DA

Perspectives

Reflections on leadership, strategy, organisation and technology. Some pieces are written in English, others in Danish.

Language
Category

39 articles

  • AI Strategy27 May 2026

    Is AI breaking our development cycles?

    One of the things I keep thinking about lately is whether AI is quietly breaking some of the assumptions modern software development has been built around for decades.

  • AI Strategy5 May 2026

    From change management to changefulness

    AI is not one change with a beginning, middle, and end. It is a continuous disturbance. It changes how we write, search, analyze, code, decide, communicate, learn, and create. It changes what good looks like.

  • Learning23 April 2026

    Familiar ground and deep water: reflections from my MBA journey

    What has become clearer to me through these modules is that the value of the MBA is not just in confirming what I already know, or in collecting new frameworks. It lies in the alternation between the known and the unknown: between modules where experience helps, and modules where I have to build understanding from first principles.

  • AI Strategy9 April 2026

    AI is changing the strategic layers of SaaS

    One of the more important strategic questions facing SaaS leadership teams right now, is not just how AI changes the product, but how it changes the layers of value around the product and, with them, the future economics of the business.

  • AI Strategy6 April 2026AI-translated

    A new logic for digital product development

    A more direct path from intention to a working solution. A sense that the digital no longer has to be translated through a series of technical intermediaries before it can become reality.

  • AI Strategy29 March 2026AI-translated

    Which AI personality makes you most productive?

    An MIT study suggests that personality matching between humans and AI can influence the quality of collaboration. If that holds, AI becomes not just a tool, but something leaders need to factor into team design and composition.

  • AI Strategy22 March 2026

    Is AI quietly bringing Agile back?

    When I look at the companies that seem to be learning fastest with AI, I do not see a waterfall mindset winning. I see many of the underlying principles that made Agile valuable in the first place.

  • Leadership14 March 2026

    Reflections on AI: Good decisions still depend on context

    I’m currently studying Deploying AI for Strategic Impact at MIT, and one of the modules has made me reflect on something that feels very familiar. AI may improve access to answers, but it does not remove an old leadership challenge: making good deci...

  • Leadership7 March 2026AI-translated

    Takeaways from 15 inspiring conversations with female leaders

    What stands out most to me is not just a story about women who have found their way into executive roles, leadership positions, and boardrooms. It is a story about leaders who are expanding our understanding of what leadership can be. And perhaps also what it should be.

  • Leadership17 February 2026

    Why IT systems fail when they ignore human behavior

    Many large IT initiatives fail for a remarkably simple reason: they do not fit how people actually behave. Over the years, I have seen ambitious systems with strong business cases, solid architecture, and executive backing quietly die after launch....

  • Leadership15 February 2026

    Why AI strategy is ultimately a leadership problem

    Before generative AI entered the mainstream, I led transformations across several insurance companies where automation of the claims process was a central element. What became clear early on was not a limitation of technology, but a leadership realit...

  • Leadership29 January 2026AI-translated

    Why organisation almost always wins over architecture

    Conway’s Law is often quoted, but rarely taken fully seriously. It describes how organisations tend to design systems that mirror their communication structures. In other words, architecture becomes a reflection of how we organise ourselves and work together.

  • Leadership7 January 2026AI-translated

    Which way is the leadership pendulum swinging?

    Seen over the past 100 years, developments in leadership have followed a fairly clear pattern. A pendulum swinging back and forth in an attempt to make consciousness and complexity fit together. New leadership movements emerge when the way we understand leadership and the world can no longer contain the reality we are facing.

  • Strategy11 December 2025AI-translated

    Everyday translation of strategy

    This week, I had a wonderful coffee conversation with two seasoned consultants, and it did not take long before we landed right in the middle of a familiar phenomenon: strategies that never become anything. Strategies that live in beautiful presentations, but not in the reality employees face every single day.

  • Leadership9 October 2025AI-translated

    What does the research say about Agile Leadership?

    The effect varies considerably depending on the context, and there is limited knowledge about harder bottom-line and customer-related metrics. In other words, Agile Leadership is not a miracle cure, but it can create significant value under the right conditions.

  • Strategy30 September 2025AI-translated

    Does your strategy live in your stories and actions?

    When plans are always adjusted anyway, when stories create more energy than spreadsheets, when success can become a trap, when values reveal themselves through actions, and when the biggest goals are often best reached at an angle, then the role of the strategist changes too.

  • Podcast15 June 2025AI-translated

    10 insights from season 2 of Ledelse i Bevægelse

    Season 2 of Ledelse i Bevægelse offered ten deeply inspiring conversations with leaders who, each in their own way, place movement, reflection and humanity at the centre.

