Strategy, Organization and Transformation in the Age of AI

00:00:02: Johannes Schartau: Alright, welcome to Transform Today, the HolisticOn Podcast Meetup.

00:00:07: Johannes Schartau: My name is Johannes Schartau and today I will be talking to Patrick Hoverstad. Let me formally introduce Patrick. He's the founder of Fractal Consulting.

00:00:15: Johannes Schartau: The Chair of Systems in Complexity in Organizations and author of several books.

00:00:20: Johannes Schartau: Including patterns of strategy, the grammar of systems, and the fractal organization, which you are all required to read, by the way. Patrick is also one of the few people who are deep system thinkers, but still use normal language that can be understood by fellow human beings. It's very nice to have you, Patrick.

00:00:39: Patrick Hoverstadt: Nice to be here, Johannes. Thanks for inviting me.

00:00:42: Johannes Schartau: I was thinking that I'll just quickly tell people how we met, and that was that I read your book, Patterns of Strategy, and then I thought, this is incredible, for multiple reasons, and one was that

00:00:56: Johannes Schartau: Of course, like, the entire content about strategy is fascinating, but then also you explained Agile in such a profound, succinct way.

00:01:07: Johannes Schartau: And without any terminology from the Agile bubble at that time.

00:01:11: Johannes Schartau: And I was just kind of, like, really fascinated by that, and I reached out and said, I kind of, like, you know, want to learn from you, and that's how we got started.

00:01:19: Johannes Schartau: And for this, like, episode we had a short call, and we're kind of thinking about what could be some potential topics, and then we had to stop.

00:01:30: Johannes Schartau: Because it got interesting so quickly that I thought, okay, we have to kind of…

00:01:35: Johannes Schartau: Do this in front of people.

00:01:37: Johannes Schartau: So I was thinking that we'll just start this conversation, I'll ask you a couple of questions, and then…

00:01:43: Johannes Schartau: We'll see where it goes. Afterwards, by the way, there's some interaction planned, and it's gonna be pretty cool, I think.

00:01:52: Johannes Schartau: Okay, Patrick, you said you're still all about strategy, organization transformation, can you explain why these three and why, like, how do they connect?

00:02:02: Patrick Hoverstadt: Well… I think, well, for me, there's a natural kind of flow.

00:02:09: Patrick Hoverstadt: So there's an obvious flow from strategy to organization, so, you know, you come up with a strategy, and you need… you might need to change the organization, so that gets into the organizational space, and then…

00:02:20: Patrick Hoverstadt: That might involve transformation of the organization, so you have to do that. So that's… that's the kind of obvious flow, but there's a flow the other way, which is…

00:02:30: Patrick Hoverstadt: strategies don't come out of nowhere. They are developed by organizations, and you have to be able to… you know, if you don't design organizations to be

00:02:39: Patrick Hoverstadt: Intelligence, to be smart, to be able to come up with good strategy, they come up with stupid strategies.

00:02:45: Patrick Hoverstadt: So there's a flow that goes the other way, from organization to strategy as well.

00:02:50: Patrick Hoverstadt: And both of them involve doing something different, which is where the transformation comes in. So for me, the three go together quite naturally.

00:02:59: Patrick Hoverstadt: And we actually got into strategy.

00:03:02: Patrick Hoverstadt: I actually got into strategy because, we were doing lots of work, organizational work and transformation work for clients.

00:03:13: Patrick Hoverstadt: And they asked for help with strategy, and we looked at all the strategy approaches that we could see.

00:03:19: Patrick Hoverstadt: And we knew that none of them really worked.

00:03:22: Patrick Hoverstadt: So we had to come up with something different. We had to go back to first principles and look at it systemically and say, well, why does… why does conventional strategy fail?

00:03:30: Patrick Hoverstadt: Like, nearly always.

00:03:33: Patrick Hoverstadt: And when you looked at it from a systems lens, you go, oh, well, that's why, and we came up with a different approach. But it was a demand pull from clients to bring strategy into the mix from just organization and transformation, which is where we started, you know?

