Written by

Our health is the most important thing we have. Our health is something that we as people, leaders, colleagues, employees and employers should hold as our highest priority. It is not enough to offer a wellness allowance, there must be room for wellness, reflection and recovery during work hours.

My work causes me both stress, anxiety and feelings of not being enough. And how is it right that I need my private time to compensate for that? I believe that my work hours should include everything I need to be able to do my job in the best possible way. For me, this means that I need space between meetings to process what has been said and time to prepare for the next meeting. I need time alone for my thoughts and reflections to be able to work out the best solution to a problem, create a good setup for the next meeting, or think about how to handle a situation.

As a leader, I owe those that follow me to think before I act. I owe them to be prepared for a meeting, to reflect on situations before I make decisions and think trough how I will handle a conflict. I also need space to learn new things, to read about research and new methods of leadership, team and psychological safety. This is important for me to be able to do my job, in the way that I want to do it.

I also need time when the brain can recover and turn off all impressions and thoughts. Where I have the opportunity to connect to my body that carries me through my work day. For me, it is yoga, which I often practice at lunchtime or before I go home. For you it might be a walk in the park, a horse back ride, a run around the nearby lake or to walk your dog. The important thing is that you know exactly what you need to have a sustainable work situation. Regardless, we all need recovery as part of our work day to be able to get through it, and the next day, and the next.

(more…)

Written by

Agility is about adapting and delivering value. More and more organisations are discovering that they either need to get on the agile train or fall hopelessly behind. 

Many of them turn to frameworks to adapt agile ways of  working. But what they get is another framework that will sit  on top of  the others and cause more confusion and frustration. What they need is to focus on the real problems like organisation, leadership  and culture. I’m going to use SAFe as an example in this text (there are other frameworks trying to solve this out there but I know more about SAFe).

A framework with a clear hierarchical role chart, process arrows, planning cycles and new roles is a way of satisfying the controlling part of an organisation. And it is exactly this part that we need to remove, if we want to be truly agile. To dare go down the agile road you need trust from leaders and in many organisations that is the exact thing they are lacking. So their own fear of losing control drives them to turn to things their recognize, roles and hierarchy, processes and planning, things that are feeding the controlling needs and is satisfying their own fears.

When introducing a framework like SAFe you are forced to focus on roles and planning cycles instead of culture, organisation and leadership. To get the right people in these roles is not an easy task an one that is impossible if there are no people with an agile mindset in the organisation. When people without agile mindset take on these roles what we get is another gant chart and detailed planning that will not adapt to the changing needs of the customer.

(more…)

Written by
  1. Idag på Valborgsmässoafton är det tradition att bränna upp det gamla och välkomna in det nya!

Det är i den andan jag själv vill se den artikel som Catrin Brodin tillsammans med ett tjugotal av oss som arbetar med förändringsledning har skrivit. Du hittar artikeln här. Vi sätter sökarljuset på vad som fungerar inom förändringsledning och vad som inte gör det – och helst borde ha slängts på valborgsbrasan redan för många år sen! Några konstigheter är det inte: Bristande stöd från ledningen, otydligt syfte och mål samt underskattning av hur stor insats det krävs för att förändra. Dessa fel återkommer lika envist som Valborgsafton självt.

Även i andra länder där det istället heter Walpurgisnacht eller Saint Walburga’s Eve hittar vi dessa problem. Två internationella undersökningar visar att nyckelfaktorerna för framgångsrik förändringsledning inte skiljer sig åt mycket eftersom det är samma utmaningar vi alla behöver hantera. IBM’s egen undersökning här ovan belyser vikten av ledarskap från de som sponsrar en förändring och en vision som delas av de som påverkas av en förändring. PROSCI som släppt sin Executive Summary of Best Practices – 2018 berättar att det nu är tionde undersökningen i rad där aktivt och synligt stöd för förändring från högsta ledningens sida toppar listan av framgångsfaktorer.

