Not everyone is a fan of Agile; the allergy is so strong it often spreads to agility, frameworks or not. Even “turning on a dime for a dime” is not enough. It’s harder to argue against the need for ambidexterity, humane effectiveness, adaptiveness, and timeliness.  I’m assuming the ethical and moral variety that you’d be ok for the general public and your mother to know about. 

With regard to how ready you are for market changes, you, in the exec team or board of the organization, are seemingly not aligned with your senior leadership, management, and employees (411). It makes me wonder if top management is leading or "leadering," not you, of course.

Leadering is the knack of creating a self-serving account of whatever is already happening,

It’s not much more than truth fashioning.

Leadering allows one to take credit for whatever good things are going on,

It’s not much better than a big con. 

It requires doing things that don’t mess with success,

Heaven forbid the lack of change should regress.

Afterall the baseline for success is continued survival,

Who in their right mind would want innovation revival.

A leaderer’s organization might have only about five minutes of actual leading in its story,

Which is why it will end up in forgotten books of stock exchange glory.

Let’s have hour after hour of monotonous leadering,

And from the brink of success, let’s end all this teetering.

 – inspired by Venkatesh Rao, the Art of Leadership (412)

I reviewed over eighty models in detail. It wasn't possible to create a grand unifying theory. I took a view of the common gaps: I urge you to close the gaps. Context is king, and there are no viable recipes for ambidexterity, humane effectiveness, adaptiveness, and timeliness. So, consider your organization’s environment.

Have you ever met a plumber who praised the work of another plumber? How often have you read or heard a thought leader praising the work of another living thought leader? Each one has their own book, community, and communication channels. Many offer the keys to paradise. You only need their thing.

Marketing 101 is to berate other ideas only to say something similar, albeit with a new exaggerated twist. This is because the good results don’t last forever. They are all prone to regime change. I have not yet seen an approach without significant gaps. This (work) gives you a new set of proverbial lenses. There are no viable recipes. You need to pause and reflect regularly (465, 466). Change does not come in a box. If it pretends to, it’s expensive and doesn’t work. 

To have the energy for true change, "put on your mask first" by resting, exercising, eating properly, and doing what gives you positive energy. Journal and get help. 

To paraphrase Dave Snowden, “I really think we need to shift away from the idea of a leader as an individual to one rhizome node in a network of interactions.”

Be proactive and unwavering – own the organizational change. Success will depend on an authentic focus shift to employee and customer satisfaction, a desired experience with your product or service, and measurable short and long-term results (216, 217), not awards by peers.

See if, in twelve months, you can improve your prestige with other curious peers, then accelerate momentum and leave less energetic rhizome nodes to their slower and shallower momentum. 

John Anthony Coleman, Orderly Disruption Limited, Buckinghamshire, England,
“Born and bred” (240) in Cork, Ireland

Copyright © 2017-2025 Orderly Disruption Limited. Offered for license under Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International, accessible at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/legalcode and also described in summary form at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. By using MORE Executive SUCCESS In The Knowledge Economy Through Ambidexterity, Humane Effectiveness, Adaptiveness, and Timeliness you acknowledge that you have read and agree to be bound by the terms of Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International of Creative Commons.  

Impact of Organization Design––Rate Options

• What’s suitable for your context is wrong for another.
• Hear the praises and critique for the various options.
• Determine the critical optimization factors for your context, such as autonomy, alignment, the ability to scale quickly, and the ability to go deep.
• Shortlist more appropriate approaches for your context.

Impact of Organization Design––

• Enable autonomy and smooth delivery & governance
• Contrast designs such as hierarchy, matrix, divisions, flat, starfish, and network
• Decide what your organization needs to optimize for
• Explore the appropriate design options for your needs
• Using a string of lighting talks, Liberating Structures, and Ritual Dissent, contrast a selection of contenders, the good, the bad, and the ugly:
• Creating Agile Organizations - not all organizations are for product
• Enterprise Services Planning / Kanban Maturity Model - Kanban
• Flight Levels - visualization and collaboration design patterns
• Fluid Scaling Technology (FAST) - dynamic reteaming on steroids
• LeSS - maximize interdependencies because you can
• Nexus+ -  an understated pattern for product groups 
• Product Operating Model - principle-based product organization
• Rendanheyi - inspired by Humanocracy and Holacracy
• SAFe - a set of defaults and tools
• Scaling Simplified - the first rule of scaling is not to scale
• Scrum at Scale - for military in peacetime and strong hierarchies
• Team Topologies - being careful about cognitive load 
• unFIX - design your way with a colorful mapping technology

