unFIX
Foundation Workshop

A Business Agility & Innovation Leader Workshop

Thinking Alternatives. Overcoming Limitations.

With Jurgen Appelo
October 24th – 25th 2022
09:00 – 17:00 CEST
Vienna, Austria

Workshop Language: English

VENUE
Novotel Wien Hauptbahnhof
Canettistraße 6
1100 Vienna

> Link to Venue Website

What comes after Management 3.0, SAFe, and the Spotify Model?

Well, it’s not hard to see in which direction the world is moving: organizations that consist of networked individuals who work from anywhere, who form teams on the fly, who focus on the customer experience (CX), who aim for objectives and achieve results, and make that a whole lotta fun for themselves. Let’s unFIX our organizations!

Learn More about the unFIX Model here >

Reshape the Business. Optimize the Experience. Fix the Transformation.

This workshop introduces you to the unFIX model. The unFIX model is a simple tool that helps you with versatile organization design. Unlike many agile scaling frameworks and self-management methods, unFIX has its focus on continuous innovation and the human experience. It facilitates gradual change, dynamic teams, and an important role to play for managers.

The model is inspired by innovative companies including Haier and Tesla, various agile scaling frameworks, and books such as Team Topologies, Dynamic Reteaming, and Organization Design. 

Dynamic Teaming with Networked Individuals

All organizations need business agility and continuous innovation. But if you work exclusively with dedicated teams that always need to go through forming, storming, and norming stages before they can finally perform, you’re out of luck. That’s neither agile nor innovative. The accelerated pace of change in the world asks for fluid work structures and a switch from dedicated teams to dynamic teams.

In our new connected age, we need networked individuals who can team with each other on the fly and who can fluidly collaborate and form flexible team structures depending on context. With team topologies and dynamic teams, a business is better equipped to become a continuous learning organization. However, this demands a new approach to organizational design, with the unFIX model.

Hybrid Workplaces of the Future

After a year of lockdowns, Covid-19 policies, and many people working from home, organizations call workers back to the office. But not everyone, and not all the time. In hybrid workplaces, most team members are at the office for a limited number of days and hours of the week. Some work only from home. Some only at the office. And many spend their working time at clients, coworking spaces, or coffee bars.

But how should organizations manage that? When should everyone be at the office? How often should team members meet in person? What are the consequences for innovation, diversity, and performance? Can we still meet face-to-face if half the team is working remotely? How do we optimize creativity and productivity with team members spread across the country?

OKRs, KPIs and the North Star Metric

Objectives and Key Results seem to be the new Holy Grail. Many organizations are embracing the new goal-setting framework that was invented at Intel and popularized by Google. At the same time, most organizations are unwilling to let go of traditional Key Performance Indicators. After all, how can you achieve objectives without targets and incentives?

And then there is the North Star Metric: the highly focused approach commonly used by startups and scale-ups to get high-performance, agile teams aligned around a single team-wide metric. And if this technique works for young businesses, then why not the larger ones?

Habit-forming and Gamification at Work

For many years, organizations have wondered how to motivate their workers. Average employee engagement has been low for decades, and no employee engagement program seems to have a lasting effect. That’s because motivation (and willpower) are not enough to achieve organizational change. The science of habit-forming and the research into gamification teaches us how to successfully change our behaviors.

Gamification is all about applying concepts and techniques from good game design. The purpose of games is to give people a great time while doing some activities together. How is that any different from working together as a team? But beware! Gamification comes with a dark side. We need to avoid addiction and unintended consequences.

Audience

Mid-level employees such as functional managers, product managers, coaches, consultants, team leaders, HR team members, change agents.

What Participants Say about this Workshop

unFIX Foundation workshop (A Reflection)

By Cigdem Ozdikmen Sengul

It’s an arduous journey from being a startup to a big scaled-up company. Each stage has a different challenge and needs. Whatever happens in an organisation, as coaches, we are looking with agile/lean lenses.

The biggest question is where we should look with these lenses. Is it just implementing a framework?

