Michael is available for Signature keynote Talks, Workshops and Training

Signature Keynote Talks

My Lean-DevOps-Agile journey – The Good the Bad and the Ugly

It has taken me over a decade, to make the transition from improving manufacturing environments with Lean, to conceptualizing agility within software and hardware organizations. Asking the hard questions required to create quality software, faster, often rubs people the wrong way…. but without those questions you’ll keep hiring scrum masters who end up being JIRA admins and going through agile motions without winning the true benefits of lean agile and DevOps.

In an age of disruption – the right mix of agile, lean, design thinking, lean start up and DevOps injected to high performing teams is crucial in getting your digital transformation right – Michael shares a journey of 20 years – crystallizing hard gained lessons learned from numerous engagements and global clients

• Digital transformation – Team agility without technical practices and continuous integration is wasted effort;
• Scaling agility is counterproductive when culture of team empowerment is not retained and focus on fast iterative feedback is missing;
• Value stream mapping of your deployment pipeline without a plan for Toyota Kata of continuous improvement is just another one-off workshop;
• DevOps might be the new agile, and maybe just once, we’re getting it right – focusing on results rather than creating scrum certification programs – or maybe not…

Allow me to share my tips, anti-patterns and lessons learned about lean, agile and DevOps from a 17 years’ journey across continents, numerous clients and many industries.

Persuading the Bear: Build Engaged Communities through Horizontal Influence Without Authority

It was 9 pm on a Friday and I was at work, my spouse called asking when I’d be home, my boss was all over me.
I had been working on a proposal for 5 months and couldn’t get  team, vendor and client’s buy in!
I became insufferable, even Ron, my best friend, declined our traditional Wednesday beer date.
I changed jobs frequently, feeling disengaged (my ‘record’ was 4 hours) until I became physically ill.
After a third round of antibiotics,
I decided to quit another position and start working for myself.

Remarkably, my feeling of disengagement was not unique. According to the Gallup engagement study – nearly 70% of employees suffer from work place disengagement- a true epidemic! Disengagement hits the bottom line, it inflicts pain and unhappiness, reduces profit per share, and leads to high turnover!

For over 20 years, my personal transformation journey as a consultant and later as a leadership agile coach taught me to look for patterns in organizations.  I have recognized recurring behaviours that plague unsuccessful disengaged organizations. The overarching problem is the traditional approach to organizational power/influence which I named vertical influencing. Unsuccessful organizations suffer from high employee disengagement since they adopt vertical influence patterns. This is true in for profit, government and non-profit organizations as well

Vertical influencing originates from viewing power/influence as a zero-sum game – a win lose proposition. Where one idea is a winner and the other a loser, one side is right and the other is wrong; In unsuccessful organizations everyone competes to be the influencer, the winner, breaking support communities & leading to disengagement.

On the other hand, I discovered that successful organizations adopt a fresh paradigm of horizontal influencing. Presently, these horizontal influencing structures manifest themselves in lean agile approaches. Horizontal influencing radically changes the way people interact creating engaged communities.

The know how to horizontal influencing includes a set of skills fundamental to building Dyad and Triad relationships; creating a true win-win environment at the individual, team and organizational level. Through this prism, Influence is communication at a deep level, where we relate to each other compassionately and look actively for commonalities and shared goals.

Experience how to create engaged communities together, through building Horizontal influencing.
We’ll discover:

• Influencing patterns by exploring relevant best practice protocols
• Collaborative community engagement building approaches through recreating and re-running real interpersonal situations
• Specific behavioural patterns relate to them and learn how to influence without authority.

Michael’s model of the 4 components to Influence without Authority:(Based on OODA loop framework, developed by John Boyd)

Situation (Observe)
Perception (Orient)
Decision (Decide)
Strategy (Act)

Each component is presented, discussed and synthesized through a hands-on pair or team activity.

The Agile PMO – Practical Value Driven Change Leadership in Projects and Portfolios

Approximately 50 percent of Project Management Offices (PMO) are terminated in 2 years. Yet, the same mistakes are repeated in the implementations! We use generic, project control processes to stifle project and product delivery; focusing on cost time and scope, rather than leading our projects to deliver value.

In this presentation the audience will learn an alternative model for a value driven PMO as an integrator, enabler, differentiator, and change agent in business, development and the organization.