Learn How to Think, Not How to Follow

Traditional Agile training front-loads information, imposes prescriptive practices and/or structures, and assumes teams can translate abstract frameworks into their context — an assumption disproven daily. These approaches rely on big change resets, overwhelm people with ceremonies and vocabulary, and leave the hard diagnostic work to those with the least leverage to change the system.

The Amplio Leadership Capability Program takes the opposite stance. It provides a foundation that enables it to be applied anywhere. By also providing tailorable practices, you are not stuck with practices or structures that may not work for you.

• No frameworks. No rituals. No certification theater.
• Starts with the minimum viable set of concepts leaders need to diagnose and evolve their value stream.
• Continues for a year providing new information and coaching as it is needed.
• Small steps, deeper understanding, and system-level leverage.

Instead of training hundreds of people to follow rules, Amplio trains a handful of leaders to think — and equips them to improve the system itself. They are provided the materials they learn from to use license free. This enables them setting up centers of excellence.

Meaningful organizational impact in weeks not months

The question is not how does this program deliver true improvement so quickly, it is understanding why other programs are so slow.

Frameworks don’t perform a diagnostic before mandating a combination of roles, events, artifacts, rules, and structures. Most of these will not fit you well. Not to mention that they use antiquated practices because certification makes it difficult to innovate.

While it’s easy to get seduced by the quick start, the lack of understanding and appropriate practices catch up to you quickly.

By being based on the physics of flow, your organization can take established practices and tailor them to your needs.

In most organizations, removing two or three core constraints produces dramatically large gains.

“A system has only a few leverage points; improving them improves everything.”

When you don’t have a clear underlying theory your progress is very slow. When you combine a clear underlying theory with proven practices, you avoid the waste of an approach that doesn’t fit and the effort of having to reinvent the wheel.

The criteria for the cohort.

(1) Genuine willingness to think

(not compliance, not “just tell me what to do”)

Every organization has these when given a chance.

(2) Enough positional leverage to make local changes

This is not necessarily authority. Amplio integrates how to coach and influence others.

If the cohort has desire but not leverage → they grind.

If they have leverage but not desire → nothing happens.

Pick correctly, and this is a high-probability path.

The cost of the program and the materials you get

The program costs $28,800 for consulting fees and education fees for 4 people.  Additional people are only $1200 per person. Participants get:

• All participants are enrolled in the Amplio Learning Journey for 12 months.
• All of the PowerPoints used in the program. While still under copyright, your agents can use these, change them, and add to them for internal use in your organization.
• All of the Lucid boards used. Copies are provided that you own.
• Access to all of the Amplio Learning Journeys. This enables them to go deeper into many different subjects.

Program structure

• One-year in length. First quarter provides the basis. Each quarter goes deeper. Results within 6-12 weeks.
  
• 2-4 Hours/Week. Two one-hour sessions focused on practical Amplio concepts. More time to learn more concepts can be used watching other sessions.
• Cohort-Based Learning. Shared language, shared mental models, shared learning.

A note from Al Shalloway if you’re considering moving forward with a big transformation effort

Over my twenty plus years of experience of helping organizations with Agile transformations, I have met several who understood change was necessary, but who couldn’t quite pull the trigger. 

These were not laggards, but were usually those who lacked the budget to proceed or were concerned about the disruptive effective of massive change over a short period. 

Even if you have the budget and clear direction from the top, large transformations’ disruption can often work against you. And these ideal conditions often don’t exist.

I have found that organizations having trouble “pulling the trigger” are not lagards, but are concerned about real issues:

• budget
• overloading people
• resistance that will arise
• questioning if the right path forward is being suggested.

The Amplio Leadership Capability Program is an alternative that can accomplish what large transformation can’t – real change over time. This program isn’t a transformation; it’s about creating a cohort to lead your organization at the pace it needs to be led.

No big reset. No disruption. No certification costs. No dependency on consultants.

You get progress, not upheaval.

You get capability, not compliance.

You get a leadership cell that can keep improving long after the program ends.

If budget prevented a big change, this is the smartest, safest, and most leveraged investment you can make.

A small cross-functional leadership cohort is the only unit that can actually change a system

The roles of Portfolio manager, Product manager, Value stream manager, Team lead provide:

1. span strategy → demand → flow → delivery,
2. control the constraints that actually cause dysfunction,
3. influence both the work and the environment the work happens in.

This represents the minimal viable “change vector.”

Anything below that level (teams) is powerless.

Anything above (executives) lacks operational traction.

Anything bigger is diffusion.

Amplio’s Learning Journey Format Is a Key To Being Effective

You don’t really know how to do anything until you can try it out in your workplace, take it to the limits of what you know, get some mentoring, and try it again. This learning cycle is what the Amplio Learning Journeys are created around. 

Each week there are two 1 hour sessions which provide new content. There are also three one-hour Q&A sessions available.

