Is there really someone to blame?
One of the biggest issues faced by organizations in creating a culture of continuous improvement is the underlying need to always have someone to blame and the way that this need figures prominently in the day-to-day language of its teams. This often fuels adversarial relationships rather than the true collaboration …
At Pyxis, you are not going up; you are going forward!
29As coach and facilitator in organizational transformation and development of leaders, teams and individuals for over 25 years, I wanted to meet the Pyxis team with a colleague of mine. We had a question: “Is it possible to structure and run an organization in a more organic, more flexible, more …
The Story of Simple C.I.
Simple Continuous Improvement, or Simple C.I., is a technique which I developed and now teach as a simple, repeatable process for solving problems within an organization. Here is my story on how the concept was developed: While working as a Continuous Improvement and Process Specialist for a leading Telecommunications company, …
The Necessity of an Expert Agile Guide
If you are a tourist, a specialized escort or a guide, can be useful. Especially if, like any self-respecting agilist, you are going to the mountain. But that is not the type of person I want to talk about today. Recently, I presented HEART, the essence of Agility in only …
Storming Agile Teams: Building a Path of T.R.U.S.T
Three weeks ago, I have shared with you the first section of the Storming Agile Teams workbook called “Our Role & Multi-dimensional Storming Challenge”. In today’s article, you will read about the main techniques that I use to help groups wanting to become Agile teams to build a successful path …
Coach Stories: Once Upon a Time… DevOps
Author’s note: We have changed the title of this series of posts to “Coach Stories”. It better reflects its intent. You see, I am from of a small town down the Saint Lawrence River. In my part of the country, if you’re bored on a fall evening, you can always …
The tools of Management 3.0
I recently had the opportunity to attend the Management 3.0 training hosted by Steffan Surdek, one of my colleagues at Pyxis. Steffan is the founder of Pyxis Cultures and also an expert in corporate leadership development. So the concepts of the Management 3.0 course have recently appeared in my team …
Coach stories: A coach’s tale
The day that Change became a new brand of shampoo Please, let me first reassure you, I won’t try to convince you that change will make your hair brighter, cleaner, or fuller. What I want to propose is to stop thinking about Change like a weird beast that you must manage before it get …
When should you let the team fail?
“From now on, we should only communicate by email so we won’t get disturbed unnecessarily and we’ll be able to focus on the code.” We’re in a sprint retrospective. This proposal comes from one of the Scrum team’s developers. It’s quickly applauded by other developers. Even the other members of …
The Agilist and the Caregivers
I believe that we subconsciously apply Lean and Agile Methodologies every day of our lives and I can only imagine where we could go if we learned to apply the principles intentionally. I believe in improvement for Everyone. I want to be the “Everyday Agilist”. This will be a very …