Agile Amped Podcast - Inspiring Conversations
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Simon Hayward is an honorary professor at Alliance Manchester Business School in the UK and author of The Agile Leader and Connected Leadership. He is also Global Lead for Leadership and Culture at Accenture’s Talent & Organization/Human Potential practice. In this episode, Hayward outlines challenges before leaders who seek to engage people in radical change – often the case in large-scale agile transformation. COVID has undoubtedly had a hand in worker expectations, and it offers leaders the opportunity to move their business from being just connected to becoming “omni-connected.” “When organizations combine the digital and technological with the human and cultural, then that combination becomes particularly powerful. And leaders have a disproportionate impact on the way the culture operates and the behaviors in the organization.” Accenture’s William Rowden hosts. Learn more: - Accenture Research "From Always Connected to Omni-Connected" https://www.accenture.com/cr-en/insights/strategy/organizational-culture
Julian Mancia is interested in helping humans get out of their own way, specifically when it comes to business innovation. As a Director of "What If! Innovation," part of Accenture, Mancia is excited by nebulous projects that might terrify others. For example, helping companies break into the competitive snack market or doubling growth in five years. How does he do it? With adaptive strategies. Accenture’s Allia DeAngelis hosts.
Lisette Zounon is passionate about building quality into everything she does. A quality engineering leader with over 15 years of experience, Zounon is agile at work and at home, whether she’s planning her wedding or helping teams deliver excellent products. Her stories inspire the person in each of us that wants to make the world a better place in big ways (e.g., bringing breast cancer care to rural West Africa) and small (e.g., mentoring a young female professional on the verge of quitting the industry). Accenture’s Ryan Keawekane hosts. Learn more: - https://www.zsquare4thecure.org/ - #UpYourConfidence podcast - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/upyourconfidence/id1518304276
The world of work has irreversibly changed. As the CEO for Institute Agility, Neville Poole is actively making space for people-centric work experiences. Physical workplaces now serve to bring people together to do what they cannot do remotely: connect, align on values and be creative. What’s more, people want their work to be meaningful, especially the next generation of workers. Neville shares her experiences both as an executive in Tech as well as a mother of two teenage girls with big dreams. “This generation places a lot of value on impact… and impact doesn’t mean increase revenue by 20% or work 40 hours a week.” Accenture’s Ryan Keawekane hosts. Learn More: • “Getting to Equal: Gender Parity in the Workplace” with Neville Poole https://open.spotify.com/episode/2mptreWZWjhtiBlYMQdMid?autoplay=true • https://instituteagility.com/
Agile began in software but has evolved to impact every part of the business. Now business agility is seen as a way for organizations not just to create better products but also to run more effectively overall — regardless of what comes their way. Our guests discuss the evolution to business agility as we see it today. Jason Novack is the global lead of the Accenture Business Agility practice (formerly Accenture | SolutionsIQ), and Evan Leybourn is the founder and CEO of the Business Agility Institute. They share what they are seeing in the world both from a business perspective (a greater interest in bringing agility into governance and portfolio management) and a human perspective. As Leybourn puts it, “We spend more time working than any other part of our life … If work isn’t one of the best parts of our life, that’s a waste of human potential.” Accenture’s William Rowden hosts.
Who do you turn to to celebrate or to commiserate? When Apriel Biggs started her career 15 years ago, she didn’t have a community of agilists who shared her experiences, other Black and Brown people to share her highs and lows with. So Biggs started Blagile, an organization dedicated to elevating Black and Brown voices in agile. In this episode, she shares her journey and the help she got along the way in hopes of inspiring young agilists today. Accenture’s Alalia Lundy hosts. Learn more: - Blagile.com - Reach out to Apriel Biggs if you would like to guest on the Blagile podcast at hello@blagile.com.
Abiodun “Abby” Osoba has tirelessly been creating a community of agilists based primarily out of Lagos, Nigeria, through her commercial and non-profit efforts. Osoba is the founder of the Agile Advisor Africa, co-founder of the Remote Agile Workspace (RAW) as well as one of the creators of the Agile Contracts Manifesto. She shares her journey, her experiences and her vision for business agility in Nigeria and beyond to Africa and the world.