Kan en orsakerna bakom att det ändå brister vara att man underskattar komplexiteten i förändring och tror att det från ledningens sida räcker med att visa sitt stöd vid kick-off? Alla ni som använder agil metodik vet att det är ett ständigt utforskande och omprövande vartefter man lär sig nya saker. Kan det vara bra att ha ledningens stöd även längs med denna krokiga väg och inte bara i början? Dela gärna med dig dina tankar här nedan. Kom gärna och diskutera på något av våra gratis frukostseminarium om Agil Förändringsledning.

Written by

The updated version 1.1 of the poster “Agile Change Management in a Nutshell” is now available for free download! This poster is the latest addition to the “In a Nutshell” series!

The Agile Change Management in a Nutshell poster is available for free download here >

Free download: Portuguese >
Free download: Spanish >

Buy printed A1 poster >
You are welcome to share this link and print as many posters as you want.

Free Agile Change Management Poster

While many change management methodologies contain proven methods based on substantial experience and research, not enough is done to cater for the highly complex nature of change where you can’t simply “plan-and-execute” and get it right the first time. An iterative approach with rapid feedback and gradual learning is therefore suggested here.

Similarly, lean or agile methods risk being not deep enough if only focusing on basic PDCA. We want to include best practice in defining the problem to be solved together with assessment of the change capability of the people and organization going through the change. To assert that improvement has happened beyond a shadow of a doubt in a high-variation environments, statistical significance between baseline and new performance data should be established.

At Dandy People we have therefore combined the best parts of both approaches into what we label Agile Change Management and condensed it into one poster. At the center is the Agile Change Process which is made up of an outer circle representing a change that is needed. It contains both a people track and a system track as both dimensions are needed for change to happen quickly and ensure return on investment. The inner circle is the iterative discovery of what actually works in terms of bringing people and system to work in a new and improved way. The poster is based on concepts from Lean, Agile, DMAIC and the Standard by ACMP.

Change Management - Mia o Joel

Free to download, use and share

(more…)

Written by

I dag har jag varit på UX Open tillsammans med ca 300 andra UXare. Vi har diskuterat och delat med oss av erfarenheter. Det har varit givande och roligt.

Kul häng på UX open :)
Kul häng på UX open 🙂

Den här posten handlar om den workshop som jag och Anette Lovas från Expressen höll med 30 nyfikna personer. Vi gjorde två olika övningar som bygger på metodiken upplevelsebaserat lärande, och syftet var att skapa en förståelse för varför vi behöver arbeta Agilt och med Lean UX. Vi gör övningar för att simulera en situation och möjliggöra en upplevelse som vi sedan diskuterar ikring. Dessa två övningar var Sommarängen, och en övning som vi kallar “Simple, Complicated and Complex”. Här beskriver jag hur dessa övningar fungerar och varför du ska göra dom. Gör det gärna med kunder, utvecklingsteam, ledningsgrupper och chefer, på utbildningar, möten eller workshops. Jag har lånat övningarna av mina Crispkollegor som har kommit på dom.
(more…)

Written by

discovery-adn-delivery-process-w-one-team-small

Here you find the “Product Discovery and Delivery process with one team” as a PDF poster if you like to download it >

Ever since I saw Henrik Knibergs movie “PO in a nutshell” about how the PO role work for the first time I have been thinking about how he could have included the discovery process in the picture too. A while ago I created this as an example of how it could look and work for a X-functional team.

All ideas could be good ideas

The process starts with some kind of idea that could come from any stake holder – even from anyone in the team (this is usually a very rare occasion in most companies). The idea is verified in a concept (see example of a concept in my blog post on discovery framework) by the owner of the idea and the Product Owner decides if it worth starting the discovery process to figure out what it is they are supposed to build – or if it is not, based on the information in the concept.
(more…)

Shopping basket
Related Trainings
Our Trainings
Digital Product Development Paradigms – How to Become Product-Led Instead of a Feature Factory
Target Group: Everyone in need of delivering business value faster in complexity
Teachers: Mia Kolmodin
16 January 2025,Stockholm + Online