How Change-Ready Organizations Turn Strategy Into Action

Galen Low: These days, the winds of change feel more like a hurricane of change. Between AI disruption, macroeconomic turbulence, and wars, everyone is trying to keep up with an unfolding future that didn't come with a manual. Many of us are now being told to build a culture of change readiness so that we can adapt quickly as the world changes around us.

But change readiness is hard. It's hard for individuals, it's hard for teams, and it's hard for organizations of all sizes. Sometimes the strategy seems clear but becomes blurry in the execution. Sometimes the teams creating the value have better visibility into the problems, but just aren't being heard.

And across the board, sometimes the things that seem clear to one part of the organization end up getting lost in translation and turn into chaos. So what does it actually take to achieve organization-wide change readiness, and why are so many people getting it so wrong? To answer that, I've brought in an enterprise transformation specialist whose team has been researching this exact question.

Together, we'll be unpacking insights from conversations with hundreds of executives, managers, and practitioners about how to develop change readiness as a business-wide capability. Hope you enjoy the episode.

Welcome to the Digital Project Manager Podcast—the show that helps delivery leaders work smarter, deliver smoother, and lead their teams with confidence in the age of AI. I'm Galen, and every week we dive into real-world strategies, emerging trends, proven frameworks, and the occasional war story from the project front lines. Whether you're steering massive transformation projects, wrangling AI workflows, or just trying to keep the chaos under control, you're in the right place.

Oh, and if you've been liking what you've been hearing from us lately, please consider following us wherever you're listening or watching, and maybe even leaving us a review. All right, let's get into it.

So today we're talking about what it means for organizations to be adaptable in the face of continuous change, and why so many business leaders are struggling to build anti-fragile teams that are resilient to disruption.

With me today is Denise Jarvie, Managing Director of Agile Alliance and Director of Agile Community at the Project Management Institute. Denise is an enterprise transformation specialist who works at the intersection of strategy, technology, and operating models, and has the battle scars to prove it. Her current focus is on enterprise agility, not as a delivery practice, but as a business capability.

That includes helping organizations use AI to expand how value is discovered, how decisions are made, and how work flows across the enterprise. In her role at Agile Alliance, she partners with leaders to adapt roles, decision rights, and operating models to achieve enterprise agility by amplifying, not replacing, human judgment and accountability.

But more importantly, she is a champion of mindful leadership, emphasizing the value of clarity, focus, and the conditions for candid, high-quality decision-making in complex environments so that teams operate with confidence, surface risks early, and sustain momentum over time.

Denise, thanks so much for joining me today.

Denise Jarvie: Yeah, absolutely. Thanks, Galen. It's really great to be here. And honestly, I think this is one of the most important conversations that organizations are having right now. I think that most organizations don't really need help recognizing that change is happening. They're trying to figure out how to keep strategy, decisions, and executions connected while everything around them is changing.

So this is gonna be a great conversation.

Galen Low: I couldn't agree more. It's like it's like it's such an, I don't know, I don't wanna say urgent climate but especially someone like yourself, you know, with a background, a deep background with Agile and Agile transformation and, you know, that sort of that urgency, you know.

Talking like 25 years ago with like the Agile Manifesto it's different now. It's very... It's, it, you know, you can cut it with a knife. And I agree that a lot of organizations just haven't built that muscle yet and need to do it now. kinda quickly. So I, I am equally excited about this conversation.

You've got such great depth of experience. You've done the digital transformation stuff that's exactly what we like to talk about on the show. And honestly, I, I hope we go wherever the wind takes us today. But just in case here's a little roadmap that I've sketched out for us. So first I kinda wanted to just hit you with a somewhat controversial question that my community wants to hear your take on.

But then I'd like to use that just as a lens to kind of explore how organizations can keep their AI strategy from getting lost in translation at the execution layer. Maybe talk about ways leaders at any level can support teams being impacted by wave after wave of change, and maybe even dive into the world of software development to show kinda what good looks and where some of these techniques are already having an impact.

How does that sound to you?

Denise Jarvie: Sounds great. I like the roadmap idea, and I like that you're connecting enterprise strategy to kind of the reality of delivery teams, 'cause I think that's actually where some of this change readiness becomes real. It's not like whether a plan exists, it's whether people can respond effectively when the plan meets with, you know, new information.

So this is great.

Galen Low: Okay. Let me just set the scene with my controversial question. But let me take a running start, because when we first spoke, you were just back from Agile Alliance's Agile 2026 conference- ... where the overarching theme was about shaping the future with agility. And at that conference, you and your team doubled down on the progress you had made on the Manifesto for Enterprise Agility, which was announced last year and I think published in March.

Denise Jarvie: Yep.

Galen Low: And some critics might see this as Agile fighting to stay relevant in today's economy, but I suspect there's something more to it than that. So my question is, did the world need another Agile manifesto, or is the manifesto for a- enterprise agility something different altogether?

Denise Jarvie: All right. I love it.

So thank you for the hot question. What my short answer would be you know, the world did not need another manifesto about how to run Agile teams, but it did need a shared way to think about how enterprise adapts without losing coherence. So the original manifesto emerged when software development needed a better way to handle uncertainty.

And today, the challenges are just a lot bigger than software. So AI, market disruption, all the geopolitical shifts. I mean, there's, you know, changing customer expectations. All these things require entire organizations to become more adaptive and more adaptable. So the manifesto for enterprise agility, it really a, it addresses a different level of the system.

