's a soft skill you can nurture and develop with practice. Use the empathic diagnosis tool that we provided earlier this year (link below). The techniques for empathy include the Means-End Ladder (understanding customers' goals, or ends, and why they select the means they choose to attain them) and Listening From The Heart, a market research technique given to us by Isabel Aneyba. Peter Klein on Means and Ends The Means-Ends Ladder Tool How to use the Means-Ends Ladder Tool Peter Klein on Entrepreneurial Empathy Empathy tools for entrepreneurs Isabel Aneyba: Listening From The Heart And The Techniques Of Empathy Avoid Competition The mainstream economics concept of competition considers firms competing to sell identical goods to an identical audience. Entrepreneurs take the opposite tack: they choose a select group of customers whom they understand deeply, and they assemble a unique set of capabilities to deliver unique, customized solutions. The tools we presented during the year include differentiation and branding. Differentiation is the pursuit of uniqueness in your offering. It requires providing your customer with a means to achieve their goals that is different and better than any alternative. That can be faster, or easier to use, or more comfortable, or more personalized, or some other attribute or combination of attributes that the customer prefers. Differentiation is not achieved through pricing. It's achieved by superior understanding of your customer and their subjective goals. Trini Amador demonstrated how to capture differentiation in a brand. A brand is a promise — a unique promise only you can keep to help customers achieve their ends. It's a promise that customers can embrace emotionally, and that you can deliver consistently, every time with certainty and without exception. Promises must be kept. Trini provided us with a templated process for brand building. Per Bylund: What Is Competition? Trini Amador on Brand Building Brand Uniqueness Blueprint Dynamic flexibility Austrian economics has always been on the leading edge of dynamically flexible resource allocation and capital assembly. Austrians see the worth of capital purely in the future revenue streams that it can generate from customers. If customers change, and the revenue stream changes, the worth of the capital has changed. The capital structure of a firm must change to reflect changes in the marketplace. This applies to hardware, software, human capital, processes and methods and organization. Old capital must not be allowed to eat up resources that could be better used to serve customers in new ways. With the arrival of the digital age, dematerialization, interconnectedness that can support rapid assembly and disassembly of global networks and supply chains, practitioners are now able to apply in practice what Austrian theory has been saying all along. Dynamic flexibility is well-captured in the methods of the Agile revolution, as Steve Denning explained. And the ultimate expression of dynamic flexibility is innovation – the dynamic flexibility to supplant old technologies, old services, old organizational structures with new ones. Curt Carlson gave us his formula for successful innovation, and it's very Austrian: always start with the customer's need. Stephen Denning on Agile resource allocation Per Bylund on The Laws Of Agile Curt Carlson on Systematic Innovation Curt Carlson N-A-B-C innovation system The Economics Of Value We finished the year with three episodes on the new economics of value. It's the opposite of traditional economic thinking for entrepreneurs – the economics of scale and cost reduction. The economics of value entail selection of the smallest customer group to serve in the best possible way, so that they can experience maximum subjective value. It involves scaling down – personalization, customization, scarcity, limited availability, and high differentiation. We published a simple guide to the economics of value. Mark Packard shared his latest research on the economics of value and specifically how customers experience it. They do so as a learning process, one that takes place entirely beyond the entrepreneur's line of visibility – in the custmer's perception. Mark explained the neuroscience as well as the economics behind the process, and introduced a 5-part cycle of customer value learning. We published a flow chart and a set of explanatory slides, using pizza as an example. The power of the value learning cycle is that it replaces the concept of the funnel for entrepreneurs. The funnel has built-in inefficiency – wide at the top and full of costs, with revenue at the end where it's narrow. There's a lot of waste. The value learning cycle, when used effectively, engages a small group of customers well-known to the entrepreneur, and guides them logically to an experienced benefit that they assess positively. Per Bylund on The Economics Of Value Economics Of Value versus Economics Of Scale Mark Packard on The Value Learning Process Value Learning Process Map

The Age Of Agile and why agile is more than a tool or method - Interview with Steve Denning, who describes himself as a writer, author, journalist and a renaissance man. He is very modest so I have included a more detailed bio for him below. As well as being a fellow Forbes contributor, he has just published a new book called The Age of Agile: How Smart Companies Are Transforming the Way Work Gets Done and joins me to day to talk about the new book, the imperative behind it and what leaders and entrepreneurs need to be thinking about in order to build and sustain competitiveness in their organisations.