Impact of Organization Design––

Adaptiveness is not a team sport; it’s an organization sport (inspiration from Klaus Leopold). There is no single universal truth or utopia for organization design. However, there are many examples of dystopia. Try thinking differently:

• Use inspiration from seemingly ‘great organizations’ at the time of writing, within the thinking constraint that ‘nothing lasts forever.’ Become more anti-fragile.
• Review a range of options with radical candor.
• Take the time to consider the advantages and disadvantages of each option carefully.
• It’s not all about reason and logic. If there had been a logical answer, we would have already found it. Beware of case studies that have since unraveled.
• Don’t confuse the quantity and quality of information. Consider non-reason and non-logic also. Maybe even ‘inefficient’ in how you handle complexity. 
• This balanced approach can lead to more informed decisions.

Impact of Organization Design––When Ease of Delivery Enables Ease of Self-Management––contrast a selection, the good, the bad, and the ugly

Impact of Organization Design––

• Discover a range of optimization factors for organization design.
• Learn the pros and cons of the key contenders in organization design, and then determine a shortlist for your organization.

Impact of Organization Design

• The Trojan Horse did not work out in the end. Let’s invite by design.
• Discover appropriate optimizing factors for your organization.
• Explore the options that best suit those factors for now.
• Co-design boundaries and test in safety what would happen if those boundaries were breached. How serious is your organization about profound change?
• Let’s practice candor with those who cannot go on the expedition with you.
• Use an emergent approach, as even the most minor change can be difficult.
• Use a combination of first principles and proven approaches.

• Top-level executives
• Senior-level managers
• Change management executives
• Product executives
• Program or portfolio executives
• Anyone involved in leading change initiatives

We offer flexible delivery formats to suit diverse organizational needs and learning preferences, all designed to maximize engagement and ensure a rich learning experience.

Our approach prioritizes interaction and practical application, ensuring participants are not just observers but active contributors to their learning journey.

In-Person Sessions

Immersive, hands-on workshops conducted at your location or a designated venue. These sessions require full engagement from all participants, fostering direct interaction and interaction and collaborative problem-solving in a dynamic environment.

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Live, virtual workshops designed for maximum interactivity. Participants are required to have cameras on and maintain full engagement, somewhat replicating the collaborative atmosphere of an in-person setting. This format ensures active participation and real-time discussion.

Live Webinars & Q&A Sessions

Engaging broadcast sessions covering key concepts, followed by dedicated Q&A segments. This format allows for a broad reach while still providing opportunities for participants to clarify doubts and interact directly with the facilitator.

Whether you opt for a public workshop or a tailored private session for your organization, our programs are structured to deliver profound insights and actionable strategies.

Duration details are customizable, ranging from intensive half-day modules to comprehensive multi-day programs, designed to fit your schedule and learning objectives. Each format is meticulously crafted to ensure high levels of interactive elements and clear engagement expectations, promoting a truly transformative learning experience.

• Multiple modules (4 to 6 hours per module)
• Join one or many sessions with peers
• Private or public

At the time of writing, and to the best of our knowledge, no organization had perfected ambidexterity, humane effectiveness  (275), adaptiveness, and timeliness. Some get tantalizingly close; time will tell how close and for how long. Mediocre management eventually slips back in, and psychological safety (419), if it was ever there, slips back out, with transparency quickly following it out the door.

You may have seen cases where the culture is toxic, where, for example, "leaders" put pressure on people doing the work and ask team. members to resubmit “maturity” surveys in a more positive light.

The lack of perfection is primarily due to human factors, including a lack of discipline, continual improvement, experimentation, and political will. Imagine a world where toddlers stopped trying to walk because they fell once and concluded, “I tried that, and it didn’t work.” You would have a world full of people moving around on their posteriors.

Sustainably improved results do not arise from <Pick your fad> "transformations." The fads will change; the nonsense will not. We asked an executive recently how he planned to continually improve sixty-eight "squads," as without energy to improve, entropy would ensue. Those squads started with a big bag. we asked, "Should you not continually search for and experiment with the best ideas to improve?" He had no answer. 

