Strengthening Organizational Agility

Accountability Nearly every organization I work with at the moment is focused on some version of creating a "high-performance" culture. Alongside this goal is a push for greater speed of decision-making, efficiency, and accountability. However, a common mistake many organizations make is treating accountability as a binary attribute—individuals are either seen as accountable or not. In reality, accountability is more nuanced. Understanding accountability as a spectrum is critical for cultivating a high-performance culture. The Accountability Ladder illustrates this concept by mapping out various levels at which individuals engage with their responsibilities, ranging from unaware or indifferent to becoming proactive and inspiring others. Those familiar with the Leadership Circle Profile will note that accountability transforms as leaders pivot from an external to an internal locus of control. This move from a Reactive to Creative mindset is a critical prerequisite. Here is a summary of each step on the ladder: Unaware: At this level, individuals are not aware of the issues or their responsibilities. They lack the knowledge necessary to understand what needs to be done. Blaming Others: Individuals recognize the issue but choose to blame others rather than taking any responsibility. They see the problem as someone else's fault. Excuses: At this step, individuals acknowledge the problem but offer excuses for why they can't address or resolve it. They often cite external factors or limitations. Wait and Hope: Individuals here are aware of the problem and hope it gets resolved by itself or that someone else will take care of it. There is recognition but no action. Acknowledge Reality: This is a turning point on the ladder. Individuals acknowledge the reality of the situation and their role in it but have not yet begun to take corrective action. Own It: Individuals take ownership of the problem and accept their responsibility for dealing with it. They start to commit to resolving the issue. Find Solutions: At this step, individuals not only take ownership but also actively seek solutions. They explore various options to resolve the problem. Take Action: Individuals implement the solutions they have identified. They take concrete steps to resolve the issue. Make It Happen: Individuals not only take action but also follow through to ensure that the solutions are effective. They monitor progress and make adjustments as necessary. Inspire Others: Leaders inspire and encourage others to take accountability, creating a proactive problem-solving culture. As a team exercise, try writing the steps of the accountability ladder on a whiteboard and ask: What level of accountability do we see across the organization? What level do we exhibit as a team (to each other and our stakeholders)? And finally, where would I place myself?

HR doesn’t need more dashboards. It needs better listening. Most people teams measure what’s easy…like engagement scores or turnover. But the best teams? They build feedback loops that help them predict problems, not just react to them. This post gives you 11 of the most useful, often-overlooked loops you can implement across the employee lifecycle: 🟢 Week 2 new hire check-ins (capture early impressions) 🟠 Post-interview surveys (from both sides) 🔵 Onboarding reviews (day 90 is your goldmine) 🟡 Skip-level 1:1s (cross-level truth-telling) 🟣 Quarterly team health check-ins (lightweight, manager-led) …and 7 more. 📌 Save this if: • You’re building a modern HR function • You want fewer “We should’ve seen this coming” moments • You believe listening is strategy Which feedback loop is missing in your company?

Great leadership isn’t about ensuring alignment all the time. Here is why: I recently worked with a leadership team in a global company that, at first glance, seemed to be thriving. Meetings were quick, decisions were made efficiently, and everyone was on the same page. They believed this harmony meant they were operating at peak performance. But beneath the surface, something critical was missing: 🚫 innovation. Their constant agreement was stifling progress. Without diverse ideas, challenges, or healthy debate, the team was simply recycling the same thinking, overlooking new opportunities and struggling with complex problems. It was a classic case of ‘groupthink’—where everyone falls into agreement to avoid conflict or discomfort.  👇 Here’s what I did with the team: - Diagnosed the agreement cycle & TPS - Introduced psychological safety practices - Encouraged intellectual humility - Secured mechanism for diverse input integration We started worked on inclusive decision-making practices by ensuring that every voice in the room was heard. We integrated mechanisms like structured brainstorming, anonymous idea submissions, and rotating roles of idea champions to reduce bias and prevent dominant voices from overtaking discussions. 📈 The result? Not only did their decision-making improve, but their solutions became more creative and forward-thinking. Leaders, here're the takeaways: 1️⃣ If your meetings are full of "Yes, I agree," ask yourself what you might be missing. 2️⃣ Diversity of thought is your competitive advantage. 3️⃣ Teams thrive when they feel safe enough to disagree and bold enough to innovate. This is psychological safety. P.S. Do you think your team challenges each other enough? I’d love to hear your thoughts 👇

