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Fair Process – A Primer
INSEAD is big on “Fair Process”, a leadership mental model formulated by the creators of Blue Ocean Strategy W. Chan … Read More
Reflections on “Think like a farmer”
This visual on “Think like a farmer” has been going around on LinkedIn for a while. It’s good advice and … Read More
Capital “A” Agile and lower case “a” agile/agility
(This is an excerpt post from Coach Takeshi’s Agile 101 with edits.) One VERY helpful framing we use when we … Read More
Is Agile a Methodology?
(This is an excerpt post from Coach Takeshi’s Agile 101 with edits.) Question: would you agree with me, along with … Read More
7 Telltale Signs of Waterfall Agile
waterfall agile [ˈwɔːtəfɔːl aj-ahyl]: the paradoxical phenomenon observed in large organizations where agile transformation is attempted to be delivered with … Read More
Conflict Resolution: Try This Simple Two Step Approach
Caught in an argument, tough negotiation or even a full-blown office battle? Try this simple two step conflict resolution approach. … Read More
The Many Faces of a Learning Professional
Our need to be right is persistant and we learning professionals are no exception. The key to be an effective … Read More
Gong Xi Fa Cai 2023!
Gong Xi Fa Cai! Wishing all those who celebrate the Lunar New Year a wonderful 2023 ahead! After another fruitful … Read More
What is a High Performing Leader?
At Agile Organization Development we regularly design and deliver High Performance Leadership Development Programmes for MNCs. The set up by … Read More
It’s seductive to assume that data is really knowledge.
Dr. W.E. Deming, the father of TQM (Total Quality Management) and the whole Lean movement, once said: Without data, you’re … Read More
Can agile coaching hours count towards ICF credentialling?
Hi Coach Takeshi, I am working towards ICF PCC through ACTP ROUTE. I am not clear about what activities as … Read More
Lean Lingo
Kaizen, Kanban, Gemba, Muda and other Lean lingo we always hear, what do they actually mean? Coach Takeshi explains. Download … Read More
Coaching Fair Process to the Impatient Leader
“It’s not that they don’t get it. It’s that they’re resisting.” “I don’t get it. This plan makes so much … Read More
c2it to follow-through
As boss, how do we ask our team members “can you see to it?” without sounding hard-pressing and controlling? Getting … Read More
How to Build a Kanban Board from Scratch
Your Kanban is a living, breathing artifact. Use it daily and update it frequently. Keep it live and fresh. Why … Read More
Remote and Hybrid Teamwork Success: “Asynchronous” Communication is the Key
Addressing the “Always On” Fatigue of Remote and Hybrid Working with Asynchronous Communication “I miss working in the office, at … Read More
Separating Thinking & Doing Time: Learnings from David Marquet’s “Blue & Red Work”
David Marquet’s “Blue & Red Work” Red Work: Doing Time We continue to be haunted by the ghosts of Taylorism … Read More
Team Alignment in VUCA”O” Times: Try W3 x 124A (What, So What, Now What x 1-2-4-All)
The situation is volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous, overwhelming (VUCA”O”). We have an immediate, mission critical challenge to tackle. We need … Read More
Understanding the Science of Motivation for Leading with Inspiration and Purpose
Watch on YouTube References Transcript How do we lead with inspiration and purpose? It’s a good question and every leader’s … Read More
How to Influence, Not Manipulate (Follow-up post to “Aristotle’s Influence Model”)
Dear Eli, Frankie and team, thanks for the follow-up questions to our group coaching session on “Aristotle’s Influence Model”. What … Read More
Authentic Conversations and the Art of Feedbacking
Watch on YouTube References Transcript Why is it so hard to have an authentic conversation? The type of conversation that … Read More
