The Pot of Gold in the Fifth Stage of Agile Organization Design

Man looking at a gold trophy on a pedestal

Background For the first decade of this century, Washington DC was a hotbed of government innovation, heavily influenced by almost a decade of “Reinventing Government” at the Federal level.  Emerging from bankruptcy with a new vision developed by thousands of residents, DC was committed to reforming its reputation as America’s “Crime Capital” to becoming its…

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Agile Organization Design Accelerates Adoption and Implementation

organizational strategic planning

Case Study Background: A radical restructuring of a State Education Office (SEO) that illustrates the 4th stage, Customize, of the 5 stages of Agile Organization Design (see visual). This stage tests the operating model from the first 3 stages and develops implementation details. To get a flavor of this project, it was done on the…

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The Secret Power of “Community Surveys” to Accelerate Agile Organization Design

In my last blog I introduced the “Use-of-Self,” a set of agile consulting skills that enliven all 5 Phases of Agile Organization Design. In bringing all of their faculties to the table, the intervenor, in service of broadening their customer’s perspective of reality, beyond just the rational mind, can in real time model making the…

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“Sensing” & “Use of Self”
How Agile Leverages the Human Factor

Case Study 1 – What is the Context? A regional Chief Technology Officer (CTO) proposed a novel solution to a “hot-potato” public safety problem.  Dropped calls, 911 wait times and failed hand-offs between police, fire and emergency medical agencies resulted in well documented loss of life and property. It was a frequent highlight in the…

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False Flags: Why 80% of Public Sector Change Efforts Fail

Agile Organizational Design

The George Washington University – Center for Excellence in Public Leadership’s program offering “Mastering Adaptive Organizational Design Certification” provides me, as a member of the instruction team, the opportunity to blog about major disruptions in the field of organization design. For more than a decade, practitioners have wrestled between the polarities of the tried and…

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