00:03:50: Patrick Hoverstadt: So does that sort of answer the question, Johannes?

00:03:56: Johannes Schartau: Absolutely.

00:03:56: Patrick Hoverstadt: Usually, you can't… you can't do one without pulling in one of the others at some point, you know?

00:04:03: Johannes Schartau: Yeah, and I actually fully agree, and I think my background is quite similar, that there was a poll.

00:04:08: Johannes Schartau: And I think I'm working on quite similar topics, but you just mentioned, so I still, I would say that patterns of Strategy is absolutely required reading for all the people listening, but could you just kind.

00:04:19: Patrick Hoverstadt: Well, I would, but I'm biased, you know, so…

00:04:22: Johannes Schartau: No, that's why I'm doing it for you. Good, man. Could you just elaborate a bit when you said, there were reasons why strategy, traditional ways of strategy making didn't work, and from a systemic lens, this was kind of obvious? Could you just explain what that means?

00:04:40: Patrick Hoverstadt: Well, there are lots of… there are lots of things you can look at with traditional strategy and go, oh, well, that's a problem with it. So, yeah.

00:04:47: Patrick Hoverstadt: But the big, big, big, big one for me, is… that…

00:04:55: Patrick Hoverstadt: You know, if you're looking at it systemically, you're looking at anything systemically, what you tend to focus on is relationships.

00:05:02: Patrick Hoverstadt: So you look at things, how they relate, rather than the actual things themselves.

00:05:07: Patrick Hoverstadt: Now, conventional strategy doesn't do that.

00:05:10: Patrick Hoverstadt: So, you are never, ever doing strategy

00:05:15: Patrick Hoverstadt: In a space where there's just you.

00:05:19: Patrick Hoverstadt: You know? Because then it's not strategy, you know?

00:05:22: Patrick Hoverstadt: And none of the conventional approaches to strategy kind of look at this in a relational way, so they don't go…

00:05:29: Patrick Hoverstadt: Right, this is the nature of the relationships between us and the other actors in our environment, and this is where it's…

00:05:38: Patrick Hoverstadt: This is the dynamic of those relationships, and this is…

00:05:41: Patrick Hoverstadt: Why we end up doing the things that we end up doing, which is… which is how you look at it systemically.

00:05:47: Patrick Hoverstadt: So they're… they're all kind of…

00:05:52: Patrick Hoverstadt: just about us. You know, it's about… conventional strategy is all about what we want to do, and assuming that the rest of the world is just going to get out the way and let us do it. Well.

00:06:02: Patrick Hoverstadt: Life's… life's just not like that, you know?

00:06:05: Patrick Hoverstadt: The rest of the… the rest of the strategic world is full of other actors doing their own thing, and they… their strategies collide with our strategies and derail both of those.

00:06:17: Patrick Hoverstadt: Most of the time, so… When you look at it from a…

00:06:22: Patrick Hoverstadt: We need to focus on relationships.

00:06:26: Patrick Hoverstadt: Because that's what the world is made up of.

00:06:29: Patrick Hoverstadt: And conventional strategy doesn't do that. You just kind of go, well, you know, it's obvious it's going to fail.

00:06:35: Patrick Hoverstadt: You know? Because obviously, there are going to be other actors in our strategic space who are gonna do things that get in the way of our strategy and change where we're trying to get to, and…

00:06:45: Patrick Hoverstadt: all that sort of thing. The world is built from these interactions, so to ignore them in

00:06:52: Patrick Hoverstadt: in your strategy making is insane, really. So, I mean, I look at it from a systems lens, and I go, yeah, I'd expect it to work about as often as it does, which is about 10% of the time.

00:07:05: Patrick Hoverstadt: So, yeah.

00:07:06: Johannes Schartau: Sounds fairly accurate, yeah, so what I'm…

00:07:08: Patrick Hoverstadt: Brutal, but, you know, it's how the world is, you know?

00:07:12: Johannes Schartau: Yeah.