Leaving aside that a "transformation" is never finished, some organizations have "transformed" over five times; the change unraveled each time.  There are missing ingredients. When you stay still, others don't. History repeats itself as a lack of humanity abounds in the workplace, and short-term focus takes over. Many prefer to be wrong than uncertain. You need to get to the long-term through the short-term, but you often need more emphasis on the long-term. Collective discipline and healthy-habit forming might be key ingredients key to success.

There is a saying, “Nothing lasts forever.” Some organizations offer hope; only time can tell. Even the "poster children" organizations struggle with psychological safety (419)  and become victims of their success; they don’t refresh their product or service lines, have quality issues, and get pegged into market segments, allowing “fast follower” competitors to take the cream. You have room for improvement.

When you cannot “see” the invisible waste or knowledge work, you cannot have the right conversations at the right time, and a much-needed sense of urgency gets lost. You need to make work and waste noticeable and be open to proactively discussing the signals, however inconvenient.

How well can you sense opportunities or threats and respond to them in a timely, humane, and effective way Examples include the blockchain, robotics, AI, mixed-reality, and (non green-washing) sustainability.

Do peers and colleagues feel cooperation is in their interests, e.g., incentives and rewards? Are you watching the baton (the work) or the runners (the people doing the work (14)? 

Many of the models shared have case studies that you can explore. What few have managed well is creating or mixing the right blend for their environments. "Copy and paste" is tempting but mechanical and usually falters. Try better and more timely decision-making, with happy employees serving happy customers, good psychological flow, and an optimized flow of potential and actual value.  

Consider multi-year operational performance over share price (231); share price focus alone drives cost-cutting to the extent employees incur (now official) “moral distress” (281), increase long-term costs, and worsen customer, consumer, or user long-term experience.

Copyright © 2017-2025 Orderly Disruption Limited. Offered for license under Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International, accessible at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/legalcode and also described in summary form at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. By using MORE Executive SUCCESS In The Knowledge Economy Through Ambidexterity, Humane Effectiveness, Adaptiveness, and Timeliness you acknowledge that you have read and agree to be bound by the terms of Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International of Creative Commons.

• Your organization bought a solution in a box rather than getting the right help; treat the ‘box’ as a toolbox and a set of defaults. It’s a long road; don’t let anyone fool you otherwise. Let’s reconstruct. Picture your intentionality for long-term change.
• Or maybe you’re a ‘Spotify’ zombie. Your people ended up with ‘the matrix reloaded and nothing like Henrik Kniberg’s fabulous videos. Your organization does not have Spotify’s culture of ultra-transparency or mantra ‘don’t let priority number three block priority number one.’ Let’s adopt profound change. Envision some rewards emerging already within one year.
• Perhaps you think ‘WaterScrumFall’ or ‘Wagile’ is excellent. You may have already noticed quality and employee engagement going down the drain. Let’s throw away the ‘Kool-Aid’ and build quality in. Picture motivated people serving happy customers.
• Or you might have a pre-scaleup situation. You realize that scaling bad stuff will grow bad stuff exponentially. Let’s clean up the kitchen now. Picture yourself being happy you sorted out the brown stuff to enable a healthy scale-up.
• Maybe a famous author convinced you to use a rehashed model more akin to yesterday’s breakfast, implying that what happened elsewhere could also happen to you. Well, anything is possible. But, all models are flawed. Let’s cut through the proverbial bull and discover an emergent approach. Let’s be determined and focused and avoid manifestos reloaded. Conceptualize employees using a first principles approach supported by proven patterns so ‘we don’t reinvent the wheel.’

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Subject to GDPR or other regulations:

• Attendees may be asked to optionally consent to receive communications, e.g., follow-up email newsletters.
• Attendees will be invited to a slack channel for the class to enable communications before, during, and after the class.
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• Reviews & Testimonials will be requested in class; you can add the same review and star rating to each of TrustPilot, and Google, to be performed optionally in class.
• A limited number of free-of-charge post-training Zoom/alternative calls are offered. To book, attendees can arrange to meet me here.
• Attendees may be asked to join compatible communities, e.g., the LeSS community.

Executives...
What got you here won't get you there (79).

Avoid:

• Focusing too much on quarterly results and targets
• Not caring how employees deliver results
• Not truly empowering teams to solve impediments
• Employees not feeling inspired and hence not exciting customers in the right way

Prepare your successors.

