Preparation  |  Room Setup  |  Facilitation Process  |  Post-Event Mailout  |  Downloads

Preparation

First, you will need to get the Domains of Business Agility posters printed. There are 13 posters and they will cost between $7 and $20 per poster to print, depending on where and how you get them printed. We recommend high quality gloss printing for best results – this also allow you to reuse them! » Download the posters ».

Make sure you have permission to stick the posters on the walls of the meeting venue.

Review the Domains of Business Agility to ensure you are able to talk about each one with confidence and authority.

Room Setup

Stick all 13 posters on the walls of the room in groups of 3 (and one group of 4). Ensure you group each Dimension together (Relationships + Customer, Leadership, Operations, Individuals). As long as the dimensions are together, the exact order of Domains doesn’t matter. Leave a little space between each poster as people will be moving around and clustering around them. If they are too close together it will be hard to do that. Assuming a standard square/rectangular room (you have access to all 4 walls), one Dimension per wall is best.

Be careful not to damage or mark the walls. Blu-tack (adhesive putty) is best for this. Painters tape (blue tape) is also good, but can damage the poster when it gets removed.

Facilitation Process

Stage One

Start with a high level discussion on Business Agility. This should take no more than 10 minutes and should cover:

• Why Business Agility is important (failure of companies, vuca, copernican revolution, adaptable, attract talent, moral imperative).
• That it’s a hard journey (not a transformation) and takes many years.
• That business agility isn’t the goal, but customer centricity and employee engagement is.

Stage Two

The second stage involves getting everyone out of the chairs and walking around the room. Starting with customer go to each poster and spend 1-2 minutes describing that Domain. A few points from experience:

• Customer – this is why you are in business! It is not to make money (you make money to stay in business, but serving your customer is why.)
• Board – this is the hardest, very few examples but those that do have higher success rates and greater returns on the transformation
• Partner – you can talk about Evan’s Theory of Agile Constraints here.
• Process Agility – very simple, this is where most agile practices sit.
• Enterprise Agility – no process is independent – this is the complex (chaotic) interplay of the hundreds of processes. You can also talk about Evan’s Theory of Agile Constraints here.
• Structural Agility – talk about reducing handoffs and aligning team structure to the customer view of value creation. Talk about how the customer doesn’t care about your internal processes. You can also talk about how the general functional hierarchy traces itself back to the apprentice system (e.g. blacksmiths). Also talk about how whatever you design for, you are design against something else (law of unintended consequences)
• Craft Excellence – Not just about technology (e.g. DevOps), but Finance and Marketing practices need to be adaptive
• Strategic Agility – this is a key distinction between a company successful today and successful tomorrow. Sometimes called emergent or adaptive strategy.
• People Management – everyone wants to be a leader, but no one wants to be a manager anymore. But management is important. More people leave companies because of bad managers than any other reason. Process management is irrelevant.

Stage Three

The third stage involves them thinking about their organisation and their transformation. Depending on the time remaining, ask them to move to the poster that best answers the questions…

1. What domain has your organization focused most on so far?
2. What domain needs the most attention?
3. What domain do you need to learn more about?
4. What domain do you have the most experience with and are willing to share?
5. Where are you doing well?
6. Where can your organization grow?

As you ask each question, get the attendees to pair up and discuss their experiences and thoughts on that domain in the context of the question you just asked. E.g. What area has your organization focused most on so far? Possible pair convo: what has been the payback so far?

Post-Event Mailout

After the event, share the links to the Domains of Business Agility and any specific case studies or references that were discussed.

Remember to invite them to join the Business Agility Institute as a member.

Downloads

Domains of Business Agility Posters: To support organizations on the journey, we have commissioned a series of posters for each of the Domains of Business Agility.

Download the Posters

See Also: The Domains of Business Agility