00:07:14: Johannes Schartau: I kind of often see organizations just kind of doing these ambitious goals, like you're saying, they're not connected to anything, or they don't take anything into account, or they don't talk about why this might be difficult, or how…

00:07:26: Johannes Schartau: the environment might react. And what I really like is that, because we've actually done some strategy work with you on our company, and what we've done was to kind of map…

00:07:37: Patrick Hoverstadt: It was fun, wasn't it?

00:07:38: Johannes Schartau: It was… I thought, for me personally, it was great, and also, if I can quote one of the participants, that, like, this was like a watershed moment for this person, because he said that, I didn't even know that it would be able… like, we would be able to talk about strategy in such a way in a big group.

00:07:56: Johannes Schartau: And like I said, so I think it's required reading for everybody. Now, one of the topics that we talked about, and I thought it kind of got interesting, was that, when we… when we're talking about strategy, organization, transformation, now we have this big influence

00:08:12: Johannes Schartau: in the form of artificial intelligence. So, where do you see this having an influence?

00:08:19: Johannes Schartau: I'm assuming you… you see some kind of influence, or… let's just speculate on how this is going to evolve at some point in the future. What is your opinion on that?

00:08:31: Patrick Hoverstadt: I think… It's a really, really difficult one, because actually I don't see that much influence

00:08:39: Patrick Hoverstadt: In real terms yet.

00:08:41: Patrick Hoverstadt: Okay?

00:08:42: Patrick Hoverstadt: But I'm… I'm sure there will be.

00:08:45: Patrick Hoverstadt: And I think the best analogy I can give, really, is it's a little bit like at the beginning of the internet.

00:08:54: Patrick Hoverstadt: Where… You know, people tended to look at it from where they were.

00:09:00: Patrick Hoverstadt: You know, and say, oh, how could we use this to do what we do now, but do it… do it a bit better? But actually, what the internet did was make a whole load of things possible that nobody had ever thought of before, you know?

00:09:12: Patrick Hoverstadt: And… you're… I think you're a fool to… to bet on…

00:09:18: Patrick Hoverstadt: on… with any certainty on what the… what… what AI… impact AI is going to have.

00:09:24: Patrick Hoverstadt: Because I… well, I don't think we know, and I don't think we…

00:09:27: Patrick Hoverstadt: should expect to know, and certainly I don't know.

00:09:31: Patrick Hoverstadt: But there are… there are some things you can look at and go, yeah, that looks fairly likely.

00:09:39: Patrick Hoverstadt: So I think on… on… on strategy, I mean, you know, when we finish this, we can do, we can have a play with our AI strategy tool, so we've got a…

00:09:48: Patrick Hoverstadt: an AI version of patterns of Strategy, so it will

00:09:52: Patrick Hoverstadt: If you put in some information about… you can have a think about this now.

00:09:55: Patrick Hoverstadt: If you put in some information about your company, like, just the website.

00:09:59: Patrick Hoverstadt: Or a company you know, it'll… it'll spit out some strategies and how those could be implemented like that, you know?

00:10:07: Patrick Hoverstadt: So, you go from something that would have taken one of the big four consultants

00:10:14: Patrick Hoverstadt: I don't know, 6 months, 9 months, 2 years to develop, and you can do that in minutes.

00:10:20: Patrick Hoverstadt: So… Is that gonna have an impact? Well, at some point it is, you know?

00:10:27: Patrick Hoverstadt: In organization, I think…

00:10:31: Patrick Hoverstadt: I can see that going, sort of, two ways, and this is quite an agile-y thing as well, I think, Yannis, you know.

00:10:37: Patrick Hoverstadt: You can see it speeding up the cadence, you can see it being used in all sorts of ways to make what we do now

00:10:44: Patrick Hoverstadt: Quicker, faster, better, easier to find stuff, you know, all those sorts of things.

00:10:50: Patrick Hoverstadt: But equally.

00:10:52: Patrick Hoverstadt: it could go… it will go as well, the other way, I think. So what you get with AI is… is these… is a series of black boxes, and you have no idea how it's doing what it's doing, quite often.