It asks whether purpose stays clear and whether decisions can move to where value is created, and whether structures within organizations can shift with priorities, and if people can surface those risks and if they can learn quickly. So I would say it's not Agile fighting to stay relevant. I think that it's recognition that the same challenges Agile helped software teams solve for 25 years ago, adapting in the face of uncertainty, those kinds of things have now become enterprise-wide challenges.

So the question is no longer whether teams can adapt, it's really whether entire organizations can. So in a nutshell, okay, the world did not need another playbook for Agile teams, but it needed a way to help whole organizations adapt without losing coherence.

Galen Low: I actually really love that because I, I, I feel like throughout my journey in project delivery and my exposure to Agile, it's kind of felt like this, I don't know, almost like isolated, more grassroots, and, and that's a compliment to Agile.

But it felt like it kind of got misunderstood as it kind of, permeated through an organization, especially like an enterprise. And, you know, there's people in the organization who are like, "Yeah, that's not for us. That's for software developers." "You guys do your Scrum, it'll be fine. We're just gonna do us."

And now it's almost you know, as a, as a sort of closet Agile champion, I'm, I'm like, well, now, now it's catching up, right? It's like, okay, well, that agility and that nimbleness, you know, that sort of grassroots-ness is something that we need to have throughout an organization in order for us to be able to adapt and change and react.

And I'm really glad that you framed it not just around AI. There's just so much changing around us. AI is one of them. But if, you know, the past six months, at least for me reading headlines, I'm like If that's taught me anything, it's that this like sort of VUCA world is is, is, is more VUCA than ever like.

Denise Jarvie: It's more VUCA than ever, and we call it polycrisis. Like you said, it's not just AI, but it's AI and em- other emerging technologies, and wars, and climate change. Or there's so many different things that organizations are, are having to deal with all at once, all the time. So yep, I-

Galen Low: Polycrisis is, is a very good word for that.

Very good word. All right, let's zoom out a bit because you and your team, you've recently published a report. It's called "Closing the Change Readiness Gap: What Gets Lost Between Strategy and Execution," exactly what we're talking about today. And it lists out four key insights of things that are working and I guess not working for organizations that are trying to become truly adaptable by design instead of, you know, continuing to launch like one-off transformation initiatives that often take years and sometimes just feel like putting lipstick on a pig.

Can you tell me what went into this report and what change readiness means to you now that you've done this deep dive?

Denise Jarvie: Yeah, sure. Thank you so much for asking. Yeah, so what went into the report was actually a combination of a lot of things. So there was a lot of PMI research. There were executive perspectives.

We talked to a lot of executives and CEOs project professional perspectives, and also a lot of ideas that informed the manifesto for enterprise agility. So what we were trying to understand is actually a pretty simple question. If everyone agrees that the world is changing faster, like we just talked about, then why do so many organizations still struggle to turn strategy into action?

And what we found was really interesting. The problem is usually not that leaders don't recognize that it-- like, the need to adapt or the need to change, 'cause in fact most of them do. But the problem is actually that leaders and the people closest to the work often experience the organization differently, very differently.

So leaders tend to measure readiness by the clarity of the vision that they've established, and teams experience readiness through something like a lot more tangible. For example, do they understand the intent behind the decisions? Do they actually have the authority to act? Can work flow across the organizational boundaries?

You know, things like that. So a simple example is actually AI. So an executive I know he was sure that they, you know, he'd been clear about his AI priority and that AI is a strategic priority, and yet the teams experienced that message as three new tools, five conflicting objectives, no clarity to what success actually looked like.

And both groups, you know, believe that they were talking about the same strategy, but they were actually experiencing really different realities. And so that's why we describe the change readiness gap as the distance between an organization's desire to adapt and then its actual ability to execute that change.

After doing all this research and being part of it, I would say that my definition of change readiness definitely evolved. I no longer think of it as a transformation initiative. It's not a training program, and it might not even be a change management process. It's more of I would describe it as an organizational capability.

So a change ready organization can continuously adapt without losing alignment. That's the key part. So they have clear intent, decision authority, which is close to the work. The structures are designed for flow and also enough trust that people can actually surface problems early and they can learn and adjust course as things are changing.

So those are the four components or the four conditions that emerge consistently through the research. And I think in an AI driven world, that's actually becoming a competitive advantage. So the organizations that succeed might not be the ones that change the fastest, but I think they'll be the ones that learn the fastest and can keep changing without losing that alignment.

So yeah, that's what I learned through this research. It was a really great experience.

Galen Low: I, I, I mean, it's, it's very relatable. As you frame it out, I'm like, "Yeah, that is how change feels." You know, and there's that metaphor someone had shared with me where, you know, when you're setting the strategy, you know, you're kind of like, you've got it clear, you're, you're sort of shaking this long rope and it feels controllable.

And then you go to the end of the rope and it's like a wild fire hose and everyone's- Yeah ... trying to grab it, and it just feels like chaos. And you're like- I like that ... all I'm doing is just I, you know, I, I, I've got a, you know, a very good system for shaking this rope and, you know, I thought it was clear and yet it doesn't feel that way on the other end.

I, I mean, I'm curious, is it like, I mean, I wanna dive into this sort of like signal loss thing and you know, lost in translation. But is it

always naturally the case? 'Cause I think that sometimes people feel like, well, if only it had been communicated clearer from the top or, you know, the strategy was a little bit more easy to understand or, you know, if it came in tidier component parts, then there wouldn't, you know, there wouldn't be this sort of like miscommunication.

