Agile Leadership Training with Michigan Technology Services

Michigan Technology Services offers instructor-led Certified Agile Leadership (CAL) training, as well as other Agile and Scrum courses, through partnerships with a number of Scrum Alliance Certified Scrum Trainers and Agile Leadership Educators.

In a pre-Covid world our training would take place at our location in the Farmington Hills/Novi area, 20 miles outside of Detroit, or at your location anywhere around the world. Our Agile Leadership workshops and Agile coaching sessions are now offered both in-person, and online/virtually, reducing your need to travel.

Pete Behrens, Scott Dunn and Rachel Weston Rowell are our Agile Leadership instructors and guides. Pete guides leaders to transform themselves and their organizations toward Agile ways of working and improved outcomes. Pete is an Agile Leadership Educator. He has been educating Agile leaders since 2011, developed the CAL Program for the Scrum Alliance in 2016 and founded the Agile Leadership Journey Program in 2018. Further, he is a Thought Leader and Certified Enterprise Coach (CEC) through the Scrum Alliance. Pete developed the CEC Program for the Scrum Alliance in 2007. Scott and Rachel are Certified Scrum Trainers (CST) and Agile Leadership Educators.  They have been guiding leadership teams for over twenty years, and are passionate about helping executive teams grow their startup organizations.

Our core group of Agile coaches and trainers live here in metro Detroit and support the local Agile community. We continue to sponsor regional Agile conferences, and have successfully run Agile and Certified Scrum courses for multiple teams in the Great Lakes area, and all over the globe.

About Agile Leadership and Shaping Culture Education

We offer our impactful 2-day Certified Agile Leadership (Shaping Culture) workshops two ways.   First, we offer in-person workshops – at our facility – or onsite at yours.   We also conduct the leadership workshop via two independent online engagements. The first is focused on the leader and the second on the organization. Our leadership training is broken down into 60-90 minute modules that are combined with pre-work and practice.

This workshop follows the learning objectives and meets the credentials for Agile Leadership Journey Aware Leader Credentials and the Scrum Alliance Certified Agile Leadership (CAL 1) Credential.

Agile Leader	Agile Organization	Agile Leader & Org
Developing leadership self-awareness, capacity and situational agility to improve the leader’s impact on organizational health and performance.	Developing organization culture awareness and alignment toward agile ways of working to improve cross-team, department and division effectiveness.	Combine Agile Leader and Organization Workshops to complete the full awareness curriculum. Workshops will be run consecutively.

	OVERVIEW: Agile Leadership Workshop The Agile Leadership Workshop provides education for leaders in understanding how they can shape micro-culture through their own thinking and behaviors to support Agile ways of working and improve business outcomes.
	MODULE 1: Workshop Kickoff & Business Agility Context Complexity, uncertainty and the pace of disruptive change continue to escalate globally. We demonstrate the need for new ways to reduce risk, manage budgets, lead projects, and engage stakeholders.
	MODULE 2: Agile Leadership Introduction Leadership is a choice. Yet most leaders are unaware of the hundreds of choices they make each day, limiting their effectiveness. We show leaders a new path to improve engagement and effectiveness. We will discuss how expert, achiever, and catalyst leadership approaches can be situationally applied at work.
	MODULE 3: Catalyst Leadership Beyond servant leadership, catalyst leaders are more purposeful, creative, balanced and adaptive. We develop proactive and positive agitators of change for themself and others they engage.
	MODULE 4: Catalyst Conversations Leadership is not a solo sport. We teach leaders a catalyst conversation technique to improve every discussion, decision and team meeting with more balance, voice and shared-ownership.
	MODULE 5: Catalyst Feedback Feedback is a core principle of an empirical approach. We help leaders recognize common threats and to create an environment for safe feedback to give and receive feedback more effectively.
	MODULE 6: Catalyst Habits Like health and fitness, leadership requires a disciplined routine to sustain and grow. We teach leaders the importance of, and techniques to, build their new skills into disciplined growth habits.