00:11:05: Patrick Hoverstadt: So, you can imagine people applying it to big IT systems, and you end up with something

00:11:10: Patrick Hoverstadt: You're doneer what it's done, you're doneer how it's done it. If it's wrong, you've got no idea how to fix it, you've just got this…

00:11:19: Patrick Hoverstadt: as we have now, with things like ERP and big systems of record in organizations that were written in COBOL and nobody understands them anymore.

00:11:28: Patrick Hoverstadt: You know, you've got things that, when they break.

00:11:31: Patrick Hoverstadt: You don't… nobody… nobody in the organization knows how to fix them.

00:11:35: Patrick Hoverstadt: You can imagine that on steroids with AI.

00:11:38: Patrick Hoverstadt: So…

00:11:39: Johannes Schartau: what you're saying is we could… we could have the chaos quicker. Is that what you're saying?

00:11:43: Patrick Hoverstadt: Yeah, we could have… we could have,

00:11:46: Patrick Hoverstadt: We can have two sorts of chaos, I think. So one's a kind of an agile chaos, so we can do stuff, good stuff, faster, and that creates chaos. But also.

00:11:56: Patrick Hoverstadt: We can do big, clunky stuff worse.

00:12:00: Patrick Hoverstadt: You know?

00:12:01: Patrick Hoverstadt: And the… between the two, it could be interesting, I think, you know?

00:12:08: Johannes Schartau: Yeah. So, I think the… when we stopped our initial conversation was, so I have this theory that there's, like, a tendency or a possibility for increased autonomy in value-creating units in…

00:12:21: Johannes Schartau: in organizations, and my prediction would be that AI is going to enhance this, so smaller units, often probably smaller teams are going to have more power and more autonomy, and that is going to be one of the big challenges for organizations to kind of balance that and make sure that they don't completely, like, decouple or decouple from…

00:12:41: Johannes Schartau: from the rest organization, you also pointed towards the fact that we might see this

00:12:47: Johannes Schartau: gigantic monolith. So, because, like, in computer architecture, we have a decentralization form of microservices, maybe, and then… but there's still the general monolith. Could you just talk a bit about what… how you envision this? Like, how could the AI-enabled organizational monolith look like?

00:13:05: Patrick Hoverstadt: Well, I mean, really, what… what I was… what I was just saying, Janice, you know, you… you… we have…

00:13:12: Patrick Hoverstadt: you've got this kind of schizophrenia in IT now, and you always have… I mean, you have had for, like, 20 years, we were talking about this 20 years ago, you know, where you've got

00:13:22: Patrick Hoverstadt: you've got whole areas of the industry. I mean, you know, enterprise architecture is one, which is kind of driving towards standardization, and let's put it all in, you know, do…

00:13:35: Patrick Hoverstadt: Vast amounts of work on ontology to try and get things standardized and, you know, all that sort of stuff.

00:13:40: Patrick Hoverstadt: And it's baked into… Huge.

00:13:44: Patrick Hoverstadt: ERP systems.

00:13:46: Patrick Hoverstadt: And at the same time, going on in the same organizations.

00:13:50: Patrick Hoverstadt: You know, everybody's got a server under their desk and running programs that nobody knows about and, you know, just to make the thing work.

00:13:59: Patrick Hoverstadt: So you've got this sort of, two-speed thing, and you always have had this two-speed thing going on. One, the big, slow, centralized thing, and one the…

00:14:09: Patrick Hoverstadt: They, you know, they, they… Individuals or teams doing something completely different.

00:14:15: Patrick Hoverstadt: And that's always… that's always been the case, but it's… I think it could be more so now.

00:14:20: Patrick Hoverstadt: Because as you say, you know, you've got your individuals and your teams powered by AI,

00:14:27: Patrick Hoverstadt: And when you put AI into the…

00:14:30: Patrick Hoverstadt: into the big clunky thing, it's just… I mean, Dennis made a comment in the chat, like, don't connect it to that, but you know people are gonna, you know? So, you end up with something that is even more difficult to navigate and understand, and when it goes wrong, it goes wrong, you know?