It was Charlie ‘Tremendous’ Jones who said, “You will be the same person in five years as you are today except for the people you meet and the books you read.” Well, 15 years ago Gabrielle read a book that changed the direction of her life. It was so good that she read another two books by the same author, Steve Denning, the former Senior Executive of the World bank. The titles were The Springboard, Squirrel Inc and The Leaders Guide to Storytelling. The content she read prompted her to leave corporate life and start a company teaching leaders how to share stories. Fast forward a few years and Gabrielle got the opportunity to see Steve speak. Then after another couple of years passed, she had a coffee with him on one of his trips to Australia. You may be interested to know that Steve was born and raised in Sydney. If Gabrielle's storytelling training has had a positive impact on the way you lead and communicate, then you have Steve Denning to thank for that. We hope you enjoy this podcast interview with Gabrielle's professional idol and the irrefutable father of storytelling in business.

As the holidays approach, we are re-releasing our top podcasts from 2019. Please enjoy our conversation with Steve Denning, author of "The Age of Agile," which argues that even global giants don't have to be born agile in order to be an entrepreneur and deliver more value from less work. 

Steve Denning is a keynote speaker, Author, and frequent contributor to Forbes. His latest book, The Age of Agile, talks through the three laws of an Agile organization as the law of customer delight, the law of small teams, and the law of the network. See more information at https://www.theagilewire.com/

Steve Denning: 21st Century Workplace and Education | Steve Hargadon | May 24 2011 by Steve Hargadon

How can large organizations act like small teams? Steve Denning is a popular Forbes.com contributor, Fortune500 leadership coach, and author of six leadership books including…

Join Shane and Blair as they chat to Andy Cooper on his experience working with senior executives to help them introduce Business Agility to their organisations. Connect with us on Twitter | Shane @shagility | Blair @affman01 | Andy @Andy766Cooper or LinkedIn Find out more about how Andy helps executive and organisations adopt a agile mindset over at https://www.softed.com/about-us/our-team/andy-cooper/ Want to find our more about business agility, Andy recommends these: Business Agility White Paper:  https://stage.softed.com/assets/Uploads/Business-Agility-Whitepaper.pdf  Steve Denning: The age of Agile book:   https://www.amazon.com/Age-Agile-Smart-Companies-Transforming. Steve Denning writes in Forbes magazine on Agile in the business and is well worth following. This is a typically good article:  https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2019/03/17/how-mapping-the-agile-transformation-journey-points-the-way-to-continuous-innovation/ If you have any questions or an area of applying agile techniques to Data, Analytics or Visualisations you would like us to discuss send us a note over at https://agiledata.io/contact-us/ Subscribe: iTunes, Spotify, Google Play Simply Magical Data

It’s not easy to deliver more value from less work. Steve Denning, author of the “The Age of Agile”, argues that even global giants such as Barclays don’t have to be born agile in order to act entrepreneurially. Listen to this episode of the Talent Angle to understand how organizations can harness the power of their teams, customers, and networks to ultimately deliver value on a larger scale than ever before.

Courage to Ignore Limits Richard Kasperowski interviews Steve Denning, author of The Age of Agile and contributor to Forbes.com. Steve talks about courage, openness to diverse viewpoints, and ignoring limits – working around the team’s constraints. Contact Steve at https://stevedenning.com, and check out his book, The Age of Agile, at https://kspr.co/theageofagile. Join hundreds of high-performers and subscribe to Richard’s newsletter at https://kasperowski.com.

