01 / Diagnostic
AO Assessment — 5 dimensions
Deliver · Demand · Capacity · Capability · Organization. Map systemic bottlenecks before proposing anything.
Interactive Lessons Learned · REX
When agile frameworks hit the org chart.
A 150-person program. Velocity tracked, ceremonies clean, backlogs tidy — and yet deliveries slip, dependencies pile up, decisions go untraceable. The team wasn't the problem. The system was. A working session on diagnosing what frameworks can't see — and acting without breaking what works.
- Format
- Talk + facilitated dialogue
- Duration
- 90 min · or 4 × 2h online
- Audience
- Coaches · designers · transformation leads
- Level
- Advanced — practitioner
Built on
20+ yrs in enterprise transformation
SAP · public sector · finance
AO Method · author & creator
From Pierre — why this workshop
Transformations look good on paper. So why do nearly 70% fail?
That's the question I've been chasing for years — and by transformation I mean all of them: agile, digital, restructuring, M&A, AI. We can blame developers or blame management, but does that solve the problem? No. It just moves the conversation away from the system.
So I built a collaborative working session. Dense, but the centre of gravity is collaboration, not slides. We use tools, surface patterns, and leave with recommendations you can act on the same week.
It exists in two forms — a tight 90-minute live version for conferences, and a longer 4 × 2h online cohort when reflection deserves more room.
Which one fits your context? Tell me below — I'll be in touch when the next date lands.
The business problem
It wasn't a team problem. It was a system problem.
A large modernization program. 150+ people. "Agile" teams on paper. Velocity measured. Ceremonies clean. Backlogs tidy. And yet — deliveries slip, dependencies multiply, no one can name who is actually making the decisions.
The real issue: the organizational structure was never redesigned. Scrum was grafted onto an org chart built for stability. The system resists — not by ill will, but by design.
How do we diagnose what agile frameworks can't see — and act without breaking what's working?
Agile coaches
Organizational designers
Experienced Scrum Masters
Transformation leads
CTOs & heads of engineering
Tools & practices used
The diagnostic stack — five lenses, one system.
No silver bullets. A coherent set of tools that, used together, surface what dashboards and ceremonies politely hide.
02 / Flow
Organizational Value Stream Mapping
Applied to decision and authority flows — not just product flows. Where does ownership actually live?
03 / Reframe
The 8 Wastes — at system level
Move the conversation from "team underperformance" to "poor system design." Same data, different verdict.
04 / Experimentation
Organizational Backlog
Structural POCs tested before any redesign — small, time-boxed, reversible. Evidence over slides.
05 / Governance
Viable Systems Model (VSM)
A framework for spotting the regulatory loops that are missing, broken, or routinely bypassed — the structural cause of most "people problems."
Lessons learned
What failed. What worked. No varnish.
The point of a REX is honesty. The room has likely seen the same patterns — naming them is half the work.
What failed ✕ Failed
- SAFe as plug-and-play. Generated more meetings than value. Teams learned to simulate compliance without changing underlying behavior.
- Starting with teams, not the system. Advanced Scrum training while inter-team dependencies stayed untouched — largely wasted effort.
- Assuming managerial buy-in. Verbal in meetings, evaporated the moment experiments touched scope or budgets.
- Confusing speed with direction. Several sprints delivered on schedule — features no one actually used.
What worked ✓ Worked
- Diagnose before designing. The AO Assessment objectified tensions without assigning blame — shared language made hard conversations possible.
- Small-scale organizational POCs. A new ownership structure on a single workflow, 8 weeks — succeeded where slides had failed.
- Involve the experts on the ground. Scrum Masters and tech leads who knew the real dependencies became the best co-designers.
- Make the invisible visible. A decision-flow map posted in the open-plan office generated more useful conversations in a week than six months of workshops.
Key takeaways
What you leave the room with.
Concrete artefacts — applicable the week after.
A rapid diagnostic framework
The 5 dimensions of Agile — applicable next week to pinpoint the real issues in your own context.
A "framework vs. system" grid
How to distinguish agile processes from organizational design — and why confusing them is expensive.
The principle of organizational POCs
How to propose and timebox structural experiments without triggering political resistance.
Shared honesty
The room is probably feeling the same things. On-the-ground difficulties aren't failure — they're systemic signals to be interpreted.
Who's running this
Pierre Neis — practitioner, not pundit.
Twenty years inside transformations that worked and transformations that didn't. The slides came after the scars.
Pierre Neis
Organizational designer · Executive coach · Author
Multilingual organizational designer and executive coach, based in Uster (Zurich). Worked across SAP-scale enterprise programs, Swiss finance, public sector and Erasmus+ contexts. Founder of the AO Method — Agile Organization — a working framework for adaptive design grounded in systems thinking, VSM and viable feedback loops.
What I bring to a room: honest diagnosis, no framework worship, and a stubborn focus on what will actually change Monday morning.
From the room
What participants take away.
Pierre doesn't sell a framework — he hands you a working diagnosis. Two days later, my leadership team was finally arguing about the right thing: the structure, not the people.Head of Transformation · European bank
Register your interest
Want to join the next session?
Tell me which format fits you best. I'll be in touch when the next conference date or online cohort is scheduled. No newsletter, no spam — one email when something concrete is on the calendar.
Prefer email? Write to pierre.neis@menschgeist.com.
Bring this REX into your organization.
Conference keynote, in-house leadership session, or a closed-door coach circle — the workshop adapts to the room.