Originally written in 2023, never published, see Note below. I was sitting in a room with about forty people. A large organisation, several hundred developers across multiple teams, running a Scrum of Scrums-style event to surface their biggest impediments. The usual suspects came up — dependencies, unclear requirements, technical debt. But the issue that kept … Read more
The question isn’t whether you’re changing. It’s whether you’re changing fast enough. The manuscript hit 150,000 words before I stopped counting. Too big. A motivated leader doesn’t have time for a 600-page read. They need something they can finish in a single sitting and apply on Monday. So I cut it. Ruthlessly. Down to around … Read more
What 15 years of ground-level observation reveals about DSO’s real trajectory BOTTOM LINE Published metrics tell one story. Ground-level observation tells another. I’ve watched Bayer’s evolution for over 15 years—close enough to see patterns that analyst reports miss. The signals that predict transformation success or failure aren’t in quarterly earnings. They’re in who stays, who … Read more
Thriving in Turbulence is live on Amazon. Here’s the diagnostic system behind it. Monday morning. Your transformation is three months in. Everyone’s working harder than ever. Standups happen. Retrospectives are religious. You’ve got OKRs, Kanban boards, and detailed roadmaps. Yet delivery is slowing. Dependencies multiply. Your best people look exhausted. Stakeholders escalate to your boss. … Read more
Precedents, patterns, and why scale changes everything BOTTOM LINE The largest Western self-management experiment before Bayer was Zappos. They had 8 years as “best place to work,” 1,500 employees, and voluntary departures. They still quietly retreated from holacracy. Bayer has 60× the scale, a trust deficit, and involuntary layoffs. The precedent doesn’t predict failure—but it … Read more
Why DSO might be the right destination reached by the wrong path BOTTOM LINE Bayer’s Dynamic Shared Ownership isn’t wrong. The diagnostic sequence is. Harvard Business School is already writing the case study. The question they’re examining: “Could fewer bosses truly drive innovation, or was this an unsustainable gamble?” CIRCA-CLEAR suggests a different question: Is … Read more