Key Take-Aways: A passionate team can be recognized by the quality of the product or service they provide. They create something that creates value in the world, not just a product. [...] I would say that you can't look for passion by looking at the team. When you look at the outcome of their work, at the quality of the product or services that the team produces, as seen by their customers, you will know if it's a passionate team. You will know it because passion exudes in the product, the outcome or the final deliverable that comes out of a passionate team. You will see it in the quality of the products that they produce, and just before we started recording, we were talking about two different kinds of microphone, right? The one that you are using right now, which sounds awesome. And another one, which is driven by what I would call a marketing focused American company who doesn't understand the use of their technology. […] Well, it doesn't need to be easy to use, necessarily, it depends on what kind of product we are talking about. But in the case of a microphone that is used for recording in a, like for example the microphone that I'm using, it's used for recording anywhere. It's not used for recording in a studio, right? So you need to deal with all kinds of other sound problems. And you see that. People are actually thinking about how the product is going to be used, and they transfer that into the product itself. It doesn't need to be an easy to use product. It can be a very complex, I don't know, spectrometer, or whatever. It doesn't need to be something that is easy to use. But it clearly helps the people using it to solve a real problem that they have. And it does solve very often in ways that are very hard to replicate, because they required a lot of passion to develop that kind of a product. [...]  In most passionate teams, there is constructive conflict, where ideas are the focus, not the people. […]Well, actually, in my experience, the best teams I worked with, there's conflict. And sometimes, when you're an outsider, you might even think that they are fighting with each other, but they are not. What they are trying to do, the process they are going through, is this constructive conflict whereby ideas are the focus of their discussion, not the people. It's not about your idea vs. my idea. But it's about multiple ideas, and which one should we try, and how to we develop it, so in the end, out of those conflicts emerged other ideas that no one in that meeting or conversation ever thought about before, but they were developed and further improved with multiple perspectives, and together as a team, they created something new. So this constructive conflict is definitely one of the most important things that I would say you would see in a high-performing or a passionate team, if you will.[…]  Passionate teams work in an environment, where diversity can be expressed. When they argue, they learn, as they have to express their unstated assumptions. […]I would say that a team, if it's more than two people, and even in two people, that could happen, a team is a complex social system. And in my experience, you can't remove diversity from a social system. What you can do is that you can quench it, you can stop it from emerging. And this is very much done, I'm thinking about Germany, the country we both lived in, you still live there. Where the opinion of the boss is always the one that matters. And that's one way to constrain a social system, in order to create order, there's a reason for it, but that does not remove the diversity in those teams, it just stops it from being expressed. And I would say that in passionate teams, there is an environment where diversity can be expressed, where it's okay to disagree, and actually in fact we look for opportunities for disagreement, not to fight, although it might look like fighting from the outside, but rather to learn. And when we get into a discussion and we start arguing even, when we put arguments, then we learn, because we have to express unstated assumptions that we had. And we have to listen to other assumptions that may be different than ours. That's my hypothesis, at least, that you can't remove diversity from a complex system. You just need to find ways to let it emerge.[…]  Passionate teams don’t accept external constraints. They embrace them and then they change them. They own the way they are working. […]And actually, there's one perhaps another characteristics of a passionate team, is that they don't accept external constraints, they embrace, but then they change external constraints. Like for example, in this particular team that I was working with, we introduced Scrum. And in Scrum, there's this thing that, you know, you do the sprint planning in the beginning, and then you do the planning poker and so on. And this team just stopped estimating. They took in the Scrum constraint of doing the planning and the estimation and so on, and then at some point they decided, hey, this is not useful for us anymore, we'll stop it. Another thing that they did is that they had the Jira board, where they had all of the stories that they were working on, and at some point they said, this is not useful for us, we should use a physical board. They were collocated, so that was easy for them, and they started using a physical board. And then later on, we changed rooms, we went to another room in another part of the building, and they designed the room themselves. And the room, if you entered that room, you would say, "These guys are crazy." It looked totally different from a normal room in that company. […]  The leader of a passionate team is constantly working on creating the environment that allows the team to express their creativity and their ingenuity every day. […]We have these amazing examples of companies that delegate the decision about making the customer happy to the lowest level of the organization, like Nordstrom, the department store, there's a whole book about it, I think it's called, "Radical Management" by Steve Denning, where he talks about putting the client first or the customer first in everything we do. And the way to do that is to actually delegate the decision making to the fringes of the organization, because those are the people who are actually in touch with the "reality" of what it is to work with clients, to be in front of clients every day when they are at work. So, for me the role of the leader is someone who enables the people who do the real work, who solve the real problems in product development, who develop the real product, to be able to make decisions.  Now, what does that mean? In very practical terms, it means that the product owner is not a person outside the team. I shudder to think and to hear when people in Scrum say that the product owner is not a team member. That is the most ridiculous idea I've ever heard in my career. Of course the product owner is part of the team. Otherwise, the team has no ownership over the product. By definition. If you put the product owner outside the team, the team is just a bunch of lackeys, servants to the product owner. That makes absolutely no sense. The team is the most creative, intelligent group to develop the product. So I would say that leaders need to create the environment, for example making the product owners part of the team, getting the developers to actually talk to and interact with customers, real customers. That kind of actions, that's there for the leader. The leader in a passionate team is constantly working on creating the environment that allows the team to express their creativity and their ingenuity every day.[…]  Passionate teams do not fall from the sky. They are not an accident, they are not created by magic tools either. They are created by constant, daily endeavor, effort and reflection. […]Well, so, first of all, I think that you should all read the blog post that Marc published on the passion model, and hopefully at some point even the book. But that's not enough. What I would say is that once you understand the model and once you understand those characteristics that Marc describes, then it's time to go back to basics. Passionate teams are created on the day to day practice of creating amazing, hyper-performing, really passionate teams. Passionate teams do not fall from the sky. They are not an accident, they are not created by magic tools either. They are created by constant, daily endeavor, effort, reflection, just like the Agile manifesto says.[…] Additional Material: Books: Radical Management Five Dysfunctions Of A Team Links: PASSION Model: http://marcloeffler.eu/2016/09/07/seven-elements-of-highly-passionate-teams/?lang=en The 5 Dynsfunctions of a Team: https://www.tablegroup.com/books/dysfunctions Bio: https://about.me/duarte_vasco Podcast: http://scrum-master-toolbox.org/ Blog: http://softwaredevelopmenttoday.com/  