• Short sessions enables higher retention as well as trying out in your workplace what you’ve learned in the learning journey.
• All sessions are recorded.
• It has an integrated coaching workshop so that you can convey what you’ve learned to others
• It provides several collaboration boards to help you learn and to use in your workplace.
• You can use the PowerPoint slides while in the workshop license free. After you leave you are given PDFs of them to use license free.
• It has consultative sessions on demand for group consulting.
• Sessions are based on ensemble learning. Although Al Shalloway leads the sessions we run the sessions based on good ideas, not authority.

Vision of Success Engineering

It’s simple. Have education be an order of magnitude more effective while being an order of magnitude less expensive. It is known how to be effective in creating value for stakeholders. The challenge is few people know how. The reason for this is the way most training is done and the cost of the training being so excessive.

Al Shalloway, Success Engineering’s CEO, has been a thought leader in several Agile schools, including object-oriented design, design patterns, eXtreme Programming, Scrum, Lean, Kanban, SAFe, Disciplined Agile, value stream analysis, and lean management.

He believes that the biggest challenge in improving businesses is that, although it is now well known how to do this, education costs have become so high that few people have learned how to be effective.

Amplio integrates Flow, Lean, the Theory of Constraints, and Human-Centered Development. While few parts of it are unique, no other approach integrates such a broad spectrum of knowledge.

This enables Amplio to work effectively anywhere.

Amplio is designed to allow people to take programs that make sense to them. Over time, training allows participants to learn and apply what they’ve learned in their workplace. This learning by doing is essential to becoming effective.

By using modern training techniques and technology, Amplio’s learning journeys enable much deeper learning at a fraction of the cost of short training sessions, during which people cannot try out what they’ve learned.

How the Sessions Are Run

The intention of every session is to be as interactive as possible.

Everyone is free to talk in all these sessions. The only topics not allowed are those that are political in nature. Although the sessions are led by Al Shalloway, he is not considered an authority in the discussions. No one is. In fact, the request is to challenge anything he says. The model is that we’re looking for what’s most useful. When an issue is not totally resolved by the person with the question, or the challenge feels they’ve discussed it enough we take a “Keep Qualm and Carry On Attitude.” The learner can bring the question up again at any time in the future.

A Special Note About those New to the Amplio

It is natural for those new to a learning journey to feel a little intimidated to engage. They often feel like they are latecomers (true) and that their engagement at this time would slow everyone down (not true). Asking questions, even at a basic level, is almost always useful. It provides review as well as creating an opportunity to see how the questions are answered. If it is a question that would derail the session, trust the leader of the session to say it’ll be discussed later, or off-line.

Special Consulting Sessions

In addition to these sessions learners may request a special consulting session. This is when a learner presents a problem the want help in. They present their situation and the session is then open for conversation about how to help them.

How Different Personas Use these Offerings

It is the responsibility of the learners to manage how they participate. The blend of recordings and live sessions gets the best of both worlds – both for scheduling reasons and for learning styles. Some prefer to just watch recordings of interest and engage with questions when needed. Others attend virtually every session. If a topic seems too advanced learners should ask the instructor to provide background reading or videos. If a learner can’t find a recording for a session of interest they should ask the instructor if one has been done and where it is.

If you’re considering enrolling in a learning journey but are waiting because you don’t have the time, be clear they are designed for you.

I understand an Amplio Learning Journey can appear daunting.

Each week we have two 1-2 hours of live, interactive sessions presenting Amplio’s approach or taking questions.  In addition, participants can pull on literally hundreds of hours of past sessions (all are recorded and available). Not to mention a dozen or so Lucid (collaboration) boards are given to people, and while the program, license-free use of hundreds of PowerPoints.

Amplio covers a foundation of Flow, Lean, The Theory of Constraints, Human-Centered Development and automatic interpretive reframing (how people listen, filter, transpose, react, and resist what’s said to them). It goes from individual roles to the team, to the organization. It provides cutting edge disciplines such as the Jobs To Be Done Framework and a diagnostic to see what teams and organizations need. It even includes a coaching track based on the Toyota Kata approach.

I understand that it appears daunting.

I’m not trying to convince you it’s otherwise.

But consider this. When a buffet adds a greater variety of food to its options (without raising the price), is that daunting?

Maybe, if you like to be told what to eat.

The idea of Amplio’s learning journeys are to:

• Provide you with what you need to learn to be effective
• Provide you with support materials (PowerPoints, collaboration boards)
• Enable you to try out what you’ve learned where you are
• Enable you to learn at your own pace.

Some people do attend all of the sessions. Most don’t. Some don’t attend any and use the recordings.

Everyone works at a pace that works for them.

Success Engineering’s fees are less than 10% of what live training typically costs (see diagram).

We do this for several reasons.

First, most of the troubles we see people have in their work are due to them not knowing concepts and practices that have been well-established as effective and critical. Low cost is needed to make this knowledge widespread. But adjusting the pace of learning is also needed.

Even if you only took advantage of 20% of what Amplio has to offer, it’s still 75% less expensive than the average cost of live training.

We have focused on creating a delivery and support system that drives the cost of delivery down. And, interestingly, drives up the quality at the same time. I call it over-time, remote, ensemble learning.

The real decision is if you are committed to working with a thought leader in many of the popular frameworks that people are having trouble with. At a pace and cost you can afford.