Takeshi Yoshida ICF ACC PSM II PSPO

Takeshi Yoshida

Chief Coach, Agile Organization Development

Owner, Lifecycle Pte. Ltd. (Singapore)

View Executive
　Coaching Profile

Summary

I am a coach, consultant, facilitator, trainer that develops organizations for change, transformation and innovation. I lead a growing tribe of currently twenty plus coaches that are all hybrid behavioral + process coaches; typically ICF (International Coaching Federation) certified coaches with expertise in Agile, Design Thinking and Lean.

I am concurrently a serial startup entrepreneur and a former banker with a combined quarter of a century experience as a front-line business professional. I practice what I preach – from theory to action, everything that I coach is tried, tested and validated through my own learning by doing. Therefore my coaching is not teaching; it is more about sharing of experience and trying together.

Expertise

  • Behavioral Coaching: My coaching focus is on conversations. I help clients develop stronger conversation and communication skills with habit formation training using many mental models (https://agile-od.com/mental-model-dojo). I am a Certified Positive Psychology Coach (CPPC II) and International Coaching Federation Associate Certified Coach (ICF ACC). In addition to individual coaching with executives and entrepreneurs, I am particularly proficient in group and team coaching.
  • Process Coaching: I practice Design Thinking, Agile Scrum and Lean everyday. I am a Scrum.org Professional Scrum Master (PSM II) and Professional Product Owner (PSPO). I use Liberating Structures for my facilitation work, and am also a certified Lego® Serious Play® facilitator.
  • Organization Development (OD): I see organizations from five view points: people, process, structure, product & client. Most organizations are well resourced (although efficacy is another question) for the latter two commercial focuses (product & client), therefor I bring the spotlight to the first three areas for Organizational Capability building (people, process, structure).

    • Further, I work with organizations on bringing drive to the operational and delivery aspects of organizational change, digital transformation and innovation programs. My take is that there’s enough planning and thinking in these programs, but not enough effort in the execution, hence the focus.

  • Industry Expertise: Prior to becoming a learning professional, I was a career banker between 1994~2011, with significant fixed income transaction experience across Japan, Asia and global Emerging Markets. Since 2011 I have been a serial startup entrepreneur, particularly in the fintech space as I maintain close relationship with the banking and insurance industry.
Coach Takeshi: Behavioral Coach, Process Coach, Organization Development Professional

Coaching Focus

Performing teams have processes that work, and people that talk to each other. It’s that simple but organizational reality shows otherwise. I help leaders and teams learn complexity handling and enabling conversation skills to make this simple thing work.

  • Complexity Handling: Among the simple-complicated-complex-chaotic spectrum, we often confuse the difference between complicated and complex, and make the common error of using tools and processes meant for complicated tasks, to complex work. Further, we often become overwhelmed and make simple and complicated things complex (and even out of hand – chaotic). Agile Scrum, Design Thinking, Lean Startup are all frameworks and approaches developed for handling complex work, and I make good use of the learnings from the field to coach complexity handling.
  • Enabling Conversations: Despite the decades of advances in behavioral and cognitive science, we are still trapped in the use of controlling language. Often, catalyst moments in coaching sessions come when coachees discover the true power of inquiry and dialogue. The challenge is how to sustain that revelation – we are creature of habits, and habits are hard to change. The focus is on the practicing, and I make many references to old and new literature on human sciences for coaching enabling conversation skills.

Meanwhile, I am an ardent advocate of learning organizations, and central to this is the practice of self-organization.

  • Self-Organization: Without activating the collective intelligence of the team, developing complex products in today’s evolving technological landscape is an impossibility. And self-organization is a consistent trait observed in high performing teams. Yet again as we are so ingrained in command and control culture, self-organization does not come naturally to most teams. It takes some good coaching and organizational alignment to de-learn the many old habits that we hold, yet with a lot of optimism (it doesn’t hurt to be a Positive Psychology coach!) and respect to our intrinsic drive for autonomy, purpose and mastery, I am confident that change for self-organization can happen with every team.

Clients

Current Engagements

  • INSEAD: Corporate Executive Programme lecturer and workshop trainer
  • Major European FMCG: Agile transformation advisor and agile coach for CIO/CTO board
  • Global consulting company: Organization wide leadership development programme director
  • Singapore Government agency: Executive leadership team coach, organizational transformation programme with Service Design
  • Global insurance company: Agile cultural transformation programme lead coach and trainer
  • Executive coaching engagements with global financial institutions, MNCs, GAFA

Career, Education & Qualifications

  • 2011 – Present: Lifecycle Pte. Ltd., Founder (Singapore)

    • 2018 – Present: Organization Development, coaching, training, facilitation, consulting

    • 2019 – Present: INSEAD Executive Education, Lecturer & Workshop Trainer, Facilitator

    • 2011 – Present: Various start-up projects

    • 2015 – 2018: Canopy Pte. Ltd., Chief Commercial Officer (Singapore, fintech)

  • 2009 – 2011: Barclays Bank, Director (Singapore & Tokyo, Global Markets)

  • 2004 – 2009: Deutsche Bank, Director (Singapore & Tokyo, Global Markets)

  • 2002 – 2004: Bank of America, VP (Tokyo, Global Markets)

  • 1994 – 2001: Morgan Stanley (Tokyo, Investment Banking, Asset Management)

  • 2001 – 2002: INSEAD, MBA, Freshfields Scholarship (France)

  • 1990 – 1994: International Christian University, BA, Liberal Arts (Tokyo)

  • Certified LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® Facilitator, Association of Master Trainers in the LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® Method (credential)

  • CPPC (International Association of Positive Psychology Coaches, Certified Positive Psychology Coach, credential)

Testimonials

Coach Takeshi Testimonial
Coach Takeshi Testimonial
Coach Takeshi Testimonial
Coach Takeshi Testimonial
Coach Takeshi Testimonial
Coach Takeshi Testimonial

View Coach Takeshi’s Individual Coaching / Executive Coaching Profile

Contact


www.linkedin.com/in/takeshiyoshida
https://medium.com/@takeshi.yoshida/latest
@coachtakeshi
@coachtakeshi

Publications

18 Sep 2018
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

A Pretty Good Summary of Lean, Agile, Scrum | Lifecycle
26 Aug 2018
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

11 Jun 2019
Scrum Sprint Pilot
|

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

Coach Takeshi's Agile 101
14 Jun 2020
Agile 101
|

What is agile? Why agile? How do we do agile? What’s the difference between Agile, Scrum, Lean, Design Thinking? Tell me about Scrum. Is agile a fad? What’s the difference between Agile and agility? All... Read More

Coach Takeshi's Scrum Crash Course
28 Mar 2021
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 Crash Course that I give to leaders and teams that are about to embark on... Read More

▶ Browse more

Latest Posts

Lean Lingo - Agile OD
8 Apr 2022
Lean Lingo
|

Kaizen, Kanban, Gemba, Muda and other Lean lingo we always hear, what do they actually mean? Coach Takeshi explains. Download the slides from here. (Creative Commons copy left – free for anyone’s use with attribution.) Read More

c2it: confirm, communicate, dot the i's, cross the t's
21 Sep 2021
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 things done, it’s so hard to seek team members to follow-through, isn’t it. Try “c2it”;... Read More

▶ Browse more