In this episode, I consider whether a paradigm shift is underway in management thought. The original inspiration for this question came from a couple of articles that Steve Denning wrote in Forbes, during the period 2011-2012. The traditional management model has roots in Taylorism (1911).  I discuss the differences between traditional management (based on Taylorism, the … Continue reading 050 – Is management thought undergoing a paradigm shift? (rerun) →

Steve Denning is a thought leader par excellence in the Agile industry. With six successful business books and 600 articles on Forbes, which collectively deal with radical changes is leadership, management and storytelling, Steve has been a vocal proponent for Agile for years. In this Agile In-Depth podcast, SolutionsIQ's Howard Sublett discusses with Steve the 3 Laws of Agile and how simplicity is the strongest weapon to combat complexity. Steve is also promoting the upcoming inaugural Business Agility conference, which SolutionsIQ and Agile Amped will be onsite to capture! Here are some sound bites to whet your appetite: "We are moving towards a world I think where... Agile will simply be management, and the normal way to run a company will be Agile." Instead of scaling the organization up... it's de-scaling the work down to small pieces, small teams, small batches, small cycles... (In this way) you can in fact handle some very large, complex problems." "An obsession with delivering value to the customer... and giving everyone a clear line of sight to the ultimate end user." "Culture is a verb, not a noun." "The biggest risk is on-boarding people at the senior level... If they are not on the same page, then the organization is heading for immediate problems." Further Resources "Explaining Agile" (Forbes article by Steve Denning) Steve Denning on Forbes stevedenning.com

