Agile Connect Event – June 26, 2025: Join the Conversation!
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It’s time to connect again and talk about Agile in practice. On Thursday, June 26, from 15:00 to 17:00 CET, we’re hosting the next Agile Connect Event – fully online, interactive, and full of inspiration.
Whether you’re in the middle of a transformation or simply curious about how other organizations are becoming more agile, this event is your chance to share experiences, ask questions, and help others grow.
What to Expect:
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Bring in your own Agile topics or challenges (no pressure – it’s optional!)
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Support others by sharing your perspective and experience
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Discover new insights and practical solutions
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Connect with professionals from other organizations who are also on the path to greater agility
This session is open to everyone driving change in their organization – not just certified Agile Champions. So feel free to invite colleagues as well!
Ready to join?
Just fill in the RSVP form (link below) to receive your confirmation and the event details by email.
Let’s inspire and learn from each other. See you on June 26!
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Take a moment to be amazed today
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The book Expedition Agility includes various exercises to approach the transition to agility in a playful and lighthearted way. In each blog article, we highlight one of these exercises to inspire you and encourage experimentation. This time, we explore the exercise “Take a moment to be amazed today.”
Rekindle your curiosity
In the hustle and bustle of daily work, we often lose the ability to see our own organization with fresh eyes. What once seemed unusual or impractical has now become the norm. The way we work, the rules we follow, and the habits we have are rarely questioned. But what if we take a moment to consciously marvel at our surroundings?
The exercise “Take a moment to be amazed today” invites teams to look at their organization with a curious and critical perspective, as if stepping inside for the first time. By asking yourself and each other questions about why things happen the way they do, you can uncover hidden inefficiencies as well as creative solutions that often go unnoticed.
Exercise: Take a moment to be amazed today
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Try looking at your organization as if you were seeing it for the first time. Ask yourself why things are done the way they are.
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Investigate and discover the oddities in your organization—things that have become normal but might not be normal at all. For example: always needing consensus for every decision, consistently missing deadlines, or accepting that agreements are not followed (because, well, it happens, right?). Or the unquestioned acceptance of fixed remote workdays where someone never comes to the office.
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Pay special attention to the “desire paths” in your organization—the unofficial shortcuts people take that aren’t documented in processes and procedures. What detours are being made to speed things up or bypass obstacles?
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Ask yourself a different kind of question: What isn’t being talked about? What are the recurring topics in your organization, and what stays out of sight? Consider aspects like customers, employees, budgets, results, satisfaction, culture, and behavior. What does this say about your organization? Why might this be the case? And what could change if these topics received more attention?
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Dive into your colleagues’ needs. Are they openly expressed? Do these needs align with the organization’s agility goals, or are they in conflict? How could you bridge that gap?
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Examine your work processes. What causes slow decision-making, delayed delivery, and resistance to change? Why is it so hard to improve?
After a day of curiosity, you’ll often come away with surprising insights. By investigating strange habits and illogical workflows with your colleagues, you’ll realize that much of what is considered “normal” is anything but. What starts as a playful exercise can spark valuable discussions about what is truly needed for your organization to become more agile and effective.
By using humor and laughing at quirks, you lower the threshold for change and create a safe space for transformation. The insights you gain can ultimately lead to concrete improvements, helping you make faster decisions, deliver results more efficiently, and adapt more easily to change. This exercise not only fosters a sense of wonder but also paves the way for growth and innovation.
Source: Expedition Agility
By: Els Verkaik, Edwin Clerkx, and Jeroen Venneman
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Invitation Online Agile connect event April 3th
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It’s almost that time again. Our next Agile Connect Event will take place on Thursday 3 April from 3:00 PM to 5:00 PM. This online event offers the opportunity to participate in a lively discussion and exchange of ideas about Agile in practice.
During this interactive event, everyone will have the opportunity to bring up questions or statements. This is not mandatory. You are also welcome to join to help others with their issues. Together we can inspire each other, gain new insights and learn from each other.
The event offers inspiration through the experiences and insights of others, and the opportunity to discover new perspectives and solutions for your issues. In addition, you can meet professionals from other organisations who are also working on making their organisation more agile step by step.
Register by filling in the RSVP form below. We will then send you a confirmation with the details of the online session. As mentioned before, the event is not only for certified Agile Champions but also for everyone else who is creating a movement in their organisation. So don’t hesitate to let others register too.
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The Best Change Agent is a Power-Calimero
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Last week, a great article about Expedition Agility was published in the Managementboek.nl Online Magazine. In this interview, we as Amigos – Els Verkaik, Jeroen Venneman, and Edwin Clerkx – share the journey that led to our book and the philosophy behind our work. We’d love to share some key insights with you.
Agility as a Journey of Discovery
Change is not a fixed plan with a checklist to tick off. It is a journey of discovery where you learn, adjust, and continuously seek new ways forward. This mindset is reflected in the Amigos model: a journey across six ‘islands’ – Agility, Mindset, Inspiration, Growth, Organization, and Sustain. This model helps organizations and teams embrace change in a playful yet structured way.
