The joys of agile water-scrum-fall!

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Powerful stories. Practical learning. Useful, long-term connections!

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(14) The rise and rise of a scientific mindset This is the 14th blog post in the Organising for Outcomes series. It is helpful to understand where we’ve come from, how today’s ways of working have evolved, and the context that those ways of…

As is the case with each Industrial Revolution, it was engineers who were at the forefront of innovating new ways of working. 

Read here: www.soonersaferhappier.com/post/14-the-...

Enjoy and please share your thoughts!

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The Scientific Revolution taught us to think like engineers of certainty.
Today, we need to learn to think like gardeners, nurturing emergence.

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The main source of failure is our failed attempts to avoid failure.

Fearing intelligent failure is fearing learning.
Fearing intelligent failure leads to unintelligent failure.
Intelligent failure IS learning.
We need to learn quickly, cheaply, uniquely and safely.

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Looking forward to the next one and to the SSH Conference on 9th September in London!

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The Force is strong with this one.

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Sooner Safer Happier LIVE 2026: Call for Speakers Share Your Story. Help Leaders Improve How Work Gets Done.Across organisations everywhere, leaders are rethinking how work happens — not just what get...

Our goal for the day: maximise learnings per minute!

📅 9th September
📍 Central London

If you’re making progress worth sharing, we’d love to hear from you.

Submit your talk here: sessionize.com/ssh-live-2026/

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(13) From Systematic Management to Scientific Management This is the 13th blog post in the Organising for Outcomes series. It is helpful to understand where we’ve come from, how today’s ways of working have evolved, and the context that those ways of…

Enjoy and please share your thoughts!
Read the post here: www.soonersaferhappier.com/post/13-from...

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But, we are still primarily focused on the former, partying like it's 1885.

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It was also a pleasure to hear from Matthew Syed on growth mindset and Antonio Weiss on demystifying AI.

Thanks to Stuart Haire, Roberto Canenti, Jenny Wood, Sarah Barnett and Isla Sutcliffe for the invitation, hosting and organising a great event!

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And, lots of learning for the Aston Martin team to do, along with Honda!

The goal is to be the fastest learning and adapting organisation.

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Not <insert thing here> for the sake of <insert thing here>. Why should I leave my comfort zone? Why should I feel uncomfortable and fail in order to improve? What are my incentives and threats?

The Why should appeal to self, colleagues, organisation, customer and citizens.

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Come on your own or host a table for your organisation and include a few individuals you're seeking to influence.

Powerful stories. Practical learning. Useful, long-term connections!

Tickets available now!

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Pattern: Dedicated data focus on ‘How’ measures

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The solution to all of our Psychological Safety problems!

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(13) From Systematic Management to Scientific Management This is the 13th blog post in the Organising for Outcomes series. It is helpful to understand where we’ve come from, how today’s ways of working have evolved, and the context that those ways of…

Read the blog here: www.soonersaferhappier.com/post/13-from...
Enjoy and please share your thoughts!

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▶️ Bring internal audit and any external regulators or auditors with you on the journey
▶️ Speed AND Control

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Expected Opportunity Loss = cost of being wrong x probability of being wrong
Big batch, late learning: high cost and high probability.
Small slices, quick learning: low cost and low probability.

Crack on!

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AI does not transform your organisation. You do.

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When everything is a priority, nothing is a priority.

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Link-Belt became a model organisation with Taylor directing numerous visitors to tour the factory.

Source: "Frederick W Taylor: Father of Scientific Management" vol II, Copley, 1923.

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AI antipattern: sprinkling AI on top of existing processes like parmesan on a tower pasta

youtu.be/11s7tqG9vuo?...

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We need to optimise for unknowability, for outcome hypotheses, experimentation and learning, if we want to optimise for outcomes.

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There is no priority to improve 'how we do, what we do' because we're too busy (read incentivised, prioritised) to just do the doing.

It's simple: it's not about <insert shiny object name here>. It's about creating incentive and priority to go slower to go faster.

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Every road leads in the right direction if you don't know where you're going.

Producing the wrong thing faster makes you wronger.

Outcomes > output.

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If you don't fail, you're not learning.

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🎯 working as a multidisciplinary team with shared incentives (high collaboration)

Improving ways of working, if done well, can be as exciting as curling!

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I.e. learn by doing. However, this only works if there is a generative, not pathological, culture.
If there is fear, order-giving and order-taking, there will be no change.

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"We want to hear the whispers before they turn into screams".

Psychological safety isn’t a nice-to-have; it’s what makes high performance possible.

Without it, people survive. With it, people thrive.

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