A Tale of Two Agile World Series

About

The Agile Manifesto came out in 2001. Today, it seems that everyone is on the Agile bandwagon, making it fairly common in many workplaces. Still, whether a company is already established with Agile or just starting on their Agile journey, resistance to Agile, abounds. How is that manifested in such organisations? Where are the sources of the opposition? Do they come from People? Executives? Middle management? Individuals? All of the above? Or do they come from departments such as Engineering? HR? Programme Management? Everywhere?

Introducing “A Tale of Two Agile Worlds”:

In Episodes 1-3, we’ll look at senior management’s resistance from both the UK’s and the US’s perspectives. In Episodes 4-6, we’ll look at middle management’s, team’s and individual’s resistance. We’ll compare and contrast the manifested behaviours of resistance to Agile – both overt and covert forms. We’ll see how the people perceive and react to them. We’ll also dive deeper into understanding the various sources of the resistance.

Through the UK and US viewpoints, are we going to find the problems divergent across the pond, or are they ubiquitous? And would we be able to find the same solutions to the middle management, team and individual resistance problem?

Beyond Budgeting: 25 Years of Management Innovation Episode #4 – Our Agile Tales

Welcome back to Our Agile Tales as we continue our conversation with Bjarte Bogsnes, exploring case studies from his latest book, This Is Beyond Budgeting. The book distills nearly three decades of experience challenging traditional budgeting, targets, and control-based management.In this episode, we examine Beyond Budgeting through two case studies: Miles and David Lloyd Clubs.Miles is a Norwegian IT consulting company founded in reaction to command-and-control micromanagement. It operates without budgets and with minimal KPIs, guided by an evergreen financial ambition of maintaining a profit margin above 10%  without cascaded targets or bonus links. Employees enjoy wide autonomy, with transparency as the primary control mechanism: purchases and training costs are posted on the intranet for shared learning.Miles places strong emphasis on recruitment and cultural fit, taking at least ten references and interviewing for beliefs, values, and attitudes. Employees assess technical skills and can veto candidates. The company invests heavily in social cohesion, including spouse-only events, and practices servant leadership, with the CEO retitling himself “Chief Servant Leader.” Bjarte notes that Miles was essentially “born beyond budgeting” and has sustained its principles through growth by consciously resisting bureaucracy, including internal leadership succession.The second case study, David Lloyd Clubs, a high-end UK gym chain with around 300 clubs, represents one of the fastest Beyond Budgeting implementations Bjarte has seen: launched in October 2019 and fully budget-free by January 2021. The model helped the company not only survive COVID-19 but emerge stronger.Key practices included increased club autonomy, strong internal benchmarking, transparency, and local involvement in KPI selection. Central target setting was reduced, with emphasis on relative performance rather than detailed annual targets tied to bonuses.Ownership by private equity firm TDR Capital supported the shift, focusing on leadership and management improvement rather than cost-cutting.Bjarte attributes the speed to strong owner backing, a capable controller leading the effort, and a supportive CEO, while noting that mindset change takes longer than process change. HR played a key role in shifting performance evaluation toward relative measures and maintaining shared club-level bonuses instead of individual incentives.Key topics and timestamps00:00 Welcome01:07 Miles Overview02:47 Transparency Over Budgets04:15 Recruiting and Culture06:05 Servant Leadership06:46 Born Beyond Budgeting10:37 Sustaining Beliefs at Scale12:23 David Lloyd Clubs13:09 Rapid Rollout13:56 Benchmarking and Rhythm17:41 Why It Worked20:53 Relative Performance24:45 Transparency and Learning26:47 HR and Rewards28:15 Results and ConclusionAbout Bjarte BogsnesBjarte Bogsnes is Chairman of the Beyond Budgeting Round Table, a former global finance executive, and a leading thinker in management innovation. He is the author of Implementing Beyond Budgeting and This Is Beyond Budgeting, showing how organizations can replace rigid, calendar-driven systems with models built on trust, transparency, and adaptability — creating companies that are both more responsive and more human.Follow Bjarte at:https://www.linkedin.com/in/bjarte-bogsnes-41557910/Music: https://www.purple-planet.comVisit us at https://www.ouragiletales.com/about
  1. Beyond Budgeting: 25 Years of Management Innovation Episode #4
  2. Beyond Budgeting: 25 Years of Management Innovation Episode #3
  3. Beyond Budgeting: 25 Years of Management Innovation Episode #2
  4. Beyond Budgeting: 25 Years of Management Innovation Episode #1
  5. Navigating World Crises: The Agile-Law-AI Alliance in Action Episode #3
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