  • Leadership12 June 2025AI-translated

    The 50/50 model: a key to more motivated and predictable teams

    Predictability and productivity are among the most common reasons why leadership teams want to introduce agile ways of working. When teams depend on one another, even small delays can have major consequences. Of course, dependencies can be reduced through thoughtful organisational design, but that will have to be the subject of another post.

  • Leadership11 June 2025

    Scrum Guide Expansion Pack 2025 – my first impressions

    Where the 2020 guide was held to a minimum, the new pack stretches across roles, artefacts, events, theory, scaling, AI and an appendix on adaptive strategy. It’s declared community-driven, meaning updates will be released much like software patches - small, frequent, and based on real-world feedback.

  • Personal23 January 2025

    I love receiving feedback!

    Let’s be honest – most people don’t enjoy receiving feedback. Many of us feel like the person in the picture when the boss asks if we’d like feedback… We know we should say yes, all while our internal alarm system is screaming at us to brace for impa...

  • Leadership12 January 2025AI-translated

    Delegation: Create clarity and freedom with CROW

    Delegation is a core discipline for leaders, but also one of the most challenging. Many leaders fall into the trap of “drive-by delegation”, rushing to hand over a task without clarifying the frame around it. It may feel efficient in the moment, but it often results in the leader having to spend time later cleaning up misunderstandings and mistakes. That is both frustrating and time-consuming for both parties.

  • Leadership9 January 2025AI-translated

    Case: How to balance structure and freedom?

    Over the past two years, I have worked with an organisation that wanted to find a better balance between freedom and structure in its agile ways of working. The challenge was to create a framework that ensured cross-organisational coherence without suffocating team autonomy.

  • Leadership7 April 2024

    How to Determine the Pathways in Your Organization?

    When Walt Disney envisioned Disneyland, he waited to observe where visitors naturally walked before laying down sidewalks, allowing natural behaviors to dictate design. This approach, mirrored by Michigan State University (main image), emphasizes ada...

  • Leadership29 January 2024

    Cultivating Effective Communication

    In the ever-evolving complex landscape of modern leadership, the importance of effective communication cannot be overstated. It was therefore no surprise that effective communication was one of five themes ChatGPT identified when I tasked it with ana...

  • Leadership1 January 2024

    Insights from HBR's 2023 Daily Management Tips with ChatGPT

    On workdays, I get an email from Harvard Business Review with their Management Tip of the Day. As we embark on a new year, I got curious to see what we can learn from the approximately 250 tips I received in 2023. To help me with the analysis, I exp...

  • Leadership5 December 2023

    The Irony of Scaling Agile from a Teal Perspective

    A friend recently pointed me to a [very insightful 2018 post](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/un-safe-any-speed-rethinking-scale-agility-sam-mcafee/) by [Sam McAfee](https://www.linkedin.com/in/smcafee/) where he critically examines the trend of scali...

  • Leadership6 February 2023

    5 Surprising Facts about Agile Leadership

    I just facilitated my 20th [Scrum.org Professional Agile Leadership – Essentials](https://21leadership.com/training/professional-agile-leadership-training/) training, making me the 9th most experienced Agile Leadership trainer worldwide – go figure f...

  • Leadership25 January 2023

    How to Color Project Gates Teal

    I was recently involved in discussion with a group of leaders on project review gates and how to help a product team move forward. Part of the discussion centered on using the word gate and what that means. The more interesting debate, IMHO, is on ho...

  • Leadership2 January 2023

    Do You Need Six Geniuses to Make Agile Work?

    “You are definitely not a finisher,” responded my wife over lunch after I had explained the Working Geniuses model to her. To make her point clear, she followed up by giving me a couple of examples of projects I have enthusiastically started but have...

  • Leadership14 December 2022

    How to Improve Business Agility

    The newly published 2022 Business Agility Report contains insight from 296 organizations worldwide. According to the report published by Business Agility Institute, understanding your value streams and structuring your workforce and processes around...

  • Leadership3 December 2022

    9 Leadership Lessons from Running 100 Miles

    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...

  • Leadership22 May 2022

    What We Can Learn From Running a Shoe Company

    As a longtime fan of Brooks running shoes, I was looking forward to reading Brooks Running CEO [Jim Weber](https://www.linkedin.com/in/ACoAAAGQ3n0BrIcwYEnWSKR0rnHSHxokE1XDqw8)'s new book Running with Purpose, where he reflects on his career and the s...