Mastering Agility

The leading authority on agile marketing shows how to build marketing operations that can pivot freely and yet remain committed to priorities. As a marketer, are you tired of chasing marketing fads and algorithm rumors that seem to change every couple of months? This guide to building the perfect marketing department will help you achieve the latest and greatest without having to rebuild your operations from scratch every time the wind shifts. Agile strategies have been the accepted modus operandi for software development for two decades, and marketing is poised to follow in its footsteps. As the audiences we market to become ever more digital, agile frameworks are emerging as the best and only way to manage marketing. This book is a signpost showing the way toward the agile future of marketing operations, explaining how every role, from social media intern up to chief marketing officer, can work in unison, responding to the market's demanding challenges without losing focus on the big picture. You will learn what it takes for marketing agility to thrive—customer focus, transparency, continuous improvement, adaptability, trust, bias for action, and courage—along with the antipatterns that can drag you down. Most important, you will learn how to implement the systems, strategies, and practices that will truly transform your marketing operations.

Batten down the hatches; great change is upon us! Excitement and uncertainty, in larger and more frequent doses, will define business and change management from here on out. To successfully navigate these uncertain waters, you and your crew will need to both understand business agility and practice to master its use to survive and thrive in these mounting seas of change. Colossal mega trends combined with a perfect storm of precarious economic, geopolitical and societal circumstances will make the choppy economic seas of the past look calm in comparison. No business will be safe using tools, methods and management styles developed for yesterday's business as usual. The pace of change will be frantic and to cope will require a flexible, more agile state of mind, plus powerful tools to help you remain focused upon what is coming instead of measuring and anal-eyes-ing what has already occurred. Get Agile Now! Here is a book packed with simple, practical tools to prepare you and your crew for the ride of your life! Whether you are running a small or medium enterprise, or grappling with the demands of a super large, multinational concern, being agile in thought, action and result is now a necessity.It is no longer only about making good decisions; it is about mastering powerful tools to implement changes effectively. It's about executing change with decisive and engaging leadership skills; to powerfully communicate with everyone involved to get them on board to quickly create measurable results. Praise for "Mastering Agility" "The message is clear: listen to what's going on with all your senses. Get your business associates and partners to do the same. Pay attention. Get agile...." Bob Waterman, Co-Author; In Search of Excellence, Author; The Renewal Factor, Adhocracy - the Power to Change, What America Does Right "Hans Amell has written a really important book. For a couple of decades now we have seen a lot of volatility. This is unlikely to change in the foreseeable future. This book provides the reader with a sound intellectual framework for how to cope in different volatile situations using agility as a headline for different activities. It also gives a number of more practical advice coming from the vast experience of the author's long life in the corporate sector. It is a book I really recommend for anyone entrusted with leading companies in the next volatile decade...." Leif Johansson; Chairman Ericsson & AstraZeneca "Mastering Agility offers a timely look at some of the global political, economic, technological and social forces rocking today's corporate world and offers plenty of well-crafted advice for not only staying afloat, but sailing ahead. It is a must read for business leaders who want to navigate the sea of changes taking place..." Dr. John W. Graham, Ph.D, Professor of Economics, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey "Terrific opportunities! This book charts a clear course for your C-suite to consider for quickly and easily leading the business through the 'perfect storms' of uncertainty.... " Hans Levenbach, President Delphus Inc. MS, MA, PhD, Co-Author; Forecasting, Practice and Process for Demand Management "Hans is the very definition of intellectual, emotional and physical agility. His vision and belief in Platinum Equity when we were just starting out made an indelible impact, and over the past two decades I have seen firsthand his power to think creatively, act decisively and inspire others to succeed..." Tom Gores, Founder & Chairman/CEO, Platinum Equity Group

The leading authority on agile marketing shows how to build marketing operations that can pivot freely and yet remain committed to priorities. As a marketer, are you tired of chasing marketing fads and algorithm rumors that seem to change every couple of months? This guide to building the perfect marketing department will help you achieve the latest and greatest without having to rebuild your operations from scratch every time the wind shifts. Agile strategies have been the accepted modus operandi for software development for two decades, and marketing is poised to follow in its footsteps. As the audiences we market to become ever more digital, agile frameworks are emerging as the best and only way to manage marketing. This book is a signpost showing the way toward the agile future of marketing operations, explaining how every role, from social media intern up to chief marketing officer, can work in unison, responding to the market's demanding challenges without losing focus on the big picture. You will learn what it takes for marketing agility to thrive--customer focus, transparency, continuous improvement, adaptability, trust, bias for action, and courage--along with the antipatterns that can drag you down. Most important, you will learn how to implement the systems, strategies, and practices that will truly transform your marketing operations.

