Impulses for Organisations – Part 15

In the digital world, we repeatedly encounter impressive personalities who provide valuable inspiration for collaboration within and between organisations. In the fifteenth instalment of this series, I would like to focus on some of these inspiring thoughts. This time, the topics include exposing fake ‘agile experts’, the surprising behaviour of well-known brands and a simple warm-up exercise for getting to know each other.

Let’s get started with some fresh and exciting impulses!

Daniel Dubbel¹:

Enough with the nonsense: exposing fake ‘agile experts’

Every day it’s the same thing:

🚫 Everywhere you look, there are:

🔸 Agile Coaches with no knowledge or experience in organisational design
🔸 Scrum Masters who moderate meetings but deliver no measurable added value
🔸 ‘Agile transformers’ who have never accompanied change

I’m just waiting for the next ‘agile prophet’ to descend from the LinkedIn heavens and promise me the holy grail of Agile. 🍹

❗️ Let’s be honest:

With superficial methods such as SAFe templates, meaningless retros or ‘Spotify models’, people show off – and suddenly the most agile transformation of all time is promised. And all this with AI-generated general knowledge and virtually zero real experience! 🤦‍♂️

In my more than 16 years in an agile context, I have learned one thing: real agility is demonstrated through value creation and successful collaboration!

✅ Faster time-to-market
✅ Higher satisfaction through rapid adaptability
✅ Sustainable productivity through smart organisational design

The problem: too many bluffers, too few tangible results. The trick is to weed out the fake experts.

💡 Try the following when seeking advice:

1️⃣ Agility impact check – questions you should ask:

🔹 How do you measure the impact of agile methods on our value creation?
➡️ A real expert will name specific metrics such as time-to-market reduction, productivity gains or increased customer satisfaction.

🔹 Can you give examples where agility has led to measurable business success?
➡️ Look for in-depth information with a demonstrable impact on revenue or costs.

🔹 How do you integrate feedback into the development process to maximise value?
➡️ Good consultants rely on iterative processes with direct feedback.

🔹 What strategies do you use to ensure that agile transformations are sustainable?
➡️ Cultural change instead of superficial process cosmetics!

🔹 What do you do when agility does not deliver the expected added value?
➡️ True professionals recognise when agility is appropriate – and when it is not.

2️⃣ Organisational know-how & leadership:

🔸 How do you embed agility in the corporate culture in the long term?
🔸 How do you ensure that managers also live agility themselves?
🔸 What change management strategies do you use to deal with resistance?
🔸 What do you do when teams understand agility as merely the blind application of familiar methods?

Conclusion: Real expertise means sustainable value enhancement, not just knowledge of frameworks and throwing around buzzwords.

⛔ Don’t be fooled by empty promises!

Some hold endless agile workshops, others deliver real, tangible results. 📈

Felix Beilharz²:

The most convenient excuse for not trying anything new

This is one of the most popular responses when entrepreneurs/managers/marketers (m/f/d) see examples of successful social media posts or ads:

‘That doesn’t fit our brand.’

And that’s that.

And even as a consultant, you can make yourself popular in professional circles with the statement ‘It has to fit the brand.’ Everyone nods in agreement and everything is fine.

And of course, no one wants to destroy their brand.

But many successful social media cases are so successful precisely because you would NOT expect it from the brand!

Want some examples?

✅ The Saxony police force posts bizarre jokes and sketches on TikTok that generate millions of views and make the police seem likeable and an interesting employer. But does that fit the ‘police (authority)’ brand?

✅ In the long-running best-case scenario at ZIEHL-ABEGG SE, employees prank their ‘boss’ Rainer Grill, dancing and fooling around. Is that appropriate for a 100+ year-old family-owned industrial company from the Swabian province?

✅ Deutsche Bahn posts memes and very trashy content that no one outside the TikTok bubble understands. Is that appropriate for a state-owned company that provides critical infrastructure?

✅ Gerolsteiner Brunnen gets thousands of likes for its cheeky comments on TikTok. Brand?

✅ Could Heinrich Deichmann ever have imagined that his reputable shoe retailer brand would one day be involved in wild brand beefs with railway companies or TV stations?

✅ Carrera is cleaning up on Threads with super funny, ironic posts, just like Dr. Oetker used to do on Twitter. Not something you would necessarily expect from a toy or food brand.

What they all have in common is that they have embraced new things, left familiar paths and, above all, adapted to the realities of social networks instead of rigidly sticking to their previous approaches.

Yes, do what fits your brand. But don’t use this mantra as an excuse. Otherwise, you might miss out on some really big opportunities.

Svenja Noä³:

High Five

The quick and easy ‘High Five’ warm-up exercise is ideal for groups who already know each other in a work context but have not yet established much of a connection beyond work-related topics. I like to do it on the first day of a workshop after the lunch break.

Effect: Gets the group moving, reveals surprising similarities, creates a positive atmosphere

Duration: 5-10 minutes
Suitable for 10-20 people

How it works:

Everyone stands in a circle with the facilitator outside the circle.

🙌 I say something like: “I’m going to read out questions that start with “who”. For example: ‘Who likes yoghurt ice cream? Whenever that applies to you, step into the middle and give yourself a high five. Let’s try it. Who likes yoghurt ice cream?” (A large part of the group steps into the middle and claps.)

🙌 Then I read out a list of about 10 questions, e.g.

– Who has ever cooked for more than 20 people?
– Who speaks more than 3 languages fluently?
– Who has more than one pet?
– Who has ever jumped out of a plane?
– Who has had more than 2 cups of coffee today?
– Who has lived in more than 2 countries?
– Who has a forklift licence?
– Who grew up bilingual?

🙌 If you have enough time, you can briefly (!) ask the people in the middle: ‘What languages do you speak?’, ‘How many pets do you have?’, etc.

🙌 I like to end the warm-up with a question that refers to the workshop or the topics. This can also be a bit rhetorical, e.g. ‘Who is awake enough to continue with our topics?’

In principle, I try to keep the questions positive and away from the focus of the work. However, if you want to include a reference to the project, you should check whether the questions you have chosen, combined with the group dynamics, could potentially have a manipulative character. It is better to be too cautious than too careless.

Impulses and questions

Three topics, three experts, three impulses. How do you anchor agility in your corporate culture in the long term and how do you measure the impact of agile methods on value creation? How do you manage the balancing act between targeted brand communication and the competition for attention? And how do you motivate participants in meetings and workshops to achieve better results?

Questions upon questions. Perhaps you have some too; great! Then part 15 of ‘Impulses for Organisations’ has once again achieved its goal.

Notes:

[1] Daniel Dubell is Agility Master and IT Executive at DB Systel GmbH, Deutsche Bahn’s digitalisation pioneer. He combines leadership experience with a deep understanding of organisation and collaboration to bring about effective, sustainable change in leadership, structure and culture. You can find more information about Daniel Dubbel on his LinkedIn profile, and the original post can be found on LinkedIn.

Daniel Dubbel has also published an article on the t2informatik Blog: Stop your agile transformation.

[2] Felix Beilharz is one of the leading experts in online and social media marketing and a well-known marketing influencer in German-speaking countries. You can find information about Felix Beilharz on his LinkedIn profile, and the original post can be found here on LinkedIn.

If you like the article or would like to discuss it, please feel free to share it in your network. And if you have any comments, please do not hesitate to send us a message.

Here you will find a selection of further ideas in the t2informatik Blog: