Leading Change About Eric

Leading Effective Agile Change

Your company is full of leaders who already know your culture, your strategy, your purpose, and how to get things done across the company. What they lack is the agile knowledge required to drive the change... not the book knowledge easily gained through training, but the deep experience of what goes wrong and what to do about it.

I've distilled a career of success, failures, and unexpected surprises into a six-month program focused on helping effective leaders take the next step into owning their group's journey to agility. We'll practice the habits needed to inspire, shape, and lead agile change while also learning to see and avoid the traps and pitfalls that can stop any agile adoption in its tracks.

This can't be theoretical, because there's no substitute for personal experience. That said, we'll work together to make your experiences more valuable, and help you earn years of experience in six months.

Inspired agility requires change agents with the cultural fluency, agile experience, and organizational skills to challenge beliefs and inspire high-impact change.

 

Good thing you're already there!

About the program

You'll join a six-month, cohort-based program designed to help leaders like you lean into your role leading change during agile adoption. You will invest two months each into: developing a personal framing for agility, inspiring & shaping change, and leading & supporting change at scale.

Each two-week iteration invites you to choose, partner, practice, reflect, and learn a personally relevant skill under the active guidance of an experienced transformation leader. During the iteration, I expect you to invest approximately three hours engaging through content, mentoring sessions, and practicing with your partner. I also hope you'll intentionally practice and reflect by applying the new skills as opportunities arise throughout the iteration, allowing you to develop new habits and accelerate your learning.

The program is available for individuals in a diverse public cohort. The program can additionally be arranged as a private enterprise cohort for 10-16 leaders.

Who is it for?

I designed the Leading Effective Agile Change program to exclusively support director-level leaders whose teams are actively engaged in team-of-teams agile adoption. You will join a cohort of individuals who are 1) full time employees of their companies, 2) have people managers reporting to them, and 3) are choosing to lean in to leading the change in their groups. Your colleagues in the program will generally have titles like Director, Sr. Director, Associate VP, or Senior Manager.

The single exception is based on the impact I've seen having the executive leadership of Centers of Excellence collaborating and learning closely with director-level leadership, so I am also accepting Director-level leaders from enterprise agility groups who have overall responsibility for agile adoptions.

More focused on strategy and portfolio design? I encourage executive leaders to consider my Shaping the Agile Organization advisory relationship instead. Please read more or contact me if you're interested.

Consultants and internal coaches are not invited to join this program. However, you may consider the self-directed version (anticipated Q2 2024) or my upcoming Inspired Agile Consulting program (anticipated Q3/4 2024)

Questions? Check out the FAQ or contact me.

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Testimonials

"Eric is a phenomenal coach and mentor. He demonstrates great command over the subject matter while introducing humor and fun to the sessions. He has the social awareness to read his audience and adjusts the content on the fly to meet their needs. As a mentor he has mastered the ability to ask questions and help guide the person to their own answer instead of giving an opinion right away"

Erin Adamaitis - Director IT Management, Agile Transformation Lead

"SAFe Fellow and Principal Contributor Eric Willeke is a true thought leader in his field. Eric has a truly fundamental understanding of the principles behind the various agile and lean methods and has a clear perspective on the difference between methodology and ideology. This frees him to apply his knowledge in most any enterprise or agile intellectual context."

Dean Leffingwell - Cofounder & Chief methodologist, Scaled Agile Inc

"... It is his ability to ask the right questions at the right times that has helped us to think more deeply and clearly about the outcomes and value we are creating. The conversations are often disarming in their frankness and the speed with which he helps us get to the heart of an issue. I would recommend Eric to anyone who wants to accelerate the delivery of value either personally, as a team, or as an organisation."

Nick Sullivan - GM Strategy, Kiwibank

"Eric is one of the most gifted consultants I've ever met, and has one of the clearest views of the qualities that every next-generation leader must *possess*. I recommend Eric without qualification for a small team or a large enterprise."

Gene Kim - Author, Researcher, and Speaker

What's in the box?

Your participation in the program includes:

  • 6 month mentoring program including 1:1 mentoring sessions, cohort-based learning sessions, and group practice review sessions each iteration
  • 13 iterations of change leadership curriculum with a predictable schedule published in advance
  • 40+ contact hours with Eric
  • 4+ hours of video content covering 50+ distinct agile leadership aha moments
  • 1 year content membership: Access to full content library (excluding standalone paid courses)
  • 1 year community membership: Access to community spanning all cohorts
  • Text / WhatsApp / email advisory support throughout the program duration 

The sponsored growth program additionally includes:

  • 4 additional 1:1 professional development plan review sessions
  • 4 pair mentoring and development sessions with you and your sponsoring executive

Program flow & content

Program touchpoints

The majority of the program consists of a repeating two-week cycle with the following activities:

Iteration kick-off call (1 hour): Group discussion of this iteration's curriculum, personal learning goals, and habits to practice.

Individual mentoring (30 minute): Focus time exploring personal goals, deeper dives into content, or company-specific challenges with your mentor. This time is completely yours in service to your needs

Pair mentoring (30 minute): 2:1 call with your cohort accountability partner and your mentor focused on extracting maximum insight from this iteration's practice and habit-building.

Group learning review (1 hour): Group discussion of this iteration's learning, insights, and continuing practice intent. Opportunity to amplify your experience through others' growth and insights.

In addition to the repeating schedule above, the program includes an initial 1:1 session for setting your overall goals for the program, a group kickoff call to meet your cohort and review the overall program flow and expectations, and a wrap-up celebration at the end of the program. After program completion, you are invited to remain in the overall agile change leadership community for another six months

Curious?

Sign up below for updates to this powerful development program, including cohort availability and opportunities to join alpha / beta experiences. 

We won't spam you, and we won't sell or share your data to anybody.