Learning
Essential Skills & Mindsets for Performance in Today’s
VUCAO World
‣ Complexity Handling
‣ Enabling Conversations
‣ Building Autonomous,
Self-Organized Teams
Evolving Organization Development for Real Value Creation in Change, Transformation & Innovation
We are an Expert Tribe of Agile Coaches, Scrum Masters, Design Thinkers, Lean Practitioners, and ICF (International Coach Federation) Coaches
Social and digital technology is rapidly transforming the way we communicate and interact. Businesses and organizations are facing urgent pressure to innovate and transform to adapt to fundamentally changing customer behavior.
The exponentially expanding complexity of leaders, teams and organizations’ need for change renders no one tool or methodology effective for today’s Organization Development (“OD”).
OD today therefore is a multi-disciplinary and exploratory practice. The modern day OD professional is required to wear many hats as coach, trainer, facilitator, consultant and mentor, integrating a vast array of conventional and emerging people and process management tools, frameworks and mental models for delivering work. We are such professionals.
VUCAO Resilience & KSA Transfer
Our mission is to help leaders, teams and organizations build the capability to perform, function and operate in any volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous, and crucially, overwhelming (hence not just VUCA, but VUCAO) condition, situation and environment.
Our approach to achieving this is heavily learning oriented. KSA (Knowledge, Skill, Ability, Attitude and Aptitude) transferring the many learnings from Design Thinking, Agile Scrum and Lean with training and facilitation, and tapping into the individual and collective creativity and resourcefulness of people through coaching are both integral parts of our work.
We coach both organizations and individuals.
Themes & Programs
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Testimonials
Coach Takeshi’s Insights
Coach Takeshi’s coaching journal. Sharing the many mental models that Coach Takeshi actually uses for client sessions.
The Reflective Leader and Learning Organization Guide
Coach Takeshi’s collection of thoughts on helping leaders use the power of inquiry and introspection for building the mental facility needed in developing Learning Organizations.
Sharing experiments and experiences from work with clients on their Agile organizational transformation journey. Includes work on Agile Scrum, Design Thinking, Lean Startup, and all other “experimental and iterative” approaches.
Latest Posts
Classic Leadership Balance Still Holds for Agile Leadership
Again, it’s all in the balance. If it’s just all vision and empowerment, the team won’t move. Even as an agile leader embracing servant leadership values, you still need to command and lead your tribe,... Read More
Aristotle’s Influence Model
We use “logos” (rational) too much. It’s “pathos” (empathy), “ethos” (credibility, presence), and “kairos” (right time, right place), in balance. We love convincing and persuading. What’s wrong with being right, right? So, “logos” is our... Read More
The Three Competencies of Mastering Complex Product Development
It’s mastery, so don’t expect it to be easy. As both a serial entrepreneur and agile coach to teams of all sizes, I have come to understand that mastering complex product development converges into three... Read More
The Two Simple Traits of Performing Teams
What do you do? The dreaded elevator pitch question. I fumble on it every time. Some days I will say that I activate people. One conversation at a time, I activate leaders, teams, organizations. Other... Read More
The Power of Tribes in Agile Organizations
Social and digital is accelerating the service economy transformation in our world. In the service economy, the competitive advantage is knowledge (including skills and expertise) and connectivity (access to resources – technology is the enabler).... Read More
In Praise of Risk and the late Anne Duformantelle
3 years ago today, French philosopher and psychoanalyst Anne Dufourmantelle, best known for her work on risk-taking (“In Praise of Risk”), drowned while saving two children off a beach in France. She died in circumstances... Read More
8 Mind & Heart Hacks for Emotionally Charged Situations
Here are eight mind and heart hacks for immediate deployment in emotionally charged situations. I use Rhythm Section and Observe, Orient regularly. And more than once, Lean-in has saved me (us) from situations with dramatic... Read More
What do we do when we have missing expertise in the Scrum Team?
On the recurring, practical question of what to do when there are missing skills and expertise in the cross-functional Scrum Team: Yes, it’s true that the Scrum Guide says “Cross-functional teams have all competencies needed... Read More
Why learning from failure is so hard: Because we can’t stand looking stupid
There’s one HBR article that I share but never hear back about. It’s Chris Argyris’ “Teaching Smart People How to Learn” (https://hbr.org/1991/05/teaching-smart-people-how-to-learn). Maybe it’s the intimidating title that ticks off the interest to read. Or... Read More
Most Read
Try Design Thinking + Scrum: A Powerful Hybrid Agile Approach
Classic Scrum’s Achilles’ heel One of the weak areas of classic Scrum, in my opinion, is the relative simplicity of the ideation phase. “What to build” is sometimes an arbitrary discussion during the Scrum Backlog... Read More
Radical Candor: My Go To Feedback Routine
In search of better feedbacking As a coach and mentor, challenging people is a natural part of my work, and sometimes they are in the form of tough messages. Not always though, the messages go... Read More
A Pretty Good Summary of Lean, Agile Scrum
Glossary: Lean, Agile, Scrum, Sprint, Kanban Consider Lean & Agile as pretty much the same thing, they are basically really good approaches to handling projects with a lot of uncertainties, which is why successful startups... Read More
How to Get Scrum Right on First Attempt
Pilot objective Within the Scrum community, there is abundant writing suggesting that the two main factors of Scrum implementation failure are: (1) sub-optimal team structure at the onset, and (2) the Scrum Team failing to... Read More
Strategy Session Facilitation with Design Thinking & Liberating Structures
Why brainstorming doesn’t work That was fun, but… Why do we get that slight, lingering feeling of doubt and dissatisfaction after brainstorming sessions? Here’s why: Group dynamics: 80/20 rule applies. Domination: The vocal minority dominate... Read More
Waterfall Agile: Addressing the Irony of Delivering Agile Transformation with Waterfall
The Irony of Delivering Agile Transformation with Waterfall Agile and digital transformation projects are abundant today. The irony is that too frequently, they are planned and delivered in essentially waterfall project management style. Waterfall is... Read More
Lean, Lean Manufacturing, Lean Startup: Clarified
Lean: not just a hype word for efficiency Yah sure, we do “lean” here and we operate a tight ship with just a few of us doing everything – you know, everyone is multi-taskin’. “Lean”... Read More
Knowing to Stop – A Confucius Teaching
Confucius’ 7 spaces of learning Knowing to stop – is a simple notion but difficult to practice skill. In “Great Learning (大学)”, written around 2,500 years ago by one of his first disciples Zengzi (曾子),... Read More
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