In this edition: A personal note; Two keynote talks; Articles; Upcoming

To begin on a personal note, Sharon and I are immensely grateful for your kind donations in Florence’s memory. More than £1,500 has been raised for Bluebell Wood Children’s Hospice, and the Lean Agile Brighton conference also raised a four-figure sum this month (exact amount to be announced) for the Make-A-Wish Foundation. On both counts, amazing! Thank you!

Two keynote talks

I’m sort of back to work now, mainly speaking engagements for the moment. We’ll be taking a holiday also – it will be the first time Sharon and I have been able to travel together since 2018. I’m not sure yet what 2026 will bring, but that’s ok, and I’m very open to ideas.

Just this month I have given my talk Introducing the Deliberately Adaptive Organisation four times now! It turns out to be very adaptable: twice this week (and next week at Øredev 2025) it took the form of a quick 30 or 40 minute talk. But earlier this week I had no trouble filling 90 minutes, and two weeks ago, nearly three hours! That last one was for a hybrid seminar at Hull University’s Centre for Systems Studies in association with the Operations Research Society, and it prompted plenty of thoughtful conversation.

Given my impending travels, I have already written my new keynote for Kanban India 2025, which takes place in early December. It’s called Thinking Organisationally about Process, and it puts the kanban of my first book, Kanban from the Inside, into the kind of organisational frame described by my fifth book, Wholehearted: Engaging with Complexity in the Deliberately Adaptive Organisation, with some of the glue provided by my middle book (and audiobook), Right to Left: The digital leader’s guide to Lean and Agile. If the clock starts with my best-known (not to mention career-changing) blog post, Introducing Kanban through its values, that’s a journey of nearly 13 years, but you can get the gist in some 45 minutes!

I mention these because if you run a meetup or conference, you might consider one or even both of these talks. For a fee, I do private events also, as I did only yesterday. Either way, I have availability from mid-December onwards.

Articles

I wrote two this month. Most recently, and prompted by that seminar in Hull and also by a panel session I did with Philippe Guenet and Jen Le Marinel for the International Coaching Federation (ICF):

Polarities, asymmetries, and why we do what we do

Before that:

In two senses, a wholehearted organisation is a high-intelligence organisation Upcoming

With home life very much in transition, I’m honouring my remaining commitments for 2025 but deliberately keeping 2026 open. My public calendar now looks like this:

5-7 November, Malmö, Sweden:
Øredev 2025 30 November to 01 December, Pune, India:
Leading with Outcomes: Train-the-Trainer / Facilitator (TTT/F) – Pune 5-6 December, Bengaluru, India:
Kanban India 2025

Blog-wise, that’s it for October, and with my travels, quite possibly November also. See you in December if not before!