Or is it just like intrinsically that's what's gonna happen because we just have different mindsets depending on our role within an organization, and they just don't translate well?

Denise Jarvie: No, I don't think... I think there are definitely things organizations and people can do. So like I said, if executives can really communicate the intent, the why behind it, I think that's a shift that is possible to make.

I don't think it always has to be like this. I think there are things that we can do to make it better, for sure.

Galen Low: Yeah. I, I, I love that. I, I, I think that the insights in the report are really good. I, I, you know, we probably don't have time to like deep dive into each one of them. But I wonder if I don't know, we c- can we maybe walk through that?

You know, we're talking about some of these tactics and strategies to be clear about the why, because that's what's gonna matter to the folks executing the work. You mentioned things like like decisions closer to where the value is being created. I, I just, I, I wonder if maybe we could kind of walk through the sort of I guess transformation change readiness process.

I see you as someone who is really passionate about transformation at all levels, right? Not just what happens in the boardroom, but what also happens close to the work in the trenches. M- maybe can you walk me through, like, how A strategy would get formed kind of at the executive level in an enterprise, and like what steps would need to be taken in order for that signal loss, A, to not happen, right?

For the coherence to come through and also what that feels like on the receiving end as somebody sort of, you know, executing the work. Yeah. What, what are, what are things that, you know, leaders, I guess at any level of the organization can do along the way in this game of telephone to reinforce the coherence of the strategy and avoid that signal loss?

Denise Jarvie: Yeah. That's great. I, I mean, I will say the biggest thing I think that leaders can do is to stop communicating decisions and actually start communicating intent. And I know it's just one little word, it's a nuance, but actually it's really important, 'cause I think in a lot of organizations, we actually spend a lot of time explaining what was decided.

This happened, this is the decision. But sometimes we don't sp- spend enough time explaining why. And when people don't understand the why or the intent, they can't adapt intelligently as things change, which we just said, things are going to change. So if they understand the why and the intent, that's good because if not, then that's where the signal loss begins.

Because each layer interprets the message a little differently, context gets stripped away, and then eventually these teams are executing tasks and they don't actually understand like what's the outcome they're trying to create. You called it telephone and I agree, it's kind of what happens. So our research identified that this is one of the key contributors to the change readiness gap.

And when, when leaders when they consistently communicate the purpose behind the decisions, then people don't actually have to wait for instructions. So if anything changes, they, they can just use their judgment, they can make trade-offs, so basically they stay aligned even though conditions change.

And the second thing I'll add is that You definitely need a feedback loop. So this is core to Agile. This is nothing new but it is really important in this case. So the second thing is creating those feedback loops instead of like the cascade, the communication cascade, where, you know, basically the leader says, "This is what it should be," and it moves through the organization.

Strategy really shouldn't move just in that one direction from the boardroom to the frontline. Leaders need mechanisms to hear what's happening closest to the customers, the products, like what's happening in operations, and that's how you actually detect signal loss early and correct it before it becomes like this major disconnect.

So, ultimately I think maintaining coherence is not about tighter control, it's about creating shared understanding. And like I said, when people understand the purpose, they have the authority to act, they can have this feedback loop to raise their concerns, then your organization can become more adaptable and it's a lot less fragmented.

And those ideas align really closely with the report's emphasis on, like you said, the clear intent, decision authority, trust and structures. So I guess if I had to give one piece of advice, it would be this: communicate intent, not instructions, 'cause instructions don't scale, especially in a rapidly changing environment, but intent does.

When people understand the why, they can make good decisions without having to wait for permission, and that's how you reduce signal loss and also just keep the strategy connected to execution.

Galen Low: I really like that. I, I, I like the feedback loop thing because in my head, even like at the beginning of this conversation, I'm like, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's called enterprise agility.

We've got a manifesto." But it's not you know, everyone in the organization is gonna be doing Scrum you know, like these standups or you know, don't do your business strategy by, you know, grooming a backlog or something like that, right? But you know, all my examples just there were all Scrum examples.

But the Agile principles are still here in enterprise agility in the sense that, yeah, we need to be listening. And I really like that idea, like you got me really thinking because we do, we come back from like quarterly planning and people are like, "What was decided?" And we're like, "Here's the decision that we decided to decide," right?

And like that's where the conversation just it's almost this like foam layer that sits on top, but the substance is actually beneath. And that's like what people really need to get. I mean, you know, we talk about like casting a vision, but like I like that idea that intent versus you know, like sending an instruction or a command and having it trickle down an organization.

Like even as I picture that I'm like, "Yeah, that seems really inefficient. Something's gonna go wrong." Versus something, you know, simpler, right? Like the, the intent that can permeate through the organization and people can make decisions based on that and not necessarily just wait to have instructions or to get clarity on that thing that it's blurry, but they kind of like know what direction like they want to head into.

I think that's really cool and honestly, I, I, I think the feedback loop thing Like, I'm gonna do it in my organizations. I think we need that more where we feel like as leaders our, our, our duty in the planning process is to make decisions and then tell people what those decisions are, and that's just how we're wired.

But, you know, it, it's kinda wrong. Like it-

Denise Jarvie: Well, it s- because it seems easy. Oh, of course we'll make these decisions and we'll just tell the organization what to do when our job is done. But i- it's very possible to make that better by just sharing the intent and thinking about it. It's actually not that big of a shift but we have to think about it and intentionally do these things.