00:14:49: Patrick Hoverstadt: I've had… I've had…

00:14:51: Patrick Hoverstadt: 4 bank accounts that I've had to close because the machine broke and nobody knew how to fix it. Now, I can imagine…

00:14:58: Patrick Hoverstadt: And I've had to change banks because of it, you know? I mean, I'm older than you, this shit happens, mate.

00:15:05: Patrick Hoverstadt: Now, I can imagine that happening just more and more, because nobody understands it anymore, you know?

00:15:11: Patrick Hoverstadt: And there were… I mean, I'm sure there'll be corporations that fail because of this stuff.

00:15:16: Patrick Hoverstadt: I'm sure there will be. Because, because, you know.

00:15:19: Patrick Hoverstadt: There'll be stuff that the machine does that nobody understands, and it's wrong, and it's…

00:15:25: Patrick Hoverstadt: And it gets legal.

00:15:27: Patrick Hoverstadt: You know?

00:15:28: Johannes Schartau: That sounds interesting, because everybody's talking about the potential of AI. Some people talk about the dangers, but what you're describing is that we could also kind of take ourselves out of the equation much quicker as an organization.

00:15:40: Patrick Hoverstadt: Yeah. By speeding up these dysfunctions and driving ourselves against the wall.

00:15:45: Patrick Hoverstadt: I think, to be honest, in risk terms, it's more gonna be the case that you are taken out by somebody who's using it well.

00:15:55: Patrick Hoverstadt: you know, then you take yourself out by doing something really, really stupid, but I think both are gonna happen, for sure.

00:16:01: Patrick Hoverstadt: You know.

00:16:02: Patrick Hoverstadt: And there's going to be lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of organizations who do AI stuff that just doesn't work, and they'll crash and burn. Same as there was with the dot-com bubble, you know?

00:16:13: Patrick Hoverstadt: That's… that's kind of inevitable, I think.

00:16:18: Johannes Schartau: Now, if we go back a bit more towards the present,

00:16:23: Johannes Schartau: Do you see anything that we're doing now that is really central to strategy, organization transformation, that you think AI is not going to supplant anytime soon?

00:16:36: Patrick Hoverstadt: I think the… I think the big thing, actually, is… and I… I…

00:16:45: Patrick Hoverstadt: There will be people who argue that AI will be able to do this better than people, but I think the big thing that I see is that

00:16:54: Patrick Hoverstadt: Change is always an emotional process.

00:17:00: Patrick Hoverstadt: And, you know, if you are… if you are in a situation, you know, that has its own…

00:17:06: Patrick Hoverstadt: It has its own rules, and its own logic, and its own emotion, and to move to somewhere different, which is what you're doing when you're doing change, or what you're doing when you're doing strategy.

00:17:16: Patrick Hoverstadt: that's always an emotional journey. It has to be. You don't… you don't make that journey unless your emotions are involved, you know?

00:17:24: Patrick Hoverstadt: And I don't see AI being particularly good at that. I think that's still going to be a human thing.

00:17:30: Patrick Hoverstadt: So, for example, I was, you know, I was talking about our, patterns of Strategy AI tool.

00:17:37: Patrick Hoverstadt: So that will come up with an answer, or 10 answers, or whatever, you know?

00:17:41: Patrick Hoverstadt: But you haven't been through the process. So if you think about when we did that exercise with you guys.

00:17:49: Patrick Hoverstadt: I remember somebody was nearly in tears.

00:17:52: Patrick Hoverstadt: You know, because it was… it was… it was quite an emotional process, and it should be.

00:17:57: Patrick Hoverstadt: You know, you should be doing this with your emotions involved.

00:18:01: Patrick Hoverstadt: Well, if you just give the job to a robot, your emotions aren't involved, so…

00:18:07: Patrick Hoverstadt: What may… what enables you to move from where we are now to a new situation, you know?

00:18:14: Patrick Hoverstadt: And I don't… I don't see AI being able to do that for you.

00:18:19: Patrick Hoverstadt: I may be wrong, but I… I don't see that at the moment. So that's… that's kind of…

00:18:25: Patrick Hoverstadt: that's kind of, for me, the big, big hole, but I don't know, I may be wrong.