Why Design Thinking + Scrum Makes a lot of Sense
Watch on YouTube Learn How To Do Design Thinking + Scrum Transcript In doing so, first, I’d like to take … Read More
Rapid Design Thinking template: Ideate customer solutions in less than 30 minutes
Stuck with a customer challenge? No problem, let’s visualize it. Sharing my Rapid Design Thinking Template that I frequently use … Read More
Coach Takeshi’s Scrum Crash Course
Learn Scrum the right way! This is a one hour fifty minute condensed version of my otherwise one day Scrum … Read More
Lay Your Lobster Traps
It bewilders me. Sitting by a calm sea, single line and hook. No catch for today. That’s okay and probably … Read More
Measuring Coaching, Training, Consulting Intervention Efficacy and Needs
Practicing Empiricism in Learning Interventions As learning professionals, we coach, train, consult and facilitate our client teams to measure their … Read More
Agile Organization Development Practitioner’s Community: Why, How and What
Join us at: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/13940775 Dear members of the Agile Organization Development Practitioner’s Community, thank you for joining and welcome to … Read More
Curious Active Listening Mindset (CALM) as a Leadership Modality
Directional Talk, or Dialogue? Previously I shared CALM for receiving critical feedback. You can also have a Curious Active Listening … Read More
How to Receive Critical Feedback in a Breeze: Try CALM – “Curious Active Listening Mindset”
Receiving critical feedback is dreadful. Our defensive routines get triggered and however we might understand that the feedback giver is … Read More
Learn Design Thinking in 30 minutes: Origami Gift Exercise
Here’s a rapid Design Thinking practice exercise that I do in my training sessions. It’s really simple. You pair up … Read More
Structured + Unstructured Learning, Vertical + Horizontal Learning, Shu-Ha-Ri (守破離), Spirit of Kizuki (気付きの精神)
I use four mental models to describe my pedagogy (theory and practice of education): Structured + Unstructured Learning Lecturing, teaching, … Read More
Coach Takeshi’s 2020 Wrap Up and 2021 Wishes
310. Wow. This is how many people I coached in 2020. Now of course, I didn’t do this alone: I … Read More
Three Chairs of Empathy: Cognitive, Emotional, Compassionate Empathy
There are three types of empathy: cognitive, emotional and compassionate empathy; each respectively the desire to understand, to feel and … Read More
Feed-Forward Positive Feedback with the FFF Feed-Forward Formula
When we think of feedbacking, we tend to just do “corrective feedbacking”; i.e. feedbacking on things to improve. Don’t do … Read More
Scrum RACI
Our coachees affectionately call it the avocado. We use this to describe the required boundary conditions and effective organizational support … Read More
The Delegation, Empowerment Spectrum
“I don’t delegate, I empower.” The mantra of the modern enabling manager. I don’t disagree. Though caveat emptor. The delegation, … Read More
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 … 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. … 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 … Read More
The Two Simple Traits of High Performing Teams
What do you do? The dreaded elevator pitch question. I fumble on it every time. Some days I will say … 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 … 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 … 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, … 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 … Read More
Let’s Talk About Fear of Failure
There’s one HBR article that I share but never hear back about. It’s Chris Argyris’ “Teaching Smart People How to … Read More
Go with the FLOW to capture your thoughts from Design Thinking customer interviews
Example: While adoption of the pre-order app for our Daily Greens salad store has been going up, we’ve been observing … Read More