	OVERVIEW: Agile Organization Workshop The Agile Organization Workshop provides education for leaders in understanding how to shape the macro culture by identifying and modifying structures, policies and measures to align values and drive behavior to support agile ways of working.
	MODULE 1: Program Kickoff & Organization Culture We introduce cohort participants and their guide, build working agreements, and dive into organizational culture and how those values can both inhibit and enable more agile ways of working.
	MODULE 2: Agile Organizations We compare outside-in and inside-out approaches to adopting more agile ways of working across the organization. Explore case studies in how other organizations have shaped their culture through changing structures, policies and measures.
	MODULE 3: Shaping Culture with Structures, Policies and Measures Leveraging the previous two modules as the core learning, we leverage this session to focus on their organizational culture, and the structures, policies and measures that are key to influencing it. Further, they create a direction to shape a desired culture as influenced by experiments to try.
	MODULE 4: Alignment & Co-creating Change Following the discovery of the desired culture to shape, and potential experiments to influence that shape, leaders will explore together on one prioritized change to focus and create an actionable plan using a V2MOM to align them and their stakeholders on that change.
	MODULE 5: Leading Change in an Agile Way Change creates a threat to many within the organization. The challenge is that it impacts each employee differently. Navigating the transition caused by change is a key responsibility of an agile leader. We explore healthy transitions and the leader’s role in creating such an environment.
	MODULE 6: Workshop Closure & Taking it Forward Finally, we don’t leave leaders with only a “that was fun” feeling, we help them identify clear action plans to carry forward in their practice following the workshop. We introduce a 4-meeting protocol for leaders to operate effectively every day, week, quarter and throughout the year.

How We Engage with You

Personal 15-30 Member or Less Cohorts While in-person workshops have up to 30 attendees, we break large online classes into small 15-person or less cohorts to foster safety, engagement and discussion. Each cohort is led by a professional Agile Leadership Journey Guide.The small cohorts create a natural shared accountability engagement, with little reason or desire to disengage from the sessions.Cohort members build relationships and journey together through the workshop schedule.

Flexible Modular Scheduling When our 2-day onsite workshop is offered online we break it down into 6 modules each delivered in 60-90 minute sessions per day with flexible daily schedules. For example, public workshops are run Mondays/Wednesdays/Fridays for 2 weeks and private workshops can be modified to Tuesday/Thursday for 3 weeks, every day for a week, or customized to fit into a corporate schedule.Different cohorts can use different times of day and different weekly schedules.

Powerful Visual Collaboration Platforms We build our online programs on Mural and Open EdX, powerful visual management and online learning platforms to fully engage leaders in the learning process.Through structured module-based visual boards, leaders are provided the structure required for program learning clarity, personal engagement to connect to the learning and the visual connection to others learning in their same cohort.

Khan Academy Style Learning We leverage an industry standard online learning approach using Khan Academy Style learning where participants explore the education through videos and self-discovery and leverage our online engagements for discussion and practice.

Secure Zoom Video Conferencing We use secure Zoom video conferencing and request all participants enable video to further connect to their peers and the guide.

Schedule:

In-person

Pete Behrens teaches our in-person Agile Leadership workshops (ALJ and CAL 1).  Our training takes place at Walsh College in Troy, Michigan.

Our next in-person leadership workshop with Pete is Tuesday and Wednesday, November 12 and 13, 2024.    The regular course fee is $2,250/student, but early enrollment for our in-person training prior to November 5 is $1,995/student.

Pete Behrens also offers an Executive Agile Leadership workshop.

Online

Scott Dunn teaches our online Certified Agile Leadership workshops.

Our next online Certified Agile Leadership workshop (CAL 1) is Thursday and Friday, December 5 and 6, 2024.   The regular course fee is $2,250/student, but early enrollment prior to November 21 is $1,695/student.

Call 248-489-0408 for info on our December online workshop.

The online workshop follows the learning objectives and meets the credentials for Agile Leadership Journey Aware Leader Credentials and the Scrum Alliance Certified Agile Leadership (CAL 1) Credentials.

Want a class before November 2024? The majority of our Agile Leadership workshops are private workshops for groups or companies.  They are available upon request. We have conducted numerous onsite and/or online CAL classes for clients all over the globe. Onsite, these days, pending public health concerns.  We can also customize a workshop for you, and address specific needs with a selection of modules.

Our Agile Leadership educators are also available for coaching and consulting. Contact us for additional details.