Inside-out Strategy: Fit for maximum impact
The heart and practice of Leading with Outcomes
For leaders at all levels in the transforming organisation, we take you straight to the heart and practice of Leading with Outcomes.
Inside-out strategy begins with your organisation's internal experience and capability. We show you how to place that in its proper strategic context as you consider what impact you could and should be making.
Throughout this module you will be developing strategy in the language of outcomes. In the process, you will be acquiring important new skills and reflecting on your role as a leader in a transforming organisation.
Module #2 of an integrated programme centred on leadership, strategy, and outcomes
With yearly and monthly Agendashift for Business and Agendashift for Individuals subscriptions, there's an affordable plan to suit you
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”
Leading in a transforming organisation is hard enough
Even when vision, the aspiration, and the initiatives are all there, you’re up against three universal challenges:
- People disengaged by the repeated failure of imposed solutions
- Hidden systems reinforcing old behaviours, driving the same old results
- The crucial innovations failing to materialise
The doubts have been there for decades, and now we're calling it: traditional solution-driven approaches to change are making things harder, not easier.
The alternative: leading with outcomes. Meaningful outcomes, authentic agreement – the right people in the room agreeing on outcomes meaningful to them, articulating them in their own words. Big outcomes, small outcomes, outcomes organised into strategy, outcomes people can organise around, outcomes that tell you when you winning. Outcomes the focus for innovation, solutions not the beginning or end of strategy but emerging at the right time from the people closest to the problem.
In this module, you'll be gaining fluency in the language of outcomes: how to generate them, how to organise them, how to pursue them in the context of strategies you and your colleagues developed together. And you'll be exposed to new tools, covering a continuous process that spans capturing context, developing and organising strategy, ideation and experimentation, and incorporating feedback on its progress.
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
Three principles guide everything we do:
- Keep asking the agreement on outcomes question:
What if we put agreement on outcomes ahead of solutions? - Keep bringing outcomes to the foreground
- Keep finding new places for strategy to happen
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
What you'll be doing
You'll be practicing inside-out strategy at two very different levels of detail: one that's all about getting everyone on the same page, the other that gets to the most important issues, where the biggest opportunities lie.
1. Everybody on the same page with purpose
- Capturing context, identifying the key challenge, articulating purpose
- Obstacles and outcomes – framing "good" obstacles, then turning them into outcomes with 15-minute FOTO, our Clean Language-inspired coaching game
- Different hats – client, coach, host
2. Getting to the issues that matter
- Using and debriefing the Agendashift Delivery Assessment
- Introducing Challenge Mapping, an alternative, innovation-focussed toolset for obstacles and outcomes
3. Organising strategy visually
- Challenge Mapping continued, reimagined for your self-paced training
- Option Relationship Mapping and one of its key inspirations, Wardley Mapping
4. From outcome to action
- Your strategy's big hypothesis, viewed from multiple angles
- 5% outcomes, 15% solutions: Small innovations, and lots of them
5. Designing your inside-out strategy sprint
- Bringing outcomes to the foreground – making the most of both everyday and more formal feedback opportunities
- Choosing your starting point and building around it
- Inviting, beginning, and continuing
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
Inside-out Strategy: Fit for maximum impact is the second of four modules 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
- Adaptive Organisation: Business agility at every scale (parts I and II)
- Inside-out Strategy: Fit for maximum impact (this module)
- Outside-in Strategy: Positioned for success
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