KISS – Keep It Stupid Simple
KISS, an acronym for “keep it simple, stupid” or “keep it stupid simple”, is a design principle noted by the … Read More
What To Do When Feeling Overwhelmed
0. Acknowledge The very first step even before the first step of handling overwhelmingness, is to acknowledge it. We often … Read More
Mental Model Dōjō TV: Agile Success Stories – UOB Finlab Felix Tan
What makes UOB’s Finlab not just yet another bank accelerator unit, is its unique focus in helping SMEs with its … Read More
Kill the Zombies in the Eisenhower Matrix
My executive coaching client was being completely overwhelmed. After a download of a long list of things on his plate, … Read More
Disagreement vs Misalignment
“Shared understanding” is an everyday word in my team coaching. It’s so easy to get into positional talk and convincing … Read More
Maslow’s Final Theory Z
Self-Transcendence – Beyond Self-Actualization and Theory X & Y Maslow’s Original Hierarchy of Needs Model In 1943, Abraham H. Maslow … Read More
Mental Model Dōjō TV: Agile Success Stories – Solaria Labs, Liberty Mutual
Does Agile work? To answer that question, I am starting a new video series of curating Agile success stories. The … Read More
Ambidextrous Organizations Explained
Link to case study video: https://youtu.be/EW_PX50NAps Transcript What is an ambidextrous organization? In a nutshell, an ambidextrous organization takes care … Read More
Stop #failureporn
There’s this thing called failure porn. As Agile professionals, as educators, as parents, we say it’s okay to fail. Go … Read More
Knowing to Stop – a Confucius Teaching
We practice the art of stopping – meditation, mindfulness, reflection, introspection, zen. Confucius says to stop, we first need to … Read More
Innovator’s Dilemma and Organizational Ambidexterity
A tribute post to Professor Clayton Christensen, author of “The Innovator’s Dilemma” (1997), who passed away after a long illness. … Read More
Addressing the Irony of Waterfall Agile
The Irony of Delivering Agile Transformation with Waterfall Agile and digital transformation projects are abundant today. The irony is that … Read More
Knowledge is for Consumption
Knowledge is for consumption. This is my street philosophy, but I really abide to this. I really, really like to … Read More
Premature Scaling is Startup Death
#1 Cause of Startup Death? Premature Scaling This is what INSEAD professor Nathan Furr said in a 2011 Forbes article. … Read More
Don’t Mix What I Want FROM You with What I Want FOR You
Frustrations about others, are (not surprisingly) frequent topics of my coaching conversations. The clarifying question “So, what are you frustrated … Read More
Karpman’s Drama Triangle
In coaching enabling conversation skills, I find Karpman’s Drama Triangle (1968) very useful. (1) Blaming, shaming and guilt tripping, (2) … Read More
Relentless Pursuit of Product Market Fit is Customer Obsession
Relentless pursuit of product market fit is customer obsession. Reality is, so many distractions in the office… It would be … Read More
Honest disagreement is often a good sign of progress
Honest disagreement is often a good sign of progress. – Mahatma Gandhi Nodding one’s head in agreement when reading an … Read More
Deductive and Inductive Reasoning and the Divergent, Convergent Double Diamond in Design Thinking
There’s science and philosophy behind Design Thinking’s divergent and convergent double diamond. It’s the logic of deductive and inductive reasoning. … Read More
If you hear a voice within you say you cannot paint, then by all means paint and that voice will be silenced
“If you hear a voice within you say you cannot paint, then by all means paint and that voice will … Read More
The Cadence of Scrum
I chose this equestrian quote because today I wanted to talk about the time-boxed nature of Scrum, also known as … Read More
Zen koan: What is the sound of one hand clapping?