Attain MORE executive SUCCESS through ambidextrous ACTION:

• MORE - Managerial and Organizational Resilience Evolution.
  
• SUCCESS – Savvy United Culture and Climate Envelope with Succession Superpowers.
  
• ACTION – Act, Clarify, Try-out, Iterate, Orient, Now.

Copyright © 2017-2025 Orderly Disruption Limited. Offered for license under Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International, accessible at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/legalcode and also described in summary form at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. By using MORE Executive SUCCESS In The Knowledge Economy Through Ambidexterity, Humane Effectiveness, Adaptiveness, and Timeliness you acknowledge that you have read and agree to be bound by the terms of Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International of Creative Commons.

FOR curious, humble, and people-smart:

• entrepreneurs,
• executives, and
• board members

WHO NEED:

• More success
• To think, act, and behave differently
• To balance the short-term and the long-term
• To improve or preserve their legacies in the eyes of people they respect

MORE executive SUCCESS IS A well-referenced executive management guide for service/product/customer-oriented organizations in the knowledge economy

THAT, notwithstanding context:

• highlights perceived gaps for the short-term to long-term
• assesses strategies and tactics for filling the gaps
• has an education bit, and
• helps entrepreneurs, executives, and board members to improve and protect their legacies

UNLIKE:

• A focus on teams, scaling, and middle management, which is already served (455, 456)
• A collection of context-free recipes
• A script for industrialization of "Agile" or "product"
• A piece based on product management, which is already served (251, 325, 326, 420, 424, 460, 461, 462, 467)
• A piece based on technical agility, which is already served (20, 114, 199, 279, 457)
• A piece based on Agile, which lost its way since its anarchic days and focused insufficiently on discover-to-deliver (458)
• A piece based on project management, which is already served (459)
• A piece lacking in focus on the problem space or discovery to delivery
• A grand unifying theory

COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE:

MORE SUCCESS focuses on executive management theory supported by intermissions of Limerick-style poetic humor. The piece also compares and contrasts Amazon, Apple, Google, Haier Group, Microsoft, Pixar, Spotify, Stripe, and Tesla against the theory.

Copyright © 2017-2025 Orderly Disruption Limited. Offered for license under Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International, accessible at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/legalcode and also described in summary form at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. By using MORE Executive SUCCESS In The Knowledge Economy Through Ambidexterity, Humane Effectiveness, Adaptiveness, and Timeliness you acknowledge that you have read and agree to be bound by the terms of Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International of Creative Commons.

Why This Workshop Series?

As a leader, you navigate entanglement daily. Save yourself with better stakeholder satisfaction, strategic clarity, delivery, and effectiveness at the lowest costs.

Our executive workshop series, with multiple modules to choose from, is a starting point for improving your ability and confidence to lead through uncertainty while inspiring short-term and long-term success.

What Makes This Series Stand Out?

• Customizable Learning: Join one or many modules based on your needs. The modules are interconnected yet independent.
  
• Proven Strategies: Interlace time-tested ideas and innovations to deliver change that sticks.
  
• Engaging Formats: Live training workshops tailored to executive needs and executive audiences, supported by free podcasts and webinars.
  
• Practical Insights: Apply visual management, stakeholder satisfaction strategies, and evidence-informed decision-making to your unique context.
  
• Pragmatic: Exercise and experience-driven ‘try before you buy’ approaches. The training favors interaction to facilitate adoption.
  
• Supported by Optional Coaching for your Context by Industry-leading Practitioners: Breadth and depth across approaches, domains, and industries with an agnostic approach for knowledge
  work.
  

Key Focus Areas

1. Clarity in Action
2. Master Complexity
3. Visualize Success
4. Adapt & Evolve

What You'll Gain

• Strategic Tools: Optimize decisions and optimize stakeholder values (including customers and users).
  
• Leadership Mastery: Uncover actionable insights into self-leadership, team dynamics, and organizational impact.
  
• Practical Application: Exercises and tools are ready to be adopted in your organization tomorrow, with an acceptable invitation to change.
  
• Scalable Solutions: Catalyze systemic changes with strategies designed for the enterprise level.

Ready to Lead with Impact?

Transform how you lead with actionable insights, a supportive community, and a path toward becoming more adaptable, resilient, and successful.

Enroll Today

Choose your modules and start your journey toward leadership excellence.

For any questions and registration, please feel free to contact hello@evolved.institute.