Galen Low: Can we dig in there? Because I think there's there, there's this thing that you've got me thinking about that I've kind of, noticed, I'm sure everyone else has noticed too, is that, you know, some of these changes, this like polycrisis, VUCA environment, especially with the AI revolution, seems to be kind of like amplifying this culture of us versus them.

I mean, in many areas, but, but particularly what I'm thinking of is you know, the executive layer and then employees, right? Like execs versus employees and vice versa. And, you know, I think one of the characteristics of this that I see is that, you know, people feel like, oh, it's like it's an employer's market, right?

People like are trying to hold onto their jobs. There's like jobs getting cut everywhere. Everyone's like trying to not get laid off. And I feel like people think of some of these decisions that get made as kind of like inhumane, right? Or like cold logic in the boardroom. And then whatever is decided, everyone kind of has to get on board or like maybe lose their job.

But I, I also like frankly think that some people are just never in these rooms when the decisions are made. In other words, they're making assumptions about how these decisions are made. And, you know, you've been talking with a bunch of leaders from enterprise organizations all the way, and, and others throughout the organization. But like what's something that a lot of people just get wrong about how strategic top-down decisions are made? Like what's something you've seen happen at the executive table or at the board level that sort of challenges the assumption that, mm, like radical top-down change is decided without considering the people who are impacted the most?

Denise Jarvie: Yeah, it's a good question 'cause I have spent a lot of time with executives who are making these kinds of decisions, and I guess one thing that I think a lot of people get wrong is that they assume resistance comes from bad intentions on one side or the other. And I just, I think executives are sometimes portrayed as, like I've heard people say, executives are disconnected from reality.

And also on the other side of the coin, employees sometimes are portrayed as like resistant to change. And in, in my experience, actually neither stereotype is really helpful or correct. So what I've observed is that people at different levels of the organization are just operating with different information, different responsibilities, different pressures.

And so leaders might be looking at things like market disruption or, you know, emerging technologies like AI or, you know, regulatory pressures or competition. And teams are looking at more operational realities. Like I have capacity strains, or I have all this technical debt or competing priorities, and it's like more practical challenges of getting work done.

And the thing is, is that both perspectives are real, both are valid, and the problem occurs when those perspectives don't actually meaningfully connect. And so, just going back to the research, one of the things that the research surfaced is that leaders often believe they're providing clarity around purpose and direction, and then the people closest to the work, just, they're experiencing uncertainty and friction.

And it doesn't really mean that someone's wrong, it just, like I said, it means they're experiencing different parts of the system. So yeah, I've sat in executive discussions that actually lasted months. We have multiple meetings and, and they're very carefully weighing things like workforce impact or customer impact.

Like I said, market pressures and, you know, sometimes it's about financial realities as well. So what challenges the common narrative is that many strategic decisions are not made quickly. They're not made casually. A lot goes into it. There's often extensive debate and trade-offs and assessments and considerations that are being made.

And the challenge usually... I've, I've really hardly ever seen that the challenge is actually that leaders don't care. They do. They care. It's, it's that the reasoning behind the decisions don't always travel through the organization and definitely not as effectively as the decision itself does. So employees are receiving the final answer.

They don't know the problems the leaders were actually trying to solve, or they might not understand there were, you know, other alternatives considered or that, you know, the constraints that shaped the decision. And that actually is where I think that trust erodes. So the lesson for me is that organizations become more adaptable when they actually spend less trying to convince people to change And a little bit more time helping people understanding the context, the constraints, the trade-offs that are actually behind the change.

'Cause I think that once people understand the problem we're trying to solve that's where the conversation really shifts from what you said before, the us versus the them, and instead it shifts to how do we solve this problem together? So I know that was a lot, so just to sum up, I guess the issue is that it's not often a lack of care at the top.

It's the reasoning behind the decisions don't often travel through the organization as effectively as the decisions themselves.

Galen Low: I think it's such a good and, you know, refreshing POV. The, the thing you said, everyone's kind of looking at it from their own perspective and their responsibilities and, and the calculus changes depending on your role within an organization, and everyone's perspective is valid.

We just experience these things differently because we are focused on different things. And yeah, I mean, I, I tend to agree. A, like the, the stereotypes I think really sink us, right? We're, we're kind of like, you know, we've got our legs tied together right out of the gates because we're like, "Oh, well, what's gonna happen?"

You know, w- w- the... us, the exec team, we're gonna go and we're gonna labor this for months and then we're gonna deliver the news and everyone's gonna hate us. And on, in the reverse, it's like, okay, well, they're just gonna go into a meeting room and be like, "Well, the board's pressuring us, you know, to have better margins.

Let's just cut this department." It's not what happens. But there is this sort of, you know, calculation and, and a deep thought that goes into it, and it's complex. Which is, you know, it's, it's not, no- not everyone's gonna win in, in, in all of these decisions. But I like that idea that the, the intent helps explain what needs to be done together, not n- you know, the end of this, the discussion was whatever in the boardroom, and then now just, just do it.

But it's actually w- you know, it is better to have people to understand the why, to be part of the intent, and to sort of act accordingly. You know, obviously I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm simplifying some of the things. If you, you know, were, were let go as a result of a conversation or a decision that was made, yeah, there, there's, there's, you know, that's, that's you exiting the organization.

