Leading with Outcomes

The Agendashift Academy's core curriculum

Traditional, solution-driven change is failing. Each failure only adds to the cynicism and disengagement it is supposed to overcome, the medicine worse than the cure.

If you’re a leader in a transforming organisation, you need not just a more reliable alternative to that failed paradigm, but one that will make you a more effective leader.

Whatever your organisational scope – team, team-of-teams, something bigger – here’s where you learn to lead with outcomes. 

 

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 – 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 no longer the beginning or end of strategy but emerging at the right time from the people closest to the problem.

You'll be learning 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 develop together. You'll be learning also the patterns that organise the tools, make them memorable, and help you integrate what works for you already. And motivating the patterns: leadership principles, each one a strategy for getting better at strategy.

Subscribe today

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

The Leading with Outcomes modules

Take those you need at the pace that works for you

1. Leading with Outcomes: Foundation

 Start here!

  • Exploring the motivation for Leading with Outcomes
  • Introducing its key patterns, most especially Ideal, Obstacles, Outcomes, the IdOO ("I do") pattern
  • Try simplified versions of inside-out and outside-in strategy for yourself
  • Leadership takeaways with every chapter

2. Adaptive Organisation: Business agility at every scale

The deep magic of organisation – what's happening at every scale as your organisation pursues purpose and performance in a changing environment.

  • Delivery, Discovery, Renewal: inside the inner learning loop
  • Adaptive Strategy: managing options for independent action
  • Mutual trust-building: connection, awareness, and attention
  • Between and across scales: Dealing with issues of scale
  • Organising at human scale: the developmental organisation
  • Possibility and purpose: Co-creating organisational strategy

3. Inside-out strategy: Fit for maximum impact

What is it really like to work inside your organisation? What could it be like? And what stops it from making the impact it should? Everything you need to develop an engaging and purpose-driven strategy that starts with its internal experience.

  • Getting everyone on the same page: Context, adaptive challenges, purpose, and the Agendashift delivery assessment
  • Adapted for solo use, our Clean Language-inspired coaching game 15-minute FOTO, Challenge Mapping and How Might we...?
  • Organising strategy visually; ideation, experimentation, and feedback loops; Designing your inside-out strategy sprint

4. Outside-in Strategy: Positioned for success

Leaving value on the table for your competitors to reach first? Learn how to develop your own outside-in (customer-first) strategy and how to include others in the strategy development process.

  • Modelled on the Outside-in Strategy Review, 5 chapters in the outside-in sequence of Customer, Organisation, Product, Platform, Team(s)
  • A challenge question for each, unpacked to get to the common issues
  • For the 5 contextualised "Ideals" (possibility-focussed purpose statements or jobs-to-be-done) you generate , obstacles and outcomes
  • Organising the strategy, organising the response

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
Yes, I'm in!

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.

Experience it your way

The choice is yours:

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.

Agendashift for Individuals

£245 + VAT

Yearly (most popular)

  • Access to video content and supporting materials for Leading with Outcomes
  • Invitation to our community on Circle
  • Two one-hour Ask Me Anything sessions per month
  • Access to resources – worksheets, templates, infographics, and more
  • Watch on your laptop, phone, or tablet
  • 7-day free trial

Exclusive benefits

  • Access to all event and conference recordings
  • 25% discount on public workshops and coaching services
  • 50% discount on Agendashift conferences
Subscribe now

Agendashift for Individuals

£24.50 + VAT

Monthly

  • Access all video content and supporting materials for Leading with Outcomes
  • Invitation to our community on Circle
  • Two one-hour Ask Me Anything sessions per month
  • Access to resources – worksheets, templates, infographics, and more
  • Watch on your laptop, phone or tablet
  • 7-day free trial
Subscribe now

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