We know the sound of two hands clapping. But what is the sound of one hand clapping? – Zen Master … Read More
In Praise of NVC – Learnings from Marshall Rosenberg’s Nonviolent Communication
The late Dr. Marshall Rosenberg’s Nonviolent Communication, made famous by Microsoft’s CEO Satya Nadella as required reading for his board, … Read More
The Map Is Not The Territory
The map is not the territory. – Alfred Korzybski, 1931 Semantic scientist and philosopher Korzybski coined this term to distinguish … Read More
Design Instead of Planning
I actually think planning and designing are pretty similar. It’s just that designing is much more colorful, multi-faceted, free form. … Read More
The Two Cadence of User Feedback
This image is from Roland Smart’s “Agile Markerter” (https://amzn.to/2O7W2EA). It’s the cadence difference between feedabck (spot the typo? :-)) that … Read More
Robert Fritz’s Concept of Structural Tension
Sharing to fellow coaches this useful visual from Peter Senge’s Fifth Discipline book. Bringing awareness to limiting beliefs, while shifting … Read More
Kaizen (改善) and Kaku-shin (革新)
My stance is that, change and transformation is a result. We don’t change for the sake of changing. Rather, I … Read More
The many flavors of Experimental and Iterative approaches
The importance is to experiment and iterate. What approach you take is of secondary importance. Chose whatever approach that best … Read More
From Know-Do to Know-[Stop/Think/Design/Make]-Do
We are highly functioning professionals. When we see a pattern, we know what to do. So, Know-Do. The challenge of … Read More
The non-linear, non-sequential nature of Design Thinking
Design Thinking is process driven. It is a process to help us activate our creativity. Meanwhile, our brains don’t necessarily … Read More
Prototyping a Walking Skeleton
Either it’s the artist in us or the perfectionist taking control, but many of us have a tendency to start … Read More
VUCA”O” – Why I add Overwhelming to Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, Ambiguous
Because when we’re overwhelmed, we make simple and complicated situations, complex and chaotic. Complexity & uncertainty handling is starting 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 … Read More
Scrum Sprint Pilot
Pilot objective Within the Scrum community, there is abundant writing suggesting that the two main factors of Scrum implementation failure … Read More
The Art of Kanban + User Story Mapping
Kanban is deep… Combine that with Jeff Patton’s User Story Mapping (USM), it becomes a powerful visualization tool in Scrum.
Liberating Structures
Liberating Structures is a collection of powerful team exercises curated by Henri Lipmanowicz and Keith McCandless (www.liberatingstructures.com). The following slides … Read More
Two Templates for Design Thinking POV (Point of View) Statements
Two versions of Design Thinking POV (Point of View) Statement templates. Download PDF version with editable text boxes here: DT … Read More
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 … Read More
Systems Thinking
We tend to confront complex, dynamic realities with a language designed for simple, static problems: normal verbal language extracts simple, … Read More
Radical Candor: My Go To Feedback Routine
Radical Candor: Care Personally, Challenge Directly Scott’s idea is that guidance is praise and criticism. And the best way to … 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 … 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 … 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 … Read More
Dialogue vs Directional Talk and the Tell Sell Yell Escalation
Our need to be right is pervasive. Suspend your assumptions, create a conversational space and have a dialogue, less a … Read More
Sprint Till You Drop, and three other tales of Scrum gone wrong
(This post is an excerpt from our earlier article A Pretty Good Summary of Lean, Agile, Scrum.) ‣ The Spiritless … Read More
Vision Hierarchy: Making Your Vision Connected with Your Team – An Agile Exercise
Sharing your Vision Leaders, why is it all so often that when you “share” your vision to your people, you … Read More
Spirit of Agile/agility
(This is an excerpt post from Coach Takeshi’s Agile 101) Agile is about relentlessly pursuing customer value. We accept uncertainty … Read More
Lattice Work of Mental Models
Charlie Munger, Warren Buffet’s 95 years old “right hand man,” on “lattice work of mental models”: “You’ve got to have … Read More
Great Product, Not Selling
Sound familiar? Let’s talk about product market fit. Your angel investor invested in your idea. Your VC and series A … Read More
How to Fix Startup Marketing
Four Areas of Focus We focus on the following four areas to help startups build strong foundations for marketing and … Read More
The 3 Challenges Of Startup Marketing
My name is Takeshi. I am the founder of Lifecycle. We help startups succeed with better product development, and marketing. … Read More
Start From Here: 5 Recommended Reads For Learning Lean & Agile
The Lean Startup, Eric Ries, 2011 Scrum, Jeff Sutherland, 2014 The Startup Owner’s Manual, Steve Blank and Bob Dorf, 2012 … Read More