There isn’t a single playbook or recipe for success, but one thing is certain: while scaled agile done well can turn into business agility, they aren’t the same thing. In his new book "The 6 Enablers of Business Agility," Karim Harbott shares his experience helping getting people and clients to think beyond just (software/team-level) agile to business agility. Harbott’s six enablers highlight the multifaceted, holistic approach required for business agility. Accenture | SolutionsIQ’s Allia DeAngelis hosts. Learn more: https://www.6enablers.com/ - karim@karimharbott.com
Self-identified “agile unicorn” Jackie Chambers de Freitas rarely sees others like her in her work as a VP of technology transformation and executive coach. In this episode, she shares how her uniqueness as a Black woman working in agile can be both a boon and a burden. Mixed in with her own challenges are the general challenges involved with bringing business agility to organizations. De Freitas mentions the “dirty little secret in agile”: agilists are champions of change – but change is tough. It can take a toll on your mental health, both those who are changing and those who are helping to change. Accenture | SolutionsIQ’s Allia DeAngelis hosts.
Facilitation involves “removing obstacles to contribution, connection and equity.” This is at the center of our guest Adam Kahane’s book “Facilitating Breakthrough.” Kahane argues that facilitating isn’t just trying to get people to do things. He discusses what he calls “transformative facilitation” – facilitating in ways that brings in both individual and collective perspectives to move forward together without leading to fragmentation or rigidity. Accenture | SolutionsIQ’s Allia DeAngelis hosts. Learn More: - Facilitating Breakthrough: How to Remove Obstacles, Bridge Differences, and Move Forward Together (https://reospartners.com/facilitating-breakthrough/)
Accenture | SolutionsIQ alumna and former Agile Amped host Leslie Morse is our guest in this episode. Serving as Product Owner for the Professional Scrum Community with Scrum.org has put Morse on a journey to help agilists “drink their own prosecco.” She is finding new ways to improve integrity, empiricism, and what she calls “change fluency” in the agile community. The goal is sense of personal agility that makes us all better able to serve others. “If we can become fluent in change the same way we are fluent in language, what new might be possible in the world in terms of personal and organizational agility?” Accenture | SolutionsIQ’s William Rowden hosts. Learn more - Seven Transformations of Leadership by David Rooke and William R. Torbert: https://hbr.org/2005/04/seven-transformations-of-leadership - Women in Agile podcast series: https://womeninagile.org/podcast/
„Sind globale Lieferketten eigentlich sinnvoll?“ Diese Frage sei heute viel stärker in der Diskussion als früher. Dorothea von Boxberg, CEO der Lufthansa Cargo, und Moritz Hagenmüller sind sich einig: Resilienz ist oberstes Gebot für Produktions- und Liefernetzwerke. Welche Entwicklungen sind zu erwarten und was bedeutet das für die Luftfracht? Wie kann sie ihrer Verantwortung in Bezug auf Klimaschutz nachkommen? Und warum gibt es in dieser Industrie immer noch so viel Papier? Ein Gespräch über zukunftsweisende Fragen und ein Ausblick darauf, welchen Beitrag die Digitalisierung leisten kann.
In his book “Agility: How to Navigate the Unknown and Seize Opportunity in a World of Disruption,” Leo Tilman offers a comprehensive definition of the word “agility.” According to Tilman and co-author former NORAD commander General Charles Jacoby, agility is “the organizational capacity to detect, assess and respond to environmental changes in ways that are purposeful, decisive and grounded in a will to win.” In this episode we unpack the loaded definition and discuss how (tactical) agile practices and mindsets as we know them in the industry fundamentally address risk – and how agility can help address other types of risk in the world including global climate change, nationalism, and populism. Accenture | SolutionsIQ’s William Rowden hosts.
This special episode celebrates the Pride month of June and features the hosts and producer of Agile Amped as the guests. Alalia Lundy (she/her/hers) is a Business Agility Enablement Manager; William Rowden (he/him/his) is a Business Agility Practice Development Associate Director, and Ryan Keawekāne (he/him/his) is a Marketing Associate Manager. We all work at Accenture and also happen to belong to the LGBTQ+ community. We share our stories of being LGBTQ+ in a business environment, some of the “roses and thorns” of our experience, as well as what we are amped about.
