Jimmie Butler's Blog

Most organizations fail to execute their strategies. There are many interrelated reasons for failure – enough to write a book about. One common problem is a lack of strategic focus. Many do not even know what the organization’s strategic objectives are, yet alone how the work they are doing every day supports the strategy, or even the team down the hall (so to speak). This is a problem rooted in a myopic view of one’s work and the impac...

Your teams work either addresses a problem or an opportunity. How they define them determines the solutions pursued. I want to challenge you to consider that perhaps they are not always solving the right problems, and therefore, not achieving the optimal outcomes. Five simple questions could change all that.

Are you familiar with the image below: is it a rabbit or a duck? It highlights the fact that perspective is important context is everything. Similar to...

Do you know anyone that’s ever had a bad experience with a government program, website, or service? Poor user experiences aren’t isolated to government interaction, but government presents a distinct challenge that contributes to this problem – the service isn’t competitive. What if we managed them as if they were?

I remember how, back in the day, going to the Division of Motor Vehicles (DMV) was a miserable experience. Ok, maybe it still is, but it used...

I have rarely met a manager that wasn’t swamped daily with meetings, emails, and fires to put out. If this is you, keeping your head above water is your primary objective day-to-day. Forget about being proactive, you can barely react to the unexpected, which occurs daily. This often requires early mornings, working through lunch, late evenings, and perhaps weekends just to tread water. Sound familiar?

You might expect me to suggest some time management training or to walk you...

Many people think of 20/20 vision as having exceptional, perhaps perfect, eyesight. What it actually means is one’s acuity (sharpness at distance) is normal relative to others. We determine how well we see based on how well most people see. Agile maturity tends to follow the same logic, but should it? As we move into the year 2020, should we really seek to have 20/20 vision when it comes to Agile?

Henrik Ibsen once noted, “The majority is...

I have a Beagle. His name is Charlie. This story of Charlie, and his bark, is going to help us think about our approach to problems and solutions. More specifically, this story about Charlie will help us see how easy it is to recommend the wrong (less optimal) solution because we often focus on the wrong (not root) problem. You might say it’s the result of barking up the wrong tree.

I have been told Charlie is the best barker of any dog my kennel has ever heard. By...

Very few organizations need to be sold on Agile these days. It seems everyone has moved in that direction one way or another. The question is, are they going to Agile for the right reasons?

The data1, as well as my experience, suggests that despite already “doing Agile,” many organizations do not understand what Agile really is, or what it really intends to accomplish. I believe this common misunderstanding leads to misapplication, and organizations struggle as a result – or at least fail to ach...data,

If you’ve ever worked outside of a high-performing team, you’ve seen all the symptoms of unhealthy conflict – such as undermining others, talking over people, and taking ownership of others’ ideas. For some, there is an insatiable appetite, a “need” even, to be right and to elevate themselves. When two or more people have this “need,” you’ll have conflict.

I’ve been that person to some degree. You’ve surely dealt with people that dig in to their ideas and do whatever it takes to ha...

Anyone that knows me is familiar with the question, “what problem are we trying to solve?” Whether it’s about the problem, or opportunity to capture, the point of asking that early in any discussion is to get folks off of thinking about solution and first onto why. In this post, I will open up a new perspective to challenge your thinking further. 

One day I was reading an article from the local newspaper talking about some $2+ million project options to solve a problem that did not...

I recently saw a map trying to represent all of the Agile-related certifications that exist (as of 2019) and was blown away. I knew there were a lot of them, but the visual took it to a whole new level for me. Every Agile-related job posting I see has a requirement for one or more certifications. The “Certification Economy,” as I call it, is very strong. So, should we continue to embrace it, or reject it?

I agree with the argument some have made that i...