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Company-wide Agility with Beyond Budgeting, Open Space & Sociocracy
Today companies are expected to be flexible and both rapidly responsive and resilient to change, which basically asks them to be Agile. Lack of an overarching theory about how to expand the Agile Manifesto has led to many fragmented attempts to apply Agile company-wide. Yet, doing Agile (the mechanics) is different from being Agile (the mindset). The mindset lets you apply flexible Agile patterns not only for software development teams but for the whole company. Many experts are looking into implementing company-wide Agility. Yet, they work from one perspective. For example:
- A Sociocracy expert might say, “You first need to resolve the power structure, because as long as you have a hierarchy defined as top-down you will not become agile.”
- A Beyond Budgeting expert might say, “Stop fixing the budget annually, because otherwise you won't have the flexibility to react to frequent market changes.”
- An Agile expert might say, “You need to start inspecting and adapting by using regular retrospectives in order to react flexibly, otherwise you will neither be able to learn from the market nor from within your company.”
- An Open Space expert might say, “You need to make space for what you don’t know and can’t control, for totally new things to emerge. If people can follow their passion, you will be able to implement company-wide Agility, otherwise people will just do what they are asked.”
All of these perspectives are true, but the perspective is always from within the discipline. Our new perspective synthesizes these approaches and invites you to take a new, overview perspective that can truly address the challenges of doing business in a volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous world.
- A Sociocracy expert might say, “You first need to resolve the power structure, because as long as you have a hierarchy defined as top-down you will not become agile.”
- A Beyond Budgeting expert might say, “Stop fixing the budget annually, because otherwise you won't have the flexibility to react to frequent market changes.”
- An Agile expert might say, “You need to start inspecting and adapting by using regular retrospectives in order to react flexibly, otherwise you will neither be able to learn from the market nor from within your company.”
- An Open Space expert might say, “You need to make space for what you don’t know and can’t control, for totally new things to emerge. If people can follow their passion, you will be able to implement company-wide Agility, otherwise people will just do what they are asked.”
All of these perspectives are true, but the perspective is always from within the discipline. Our new perspective synthesizes these approaches and invites you to take a new, overview perspective that can truly address the challenges of doing business in a volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous world.
91 pages, ebook
Published May 5, 2017
39 people are currently reading
163 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
December 25, 2018
Good overview of Agile organisational development (Agile outside IT) and a specific approach (combination of Agile, Open Space, Beyond Budgeting and Sociocracy). Very thorough with the details. Lots of pointers towards other sources for specific topics, in case the reader wants to dive deeper. I specifically liked the emphasis on experimentation.
July 11, 2019
The further I got into the book, the less interesting it got. It gets some bonus points for trying to come up with a structure based on values and principles. And also for the thorough explanation of their reasoning. But the probes/experimentation part probably could have been just an appendix, which would have resulted in a much shorter book.
Not sure I would recommend it to friends
Not sure I would recommend it to friends
February 11, 2021
Gives a good overview of various concepts.
Like many of these kinds of books they should be read more than once and worked with as a companion and I will most likely return to this one in the future.
There are many take-away points but I like a simple one of flipping the perspective:
Thinking of Personnel, Customer, Owner in that order, and not the opposite, will bring together motivation and value in a strong way.
Like many of these kinds of books they should be read more than once and worked with as a companion and I will most likely return to this one in the future.
There are many take-away points but I like a simple one of flipping the perspective:
Thinking of Personnel, Customer, Owner in that order, and not the opposite, will bring together motivation and value in a strong way.
February 1, 2021
I think there are some great concepts in here. Jutta shows real insight and understanding.
October 4, 2018
I'm not sure if this book couldn't be better organized, and it could definitely be a little shorter, but there is so much in here that it should be applauded for it's scope and meaningful synthesis alone. It's stimulated my thinking in many many ways, and inspired me to read even more on a topic I'd previously thought I knew quite a lot about. If you're frustrated about the dysfunctional way the vast number of companies operate today, buy this book. You won't be disappointed
June 11, 2018
Really good topic and idea for combining the elements of the 4 main practices. Wanted more about the budgeting piece. Thought it was mainly focused on sociocracy and open space. It did give me lots of ideas to want to find about other areas though.
September 23, 2019
Very interesting 'best of everything' look at the future of work.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews