written, illustrated
and performed by
Claudio Perrone
agilesensei.com
a3thinker.com
@agilesensei
Terraforming
Organisations
Journey of a Lean changer

Today I’m going to
change the world
… (a little).

“A few years ago, I made a world of
difference to one client”

“Except… I didn’t.”
28 months later...

“I saw good people
swallowed by an
enemy they could
not defeat”

“innovation and growth being crushed by
status-quo, fire-fighting and conformity.”

“the company went through many
reorganizations, only to stay the same”
Organization chart
Blame flow
Victims
Rule makers
Controllers
Enforcers
God
Losers

organizations can’t be “agile” if only the
development teams are doing Agile
Typical “Agile” Enterprise
SMs

“all was left was a desolate, lifeless place,
with seemingly little to offer humans.”

But What if
an “alien” technology
could change it?

LEAN
MANAGEMENT
1
@agilesensei

“ All we are doing is looking at the
timeline from the moment the
customer gives us an order to the
point we can collect the cash.
And we are reducing that timeline by
removing the non-value-added
wastes.
-­‐-­‐-­‐
TaiichiOhno,
Founder
of
TPS

“but that’s only part of the story…”

Why do you allow
your competitors to
copy all your tools?

What they need to see…
is not visible
What the
hell is He
talking
about?

W. Edwards deming believed that…
“ 95% of variation in worker’s
performance is governed by the
systems.
---W. Edwards Deming

Perhaps…
“ We should work on our processes, not
the outcome of our processes.
---W. Edwards Deming

“At Toyota, improving and managing are one
and the same”
Normal daily management
+
improvement
Traditional thinking:
Normal daily management
=
Process improvement
Toyota’s thinking:

It took me many years to finally realize that,
in lean, we co-design and continuously
improve…
…PROCESSES AND TOOLS
TO BETTER SERVE
INDIVIDUALS AND INTERACTIONS.

“learning to see” involves bringing to the
surface what we learn
Value Stream
Learning
Stream(s)

With method and guidance, managers
learn to become critical thinkers,
problem solvers and mentors

(YOU MAY ALSO CONSIDER THAT…)
“ Management is too important
to leave to the managers.
Management is everyone’s job.
-­‐-­‐-­‐
Jurgen
Appelo

@agilesensei
A3 THINKING 2

A3 thinkers are like investigators at a crime scene.

They capture a shared understanding of a PROBLEM
and move towards ITS resolution systematically.

Arguably, an A3 report “surfaces” a learning stream
around a problem

UNFORTUNATELY, It’s all too easy to develop shallow
A3 reports.
… and Good
mentors are
rarer than
plutonium.

So, with the motto:
“Toyota supplier in 2 years or less”…

… I released a family of thinking tools…
www.a3thinker.com

to change the world.
one problem at a time.
www.a3thinker.com/deck

What other
Learning streams
can we seek to
surface?

POPCORN
FLOW
3
@agilesensei

A while ago, I worked with a team who
had not deployed in months

We worked together and evolved using
the kanban method

But the real “secret” was our ability to
SYSTEMATICALLY DEFINE AND negotiate
explicit change experiments…

… a powerful learning stream that I defined
and captured on a parallel “Popcorn board”
Problems & observations
Options
Possible experiments
Committed
Ongoing
Review
doNe

It starts with Problems & Observations...

...which I use to elicit options.

Promising options lead to a backlog of
possible experiments.

experiments that we Commit to pursue have
an action, reason, expectation and Review
date.

At Each retrospective, I ask exactly these
questions:

Some people fear “failure”…
Gap = Frustration
Expectation
Reality

…but we only really “fail” when we limit
our opportunities to learn
Gap = Frustration
Expectation
Reality
Learning

It’s Not “fail fast, fail often”...
… It’s “Learn fast, learn often”.

Right from the beginning, I knew this was
different.

... Because the team COULD easily handle 5-10
change experiments each week, rapidly enabling it
to DELIVER multiple times a day

…and then it spread.
Popcorn boards started to appear to other
parts of the organization.

Imagine a continous flow of experiments to
dramatically accelerate the rate of change
in every corner of your organization...
... How far would you go?

Final Thoughts

“ -- Winston Churchill
To improve is to change.
To be perfect is to change often.

Claudio
Perrone
Thank You!
claudio@agilesensei.com
www.agilesensei.com
@agilesensei
www.a3thinker.com