00:18:30: Johannes Schartau: You know?

00:18:32: Johannes Schartau: But aren't we all professionals, and rational, and don't we all just keep working?

00:18:38: Patrick Hoverstadt: Let's be honest. I mean.

00:18:41: Johannes Schartau: I mean, I'm paying people to make rational decisions, so I don't fully understand what you're saying.

00:18:48: Patrick Hoverstadt: There is no such thing.

00:18:49: Patrick Hoverstadt: So, so… All decision… physiologically, all decision-making is emotional.

00:18:55: Patrick Hoverstadt: You cannot take a non-emotional decision.

00:18:59: Patrick Hoverstadt: Okay.

00:19:00: Patrick Hoverstadt: And that's just baked into the physiology of how… who we are and what we are.

00:19:07: Patrick Hoverstadt: But there's a good… there's a good systems reason for it, because… Decisions are about the future.

00:19:15: Patrick Hoverstadt: Okay, and if… and if you're doing… taking a strategic decision.

00:19:18: Patrick Hoverstadt: you're taking a decision about creating a new future, okay? Now.

00:19:22: Patrick Hoverstadt: There's data about the past, we can know about the past, we can argue about it, but the past is real. But the future isn't.

00:19:30: Patrick Hoverstadt: And we really don't know.

00:19:32: Patrick Hoverstadt: So… You know, you cannot take a fully rational decision about something that doesn't exist.

00:19:39: Patrick Hoverstadt: You have to do… you know, that's… that's where hopes and fears come into… that's… that's what they're for.

00:19:45: Patrick Hoverstadt: You know?

00:19:47: Patrick Hoverstadt: That's their function, in the world.

00:19:51: Patrick Hoverstadt: is to…

00:19:53: Patrick Hoverstadt: is to help us steer towards better futures rather than worse futures. That's what… that's what fear is for.

00:20:01: Patrick Hoverstadt: You know, it's just… it's to say, don't go that… don't walk into the lion's den, you know.

00:20:06: Patrick Hoverstadt: go over here instead. That… that's its function. And… so, no, it's not… it's not a purely rational thing. Yeah, you should think about it, but it's not… it can never, ever be a purely rational thing.

00:20:19: Patrick Hoverstadt: And that's just… that's just how we're made, you know? You don't change that with robots.

00:20:26: Johannes Schartau: Alright, now I'm super curious, so imagine I'm just, like, the generic… White male executive,

00:20:35: Patrick Hoverstadt: Which you are, obviously, yes.

00:20:37: Johannes Schartau: Obviously, yes.

00:20:38: Patrick Hoverstadt: Obviously.

00:20:38: Johannes Schartau: Of my own little…

00:20:40: Patrick Hoverstadt: Yes.

00:20:41: Johannes Schartau: imaginary, but, so, no, but in all seriousness, how do you…

00:20:47: Johannes Schartau: How do you relay this concept to…

00:20:50: Johannes Schartau: people who might not… I think this might be difficult for some people to accept, that emotions are always part of this, because this is actually what I hear from people, like, hey, keep the emotions out of you, be professional, let's all be rational here. How do you… how do you convey that message?

00:21:08: Patrick Hoverstadt: don't, and I don't have… well, I do on things like this, but I don't in work. I don't have to.

00:21:13: Patrick Hoverstadt: So… If we go through a strategy process together, and you get emotional, you get emotional.

00:21:21: Patrick Hoverstadt: I don't have to convey, you should get emotional, Johannes, I mean, you just are, you know?

00:21:26: Patrick Hoverstadt: And… If we're doing a strategy exercise, you can read it from the body language.

00:21:34: Patrick Hoverstadt: In the room.

00:21:37: Patrick Hoverstadt: You know?

00:21:39: Patrick Hoverstadt: Yeah, I've seen that. It's so obvious. It's so, so obvious. So…

00:21:45: Patrick Hoverstadt: You know, and if people are taking it seriously, they forget that they're supposed to be rational about it.

00:21:52: Patrick Hoverstadt: They just… they just get on and do it, you know? And… and they get…

00:21:55: Patrick Hoverstadt: They got taken up by it.