But for everyone else who are dealing with change day to day, which is also challenging, That, that idea that, you know, you can sort of y- that you can be made part of it and to have, you know, leaders throughout the organization that make you part of it I think is A, just like agile principles in practice, love it.

And it's sensible. Like when coming back to that feedback loop that you said, right? Yeah. It's like, okay, well then, you know, we're learning faster. We are getting more information, and we are not making assumptions, and we're not working off of stereotypes that are actually, you know, limiting us.

Denise Jarvie: I love it. Yes.

Galen Low: Also the change management thing, I'm like, I g- I like throughout you know, my career, like especially working at the consultancies, like change management was like, you know, a, a function, an offering. And I don't know that it was always something that we get trained on as we move around an organization or as we move more deeply into our careers.

I've seen some great leaders do really bad change management, and it's not their fault, I don't think. I think it's just like it was never sort of explained. Even the way you're explaining it to me now, it's like, gosh If somebody had told me that six years ago, I'm gonna be like, I, I might be in a different spot.

And so yeah, I I, I, I do wanna sort of like dive into some real world examples, but I, I mean, I, I wanna come back to something you said earlier, which was like pushing decision authority sort of closer to where the value is being created. And I've seen you talk about things like decision rights and psychological safety being like a key element of bringing authority closer to the people doing the work.

And it makes a lot of sense to me but it got me thinking because the reality is that not every team that creates value has the training or the experience or even the context you know, as you said before, to make good decisions. Like even if they are like the A team, right? Top of their class, like in their chosen specialization, doesn't necessarily mean they have everything they need to make good decisions.

And in some cases, the more decisions you make, the better you get at it. So if you haven't really been like making decisions, arguably you don't have as much experience, you might not make a good decision unless you have support. And I guess that leads me to my question, which is like, how can leaders and project professionals even equip their teams to make decisions that like don't jeopardize the bigger picture strategy?

Denise Jarvie: Yeah, that's a great question. And I think we sometimes assume that the choice is like black and white between centralized decision-making and complete autonomy. That's what I've seen in some, in some organizations, and I think the reality is that most effective organizations do neither. Like it's, it's actually not black and white.

So they create enough alignment that people can make good local decisions while still advancing that shared strategic direction that we've been talking about. So, one of the strongest themes that came out of the research is that organizations do move faster when decision authority sits closer to where the value is created.

But what that doesn't mean is that every decision should be decentralized, and some people kind of freak out about that. When we talk about dec- decentralizing decisions, they think, "Oh, great, like the people doing the work get to make every decision." That's not really true. What it does mean is that people need clarity about which decisions they own and which ones require broader alignment, and when do they need to escalate.

So getting really clear about that can help. So I think the first priority is establishing those clear decision guardrails. I've actually facilitated many discussions about that specifically, like who makes what decisions. Things like, you know, what outcomes are we trying to achieve? What constraints cannot be violated?

What trade-offs are acceptable? You know, what decisions can you make locally versus what really do need to be enterprise-wide decisions? Most teams don't actually need more approvals, they just need more clarity. So that's the first thing. The second priority, I think, would be going back to the feedback loops.

I know we discussed it, but really that is so incredibly important. I think that good decisions come fr- they don't come from having perfect information. They come from learning quickly, and teams really need the visibility into those outcomes so that they can adjust before the little mistakes become big mistakes.

And then third, I'll say, is that leaders need to create environments where people can surface those risks, and they can challenge the assumption. Basically, you wanna be able to bring bad news early because it's just gonna grow. It's not gonna go away. In most cases, y- knowing earlier is better. And so that's all about psychological safety, making people comfortable, making sure it's safe to tell the truth just, you know, so the organization can learn.

'Cause ultimately, the decision is, you know, it's not to push every decision up the hierarchy or every decision down to the team. It's to find that balance and create an organization where good decisions happen everywhere because people have clear guardrails. They can give the feedback. They have the trust and the psychological safety so that they can learn and adapt.

I think you don't, you don't scale decision quality through control. You actually scale it through guardrails and those feedback loops and the trust

Galen Low: That's really well said. I, I like we've been, like, you know, we've been thinking a lot about sort of decision rights and decision architecture lately.

You, you're mentioning about these sort of workshops. What does the output look like? Is it like... In my head, I'm picturing this register of like categories of decisions you know, a spreadsheet with 1,000 rows about like what you can and cannot do, and it's like the, the, the thousand commandments.

Okay, not 1,000. And I'm like... Yeah, right. It's just this is like the PM in me is like, "Okay, well, you know, let's list every risk." But I'm like, I don't think it's that. What does it what does it look like in terms of like a, a reference manual for the kinds of decisions that- Yeah ... someone can make in their role?

Denise Jarvie: I know, and, and coming from an agilist yeah, I am here saying some things do need to be documented, especially this, this thing about decisions and who can make what decisions. So like I said, not 1,000. I don't need pages and pages or, you know, multiple tabbed Excel files or anything. But you do need to sit down and have a conversation with your team and your leaders and you do need to document some of it.

And we actually have, yes, we actually have used Excel before or PowerPoint, whatever, like wherever you're gonna document it. But really it's about the conversation and making it really clear. You can make these kinds of decisions, but once it's at this scale or once this affects X, Y, Z then you need to escalate or then we need to make sure that there's a clearer alignment across the organization.