Kayton Bhatia is a Senior Leader in Digital Product Management at Kaiser Permanente. For Pride Month, he is sharing his story about bringing his whole self to work. As a gay, Indian man, Bhatia’s path to leadership is anything but typical. Despite changes to laws in both the US (where he lives and works) and India (where he was born and raised), there’s more to do. He offers advice to leaders and LGBTQ professionals and is an example to those who happen to be both of how to live and lead authentically. “I’m quite aware of the weight I’m carrying as if I’m representing several communities.” Accenture | SolutionsIQ’s William Rowden hosts.
Sandy Beky is the founder of two companies whose work, at first blush, seems unrelated. The first is HeHop, a nonprofit that uses blockchain technology to empower victims and witnesses of domestic violence to capture and store tamper-resistant evidence for use in court. The second is Kyosei Solutions Lab, through which Beky helps leaders of France’s biggest companies evolve their mindset and approach to leading organizations. In this episode, we learn how Beky sees her work through both organizations as contributing to a greater whole, to furthering humanity. “Human transformation is what is going to trigger the business transformation.” Accenture | SolutionsIQ’s William Rowden hosts.
Colleen Kirtland is on a learning journey, and in this episode, she shares her passion for and commitment to learning as much as possible from nature. Pointing to many resources and examples of biomimicry, economics, and above all systems thinking, Kirtland invites us to think about creating systems that not just grow linearly but thrive. She argues that “resiliency is built over a very long time,” and the same can be said for agile. “As I’m unpeeling life itself, I’m learning to be a better leader and a better coach of teams…” Accenture | SolutionsIQ’s William Rowden hosts. (Stick around until the end for some more insights and fun interaction.) Learn more: • Jeanine Benyus, biomimicry.org (https://biomimicry.org/janine-benyus/) • Kate Raworth, Donut Economics (https://www.kateraworth.com/doughnut/) • John H. Miller and Scott E. Page, Complex Adaptive Systems (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00CTLFPNK/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1) • Mariana Mazzucato, “The Value of Everything” (https://marianamazzucato.com/books/the-value-of-everything) • Linda Hogan, Dwellings (https://wwnorton.com/books/9780393322477)
Adam Burden is Accenture’s Chief Software Engineer and a senior managing director leading Technology services for Accenture in North America. In this episode, Burden shares how Cloud helps break barriers to agility. One barrier is legacy systems. While package solutions have become popular in the last few years, Burden says that the “renaissance of custom” today may make it more practical for businesses to customize their legacy systems. The result often is greater agility. “If I want to get more out of Agile, I have to change my culture. And Cloud is … the catalyst that helps to make that happen.” Accenture | SolutionsIQ’s Alalia Lundy hosts. Learn more • “Breaking the four barriers to Cloud” (https://www.accenture.com/us-en/insights/cloud/cloud-technology-adoption) • “Why the renaissance of custom is here to stay” (https://www.accenture.com/us-en/blogs/software-engineering-blog/adam-burden-custom-systems)
What happens if you put $1 billion dollars in the hands of students to invest collaboratively? Luke Hohmann is Founder and CEO of FirstRoot, which wants “to get $1,000 into a million schools so that children are in control of $1 billion or more of capital by 2030.” Hohmann shares stories of how real school students have invested in their schools and communities – with surprising results. It’s all in an effort to help cultivate civic responsibility in youth and grow the next generation of impact investors. As our guest puts it, the circular economy and impact investing “are the mechanisms by which we can make positive change occur through the normal structures of business in a very powerful way." Accenture | SolutionsIQ’s William Rowden hosts. Learn more at firstroot.co.
What does it mean to put customers at the center of everything you do? For Riot Games, the brand behind League of Legends, it means “making it better to be a player.” Our guest Michael Robillard is the Principal of Enterprise Agility for Riot Games, and he shares how business agility unlocks their ability to make good on that promise. One outstanding example of what Robillard calls “customer-centric business agility” happened at the 2018 League of Legends World Championship in South Korea, where a fictitious, VR Kpop group took the real stage to rave reviews from fans around the world. Accenture | SolutionsIQ’s Ryan Keawekane hosts.