Resistance isn’t the enemy of change. Poor planning is. Change doesn’t fail because people are difficult. It fails because leaders rush in without structure. That’s why the ADKAR model works - it gives you a step-by-step way to make change stick. Step 1: Awareness Start by making the case for change. – Share the “why” with clarity – Use data and relatable stories – Highlight what’s at risk if nothing changes Step 2: Desire Create personal buy-in. – Speak directly to individual concerns – Tie the change to personal wins – Invite feedback, don’t just announce Step 3: Knowledge Make learning simple and accessible. – Train based on roles, not just theory – Break content into smaller lessons – Encourage peer learning Step 4: Ability Create space for hands-on experience. – Pilot with smaller teams – Offer coaching and feedback – Let teams experiment and iterate Step 5: Reinforcement Make sure the change sticks. – Track adoption with real metrics – Celebrate visible progress – Keep communication going Change isn’t about pushing harder. It’s about planning smarter. Now the question is: Where are you seeing resistance today? -- 📌 If you want a high-res PDF of this sheet: 1. Follow Daniel Lock 2. Like the post 3. Repost to your network 4. Subscribe to: https://lnkd.in/eB3C76jb

The secret sauce of a GREAT Agile Coach In my 12 years of Agile Here are a few of my learnings And I say this as someone who has made these mistakes myself Agile Coaching isn't: - Having all the answers to every problem [Or being the hero] - Enforcing strict adherence to a specific framework [Like a list of commandments] - Obsessing over tools, methodologies [Or even events & ceremonies] - Only asking questions rather than getting stuck in yourself [Another Powerful Question anyone? Do those? You'll probably be moving further from Agile And piss people off in the process Instead, it's about: - Helping people to discover their path to agility - Fostering a culture of continuous improvement and learning - Listening more than speaking, understanding concerns, and providing guidance where it's needed - Encouraging experimentation and embracing failure as a learning opportunity - Leading by example and being the first to demonstrate a willingness to fail or change first - Turning impediments into opportunities for growth - Using feedback loops to drive progress in pursuit of goals - Systemically reducing the dependency a company has upon you - Facilitating conversations at multiple levels that lead to actionable insights - Creating a safe space where people can be candid, creative and challenge one another without causing disharmony Want to shift your perspective? Get started with these questions: - Why do we want to be Agile? What outcomes are we seeking? - What challenges are we currently facing? What's holding us back from achieving our outcomes? - How are we continuously improving? What data tells us so? - What does success look like for us in our journey? How can we measure it? - Are we measuring the right things? Which metrics truly matter for our context? - What feedback loops have we established? How can they be improved? - What process or bureaucracy can we {remove} rather than add more? - What do our people say about our ways of working? How can we involve them more? - How are we celebrating both success and learning from our failures? - What tools might ENABLE our individuals and their interactions? Despite what many consultants might say about Agile It isn't easy. There isn't a playbook that will solve your problems. Keep disrupting. Keep challenging the status quo - In pursuit of improvement. And don't forget. The customers of agile ways of working are the employees Who have experienced multiple attempts at 'transforming' their ways of working already! Involve them. Co-create the path forward with them. Invite, don't inflict change. P.S - What's on your Do's & Don'ts of Agile?

Treating AI like a chatbot, AKA you ask a question → it gives an answer is only scraching the surface. Underneath, modern AI agents are running continuous feedback loops - constantly perceiving, reasoning, acting, and learning to get smarter with every cycle. Here’s a simple way to visualize what’s really happening 👇 1. Perception Loop – The agent collects data from its environment, filters noise, and builds real-time situational awareness. 2. Reasoning Loop – It processes context, forms logical hypotheses, and decides what needs to be done. 3. Action Loop – It executes those plans using tools, APIs, or other agents, then validates outcomes. 4. Reflection Loop – After every action, it reviews what worked (and what didn’t) to improve future reasoning. 5. Learning Loop – This is where it gets powerful, the model retrains itself based on new knowledge, feedback, and data patterns. 6. Feedback Loop – It uses human and system feedback to refine outputs and improve alignment with goals. 7. Memory Loop – Stores and retrieves both short-term and long-term context to maintain continuity. 8. Collaboration Loop – Multiple agents coordinate, negotiate, and execute tasks together, almost like a digital team. These loops are what make AI agents more human-like while reasoning and self-improveming. Leveraging these loops moves AI systems from “prompt and reply” to “observe, reason, act, reflect, and learn.” #AIAgents