Your team will change whether you like it or not. People will come and go. Your company might double in size or even be acquired. In this practical book, author Heidi Helfand shares techniques for reteaming effectively. Engineering leaders will learn how to catalyze team change to reduce the risk of attrition, learning and career stagnation, and the development of knowledge silos. Based on research into well-known software companies, the patterns in this book help CTOs and team managers effectively integrate new hires into an existing team, manage a team that has lost members, or deal with unexpected change. You’ll learn how to isolate teams for focused innovation, rotate team members for knowledge sharing, break through organizational apathy, and more. You’ll explore: Real-world examples that demonstrate why and how organizations reteam Five reteaming patterns: One by One, Grow and Split, Isolation, Merging, and Switching Tactics to help you master dynamic reteaming in your company Stories that demonstrate problems caused by reteaming anti-patterns

Leadership Agility is the master competency needed for sustained success in today’s complex, fast-paced business environment. Richly illustrated with stories based on original research and decades of work with clients, this groundbreaking book identifies five levels that leaders move through in developing their agility. Significantly, only 10% have mastered the level of agility needed for consistent effectiveness in our turbulent era of global competition. Written in an engaging, down-to-earth style, this book not only provides a map that guides readers in identifying their current level of agility. It also provides practical advice and concrete examples that show managers and leadership development professionals how they can bring greater agility to the initiatives they take every day.

How to prepare your business to respond quickly and effectively to the turbulence caused by politics, climate change, pandemics, and economic uncertainty. Future success depends upon the ability to adapt to colossal, rapid changes that lie ahead. Public and private organizational life is changing dramatically. We do not have the luxury of time anymore. Product cycles are shorter and job security is uncertain. Everything is moving faster, and we are experiencing an exponential growth of new technologies and systems pouring into our society. There is uncertainty in the geopolitical arena, and with climate change. There are pandemics, conflicts, and fiscal volatility stress. These challenges make it imperative to become responsive and practice agility in business. Radical Agility provides insight into key factors necessary for agility and the different ways to make your organization more adaptive. It also provides a compendium of tools that will help you implement agile practices into the processes, systems, organizational structure, and business culture in your industry in order to overcome inhibitors of agility—and long-term business success. “A practical, pragmatic guide for leaders who understand the need for real, lasting agility but struggle to make it their reality.” —Andrea Fryrear, President and Co-founder, AgileSherpas “A timely book that provides context and actionable patterns for this new ‘organizational sensing’ that brings true business agility.” —Matthew Skelton, Director at Conflux and coauthor of Team Topologies “This book provides the vision, and more importantly the advice, to help get you and then keep you on the path to business agility.” —Scott Ambler, VP & Chief Scientist for Disciplined Agile, Project Management Institute

#1 Wall Street Journal Best Seller USA Today Best Seller Amazon Best Book of the Year TED Talk sensation - over 3 million views! The counterintuitive approach to achieving your true potential, heralded by the Harvard Business Review as a groundbreaking idea of the year. The path to personal and professional fulfillment is rarely straight. Ask anyone who has achieved his or her biggest goals or whose relationships thrive and you’ll hear stories of many unexpected detours along the way. What separates those who master these challenges and those who get derailed? The answer is agility—emotional agility. Emotional agility is a revolutionary, science-based approach that allows us to navigate life’s twists and turns with self-acceptance, clear-sightedness, and an open mind. Renowned psychologist Susan David developed this concept after studying emotions, happiness, and achievement for more than twenty years. She found that no matter how intelligent or creative people are, or what type of personality they have, it is how they navigate their inner world—their thoughts, feelings, and self-talk—that ultimately determines how successful they will become. The way we respond to these internal experiences drives our actions, careers, relationships, happiness, health—everything that matters in our lives. As humans, we are all prone to common hooks—things like self-doubt, shame, sadness, fear, or anger—that can too easily steer us in the wrong direction. Emotionally agile people are not immune to stresses and setbacks. The key difference is that they know how to adapt, aligning their actions with their values and making small but powerful changes that lead to a lifetime of growth. Emotional agility is not about ignoring difficult emotions and thoughts; it’s about holding them loosely, facing them courageously and compassionately, and then moving past them to bring the best of yourself forward. Drawing on her deep research, decades of international consulting, and her own experience overcoming adversity after losing her father at a young age, David shows how anyone can thrive in an uncertain world by becoming more emotionally agile. To guide us, she shares four key concepts that allow us to acknowledge uncomfortable experiences while simultaneously detaching from them, thereby allowing us to embrace our core values and adjust our actions so they can move us where we truly want to go. Written with authority, wit, and empathy, Emotional Agility serves as a road map for real behavioral change—a new way of acting that will help you reach your full potential, whoever you are and whatever you face.

This concise book provides a survival toolkit for efficient, large-scale software development. Discussing a multi-contextual research framework that aims to harness human-related factors in order to improve flexibility, it includes a carefully selected blend of models, methods, practices, and case studies. To investigate mission-critical communication aspects in system engineering, it also examines diverse, i.e. cross-cultural and multinational, environments. This book helps students better organize their knowledge bases, and presents conceptual frameworks, handy practices and case-based examples of agile development in diverse environments. Together with the authors’ previous books, "Crisis Management for Software Development and Knowledge Transfer" (2016) and "Managing Software Crisis: A Smart Way to Enterprise Agility" (2018), it constitutes a comprehensive reference resource adds value to this book.