Adaptive Organisation: Business agility at every scale
Up and down the Deliberately Adaptive Organisation
Module #4 of an integrated programme centred on leadership, strategy, and outcomes
Subscribe today“Very practical, highly participative – learning by doing. I can see so many opportunities to use the approach and tools in my work”
“You inspired people and got them talking – couldn’t have asked for more”
“Combines concepts I previously found challenging in a way that not only makes sense but is highly useful”
“I left motivated and confident enough to try these exercises the next day”
“Expertly and confidently helps you learn how to get from strategy to execution and back again”
“Intensely practical with solid theoretical foundations”
Overview
Six chapters – chapters 1-3 and 4-6 forming parts I and II respectively, a certificate of completion for each:
- Delivery, Discovery, and Renewal:
- Inside value creation's inner learning loop
- Turning intent into progress and turning experiments into intelligence and insights
- Reconciling Agile and business agility
- Adaptive Strategy:
- Making organising commitments, autonomy at every scope and scale
- Understanding self and environment, creating and managing options accordingly
- Actively maintaining coherent identity, purpose, and values
- Mutual Trust Building:
- Models of trust-building leadership
- The systemic role of trust
- Sensemaking – making meaningful progress in the presence of ambiguity
- Between and across scales:
- Navigating formal structure
- Your organisation in 5 networks
- Between and across scales: Structuring, connecting, translating, and reconciling
- Organising at human scale
- Thinking in circles – organising without reorganising
- Teaming and re-teaming
- The developmental organisation
- Possibility and purpose
- Conversations on organisation in the language of outcomes
- Developing and pursuing strategy
The Deliberately Adaptive Organisation deeply integrates these great models:
- Viable System Model, Stafford Beer’s classic model for all organisations that have the drive to “meet the demands of surviving in the changing environment”; here it is the framework within which the other models and tools are integrated
- Complexity science – Cynefin and more
- Agendashift, Leading with Outcomes, Right to Left, and Wholehearted – outcome-orientation, leadership and strategy
- Sociocracy (aka Dynamic Governance, Circular Hierarchy) – purposeful collaboration and self-governance at every scale
- Lean-Agile (“Lean and Agile celebrated both separately and together”) and friends
- The Deliberately Developmental Organisation, Robert Kegan & Lisa Laskow Lahey’s model for building organisations that align personal and organisational growth
- Objectives and Key Results (OKR) – the strategy deployment framework pioneered at Intel

Learning by doing:
- You'll be developing strategy yourself while learning how strategy works as a participatory process
- With each successive module you'll be gaining fluency in the language of outcomes, learning a range of tools you can use every day
- Along the way, plenty of opportunity to reflect on your organisation and your relationship with it
What sets us apart – the fundamentals

We keep asking these questions, and you can too:
- What if we put agreement on outcomes before solutions?
- How do we keep bringing outcomes to the foreground?
- Where – and where else – should we be developing and pursuing strategy?
For the big strategy occasions, for those everyday interactions, and for everything in between, we help leaders at all levels put those principles into practice:
- Having the kinds of conversations that too often get missed
- Working backwards from key moments of impact and learning
- Engaging with their organisations in all of their complexity and potential – fractal engagement
Is this for me?
If any of these apply:
- You're a leader in a transforming organisation
- You desire change and want it approached in the right way
- You aspire to leadership
- You have something to contribute to the strategy process
- You support others in that journey
Brought to you by Agendashift Academy co-founder and three-time author Mike Burrows
Mike's pioneering work in the pursuit of the wholehearted and deliberately adaptive organisation brings a needs-based and outcome-oriented perspective to leadership, strategy, and transformation.
Mike has real-world experience as a global leader in world-class organisations and clients in government, finance, industry, and the not-for-profit sectors.

It's part of something bigger
Adaptive Organisation: Business agility at every scale is the fourth, final, and most advanced module of Leading with Outcomes, the Agendashift Academy’s core curriculum. Take them at your own pace and join a growing community of leaders in transforming organisations who are learning to put outcomes before solutions.
The modules in recommended order:
- Leading with Outcomes: Foundation
- Inside-out Strategy: Fit for maximum impact
- Outside-in Strategy: Positioned for success
- Adaptive Organisation: Business agility at every scale (in beta)
Experience it your way
The choice is yours:
- Public training – check our events calendar for online or in-person events
- Private training – led by an authorised Leading with Outcomes trainer
- Self-paced study – subscription plans for individuals and businesses
They're not even mutually exclusive! Each format brings a different experience, and not only is repeat participation common – each one certified – we make it easy and cost-effective.
Subscription plans: Agendashift for Individuals and Agendashift for Business, each with a risk-free 7-day trial. If you aren’t completely satisfied, just cancel your subscription before the end of your trial period.
For multiple subscribers, check out Agendashift for Business. Easy and cost-effective access for every leader and aspiring leader in your business, with benefits not available to individual subscribers.
Frequently asked Questions
How Leading with Outcomes works for you