00:21:57: Patrick Hoverstadt: And that's how it should be. You know, you should be…

00:22:01: Patrick Hoverstadt: If you're trying… if you're doing strategy,

00:22:04: Patrick Hoverstadt: I mean, if we get asked in to do strategy work, it's usually because the organization's in trouble.

00:22:10: Patrick Hoverstadt: Okay?

00:22:12: Patrick Hoverstadt: It's not usually everything's fine and we just need to think about it. I mean, sometimes it is, but mostly it's not.

00:22:18: Patrick Hoverstadt: And… When you… when you map out their situation.

00:22:24: Patrick Hoverstadt: Usually, you can see it in the body language. People just go, oh, shit, that's why… that's why we're concerned, you know? Now, that's a perfectly…

00:22:34: Patrick Hoverstadt: appropriate emotional reaction, and it's that…

00:22:39: Patrick Hoverstadt: It's the threat that the current situation presents to them that drives them into a new, different future. You know, if we carry on down the road we're in.

00:22:50: Patrick Hoverstadt: That's… that's not gonna be pretty.

00:22:53: Patrick Hoverstadt: we need to do something else, okay? That's… that's the emotion, doing its job, that's great, you know? But you don't have to explain that to people, they just… they just do it, you know?

00:23:04: Patrick Hoverstadt: I don't want to explain it, because that's taking them back into the… that's taking them back into the rationalizing about the emotions. Well, no, just… just do the emotions, you know?

00:23:13: Patrick Hoverstadt: Let them do their thing.

00:23:15: Johannes Schartau: Wow. Yeah.

00:23:18: Johannes Schartau: Alright, so we're almost at the end of our podcasting time before we get to your AI, your patterns of strategy, AI, and then the interactive part.

00:23:28: Johannes Schartau: So, last thing, and this is just because I want to have a bit of fun with this, but as you've seen, Agile's dead now.

00:23:35: Johannes Schartau: We've buried it,

00:23:37: Patrick Hoverstadt: You said that, I didn't say that.

00:23:39: Johannes Schartau: I've seen one or two people mention it.

00:23:43: Patrick Hoverstadt: One or two.

00:23:44: Johannes Schartau: So what I really liked about you is that, for you, you've been so proficient at this whole Agile topic, but always just, like, as this, in my opinion.

00:23:54: Johannes Schartau: like, this contained side topic, which always had the attention that it deserved, which was, it's just part of something else. So it's not like the whole focus, but the way you described, for example, in patterns of strategy, you mentioned multiple times that it can be a competitive advantage, but it also has to…

00:24:12: Johannes Schartau: to be… It needs to suit the situation, and so, do you have any…

00:24:20: Johannes Schartau: any opinion on now that Agile is dead and has been buried? So what do you think is next? Do you… can you see the.

00:24:26: Patrick Hoverstadt: I suspect it will rise from the grave.

00:24:32: Patrick Hoverstadt: I mean, like I say, I'm a lot older than you, so I've been through this… I mean, I'm not part of the Agile with a capital A movement, really, you know.

00:24:42: Johannes Schartau: Yeah.

00:24:42: Patrick Hoverstadt: But…

00:24:44: Patrick Hoverstadt: at the… when I first started in consultancy, it's when Lean was first happening, you know? Yeah, Zombie Agile. It's when Lean was first happening, you know? And…

00:24:56: Patrick Hoverstadt: It wasn't called lean. It was called… it was mostly called Deming, or Continuous Improvement, or Kaizen.

00:25:03: Patrick Hoverstadt: And it failed, and it got rebranded, and it got… failed again, and it got rebranded, and it failed again, and it got rebranded, and it failed again, and it got rebranded, and, you know, I think we went through… well, that movement went through 6 or 7 rebrands.

00:25:17: Patrick Hoverstadt: You know?

00:25:18: Patrick Hoverstadt: And it got rebranded because it crashed and burned.

00:25:22: Patrick Hoverstadt: And I suspect that this is just Agile with a capital A, crashing and burning, but the need for it, the need for something.

