Leadership Foundation
Systems Thinking · Decision Making Under Uncertainty · Feedback & Learning · Mindset & Adaptability
The Leadership Foundation sits between the work and the value it is meant to deliver. It is where leaders decide how the organization will respond to uncertainty, how it will learn, and how it will change.
I focus on four elements. Systems thinking, so that we improve the whole rather than optimize the parts. Decision making under uncertainty, using real options and probabilistic thinking instead of false precision. Feedback and learning, because agility is only as good as the loops that drive it. And mindset and adaptability, which in practice means managed evolutionary change: starting with what you do now and improving from there.
Sound familiar?
- A transformation or reorganization that consumed a year and changed little
- Decisions made on false certainty, then revisited when reality shows up
- Retrospectives and reviews that never turn into real improvement
- People who have learned to wait out the next initiative
Featured talks
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Managed Evolutionary Change
In today's dynamic business landscape, organizations face the constant need to adapt and evolve to stay ahead. Traditional change management approaches often fall short in addressing the complexities and uncertainties associated with continuous improvement.
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The Foundation of Business Agility: Feedback Loops
At the core to any agile approach is the ability to manage for uncertainty. This is only possible through a process of continuous learning which requires active feedback loops. Linear approaches are doomed to fail in a world of uncertainty. Feedback incorporates new knowledge which enables learning. The key is maintaining healthy feedback loops which will enable success. An iterative approach with broken feedback…
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The Kanban Mindset
Many people think Kanban is just a project tracking board, whether it is stickies on the wall or in a tool like Trello or Jira. But Kanban is much more. And what does the Kanban Method mean to a Project Management Professional?
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Real Options for Business Agility
Enterprise projects are known to have challenges with uncertainty, risk, forecasting and commitment - and the most valuable projects often carry the most risk. Other industries also encounter risk and generate value by understanding and managing that risk effectively. Todd Little explores techniques used in a number of risky businesses - product development, oil and gas exploration, investment banking, medicine,…
Related talks from other topics
Dealing with Resistance, Think in Systems, Deliver at Scale, Is Agile Dead? Does Kanban Care?, Scrum Better with Kanban, 7 Sins of Scrum and other Agile Anti-Patterns, Changing the World of Work, Six Key Lessons Learned from Agile and Lean Principles to Incorporate into a Stage-Gate Idea-to-Launch Process, Barely Sufficient Portfolio Management, What is an Agile Leader, Value Creation and Capture, a Model of the Software Development Process
Key papers
- Project Leadership in the FutureT. Little and Ole Jepsen, 2006
- Exploration and Real Options as an Analogy for Software DevelopmentT. Little, Agile Software Development Conference, June 2003