How do you teach someone problem-solving skills? The first step is not giving them a problem to solve… it’s asking them to go find a problem! Recent OECD studies indicate that problem-solving skills, (particularly among adults!!) are not meeting the demands of today's rapidly evolving world. Leaders and manager are in prime position to change this in 2025!! 🧠 Problem-solving starts with the right mindset. Encourage a growth mindset where challenges are seen as opportunities to learn and improve. 🤔 And then it’s about cultivating curiosity- asking why they think something is happening, not just what is happening. Help them explore it from every angle (systems perspective): what’s really going on, who’s affected, and what makes it a problem in the first place. ⏸️ Stress the value of fully understanding the problem before jumping into solutions. A well-defined problem is half-solved. ❔ Focus on asking great questions...like "Who is affected by this problem, and how do they experience it?" and "What have we tried before, and why didn’t it work?" 📉 A lot of the time, gaps in problem solving skills are caused by lack of analytical skills...problem-solving isn’t just about finding answers; it’s about collecting and interpreting data. So, teach them to look for patterns, trends, and evidence that validate or disprove assumptions. 👂 Teach them also the importance of collaboration- help them learn how to listen actively to others’ ideas and build on them. 🧘♀️ Problem-solving can be frustrating. You may also need to help them develop emotional regulation skills to stay calm and focused. 🥼 Finally, guide them to test their solutions step-by-step, learn from what works (or doesn’t), and keep adjusting until they solve it. Problem-solving is a skill that improves with practice. Create opportunities for them to tackle real-life scenarios in safe, low-stakes environments. 👋 Don't forget to check in with the person regularly to reflect on their lessons learned and progress. Advise them that problem-solving doesn’t end when a countermeasure is implemented. There's a process to go through to monitor results, refine the approach, and find the next related problem to tackle. 🪜 And finally, I find that it's much easier to teach problem-solving with a structure or methodology that gives people a clear guide to thinking more scientifically. A clear, repeatable framework like the PDCA (Plan-Do-Check-Act) cycle or the DMAIC (Define-Measure- Anayze-Improve-Control) are good options! What do you think? How do you teach #problemsolving skills to the people on your team? Leave your comments below 🙏

Forget top-down mandates. Real business agility comes from unleashing the innovators within your organization. Over the years at Make, we have spent a lot of time with our customers. Many of them disrupting their industry with new digital first business models. In these conversations, we consistently come across a certain mindset in people using our technology. They are re-thinking how to operate, re-imagining their business. These innovators are the ones driving real change, enabling businesses to stay nimble and agile. Those people are the ones making the difference, empowering them is the key to achieving business agility. So today, let me share with you a recipe that includes what we believe are the key ingredients to unlock this potential in your organization. First, there is the WILL. It’s the drive to innovate. This one is about the mindset. It’s the belief that they can solve and overcome any challenge. Fundamentally it’s their urge to discover, to persevere and to make breakthroughs. And you can impact this by inspiring them. By celebrating those who drive change. By showcasing where transformative solutions like visual automation, AI agents or no-code tools can be used to overcome day-to-day business challenges. It’s about inspiring people through use cases and success stories - to motivate people to achieve more of their own potential. Second, there is the SKILL. People’s ability to drive innovation. Whether people have a highly technical background or are self-taught doesn’t matter. It’s about fostering a culture of continuous learning and adoption of new technology. It’s about allowing your people to spend time on acquiring new skills to drive change, and to reinforce it with supporting these learning opportunities. And third, it’s about your business ENVIRONMENT. The organization around the individual, strengthening the innovators. The right environment is about promoting a culture of innovation, experimentation. Empower individuals. Let them fail fast and iterate. Allow them to challenge the status quo and embrace change. If you bring those ingredients together, you are creating a sweet spot. You are setting yourself up for making business agility a reality.  So, don’t wait for innovation to find you. Start to transform your business by impacting those three aspects for the innovators in your team. What steps are you taking to foster innovation in your company? #businessagility #nocode #automation 

