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Does your office space resemble a black hole?

This is a guest post by colleague Tom Meloche, whose new book on organizational ceremony just came out.

It is an authorized extract – edited to remove client-specific information – from a private client communication and how to achieve the next level of agility.  The client has an agile tribe that other companies come visit for inspiration and exposure to “doing agile well.”  Every visitor drools over the tribe’s office area and the radically better “feel” it provides.

Tom, however, contends that their space … the very office area that other companies covet and the client uses as a showcase … is actually holding them back from going further in their agility journey.

Here are his thoughts:

 

“The facility is a nightmare.  Love, Tom.”

[Read more…] about (Office) Space – The Final Frontier for Your Business?

Ceremony.  The word brings up images of ritualistic events outside our work lives, like weddings, graduations, and presidential inaugurations.  Ceremonies are not new and are in fact as old as civilization itself.

So why are colleagues Tom Meloche and Kyle Aretae calling ceremony a “new method” in their book title?

Because the enormous power of ceremony is missing in business.  The authors point out that ceremony as a conscious organizing strategy remains almost unknown in the business world.  Executives, entrepreneurs, and front-line managers cannot formally describe what ceremony is, how it works, or how to leverage it in their organizations.  Surprisingly, it has also been ignored by an entire generation of business consultants.

[Read more…] about Ceremony – A Profound New Method for Increasing Productivity and Achieving Successful Change

“Failure is not an option” is now a common phrase. It became so as a result of the 1995 movie Apollo 13, the title of Gene Kranz’s 2000 autobiography, and other media presentations. It characterizes the “can do” attitude of the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) early years.

The phrase has also became popular in business, as often happens with catchy phrases that seem to ooze wisdom.

Yet using the phrase can actually be dangerous … “failure is not an option” can be terrific or it can be toxic, actually producing failure.

[Read more…] about “Failure is Not an Option” Produces Failure

Do you want your business to fail as leaders change over time?  Most people would quickly answer “no,” but business actions say the opposite.  And doing the opposite is leaving your business future to chance.

Planning for leadership change is vital to future success.  Some businesses like GE have legendary succession planning, and more businesses have processes in place for CEO succession.  However, most businesses do not have much in the way of succession planning for other key positions.

Even if there is some level of succession planning, it is often just knowing who is available “right now” if a leader needs replacement.  This misses the second key element of effective succession:  building and maintaining a leadership “pipeline” that supplies great leadership candidates over time.  The pipeline essentially provides the “fuel” that enables the succession “engine” to work.

There is no “best answer” for building a leadership pipeline.  What each business needs depends on the particular business situation.  This article provides some starting points for building the best pipeline for your business.

[Read more…] about Why and How to Build An Effective Leadership Pipeline

The last insight, What is Agile Leadership?, noted that leaders are looking for ways to deal with relentless market change. Uncertainty bred by terrorism, major political changes like Brexit and the new Trump administration in the U.S., and shifting regulatory landscapes only adds to massive change pressures.

Leader’s interest is expanding rapidly in business agility, agile, lean startup, and variations as possible answers.  The natural question that arises for leaders is:

What is “agile leadership” … how can leaders be agile and lead agility?

The simple answer:

Agile leadership is good leadership with a “wrong until right” mindset.

 

That begged the next question for leaders and the subject of this insight:

How do I become a better agile leader? [Read more…] about How to Become an Agile Leader

Leaders are looking for ways to deal with relentless market change.  Uncertainty bred by terrorism, major political changes like Brexit and the new Trump administration in the U.S., and shifting regulatory landscapes only adds to massive change pressures.

How can leaders navigate through the storms of change? Interest is expanding rapidly in business agility, agile, lean startup, and variations as possible answers.  Early focus in these areas was on product processes and smaller entities like teams or startups.

As focus spreads to larger entities and entire companies, a natural question is: what is “agile leadership”? How can leaders both be agile examples themselves and lead toward agility?

There is a simple answer.

[Read more…] about What is Agile Leadership?