The origins of Lean Agile Intelligence is attributed to a collaboration effort between Agile Uprising board members. What started as an Agile assessment sharing exercise (lots of excel sheets!) quickly escalated into a passionate debate about the use of assessments, or should we say “misuse” in the Agile industry.
We concluded that assessments could be a very powerful change initiative tool given the shortage of coaches in most organizations, the need for feedback from those closest to the work, and the necessity for senior leaders to make data-driven improvement decisions and investments.
However, in traditional environments, the concept of an “assessment” comes with baggage and is often seen as a non-value-added exercise by teams.
The light bulbs went off; this was an opportunity to solve an interesting problem. How do we change the perspective of assessments from an audit to a fun, learning, and feedback exercise so data-driven improvement decisions can be made at all levels of the organization? The rest is history. Lean Agile Intelligence was born six months later, and we have been aspiring to make assessments a fun, learning, and feedback exercise ever since.
Michael S. McCalla is an industry respected Business Agility expert that has executed multiple enterprise-level transformations with Fortune 1000 companies. Michael brings a pragmatic and adaptable approach helping clients establish new ways of working fit for their purpose and aligned to tangible outcomes.
At the core of this approach are employee engagement, feedback loops, and data intelligence. He has found these three elements are essential to sustain transformational change.
Michael has traveled the world, sharing his philosophy and success stories as a conference speaker since 2014. In 2016, Michael created Lean Agile Intelligence, to help organizations translate feedback from multiple levels of the organization to actionable insights, accelerating transformation outcomes.