00:25:30: Patrick Hoverstadt: doesn't go away. And I mean, Agile, you can look at it and go, it's a continuation of that, actually, because many of the ideas in Agile came from that body of thinking.

00:25:42: Patrick Hoverstadt: And the need to be able to move Faster.

00:25:48: Patrick Hoverstadt: Particularly in the IT space, with the advent of AI, of course it's gonna… it's gonna have to come back.

00:25:55: Patrick Hoverstadt: You know? In some shape or form. I hope, I hope.

00:25:59: Patrick Hoverstadt: It won't be as religious as… Agile capital A was before.

00:26:05: Patrick Hoverstadt: You know? Because I saw some really, really, really crazy stuff before, and I remember doing a consultancy job for an aircraft manufacturer, or a consortium.

00:26:15: Patrick Hoverstadt: designing a new aircraft, and they'd been told they had to do it using Scrum.

00:26:19: Johannes Schartau: Oh.

00:26:20: Patrick Hoverstadt: go.

00:26:21: Patrick Hoverstadt: you're joking, you know? Because all the bits of the aircraft have to be able to work together. You can't have one team going off and designing

00:26:30: Patrick Hoverstadt: You know, the tail… you know, the tail plane.

00:26:34: Patrick Hoverstadt: Without actually understanding how it connects to everything else, you know, and evolving that in, you know.

00:26:41: Patrick Hoverstadt: in sort of two weeks, while somebody else is doing something completely different that's working in a different direction. You know, it's an absolute classic of something where

00:26:52: Patrick Hoverstadt: It has to be totally integrated, otherwise it falls out the sky. And they all knew it was crazy, you know?

00:26:59: Patrick Hoverstadt: They all knew it was… it was potentially lethal, but… but they'd been told to do it, so they did it. Now, that's… that's religious thinking about it, so if we get a bit less of that, I think it'd be great, to be honest. But, I mean, I think the problem doesn't go… the problem that Agile was there to solve has not gone away.

00:27:16: Patrick Hoverstadt: So, there will be agile.

00:27:19: Patrick Hoverstadt: zombie agile, resurrected, you know, Return of Agile, the son of Agile, whatever, you know.

00:27:25: Patrick Hoverstadt: however many B-movie, right.

00:27:29: Patrick Hoverstadt: Titles you want on it.

00:27:32: Johannes Schartau: That makes me very happy as the co-author of Zombies from Survival Guide, because, my…

00:27:37: Patrick Hoverstadt: I only said it to cheer you up.

00:27:38: Johannes Schartau: Yes, great news might mean a bit more book sales in the future.

00:27:43: Patrick Hoverstadt: So you can work, you can work on,

00:27:46: Patrick Hoverstadt: What you're going to rebrand it as, and what it's going to look like.

00:27:50: Patrick Hoverstadt: There you go.

00:27:51: Johannes Schartau: Nice.

00:27:52: Patrick Hoverstadt: strategy for you.

00:27:53: Johannes Schartau: There's a host already.

00:27:55: Johannes Schartau: So much value in this podcast already.

00:27:57: Johannes Schartau: I know, I know. It's wasted, isn't it? Alright, I'm going to close the podcast part of this now. I hope this session has given you some concrete ideas for your own transformation challenges.

00:28:08: Johannes Schartau: At Holisticon, we put into practice what we discuss in Transform Together. So we provide companies with holistic support throughout the digital transformation process, from strategy and technology to organizational change.

00:28:20: Johannes Schartau: We make our customers more resilient, establish a future-proof agriculture, create new business models, and inspire people with better services and products. If you're facing similar challenges, or are wondering how you can implement the ideas from this session in your organization, please feel free to contact us. You can find all the information you need at holisticon.de.

00:28:40: Johannes Schartau: And, don't miss our next Transform Together session in two weeks, so September 16th at 4pm.

00:28:47: Johannes Schartau: That's Central European Summertime. Anna Jackson and Fisher Kwa will be our guests, and I'll be asking them to lead us through the latest developments in the Liberating Structures universe. See you then.