Videos, notes, and links for keynote presentations

• Introducing the Deliberately Adaptive Organisation
• Between spaces, scopes, and scales: What the scaling frameworks don't tell you
• How to “create the conditions”: Engage, Invite, Celebrate (this page)
• In times of change, what scales better than process?
• To ‘Done’ and Beyond: Coordinating, Organising, Strategising, and Trust Building with Kanban
• Right to Left: Implementing Agile Strategies That Deliver Real Business Outcomes
• Agile Strategy Meetup: Meet Mike Burrows on Strategy

More: Keynotes home

How to “create the conditions”: Engage, Invite, Celebrate

As leaders, we are often called to “create the conditions” for things like performance, innovation, agility, resilience, and so on. But what does it mean to lead when those things are on the agenda? Touching on issues of product, strategy, and organisation, we will explore an easily-remembered leadership framework – a way to recognise leadership when it is (or isn’t) happening, and identify areas of your own leadership practice that you can work on.

Video to follow.

Download a PDF of the slides:

• Updated November 15th, 2024 (dropbox.com)

Read the book

Wholehearted: Engaging with Complexity in the Deliberately Adaptive Organisation was published in April 2025. The Christopher Alexander quote, and the ‘Wholehearted’ leadership model of ‘Engage, Invite, Celebrate’ that it inspired all feature prominently.

Wholehearted-related training

Save 15% with coupon code KEYNOTE15! Applies to all the trainings described above - cohort-based and self-paced.

Links

• Engage, Invite, Celebrate: Leading “wholeheartedly” for innovation (blog.agendashift.com)
• Outside-in Strategy Review (OI-SR) template
• Done
• Changeban, the Lean Startup-inspired Kanban simulation game

References:

• Wholehearted: Engaging with Complexity in the Deliberately Adaptive Organisation (Agendashift Press, 2025)
• The Timeless Way of Building,
  Christopher Alexander (OUP USA, 1980)
• Right to Left: The digital leader’s guide to Lean and Agile, Mike Burrows (2019)
• Organizing Conversations: Preparing Groups to Take on Adaptive Challenges, Mike Burrows (2024)
• Wholehearted: Engaging with Complexity in the Deliberately Adaptive Organisation,
  Mike Burrows (forthcoming, expected 2025)
• Brain of the Firm,
  Stafford Beer (John Wiley & Sons, 1972)
• The Heart of Enterprise,
  Stafford Beer (John Wiley & Sons, 1979)
• The Fractal Organization: Creating Sustainable Organizations with the Viable System Model,
  Patrick Hoverstadt (John Wiley & Sons, 2008)