So I actually do think you need to document, and you can call it, you know, ways of working or decision authority discussion. But really get the right people in the room, talk about the decisions that are often made, and talk about who should make them, when to escalate, and when it's okay for teams to make those calls, and that, that clarity actually helps a whole lot.

Galen Low: I like that you went to dialogue, which I mean, it doesn't surprise me, but I think a lot of people were like, "Hey, didn't you read the spreadsheet that like tells you what decisions you can make?" Yeah, don't just email it. It's not the point. Yeah, exactly. Don't throw it into the dark hole and expect people to read it.

Again, like another change management mechanism. And I, I, I think, ah, there's, it's, there's so many things, right? Where we're like we're like almost hamstrung by our binary thinking. We're like, okay, well either decisions have to happen at the top or they have to like all happen over here, and if we like, you know, delegate it to these people, and then suddenly it goes wrong, we need to bring it all the way back to the central command, right?

Like it's one or the other, which is not true and I think it was hilarious what you said earlier. You're like, most organizations do neither. I was like, I thought you were gonna say both, and I was like, yeah, you're right, because there's like this sort of like ineffectual decision-making, and I see it happen in organizations that are trying and sometimes misunderstanding the notion of psychological safety and trust, which is a maybe a whole different topic for another day.

But that idea that it's like delegating. It's classic delegating, where you're like, "Okay, well, I'm gonna delegate, you know, this authority to somebody. Oops, it doesn't look like it's going right. I'm gonna take it back." And it's like this self-fulfilling prophecy of oh, like this doesn't work. Versus and this is where I'm like, aha, it was like my epiphany moment of like iterative, right?

It's like, well, use that feedback loop to learn before things get crazy, before things are like out of hand, and do those course corrections. And fundamentally, you know, that is how people learn to make good decisions, by making some of them that are of a certain impact level or risk level, and then sort of scaling it from there based on, you know, Based on what they've learned along the way, not based on one decision, "Oh, you made a one really bad decision, we're taking away your toys."

Which I n- it sounds absurd, but I'm like, ah, I see so many organizations do this. They're like, "Nope, you made a bad decision. Okay, back to the old model." And it never really gives them this time to transform, but also for anyone to learn anything anywhere across the organization.

Denise Jarvie: Yeah, give it a little time.

I love that you said, yeah, you know, you don't wanna take away their toys because of one bad decision. True. You have to learn from it, and you have to give people a little bit of room for growth. So n- nobody's perfect, not every decision is gonna be perfect. So set the stage, get the right environment, have that conversation, document some of the things, and then, you know, see how it goes for a little while.

Make sure you have those feedback loops and continue the discussion, and I think things will head in the right direction. So yep, we're on the same page, I think.

Galen Low: I really like that. I mean, maybe I'll, to, to play the devil's advocate, it's like, okay, you're getting feedback and it's just like there's this one area of the business where it just, it's just really not going right.

It's just like we give feedback, they try to course correct they're still, you know, making silly decisions. They just don't get it, and which is something that I hear a lot, you know, in, in, well, any configuration of humans, but, but especially in enterprise. They're like, "Okay, this is, this is not working.

We need to like..." W- what can an organization do when they are doing these things, right? They, they think they're creating psychological safety, you have fee- feedback loops, they're giving people enough sort of room to make decisions and grow, but repeatedly it's just like it doesn't seem to be working.

What is, what is the next step beyond that?

Denise Jarvie: Well, I mean, like any business process, nothing is gonna be perfect. So I think it is very dependent on the business context, the people on the teams, the type of decisions, how risk-averse you are. So keep re- kind of revisiting the model, and if you need to bring people back and have another discussion and maybe adjust some of those things or provide people a little more help when they're making the decisions, that's fine.

That's part of the negotiation or the discussion that you have. It's, it's not a one and done. Like we said before, it's not an email that you send out that this is how you do it. It's also not a one-time conversation, so that's part of the learning. "Hey, this is working. This might not be working as well.

How could we make that process better and talk about it?" I think that's what I would say there.

Galen Low: No, I like that. And I, I mean, I may be reading between the lines here, but also that notion that you know, probably there aren't many people in that supportive structure that will make wh- every decision is gonna be a bad one.

There's probably decisions that they are good at making. Their frame of thinking is, you know, is, is aligned to that. And we've been thinking a lot about, you know, sort of, again, the other thing that constrains us, job titles. It's like, well, everyone who has the job title of whatever, test engineer, should make these decisions.

And yes, that's probably, you know, easy and the, the right way to build an organization. But right now we're transforming so much that we're like, "Actually, you know what? There's nuance here." And maybe decision rights should be a little bit more dynamic than just painting everyone with a brush and expecting them to, to make exactly the same decisions every time.

But I also agree that the feedback loop is also the training, right? It's it's, it's it's feedback both ways. It's corrective, it is iterative, and you know, in my head I'm like, "Is there a course or a certification to become a good decision maker?" And maybe there is, but in my head I'm like, "But no," because the way we learn decision-making is through context and communication and dialogue and practice.

Denise Jarvie: I'm sure there are courses. I come from a military background. There are absolutely decision-making models that you can use and stuff. So I'm not saying have no process like that. But definitely I like that you said it's nuanced, it's dynamic, and you have to continue to have the conversation as you learn more.

It's not bad to have a model that people use that can help them make better decisions for sure. So yeah, all good points.

Galen Low: I like that, I mean, military is a perfect example of you know, a mix of both, right? There's central command, there's, you know, decisions made higher up, and there's decisions made, you know, boots on the ground.