Johanna Rothman, a.k.a. the Pragmatic Manager, is author of 18 books and frequent blogger on the topic of product management and more. Rothman shares with us insights about her latest three-book bundle on “Modern Management Made Easy.” These books are full of “the kinds of questions I keep hearing from my clients.” Each chapter begins with a question followed by a popular myth and then many different options for managing oneself, others, and one’s system to be more effective at work. “We are now in the hard work of trying to help entire organizations change their entire cultures… An Agile approach is not a new lifecycle: it’s a culture change. And managers hold and refine the culture for the organization.” Accenture | SolutionsIQ’s Alalia Lundy hosts. Learn more about Johanna Rothman at jrothman.com.
Diversifying Equity with Agile for Humanity Self-defined Soul Craftswoman April Jefferson applies her experience in coaching, crafting experiences, and conference speaking to help “bring up new voices.” Jefferson shares her story of striving to increase equity of the Black, indigenous, people of color (BIPOC) community in Agile. One way is the Agile for Humanity group and conference – or, should we say, “unconference.” Jefferson is aware that much of how conferences operate create obstacles for diverse voices to participate. She focuses squarely on “how do I unlock others’ potential?” Accenture | SolutionsIQ’s Ryan Keawekane hosts. Learn more: • https://www.agileforhumanity.org/conference/ • https://www.agileforhumanity.org/future-search/
Rajesh Nerlikar is chief product advisor at Prodify and the co-author of the book “Build What Matters: Delivering Key Outcomes with Vision-Led Product Management” with Ben Foster. Nerlikar highlights a few of the ten dysfunctions that the co-authors had seen in their experience advising product management teams. The book focuses on the four core tenets of vision-led product management that strikes a balance between “iterate your way to success” and “game-changing innovation.” Accenture | SolutionsIQ’s Alalia Lundy hosts. Resources • “Build What Matters: Delivering Key Outcomes with Vision-Led Product Management” by Rajesh Nerlikar and Ben Foster • Virtual resources: https://www.prodify.group/resources/book/checklist • Users Interviews: https://www.userinterviews.com/
Nick Horney is an organizational psychologist and founder of Agility Consulting. He spent 23 years in Special Operations in the U.S. Navy, before building a career in the agile space. Horney joins us to discuss his ideas and experience in leadership agility and anticipating change, focusing on 2020 and the COVID-19 pandemic. He uses the concepts of “After Action Agility” and the “Leadership Agility Profile 360 Assessment” to gauge how well organizations anticipate and respond to change. “The whole purpose of doing assessments is not just self-discovery: it’s what do you do with that? How do you convert that into your own individual development plan?” Accenture | SolutionsIQ’s Chris Murman hosts. Learn More: • agilityconsulting.com • Leadership Agility Profile 360 Assessment (http://agilityconsulting.com/leadership-agility-profile-360-assessment/#:~:text=The%20Leadership%20Agility%20Profile%E2%84%A2,such%20as%20clients%20or%20customers.)
Alicia McLain is a small-business owner, executive leadership coach, public speaker and co-founder of the Agile Coaching Exchange North America. McLain shares her experience speaking on the topic of “Coaching, the Secret Sauce to a Culture of Accountability.” Building on the Agile Coaching Institute’s Coaching Competency Model, she shares what coaching is and is not. McLain highlights how an ICF-certified coach builds accountability into the arc of the conversation by asking powerful questions to help the coachee commit to a change. “I think the best way to understand coaching… is to get coached.” Accenture | SolutionsIQ’s Alalia Lundy hosts. Keep Learning “Coaching, The Secret Sauce To A Culture of Accountability” (recorded talk) International Coach Academy (ICA) https://coachcampus.com “The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever” by Michael Bungay Stanier https://amzn.to/2JnfIkX “The Advice Trap: Be Humble, Stay Curious & Change the Way You Lead Forever” by Michael Bungay Stanier https://amzn.to/2Rdju5n Interested in becoming a coach? https://agilekata.com/interested-in-becoming-a-coach/ The International Coach Federation (ICF) - https://coachfederation.org/ More Podcasts with Alicia McLain: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/9-things-wildly-successful-agile-coaches-do/id992128516?i=1000493217872 https://podcasts.apple.com/ie/podcast/empathy-emotional-intelligence-in-organizational-transformation/id992128516?i=1000415679921