Your Facilitators:

• Alize Hofmeester
• Allan Kelly
• Daniel Russo
• Dave Snowden
• Jim Benson
• John Coleman
• Lia Caraman
• Magdalena Firlit
• Mike Burrows
• Nader Talai
• Pia-Maria Thorén
• Philippe Guenet
• Ralph Jocham
• Steve Morlidge
  

Other Inspirations Include Public Works related to:

• Andy Carmichael
• Annie Dukes
• Bas Vodde
• Bill Joiner
• Brené Brown
• Christina Wodtke
• Clayton Christensen
• Cliff Hazell
• Craig Larman
• Corporate Rebels
• Daniel Pink
• Dave Snowden
• Donald G. Reinersten
• Donald J. Wheeler
• Edgar Schein
• Eliyahu M. Goldratt
• Ellen Gottesdiener
• Esther Cameron
• Heidi Helfand
• Henrik Kniberg
• Henry Mitzberg
• Indi Young
• Jared Spool
• Jeff Gothelf
• Jeff Patton
• Jocko Willink
• Joe Krebs
• John Carter
• John Cutler
• John Doerr
• John Kotter
• John Seddon
• John Turner
• Joshua Seiden
• Jurgen Appelo
• Karl Scotland
• Ken Schwaber
• Kent Beck
• Klaus Leopold
• L. David Marquet
• Leandro Herrero
• Leif Babin
• Malcolm Gladwell
• Marshall Goldsmith
• Martin Fowler
• Marty Cagan
• Masha Omeragic
• Melissa Perri
• Michael Huynh
• Michael Porter
• Mike Beedle
• Mike Green
• Mike Rother
• Nigel Thurlow
• Peter Senge
• Renee A. Mauborgne
• Richard Rumelt
• Robert Sutton
• Roger L. Martin
• Rory Sutherland
• Russell Ackoff
• Russ Lewis
• Sam L. Savage
• Scrum.org Evidence-Based Management™
• Scrum.org Nexus™
• Siegfried Kaltenecker
• Simon Wardley
• Steve Tendon
• Stephen M. R. Covey
• Taiichi Ohno
• Tom and Kai Gilb
• Walter A. Shewhart
• W. Chan Kim
• W. Edwards Deming
• Woody Zuille
• Yves Morieux

How:

• Agendashift™
• Beyond Budgeting
• Customer Experience
• Cynefin®
• Design
• Estuarine Mapping
• Flow
• Inspiration
• Kanplexity
• Leadership Circle Profile®
• Lean
• Liberating Structures
• Marshall Goldsmith’s Stakeholder Centered Coaching
• Mind Body Connection
• Motivation
• Obeya
• Organization Design
• OKRs
• Planguage and Evo
• Plan Do Study Act
• Process Behavior Charts
• Product Management
• Product Leadership
• Purpose
• Strategy
• Strategy Deployment
• Team Effectiveness
• User Experience
• Wardley Maps
• Vanguard Method
• X-Matrix

By attending, you will be able to

Address Variation: Variation is part of the parcel of normal business activity. Apply techniques to diagnose abnormal variation. Visualize the normal variation that might require a big change to unseat. Also, understand when variation theory is more useful.

Attain Clarity: Communicate measurable, malleable goals to optimize value. Get some help from Artificial Intelligence Large Language Models (AI LLMs).

Deal with Complexity: Understand and apply techniques to deal with emergence. Give voice to a renewed freshness of thinking so the organization adapts to or pre-empts the marketplace.

‘See’ Knowledge Work and Waste: ‘See’ rather than not see. Visualization trumps blindness to knowledge work and waste. And go to the source to get the facts for yourself.

‘See’ the flow of outcomes: Do your teams check if they ‘hit the bullseye?’ Learn and adapt. Experiments, result-feedback, side effects, and marketplace changes offer ample to learn from if you and the teams would look.

‘See’ ‘Demand’ and How the Work Works: Convert failure to serve stakeholders well to value demand. Develop strategies that promote active participation from all stakeholders (including customers and users). Understand organizational workflows, processes, and systems. Discover how to serve stakeholders better, including the customer or user.

Address the Environment: Eliminate misalignment between what is said and what is done. Enhance the harmony and consistency between your organization's management processes, your words, and your behavior. Identify and implement systemic change. Improve Finance, Procurement, Compliance, and People systems. Improve the management processes, workflows, and systems that staff must grapple with. Create an environment where people face and adapt to reality together. Watch them deal with it constructively and appropriately.

