I just facilitated my 20th Scrum.org Professional Agile Leadership – Essentials training, making me the 9th most experienced Agile Leadership trainer worldwide – go figure for a guy who is not big on repetitive work. One of the reasons why I am still passionate about Agile Leadership training is the almost 200 leaders I have...
Two months ago, I finally crossed the finish line at a 100-mile Ultramarathon after dropping out on my first two attempts. Running for almost 24 hours gives you plenty of time to reflect on life in general and who in their right mind runs for nearly 24 hours in particular. One of my reflections centered...
As a longtime fan of Brooks running shoes, I was looking forward to reading Brooks Running CEO Jim Weber‘s new book Running with Purpose, where he reflects on his career and the six leadership principles he has picked up along the way. I will not spoil the (entire) book here, but I will share two of Jim’s leadership...
A lot of the organizations I’m helping adopt Agile are looking to increase collaboration across the organization. Business and IT people need to work closely together to shorten feedback loops and drive down the time-to-market of new productions and solutions. The world is just too complex to solve the problems organizations face in silos. Many...
I must admit, I sometimes deliberately, and probably more often unknowingly, provoke my clients to help them think differently about leadership and how they can help their organizations adapt to the challenges of the 21st century. Recently, it was my turn to be provoked when I started reading the book Fatal Management (original Danish title:...
First of all, I hope you have had an awesome summer doing the things you really care about. My summer was nothing short of amazing. Four weeks prior to our planned family vacation, I ended an engagement with one client and I chose not to take on a new client until after our family vacation....
Almost 20 years ago, I applied for a developer position at a very large Danish-based company. I completed multiple tests and interviews but was rejected in the end by the recruiter, who had roughly the following argument: “You are qualified for the position, but we fear you will spend too much time hanging out by...
It seems fitting that I’m writing this post on board a Dreamliner. I’m heading to Miami to participate in the Freedom at Work Summit. For three days, we will be exploring what many people dream about—what they were able to imagine and accomplish after overcoming their fears. According to research, and in my experience, if that...
Last year, I had the privilege of co-coaching my youngest daughter’s soccer team. I joined two young coaches and a team manager; together, we were responsible for coaching about 20 girls aged six to eight. In this post, I will share eight leadership lessons I learned that can be applied to leading both eight-year-olds and more seasoned “players”....
When building a high-performing Agile team, or any team for that matter, you need to look at people as more than “resources”. If they were just “resources”, their contribution would be merely additive. It therefore always saddens me when I hear managers talk about employees as “resources”. Even more depressing, is when the people making up...