In Episode 8, you met Rich Sheridan, author of Joy, Inc. and CEO of Menlo Innovations which is well known for it's great workplace. Agile Enterprise coach David Grabel and the HR Director for Vistaprint also met Rich at the Agile for Executives Forum. Several site visits later and a visit from Rich, and Vistaprint was on it's way to transformation. In this episode you'll hear David explain what they've learned and how they've moved forward. Also:Why self management and self organization aren't synonymous.In the conversation David mentions Doug Kirkpatrick. I interviewed Doug from MorningStar on my other podcast. You'll find the program on the Evolutionary Provocateur on iTunes. Tomatoes and Self-ManagementThen I talk to Steve Denning, founder and facilitator (and Forbes Contributor) for the Learning Consortium, a peer to peer learning community engaging in site visits. You'll hear the 2016 report results and a reflection on the Drucker Forum recently held in Vienna, Austria. Steve talks about the threads that tie all these companies together. Why Spotify can learn from Riot Games and why logistics company CH Robinson also learned from Riot Games. Learn why bosses still exist in big companies and what makes them different from the traditional command and control role. You can find out more information on the Learning Consortium report from www.sdlearningconsortium.org Intro music is graciously provided by Mark Romero Music. Host Dawna Jones is a speaker, author and transformational guide for companies and people seeking to flow with change. #decisionmaking #leadership See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Steve Denning (@stevedenning) and Don Gray (@donaldegray) joined me (@RyanRipley) to discuss the current state of agile and how an agile mindset trumps processes and tools. [featured-image single_newwindow=”false”]Steve Denning Presenting about Leadership and Management[/featured-image] Steve is the author 8 books including The Leader’s Guide to Radical Management. He’s a former director of the World Bank. Steve is a contributor to Forbes Magazine, and leads The Learning Consortium for the Creative Economy. is a friend and mentor to me, and a valued member of the agile community. He has contributed to multiple books including: CENTER ENTER TURN SUSTAIN: ESSAYS IN CHANGE ARTISTRY, READINGS FOR PROBLEM-SOLVING LEADERSHIP, and AMPLIFY YOUR EFFECTIVENESS. He co-teaches one of the top agile and leadership workshops available – Coaching Beyond the Team – with Esther Derby.Don In this episode you'll discover: Agile as a mindset vs Agile as a set of tools and processes What the only valid purpose of an organization is… Why it’s important for every person in an organization to have line of sight to the customer Links from the show: Learn more about Steve at stevedenning.com Steve Denning’s resignation from the BOD of the Scrum Alliance HBR.org Embracing Agile What’s Missing in the Agile Manifesto:  Mindset [callout]Scale collaboration, not process. If you're trying to use agile and lean at the program level, you've heard of several approaches, all about scaling processes. If you duplicate what one team does for several teams, you get bloat, not delivery. Instead of scaling the process, scale everyone’s collaboration. With autonomy, collaboration, and exploration, teams and program level people can decide how to apply agile and lean to their work. Click here to purchase on Amazon.[/callout] [reminder]What are your thoughts on the Scrum Alliance and their role in the agile community? Please share your ideas below.[/reminder] Want to hear another podcast about the life of an agile coach? — Listen to my conversation with Zach Bonaker, Diane Zajac-Woodie, and Amitai Schlair on episode 39. We discuss growing an agile practice and how coaches help create the environments where agile ideas can flourish. One tiny favor.  — Please take 30 seconds now and leave a review on iTunes. This helps others learn about the show and grows our audience. It will help the show tremendously, including my ability to bring on more great guests for all of us to learn from. Thanks! This podcast is brought to you by Agile Dev East. Techwell’s Agile Dev East is *the* premier event that covers the latest advances in the agile community. Agile for Humans listeners can use the code AGILE16 to receive $200 off their conference registration fee. Check out the entire program at adceast.techwell.com. You’ll notice that I’m speaking there this year. Attendees will have a chance to see my Business of Agile presentation, along with my half day session on advanced scrum topics called Scrum: Answering the Tough Questions. I hope to see many Agile for Humans listeners in Orlando, Florida – November 13th – 18th for this great event. The post AFH 049: The State of Agile with Steve Denning [PODCAST] appeared first on Ryan Ripley.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In this episode of AgileNEXT, Steve Denning, joins Daniel and Stephen to discuss his thoughts on “The Agile Organization”, innovation at big companies, adding customer value, and where Agile is headed NEXT. Some topics include: The Agile Organization Corporate Innovation Focusing on the Customer vs Shareholder Value

Dawna talks to author and management thinker, Steve Denning, about scaling practices like Agile, DevOps, Lean and Scrum to work in large companies.

How does business stay ahead of the curve in an increasingly competitive global marketplace? While the world's biggest companies - Google and Apple - wrestle for the top spot and some of the world's smallest start-ups set their eyes on the big time, we offer a masterclass with CEOs sharing the secrets of their success. With CEO of Infosys Vishal Sikka, James Citrin of Spencer Stuart, Marieme Jamme of SpotOne Global Solutions and analyst Steve Denning. Presented by Colm O'Regan. (Photo: Surfer Dog Tillman rides a wave in the sixth Annual Surf Dog competition at Huntington Beach, California. Credit: Mark Ralston/AFP/Getty Images)

Steve Denning, is the author of over 600 Forbes articles and eight books, including the award winning book - Leader's Guide to Radical Management (2010). Steve is heavily involved with the Scrum Alliance's Learning Consortium. This podcast is brought to you by SolutionsIQ and Scrum Alliance.

Steve Denning you used storytelling to reform the world bank. Good business cases are developed through the use of numbers, but they are typically approved on the basis of stories. A story can translate dry, abstract numbers into compelling pictures of how the deep yearnings of decision influencers can come true.