Enable Smarter Investment with Discover to Deliver: More often than you think, when your teams build it, customers don’t come to it. Let’s understand that result-feedback, side-effects, and marketplace changes provide the most impactful learnings. And here’s a Newsflash: stakeholders struggle to articulate what they want or need, so observing can be better than listening. If you can spend 5k USD on discovery to save investing 5m USD of waste delivery, it’s worth it. Get some help from AI LLMs.

Address Measurement: Informed by evidence, persevere, pivot, or stop. Learning without adaptation is pointless. Get some help from AI LLMs. Empower vendors with agile contracts.

Address the Work Climate: Engage customers, users, and employees. Stimulate a climate where you hear the truth before the grapevine and are glad to hear it. Inspired, motivated, and cognitively diverse people lead at all levels.

Address Yourself: Become More Coachable. Master personal development techniques that enhance your leadership capabilities.

Lead Yourself: Harness the innate power inside you and feel good enough, and at the same time, learn how to improve personal inner harmony.

Boost Team Effectiveness: Learn how effective teams work together and grow from a recent and eminent scientific study! Encourage everyone to talk openly, make sound and timely decisions, and continuously improve.

Boost the Impact of Organization Design: Sorry, bad news! There is no single universal truth. No one can define your utopia for you. While there are no context-free recipes, there is a congruent set of pathways to betterment. Consider some optimizing factors for your context. Uncover more appropriate organizational design options. Use an emergent approach to get started. Build momentum and learning. Distinguish delivery models from organization design options. Understand the effect of modularity on your options.

Improve Strategy Deployment and Emergence: Do Focus Top-Down and Bottom-Up with some help from AI LLMs. There is a trade-off when one goes for short-term goals. A vector of change is generally better to evolve from the present while keeping an eye on the prize. Starting from where you are, hack Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) for complexity. Benefit from coherently synthesized wisdom of giants using practical, well-known, and less-known yet straightforward tools. It is practical and logical, yet necessarily messy. Inform strategy with learnings from collaborative and intentional discussions, quantified stakeholder needs and wants, result feedback, experiments, side-effects, and marketplace changes.

Strategy as a Collaborative Generative Activity: Catalyze a more participative, collaborative, and emergent strategy. Redesign the strategy to fit stakeholder (including customer) needs. Practice a technique for learning and adapting the strategy and the next steps for strategy deployment. Practice the X-Matrix, your new strategy radar system.

Integrate Objectives with Adaptiveness: Create a straight line between team objectives and strategy. Use OKRs to create feedback loops connecting strategy and execution. Create key results to quantify objectives. Discover what key results are and are not and how key results drive in-depth thinking. Use a wide-narrow-wide OKR cycle for ambitious thinking and focused delivery. Use OKRs as a value-generating practice on a rhythm. Combining time-boxed OKR cycles with ways of working and how to incorporate planning and design.

Avoid help from people who almost always massage your ego or agree with you too often; they're just taking your money, and it’s not real help. Avoid rejecting the help and "tough love" you might need. Maybe you prefer to get an obedient and loving dog, but treat it well – a dog is for life.

Beware of black-and-white thinking, observed when someone says something is true or false when it can be both true and false. For example, management consultants and agile coaches are bad, and product coaches are good, and vice versa.

I found quite a few good adaptiveness coaches in the wild, even if they did need a little bit of redirection. Beware of confusion. For example, product development is weak and product management is strong. The best product leaders we came across were in product development.

Beware of false dichotomies, treating options like they are mutually exclusive when they are not. For example, you
need effectiveness, not efficiency – you may need to find a balance. Efficiency can be seen as effectiveness at the acceptable costs/speed (and other resources).

Beware of unoriginal thinking and people who show secondary issues as root causes and mix opinions with facts. Just because they have the mic doesn't mean they're right. Beware of bashing; wait to hear what they're selling; our bet is you won’t have to wait for long.

Copyright © 2017-2025 Orderly Disruption Limited. Offered for license under Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International, accessible at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/legalcode and also described in summary form at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. By using MORE Executive SUCCESS In The Knowledge Economy Through Ambidexterity, Humane Effectiveness, Adaptiveness, and Timeliness you acknowledge that you have read and agree to be bound by the terms of Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International of Creative Commons.         

Click here for a comprehensive list of references.