But That's really interesting. I I wondered if we could shift gears. Well, actually, what I wanna do is you know, I, I know we've been talking pretty high level. We've gotten into some tips and tactics but I wanted to kind of like, take maybe a practical example, and I thought I'd take advantage of something, which is like your background actually, you know, you're at...

You know, you're, you're doing enterprise transformation right now, but your background's actually in like the software development world. And as we were prepping for this, like it, it, it didn't go unnoticed by me that there's like this like poetry as well. I don't know if poetic's the right word, but you know, Agile started with software development.

Now it's helping enterprises build anti-fragile strategies to handle things like AI. And in the meantime, software development is arguably one of the areas that is actually being the most disrupted by AI. And we are "The Digital Project Manager" podcast so I feel like I have to get your take on what this looks like and how this all applies for, you know, dev teams and the project managers or the product owners who work with them.

As roles and skills within the software development team shift and more and more work is getting handled by AI like what's one area that professionals in this vertical can become change ready?

Denise Jarvie: Yeah. That's great. Galen, I think it is poetic. I think you nailed it with that one, by the way.

So I think the biggest shift is not just learning how to use AI tools. Like that's important and we need to do it, but it's actually not the most important shift. I think that the biggest shift is learning how to exercise judgment at that higher level. And it kind of goes back to what we were just talking about with decisions.

So yeah, for years, I mean, software professionals created value mostly through producing artifacts. Like of course they're writing code, they're creating requirements, they're building test cases, they're documenting their solutions and all that. But AI is becoming increasingly capable of helping with a lot of those activities.

And so then you think about what's the scarce human skill? The scarce skill, I think, is becoming something different, and it's the professionals who thrive are gonna be the ones who can define the right problem They're gonna be the ones who can understand customer needs and start to make those trade-offs and those decisions, and they can connect their technical decisions back to the business outcomes.

So in other words, as AI handles more of the execution, human value moves upstream. So, and you mentioned a lot of roles, so I would say project managers, product owners, architects, developers you know, all the technical leaders. That means that they need to become stronger translators between the strategy, the customer needs, and the technology, 'cause the future isn't simply just about managing delivery anymore you know, or just managing more efficiently.

That's not what it is. It's actually about helping to ensure that we're solving the right problem before we optimize the solution, 'cause AI is going so fast with that, we actually really need to slow down, make the right decisions, make sure we're solving the right problem. And I think that's why systems thinking is actually becoming more important as well.

So as AI accelerates everything, it's accelerating execution, people have to understand those other things more, like the customer needs, the governance, the business outcomes. And then what happens is the bottleneck actually shifts from producing work, 'cause that's going so quickly, to making those good decisions.

And by the way, that's one reason that PMI and Agile Alliance together are actually launching an AI and software development working group. So we're bringing practitioners together so that they can better understand, like, how these roles and skills are evolving as AI continues to reshape software delivery.

So we've had a lot of discussion about this, especially at the conference, and I'm really exciting ab- I'm really excited about this effort And I guess what's interesting about all of this is that it actually does bring us back to one of the original insights behind Agile. The goal actually was never just to become faster at producing outputs.

The goal has always been to learn faster and to deliver value sooner. AI just increases our ability to execute, but it still doesn't eliminate the need for that kind of judgment. It actually makes the, the judgment more valuable. So, you know, if you're moving twice as fast but you're solving the wrong problems you're just gonna arrive at the wrong destination twice as quickly, you know?

So if I were advising someone in the software development world today, I'd probably focus, like I said at the beginning, less on becoming exceptional at using AI and more at becoming exceptional at really understanding customers and framing problems and connecting all of this work to business outcomes.

I think those are the capabilities that AI will amplify but not replace.

Galen Low: That's even more poetic because I had this aha moment that I did not plan and that I did not see coming, which is that actually we've been talking about this all along. We've been talking about, you know, a strategy with intent, an intent that's c- gets communicated by the people who are, you know, building that strategy.

But also along the chain, we don't wanna play that game of telephone. People have to kind of get it along the way, and that is the scarce human skill now that we need to develop, you know, especially if you come from a world where, you know, previously you were seen as, you know, the, the person who writes code.

Now y- you need to sort of elevate yourself or shift yourself into a frame of thinking where you're supporting the intent of the strategy and making decisions around that. So actually, like, all of the things that we've talked about in terms of change readiness and decision-making and sort of nimble enterprise it actually, you know, it comes to bear here.

And I mean, I don't know, d- keep me honest here, but here's, here's what I'm thinking. If I was to string it from top to bottom, it's kind of like, okay, well, you know, w- we need... AI is here. It's pretty good at supporting coding. We need to stay competitive, so our strategy should be to, for example, part of it might be like, "Yeah, listen, let's get people to adopt Cursor and, you know, let's measure and see if we can ship software more frequently."

Which typically reaches the sort of software development teams as yeah, work faster, ship more. They're like, "Okay I guess I feel like more of a machine than I did before." Whereas actually the intent is, you know, let's deliver more value for our customers, for example. It's if we can react to their feedback and ship something faster And create more value sooner for the customer, for the business, and stay competitive you know, a- as a business within the competitive marketplace, that's good, right?

Everybody kinda wins there. We, we, we, we thrive together and it's, it's understanding that intent that gets us there. But it's so easy to see how, especially with AI and especially with software development, it like, it could look really dicey on the receiving end to be like, "Here, install Cursor.

