Program

First, the good news: humans have evolved to be brilliant at handling ambiguity, uncertainty, and change—we have a genius for living in complexity. And wow these days we really need that because complexity ramping up faster than ever. Which brings us to the bad news: facing complexity dulls our genius just as we need it most. In this session, we’ll explore—and try out—strategies and approaches to unleash our natural genius. Along the way, we’ll discover that when we tap into our complexity genius, we create the conditions for intentional evolution in ourselves and those around us.

This session will help participants transform their mindset to think bold like a futurist and understand the disruptive power of mastering five core capabilities for innovation and exponential growth.

Every executive, regardless of their industry, is trying to keep up with changing times and sustain a winning organization; one that can constantly capture new opportunities and fend off increasing competitiveness by showing proof of adaptability, speed, and radical innovation. The trouble is that most firms are using these efforts to tweak an underlying system that isn’t right. As the cliché says, they are rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. Fundamentally new ways of managing the firm are required. Companies that keep steaming along, ignoring the need, maybe stay afloat by luck to a greater degree than they realize.

In this session, participants will explore why five core capabilities are necessary for the 21^st century. This session is for business professionals looking to ramp up their organization’s performance while sustaining their core business. This unique session will help them better identify and seize new opportunities, as well as transform their business model in a highly uncertain and complex business environment.

We live in a competitive world. That competition forces change. It has always forced change. Change is normal. The question is not whether our organizations will change, that’s a given, but can we ride the ebb and flow of change, or are we simply rudderless boats being battered by wave after wave in a sea of complexity?

To answer that question, then we need to understand our landscape, the economic forces at play, the context in which we operate within, how evolution flows through our context, and our situational awareness of this. During this talk, we will examine these issues.

Since the book Team Topologies was published in 2019, it has gained widespread adoption within the software/IT sector as the “go-to” reference for organizing business and technology teams for fast flow. Organizations of all sizes have found that the language, patterns, practices, ideas, and deliberate constraints of Team Topologies (TT) has helped them to move to a more humane, flow-oriented approach to building and running software-enriched services.

But can industry sectors outside software and IT also benefit from TT ideas and practices? And how does TT help to navigate complexity?

In this session, Matthew Skelton (co-author of the book Team Topologies) explores how organizations in many sectors have begun to use the TT patterns to help with team-based knowledge work of all kinds. We explore the use of TT in sectors including: legal services, accountancy, clinical care in hospitals, COVID-19 emergency response, media and advertising, HR/People, higher education, and venue services (audio-visual equipment).

New tools such as TeamOS and TeamForm are also emerging in the market that explicitly use the TT principles to help organizations design and evolve the teams and dynamics for fast flow. These tools are beginning to codify some of the principles from TT as operating primitives for digital-first organizations, addressing complexity through the use of digital telemetry and suggestions for change.

Furthermore, we look at the three ‘team interaction modes’ outlined in the TT book (Collaboration, X-as-a-Service, and Facilitating) and the dynamics that emerge from the use of these interaction modes as part of the daily activities of an organization using TT patterns effectively. The deliberate constraints in TT (four team types and three team interaction modes) together provide a language for navigating complexity, helping the organization to sense its internal and external environment.

Business is becoming extremely complex at an accelerating rate. Surveys show that most executives doubt their ability to manage complexity. This complexity generates deep leadership angst, impacting lives in unhealthy ways.

As a result, there is an increasing appreciation for the value of simplification. Visa founder Dee Hock famously said, “Simple, clear purpose and principles give rise to complex and intelligent behavior. Complex rules and regulations give rise to simple and stupid behavior.”

Can modern organizations run on clear, simple principles and reap the benefits of complex, intelligent behavior? Fortunately, the answer is ‘yes.’ This session will explore the principles and practices of organizational self-management, a proven design principle for transcending leadership anxiety.

Many product teams are starting to adopt discovery best practices (e.g. interviewing customers, usability testing, experimenting). However, many of us are still stuck in a project world. We do research to kick off a project, we usability test right before we hand off to engineers, and our primary means for experimenting is a/b testing. These methods are better than nothing, but the best product teams are shifting from a project mindset to a continuous mindset. In this talk, we’ll explore the key differences between project- based discovery and continuous discovery and give your team a clear benchmark to aspire to.

This will be an extended version of Teresa’s popular talk.

You may be experiencing first-hand that we are in an age of VUCA — volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity. If that’s not challenging enough, Harvard Business Review “ups the ante” on VUCA and tells us we are living in a time of 3-dimensional change. It’s perpetual — occurring all the time, it never lets up. It’s pervasive — unfolding in multiple areas of life at once, you can’t escape it. And it’s exponential — accelerating at an increasingly rapid rate, and humans aren’t built for exponential. In other words, it is not likely that you will be getting off the change bus anytime soon, there is no brake pedal and it’s almost impossible for you to see what is coming next. Feeling any discomfort? If so, you are normal! This constant-change environment is often frighteningly uncomfortable AND it is where we Agilists thrive.

Using Agile well, we learn how to guide ourselves and others through challenging situations where there is not a clear “right” answer or “winning” strategy. With our hearts of agile and our ability to courageously inspect and adapt, we already have everything we need to thrive in constant change. This is our emerging superpower!  Yet, there are important conversations we are not having with our teams and especially with our leaders. It’s time to change that.

In this keynote, Lyssa Adkins, Agility & Leadership Coach, guides you to a deeper understanding of the change currents running beneath the modern working world and helps you explore the change edge you may be experiencing (psst… it’s the one that holds you back from having the really important conversations). Never fear! You will leave the keynote with a clear way to prepare yourself for having that conversation.

Lyssa will take our attention to the overarching change we are all experiencing which is the ability of our home, our one planet, to sustain us. She holds the notion that perhaps Agile is no accident and has emerged at exactly the right time to help us meet today’s significant challenges and paradigm shifts. If so, what might be our part to play? How might we use our emerging superpower for good?

Complexity can be intellectually captivating, but translating these ideas into day-to-day work can present challenges. In the hustle and bustle we often overlook the fact that our colleagues have their own responsibilities and limited exposure to complexity-related concepts. Furthermore, those advocating for embracing complexity sometimes overlook their own advice, overwhelming others with abrupt changes and rigid perspectives (“we just….”).

In this session I’ll share ways I have incorporated an awareness of complexity into day-to-day activities (with a focus on facilitation, diagrams, etc.). Together we will explore various frameworks and ideas that make these concepts more accessible—especially when people are overwhelmed. Finally, I’ll attempt to shed light on the inherent biases we carry, especially regarding a systems view versus an individual, human-centric perspective. Recognizing our own position within the complex adaptive system is crucial, regardless of our confidence in understanding it all.