Trust is built in drops and lost in buckets, and we’re running out of buckets. If you're leading teams through #AI adoption, navigating #hybrid work, or just steering through the tempest that is 2025, there's a crucial factor that could make or break your success: #trust. And right now, it's in free fall. Edelman's Trust Barometer showed an "unprecedented decline in employer trust" -- the first time in their 25 years tracking that trust in business fell. It's no surprise: midnight #layoff emails, "do more with less," #RTO mandates, and fears of #GenAI displacement given CEO focus on efficiency are all factors. The loss of #trust will impact performance. The Institute for Corporate Productivity (i4cp) research shows high performing organizations have 10-11X higher trust between employees and leaders. Trust impacts #engagement, #innovation and #technology adoption, especially AI. My latest newsletter gets beyond the research and into what leaders can do today to start rebuilding trust You can't command-and-control your way through a complete overhaul of how we work... Trust is a two-way street. Leaders need to go first, but we also have to rebuild the gives-and-takes of employer/employee relationships. Three starting points: 1️⃣ Clear Goals, Real Accountability. Stop monitoring attendance and start measuring outcomes. Give teams clear goals and autonomy in how they achieve them. 2️⃣ Transparency with Guardrails. Break down information silos. Share context behind decisions openly - even difficult ones. Establish guardrails for meaningful conversations internally (instead of rock-throwing externally). 3️⃣ Show Vulnerability. Saying "I don't know" isn't weakness–it's an invitation for others to contribute. The word “vulnerability” seems anathema to too many public figures at the moment, who instead are ready to lock themselves in the Octagon with their opponents. But what’s tougher for them: taking a swing at someone, or admitting to their own limitations? This isn't just about CEOs. Great leaders show up at all levels of the org chart, creating "trust bubbles:" pockets of high performance inside even the most challenging environments. If you're one of those folks, thank you for what you do! 👉 Link to the newsletter in comments; please read (it's free) and let me know what you think! #FutureOfWork #Leadership #Management #Culture

The lesson I take from so many dispersed teams I’ve worked with over the years is that great collaboration is not about shrinking the distance. It is about deepening the connection. Time zones, language barriers, and cultural nuances make working together across borders uniquely challenging. I see these dynamics regularly: smart, dedicated people who care deeply about their work but struggle to truly see and understand one another. One of the tools I often use in my work with global teams is the Harvard Business School case titled Greg James at Sun Microsystems. It tells the story of a manager leading a 45-person team spread across the U.S., France, India, and the UAE. When a major client system failed, the issue turned out not to be technical but human. Each location saw the problem differently. Misunderstandings built up across time zones. Tensions grew between teams that rarely met in person. What looked like a system failure was really a connection failure. What I find powerful about this story, and what I see mirrored in so many organizations today, is that the path forward is about rethinking how we create connection, trust, and fairness across distance. It is not where many leaders go naturally: new tools or tighter control. Here are three useful practices for dispersed teams to adopt. (1) Create shared context, not just shared goals. Misalignment often comes from not understanding how others work, not what they’re working on. Try brief “work tours,” where teams explain their daily realities and constraints. Context builds empathy, and empathy builds speed. (2) Build trust through reflection, not just reliability. Trust deepens when people feel seen and understood. After cross-site collaborations, ask: “What surprised you about how others see us?” That simple reflection can transform relationships. (3) Design fairness into the system. Uneven meeting times, visibility, or opportunities quickly erode respect. Rotate schedules, celebrate behind-the-scenes work, and make sure recognition travels across time zones. Fairness is a leadership design choice, not a nice-to-have. Distance will always be part of global work, but disconnection doesn’t have to be. When leaders intentionally design for shared understanding, reflected trust, and structural fairness, I've found, distributed teams flourish. #collaboration #global #learning #leadership #connection Case here: https://lnkd.in/eZfhxnGW