Every company wants to be a high-performance organization these days. Well, at least most organizations.

That makes sense.

A high-performance organization seems to be the answer to the uncertainty, volatility and complexity we face today. It promises outstanding business outcomes and sustainable success despite these odds. It is an organization where learning and adaptation takes place.

Which responsible company owner wouldn’t want to pursue that path? But what gets you there?

High-performance organization: the basic ingredients

Let me first tell you what will not get you there.

First, you can’t expect to do the same, give it a different name and be successful with that…

A few years ago, the term “Psychological safety” gained popularity.

Google had announced their results of Project Aristotle. In Project Aristotle, Google set out to discover what makes teams effective. Their most striking finding: Psychological safety is essential for high-performing teams. But Google was not the first to make that finding. Tremendous research on this topic has been conducted for over 20 years.

One of these researchers, Amy Edmondson, authored the book “The fearless organization” (affiliate link).

About the author

Amy Edmondson is probably the most important researcher on psychological safety.

She is a professor of leadership at the Harvard Business School. In…

Big words were used to announce the new version of the Scrum Guide. Now it is finally released. In this story, I want to give an overview of the things that I took note of.

A lot has changed in this version.

Well, many changes aim to make it easier to read and understand. But that’s not all. Funny enough, that the new Scrum Guide is a demonstration of well-known Scrum wisdom. Building a potentially releasable Increment doesn’t equal an obligation to release it. But, the new guide says, delivering more often than once a sprint, is entirely valid. …

The world is a mess.

In a perfect world, our customers would tell us what they want. More important: they would describe what they need. In the real world, however, customers do not always know what they want. Let alone that they would know what they need. And coming up with good ideas for what provides value and will be successful is not easy, either. Even the best ideas can fail in that messy world. Many ideas fail. Either they don’t solve the problem, or it takes too long before the solution provides value.

We have been aware of this…

„Its madness“, Peter thinks as he is rushing up the stairs.

He is a bit late, but that’s not what is occupying his mind. His mind is circling around his daily schedule. The upcoming meeting is only one in a bunch. Like breadcrumbs, they are scattered throughout the day. Leaving no doubt: getting things done is not his destiny. „Damn“, he thinks, as his coffee spills over. Before sitting down, he quickly heads into the kitchen to get a towel.

„Let’s give them a couple of minutes“, he hears the runner of the meeting say. Peter chuckles, wondering if he…

„What did I spend so much effort for?“, he pondered in despair.

Last months he spent most of his days working on this one thing. The work defined these months. A vision is what got him started. He had an idea that could make the life of many people easier. And he spent hour after hour to plan out this project, develop it, and prepare its launch. Almost six months had passed since then. Six months. „Wasted“, he thought.

Now, he was looking at the page with page views and registrations. He felt like a fool. All the work for…

We held next to the main road.

Our goal was to reach a small beach which was lesser known to tourists and promised to be less crowded. A friend had recommended it to us, saying that it was a bit hard to reach but worth it.

Now we found ourselves in the middle of nowhere and looked down a bumpy gravel road. The sun was burning and every move made us sweat.

The road would have brought us nearer to the beach and we wondered if we should take the risk. But looking down that road, we could spot some…

“We are doing Scrum, but …”

Some people snort if they overhear a sentence starting like this. They think to themselves: “Oh no! Yet another person who hasn’t understood Scrum and is cherry-picking“. By many, it’s considered an anti-pattern to adopt only some tenets of Scrum. In contrast, people are taking a pragmatic stance. They might say: „It’s all about the results, and if we have to change everything about scrum to achieve that — so be it.“

There are even people who think that the so-called ScrumButs are the best about Scrum.

Who is right?

I tend to the position: everything about…