Michael Spayd is the co-founder of The Collective Edge, which seeks to “transform the transformers.” In this episode, Spayd shares some of his thinking behind his new book “Agile Transformation” and reminds us of the difference between organizational transformation and what he calls “a big adoption.” Leaders are key to the chances of success: “If you’re going to transform [your organization], you’re almost certainly the first problem,” because “organizations are designed to get the results that they get.” Oh, and we take a tangent to consider the connection between quantum physics, integral theory and meditation. Accenture | SolutionsIQ’s William Rowden hosts. Learn More: “Agile Transformation” by Michael Spayd - https://www.amazon.com/Coaching-Agile-Enterprise-Organizational-Addison-Wesley/dp/0321885317/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1602615915&sr=8-2 All Quadrants, All Levels (AQAL) - https://integrallife.com/five-elements-aqal/ Systemic constellations – https://www.the-collective-edge.com/systemic-consciousness Quantum Enigma - https://www.amazon.com/Quantum-Enigma-Physics-Encounters-Consciousness/dp/0199753814/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=quantum+enigma&qid=1602616136&sr=8-1
Jim Ewel is one of the earliest advocates for Agile Marketing and is one of the authors of the Agile Marketing Manifesto. His new book “The Six Disciplines of Agile Marketing” provides a framework for applying Agile principles and practices to marketing. Ewel encourages marketers to initially shift their focus away from a process like Scrum or Kanban, and instead begin their Agile journey by developing alignment with the rest of the organization. He walks us through the other five steps and discusses the importance of metrics that matter. Accenture | SolutionsIQ’s Alalia Lundy hosts. Learn More: www.agilemarketingmanifesto.org https://businessagility.institute/learn/agile-marketing-metrics/
Corey Post is a Lean-Agile transformation management consultant with 20+ years of leadership experience developing large solutions, new products, and complex systems. Recently he authored two talks for the Agile2020 conference: · Use Product Value Streams to Rapidly Deliver Customer Value and Create a Learning Machine · What You Need to Know About Human-Centered Design and Hearing the Voice of the Customer Since the conference was canceled, we wanted to invite Post to discuss some key points from his talks including value streams and the importance of customer-centric organizations. Accenture | SolutionsIQ’s Alalia Lundy hosts The Agile Amped podcast is the shared voice of the Agile community, driven by compelling stories, passionate people, and innovative ideas. Together, we are advancing the impact of business agility.
Esther Derby has four decades of experience with organizational change and she’s a well-known author and thought leader in the agile space. Derby chats with us about her latest book: “7 Rules for Positive, Productive Change: Micro Shifts, Macro Results” While you’ll hear her 7-step guide to problem solving, we particularly dig into her guidance on attending to networks. Accumulating network drama due to widespread layoffs and stress that are affecting our peers is making people less resilient and less supportive of each other. Derby shares her tips for allowing for unstructured conversations and maintenance of our connections in our virtual work environments of today. Accenture | SolutionsIQ’s Alalia Lundy hosts. The Agile Amped podcast is the shared voice of the Agile community, driven by compelling stories, passionate people, and innovative ideas. Together, we are advancing the impact of business agility. Podcast library: www.agileamped.com
Mik Kersten, author of “Projects to Products” and CEO of Tasktop, has seen a reoccurring theme. We go to conferences; we hear about all these fantastic things that can happen when we incorporate lean practices, continuous flow, and feedback. We come back pumped to start changing the way we work because we know it will improve our lives for the better. Then suddenly, the motivation gets drained out of us by all the internal systems in place that effectively prohibit change. Mik has boiled the reasons we face in these situations down to three things: Language differences between business and technology groups Change metrics are non-existent, broken or not relevant between groups Projects are considered cost centers Mik also takes a closer look at the concepts behind his book, including the value of product value streams, persistent teams, and organizing with the intention of reducing the number of dependencies. Accenture | SolutionsIQ’s Mirco Hering hosts at the DevOps Enterprise Summit in Las Vegas. The Agile Amped podcast is the shared voice of the Agile community, driven by compelling stories, passionate people, and innovative ideas. Together, we are advancing the impact of business agility. Podcast library: www.agileamped.com