This week, I attended an amazing two days #unfix workshop in Munich. We had so many challenging topics and conversations.

The headline is #unFIX. Questioning organisational models and understanding the design patterns.

I asked myself many questions, and I am still thinking over🙂. Please ask yourself these questions, and let’s discuss them together.

  • Do we really know when, in which stage of the business lifecycle, a company needs to scale up? When should we start to prepare our company? Think value creation. Scaled value stream(s)
  • Does the organisational design fit on value streams? Maybe we stuck with a different model. How about silos? Can we see the end-to-end flow from a signal to an experience?
  • What kind of decision mechanism do we have? Are we able to provide equality? What if we have unequal power distribution and a centralized decision-making process? How are we dealing with these all?
  • Have we ever thought about human needs? From curiosity to certainty, we have lots of motivations. When we suggest or use an agile framework, what motivations are we touching on?
  • What type of teams and departments do we have? Maybe some of them offer shared services like legal services or architectural infrastructure. Or perhaps some teams have special skills. Is the organisational structure helping your purpose? Agility is not just a framework.
  • Do we have an environment for alignment without line management? Like, while having end-to-end value stream crews, having a network mechanism for market segments
  • How about parallel management? Trying to work between managers 🙂 Maybe we have a functional manager + a project manager + a regional manager. Ahhh, so many different priorities, confusion, or maybe losing yourself while thinking about which manager we should listen to. How do we deal with all these challenges?
  • Do we really need cadence? How about design thinking, lean startup, or lean thinking? Have we ever thought about real solutions without fixing processes? Think out of the box!!!
  • Do we know the golden ratio for sustaining and disruptive innovations? How do you design your organisation based on maintenance, improvement, new products/services, and reinvention?
  • Have you ever experienced flexible teams? If you have a chance, what kind of structure would you like to design for them? Just think big!
  • Do we know the vision and strategy of the company? I mean in each level of the organisation. Who is responsible for execution?
    Many thanks to Jurgen Appelo for this fantastic workshop and all the open-minded conversations.

Workshop Scope

  • Patterns of the unFIX Model
  • Differences to Agile Scaling Frameworks
  • Case Studies of unFixed Companies
  • unFixing Scenarios for Portfolios, PMO, HR
  • From Product Management to Customer Experience
  • Approached for Dynamic Reteaming
  • The Challenge of Hybrid Workplaces
  • The Blending of OKRs and KPIs
  • Habit-forming and Gamification
  • Continuous Innovation with unFIX

Learning Objectives

  • What is the unFIX Model and How to apply it
  • How to move beyond Agile Scaling Frameworks
  • What are the Key Agile Challenges Post-Covid

Prerequisites

Some familiarity with agile and lean methods and principles in general. Deep experience is not necessary, but we won’t be explaining basic concepts such as value streams, feedback cycles, and continuous improvement. 😉

Pioneers Wanted

In this workshop, we are pioneers exploring important questions. We won’t have all the answers yet. But for sure, we make some crucial steps toward the future of work.

Your Workshop Facilitator

Jurgen Appelo is the Founder & CEO of several startups and brands in the space of organizational and management innovation. After a successful career as CIO, Jurgen began 12 years ago with his publications and famous workshops on Management 3.0, followed by several additional offerings.

He has received the recognition of Entrepreneur of the Year in the Netherlands and was named Europe’s Nr. 1 Leadership Author (see ranking on Inc.com).

Today Jurgen is focused on helping companies prevent and fix failed agile transformations. He created a collaborative environment for self-development: a space to learn and share knowledge, ready to gain experience by practicing and improving vital skills for modern organizations.

 

What about Covid Measures?

Currently no measures apply for event organizers regarding Covid. Therefore – like most events – we count on personal responsibility. No certificates, tests etc. are required at the event.

    Your Ticket Options

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    Want to run this Workshop Inhouse?
    Maybe also want to have Jurgen Appelo running a part of it?
    Then please contact us > and we will get all details organized together with you.