Don't code anymore. Yes, you'll still have a job."

Denise Jarvie: Scary. I know. People are, are worried about it, for sure. So it's good that people like you are talking about this, and PMI and Agile Alliance are talking about it, 'cause it can be scary, but there's definitely a place for humans no matter what. And as AI gets better at generating answers or creating code, I think that it, we need humans to get better at asking the right questions and, and providing that judgment.

So yeah, I think the, the careers are evolving. They're definitely changing, but I don't think it's just eliminating people.

Galen Low: I love that. Denise, thank you so much for this conversation. I'm like, I'm still wowed by it. I'm like, "Yeah, okay, it's all connected." Obviously that's, that's the whole plan with the r- the work that you're doing.

Just for fun, do you have a question that you wanna ask me?

Denise Jarvie: I love that. Yes, I do. I probably have 100 questions for you, but yeah, I'll ask you one question. So, as I, as AI is changing, especially in the context of how software gets built and delivered, what shifts do you think in project management or in digital delivery, which shifts do you think that we're underestimating?

Galen Low: Oh, okay, yeah. That's a, a, a really good one. I mean, I-- there's so many things and I think, I don't know, humans in general, like we're going to sort of, take it one bite at a ti- at a time. Sometimes we might miss the forest for the trees. I think... I don't know if my listeners are gonna love this, but I think the biggest thing that we're underestimating is how much more blend there's going to be in human collaboration.

And you've heard me say it throughout the conversation where I'm like, "I think titles are holding us back," and yeah a, a lot of what we've done in the working world is a compromise because we industrialize and suddenly we're like, "Okay, well how do we manage all these people at scale?"

And we're like, "Okay, we'll just slap the same label on all of them and assume they do the same thing at the same rate at the same time." You know, assume that they all take vacation the same way, assume that, you know, their understanding of psychological safety is the same way, that they're gonna raise their hands, they're gonna be loud voices, and all these things, and we try and cram all these people into a mold.

And I think the thing we're underestimating is that we have this opportunity now to like not exist in a mold. To have clarity, right? Like things you're talking about with like decision authority and like even agreements of how we're working together. That's just collaboration, period, but it doesn't mean, you know, we have to swap all these hats or distribute the hats or, you know, that saying of wearing multiple hats is like kind of like a, it, it's a, it's, it's sometimes a bad thing But actually we have an opportunity to build collaboration out in a way where there are no hats.

You know? We have a way of working, we have the sensibility, and the thing that I don't know if my listeners will like is that project management, yeah, I, I am a huge proponent of the idea that PMs are specialists. They're specialists at delivery. But I also don't think they should just be the one person holding the ball on this dark art of delivery.

I think everyone needs to understand how to deliver value, what the intent is, right? Some of the things that we've been talking about today, so that it's a little bit more shared and we, we, we take away those silos and that isolation within teams, and we start doing more of the same things together, but with clarity.

Denise Jarvie: I love it. So that- You know I'm all about the clarity, and definitely I think, you know, project managers and other professionals, I think the work is definitely moving you know, more from coordinating work to governing those decisions, like making sure that we're making good decisions, collaborating and coordinating.

So yeah, interesting times right now for sure. Very. That's why I'm so excited about these b- these working groups that we're creating.

Galen Low: I'm excited too. I, and, and I mean, for folks listening and who are interested in the working groups or things that the Agile Alliance are working on right now, where can they go and learn more?

Denise Jarvie: Yeah. Well, you can definitely find me on LinkedIn, so check out LinkedIn, and you can learn more about Agile Alliance at agilealliance.org. And I'd also encourage listeners to check out PMI's recent thought leadership. So if they hadn't seen the enterprise agility, like the manifesto or the closing, the change readiness gap report, they're free.

You can download them and read about it. And then if you're interested in how AI is reshaping software development in organizations keep an eye on that AI and software development working group. So message me if you're interested. We'll be sharing out, like PMI and Agile Alliance will be sharing out as we bring people together and learn more.

We're super excited to learn alongside the community, so we're definitely looking for volunteers who are interested in, in helping.

Galen Low: You're doing the feedback loop thing.

Denise Jarvie: That's right. We're doing it.

Galen Low: It's awesome to see. Honestly and in the green room, and I wasn't even sure if I was gonna say this, but I was I was saying to you, I'm like, the recent stuff is really good.

The thought leadership is really good. It's different than what I've seen before from PMI and Agile Alliance, and I think it's on a really good path. Gosh, yes, you're right. What a time to be alive, but I think, you know, some of the research that y'all are doing is helping things make more clear, right?

What we're dealing with in this polycrisis world.

Denise Jarvie: Yeah, that's really good to hear, and I do think that the collaboration between PMI and Agile Alliance is amazing, and the thought leadership, the market research, the practitioner feedback that we're getting we're, we're bringing all of that together, and it's, i'm really proud of the work, for sure, and excited to see what else comes this year.

Galen Low: I love it. Denise, thank you so much again.

Denise Jarvie: Yeah, thank you so much for having me, Galen. It re- really was a blast.

Galen Low: All right, folks. That's it for today's episode of the Digital Project Manager Podcast. If you enjoyed this conversation, make sure to subscribe wherever you're listening.

And if you want even more tactical insights, case studies, playbooks create a free account with us at thedigitalprojectmanager.com. Until next time, thanks for listening.