What they said:

“I wish I'd had this training years ago!”

“A language for exploring and discussing organisational issues – issues that aren't only process-related”

“Found the ideas of context and awareness tied well into managing different relationships”

“This rounds out organisational change aspects any serious practitioner should know”

“Really related to Organising at Human Scale; Energised by the mapping exercises before and after it”

What it is and who it’s for

We'll be answering some important questions about leadership and organisation, questions that become increasingly critical as our organisations become more and more information-dependent. In a nutshell: What does it mean to be creating the conditions for business agility when the critical resources are communication capacity, decision-making capacity, and the context everyone needs to make good decisions?

This course will change two things for you: how you think about organisations, and how you engage with their challenges. Our main focus will be the digital-age (though not necessarily technology-centric) organisation, in which product development, customer-focused service delivery, and organisational improvement are becoming increasingly integrated. With that come challenges of context and scale which process-based approaches are ill-equipped to meet.

At its heart is the Deliberately Adaptive Organisation, a fresh, complexity-aware, and ground-up reconstruction of Stafford Beer’s Viable System Model. The diagnostic power of this classic model remains unrivalled, and to it we bring a truly 21st century approach. We work with rather than against the grain of two key realities: that everyone's experience of the organisation is different, and that they see different possibilities emerging for it, possibilities they may already be motivated to help bring about. We'll be turning the traditional change management paradigm on its head!

Training participants are typically a mixture of leaders and practitioners, all with an interest in going beyond process-centric approaches to organisation and improvement.

Included

• Seven 2-hour sessions held weekly over Zoom, sessions beginning 2pm BST, 3pm CEST, 9am EDT on Wednesdays
• Between sessions, selected self-paced video-based content
• The Adaptive Organisation Assessment
• For the self-paced content, access to Leading with Outcomes free for a year, upgradeable at any time to Facilitator or Trainer
• Also at the Agendashift Academy, a discussion space private to each cohort
• A certificate of completion at the end of the course

Participants will also receive a free digital copy of the accompanying book, Wholehearted: Engaging with Complexity in the Deliberately Adaptive Organisation (2025), by your host, Agendashift founder Mike Burrows.

Premium tickets

• Interactive sessions extended by 60-90 minutes on weeks 1-6 to cover the self-paced content

Corporate and public sectors

Ping us for a 30% discount on block bookings of three or more places. For government, public health (eg NHS), and NGO employees, discounts are available from the first seat and increase to 50% for three or more.

Get in touch also if you might prefer to have this run privately. If you are considering adding LIKE or other Leading with Outcomes trainings to your internal leadership development curriculum, we provide a path to self-sufficiency via our Authorised Trainer and Facilitator programmes.

Agenda

1. April 30th: Inside-out, outside-in, and the wholehearted pursuit of fit

Together: Inside-out and outside-in approaches to strategy; Introducing the Deliberately Adaptive Organisation; Identifying some high-level dysfunctions

Self-paced: A leadership pattern: Engage, Invite, Celebrate

2. May 7th: Space 1. Delivery-Discovery-Renewal

Together: The value-creating work, its relationships, and their dysfunctions; The organisation's capacities for communication and decision-making; Why and how to liberate them

Self-paced: Deconstructing the IdOO ("I do") pattern – Ideal, Obstacles, Outcomes

3. May 14th: Space 2. Adaptive Strategising

Together: The Right to Left pattern – working backwards from key moments of impact and learning; Six constraints on strategising; Identity, purpose, ad self-governance

Self-paced: How might we? Your solution ideas for the first two spaces

4. May 21st: Obstacles and Outcomes

Together: Reviewing solution ideas; Obstacles Fast and Slow – identifying obstacles, reframing them in ways conducive to a productive conversation; 15-minute FOTO – our Clean Language-based coaching game

Self-paced: Organise the strategy – Plan on a Page, OKR, and the TASTE-T ("tasty") X-Matrix

5. May 28th: Space 3. Mutual Trust Building

Together: 100 years of organising; Models of trust-building leadership; Addressing the context challenge

Self-paced: Organising without Reorganising

6. June 4th: The Space Between

Together: Exploring the challenges of scale through the organisation's inter-scale relationships; Dimensions of strategy – identifying concerns and accountabilities outside the formal structure; Navigating organisational structure with the customer/geography/technology/time model

Self-paced: Moving into action – ideas, experiments, feedback, and learning – and another pattern, Meaning, Measure, Method

7. June 11th: What Lies Beneath

Together: Constraints Club – describing what's really happening; Affordance Mapping – organising our opportunities for change; Who's invited? Setting up those next moments of impact and learning

Your trainer

This training will be led by Agendashift founder Mike Burrows, creator of Leading with Outcomes, and five-time author:

• Wholehearted: Engaging with complexity in the Deliberately Adaptive Organisation (2025)
• Organizing Conversations: Preparing Groups to Take on Adaptive Challenges (BMI series in Dialogic Organisation Development, 2024)
• Agendashift: Outcome-oriented change and continuous transformation (2nd edition 2021)
• Right to Left: The digital leader's guide to Lean and Agile (2019, audiobook 2020)
• Kanban from the Inside (2014)

Mike is recognised for his pioneering work in Lean, Agile, and Kanban, his advocacy for participatory and outcome-oriented approaches to change, transformation, and strategy, and his relational approach to organisation. Prior to his consulting career, he was global development manager and Executive Director at a top tier investment bank, CTO for an energy risk management startup, and interim delivery manager for two of the UK government's digital ‘exemplar’ projects. Through Agendashift and the Agendashift Academy, his focus now is on wholehearted, deliberately adaptive organisations and the transformational leadership that enables them.