Changing the shape of work
Change, agile at scale and new organisational forms.
Around four hours on changing the shape of work: appreciative inquiry and distributed change, change at scale, scaling agile, governing and funding agile work, self-management and agile in public services.
- Level
- Focus
- Learning time
- 4 hours
- Where
- Strategy and the future
- Price
- £69
When you step up to a higher level, what you paid in the last 12 months for lower-level courses inside the bigger course comes off its price, in proportion to how much of each is inside it, whichever topic it's from. Courses at the same or a lower level don't give credit against each other. A Focus course or above always costs at least £15. Read the full terms
Certificate of Completion, or Certificate of Completion and Assessment with a short assessment
Overview and Outcomes.
Who It's For
Senior leaders, programme sponsors and board members in public and voluntary sector bodies
Overview
As agile practice grows, the question shifts from how one team works to how authority, funding and change are designed. Drawn from Built to adapt, this course opens with Cooperrider and Srivastva's appreciative inquiry, positive deviance and the Wigan Deal, then change at scale with the National Audit Office's four root causes and Birmingham City Council's Oracle system. Scaling agile follows, comparing SAFe, Large-Scale Scrum and Nexus and reading the Spotify model honestly. Governing and funding draws on Hope and Fraser's Beyond Budgeting, Goodhart's law and OKRs. Finally, it turns to Laloux's teal organisations, Buurtzorg and Haier, and agile in public services.
Aims
The intention is to help senior leaders start change from what already works, reduce dependencies before adding coordination, fund and govern uncertain work so that accountability and learning stay in step, and distribute authority clearly rather than simply removing structure.
In summary, you will be able to:
- Use positive deviance and appreciative inquiry to find and build on what already works in your organisation.
- Compare the main scaling frameworks, and judge whether one is reducing dependencies or rebuilding bureaucracy.
- Apply clear decision rights and the advice process so that authority in your team is distributed but explicit.
What you'll develop
Through this Focus course, you will build the ability to:
- Describe the 4-D cycle of appreciative inquiry and assess when it produces transformational rather than merely positive change.
- Use the NAO's four root causes of scope, planning, interdependencies and oversight as a health check on any programme.
- Explain why the hard part of scaling lies in the joins between teams, and identify the four forces of dependencies, shared platforms, funding cycles and hand-offs.
- Explain why an annual budget for uncertain work fixes scope too early, and compare project funding with funding stable teams and products.
- Distinguish the old operating system built for predictability from the new one built for adaptability, and judge whether a rule in your team is necessary or simply inherited.
- Explain how public services can learn early and safely, using the Double Diamond and the discovery, alpha, beta, live and retirement lifecycle.
- Use positive deviance to find and learn from local outliers, with care about luck and context.
- Explain optimism bias and apply the outside view and reference class forecasting when reviewing a business case.
Built from 3 parts.
4 hours of learning.
- 01Change with people, not to themEmployee engagement and large-scale changeBitesize · Leading through Change and Conflict2 modules
- 02Agile at scale, honestlyScaling agile, governance and fundingBitesize · Agile and New Ways of Working2 modules
- 03New shapes for organisationsSelf-management and agile public servicesBitesize · Agile and New Ways of Working2 modules