Michael Hamman helps organizations grow their inner capacity for leadership agility. He joined us for this “geek fest” of an episode on the topic of agility and transformation. Hamman delves deep into a discussion on how people must shift their mindset in order to deal with the complexity surrounding them, before a company can reach “outer agility” – the agile practices. He describes his method of working on a perceived problem as a trojan horse for introducing agile concepts into their work processes. Accenture | SolutionsIQ’s William Rowden hosts. The post Using a Trojan Horse to Introduce A ..read more

Melissa Reeve is the Vice President of Marketing at Scaled Agile and has a talent for creating growth wherever she is, may that be in people, business, or in her own garden. Reeve shares her agile journey (so far!) and how she has changed her style from leading as a conductor – orchestrating and controlling her teams – to an emerging Agile leader, supporting and growing her teams, one moment at a time. She has learned to have empathy for those who learned traditional management theories, which is a lot of years of learning and mental models to unwind. And in the case of the Global 2000, many o ..read more

In this special episode, we offer a broad overview of portfolio management that uses lean and agile thinking and approaches. Our guides are Evan Campbell and Kat Conner, who together have 50 years of experience in portfolio, budgeting and funding. “Agile portfolio management is matching limited supply to unlimited demand to maximize business outcomes,” say Campbell and Conner. You’ll hear five parts: Introduction to agile portfolio management The supply side The demand side Matching and governance Funding and budgeting This is a deep dive into the topic and it’s the full-length story behind ..read more

Ontario-based Agile coach Jennifer Willems was a featured speaker in the Launching New Voices program at the 2020 Business Agility Conference in New York City. She believes that a growth mindset is essential and the key to unblocking the path for achieving agility. Willems takes us through her journey to becoming an agile coach and the lessons she learned along the way. Servant leadership is near and dear to her heart and you’ll hear real-life examples of what it does and doesn’t look like. She says servant leadership is something you are, not something you do. Finally, Jen advises us to take ..read more

Marsha Shenk works with leaders, integrating business anthropology, social neuroscience, and ecosystem thinking to build business environments that can morph with change. She says, “Change can be described as behavioral plasticity.” Her advice to agilists is that you do not have to be looking for a job that has the title Agile Coach or Scrum Master, instead look more broadly to find opportunities to help companies get back on their feet in a more flexible, fluid manner. Shenk discusses how to claim authority as a woman and as a coach: “You want to take authority to say what are the things you ..read more

William Rowden is an executive coach and consultant here at Accenture | SolutionsIQ. His journey to leading transformation initiatives has piqued his curiosity in org development and adult developmental psychology. For the past few years he has been researching how these two inform each other – and how the focus of an organization’s leaders provides a good indicator for the success or failure of business agility transformation. He walks us through the different focuses that leaders – and indeed everyone – have: self-centric, group-centric, skill-centric and beyond. Drawing from the work of Rob ..read more

Melissa Boggs and Howard Sublett, the Chief Scrum Master and Chief Product Owner respectively at the Scrum Alliance, return to tell us about their own organizational transformation. Throughout 2019, the pair completely restructured the organization into cross-functional and community-centric teams that are empowered to deliver on the needs of their specific community. Hear practical examples of how these changes were implemented, as well as success stories that are emerging as a result of the ongoing transformation. Accenture | SolutionsIQ’s Emilia Breton hosts. Listen on Apple Podcasts Listen ..read more

Allison Pollard is part of the next generation of agile thought leaders. Through her stories, we learn she loves changing up her glasses and that she loves co-presenting with people who “catch her brain.” She shares a story about a seemingly chaotic organization-wide coaching initiative – a story which seeded a memorable Agile2019 presentation she co-presented with Skylar Watson, a fellow agile coach. Favorite quote (on the topic of her changing glasses): “I usually pick out a pair that kind of scares me initially when I look in the mirror – like, I’m not sure who that is, [but] I can take a y ..read more

In the digital economy, markets are increasingly dynamic and disruption is both threat and opportunity. Adaptive and responsive agile marketing drives competitive advantage through the ability to exploit uncertainty and volatility. Rapid learning, an empirical mindset, and the ability to pivot and execute are critical capabilities marketing organizations must develop. In this webinar, Evan Campbell, Managing Director at Accenture | Solution IQ and Melissa Reeve, VP Marketing at Scaled Agile will explore: The business case for Enterprise Agile Marketing The value of adopting a Lean-Agile Lead ..read more

This white paper was co-authored by Sally Bauer, George Schlitz, William Rowden, and Ryan Keawekane. Executives in companies undergoing transformations usually want to help. They often try to make the changes needed to become a more agile leader. They remember from their past training that they need to empower teams while striving to be less directive themselves. They know what a user story is, they have even authorized re-naming all of their project managers to scrum masters – what more is there to it? And yet transformations still fail. So, there must be more to it. How can leaders improve t ..read more