Making Change Enjoyable
We often hear that change feels complex and heavy. That’s why we approach it differently. Our methods incorporate exercises, game cards, and metaphors to make change more accessible. When you engage with change in a playful way, it sticks better—and becomes more enjoyable.
The Power of the Power-Calimero
One of the key messages in the interview is the role of the ‘Power-Calimero.’ While a regular Calimero feels powerless and dependent, a Power-Calimero takes control. They look for opportunities to improve, even in less-than-ideal circumstances. This is the mindset we aim to cultivate in organizations: you can always contribute to change, no matter how small your influence may seem.
Want to Read More?
Curious to read the full interview? Visit the Managementboek.nl Online Magazine and discover how Expedition Agility introduces a fresh approach to change.
Interested in how you or your organization can start working on agility? Visit www.amigos.nu to explore our training programs, exercises, and events!
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Focus on delivering value
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Focus on Delivering Value
In the book Expedition Agility, you’ll find numerous exercises to help organizations transition to agility in a playful and engaging way. Agility is the ability of individuals and organizations to respond quickly and effectively to change, which is vital to remain relevant and successful in a constantly evolving world. Each blog in this series highlights one exercise to inspire you and encourage experimentation. This time, we’re diving into The Value Trophy.
Thinking in Terms of Value
Sharing results with stakeholders is an essential part of any team striving for agility. Feedback on results helps you determine whether you’re on the right track and adjust your course if needed. Typically, this is done through review or demo sessions. But what if we turned these moments into a vibrant and playful workshop?
The concept of The Value Trophy revolves around celebrating delivered value rather than simply checking off completed tasks. By shifting the focus to customer or organizational value, teams are encouraged not only to reflect on what they’ve accomplished but also on what it has achieved. This creates a healthy competition that is both motivating and increases awareness of the impact of their work.
The rotating trophy—The Value Trophy—adds an extra layer of excitement, with the team that delivers the most value earning the honor of taking it home.
Exercise: The Value Trophy
Here’s how you can implement The Value Trophy workshop:
- Organize the Workshop
- The workshop is hosted by and for the teams, with at least 25 participants for optimal engagement.
- Plan Presentation Slots
- Arrange five 10-minute time slots where teams can showcase the value they’ve delivered.
- This could include experiments they’ve run, new or improved features, successes achieved, or even mistakes made—value can come from many places!
- Keep it Short and Engaging
- Limit team presentations to 10 minutes to match the average attention span for a presentation. Use music or sound cues to mark the end of each slot.
- Encourage Interaction
- Teams should use interactive formats like questions, statements, or other engaging methods to foster discussion. Keep it dynamic, fun, and impactful.
- Let the Audience Choose
- If you’re running parallel sessions, let the audience move to the session that interests them most.
- Vote for the Winner
- At the end, participants vote on which team delivered the most value and why. The team with the most votes wins The Value Trophy.
- Reflect Together
- Conclude with a group reflection on what was learned during the session.
Results that Matter
At the end of the session, it becomes clear that value is not just about what you’ve done but the impact you’ve created. Teams shift from task completion to focusing on delivering meaningful results.
This exercise brings a playful and competitive edge to reviews and demos, giving teams a chance to reflect on what truly matters: the value added for customers and the organization. By voting and reflecting as a group, you create an environment where successes and lessons are openly shared. Winning the trophy becomes more than just recognition—it’s a motivator for teams to continuously improve and deliver impactful work.
Source: Expedition Agility
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New Agile Champion Program starting in May!
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Are you ready to join, or do you know someone who might be interested? Spread the word! 💬
Make an Impact and Inspire Others! 🚀
Do you want to make your organization a little better every day?
Would you like to learn how to drive change and bring others along on the journey?
Then our Agile Champion Program is exactly what you’re looking for!
During this 6-day program, you’ll learn:
✨ How to foster agility in your organization.
✨ How to use practical tools to drive change.
✨ How to inspire others and take steps together toward a better organization.
The program is packed with practical knowledge, inspiring insights, and plenty of hands-on activities! 🎯
👉 Sign up now for the May 2025 group in Utrecht by emailing info@amigos.nu
More info: Agile Champion Program – Amigos
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Expedition agility: Listen to our podcast and get inspired!
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As a complement to our book, Expedition Agility, we launched a podcast series, “De Overhoring”, in January 2024 in collaboration with publisher OMJS. In this series, Job Christians (founder and director of OMJS) and authors Els Verkaik, Jeroen Venneman, and Edwin Clerkx take you through the insights and practical stories from the book Expedition Agility.
The podcast explores the six islands from the book that are essential for agility—both for you as an individual and for your team and organization (the podcasts are in Dutch only):
In this first episode, we discuss the essence of the book and what agility means for organizations in today’s rapidly changing world.
This episode dives into the theme of agility: how to stay adaptive in a fast-paced world and approach change in an agile way—going from A to B in the “b way.”
In this episode, we focus on mindset: how to develop personal agility and create a culture of agility together..
This episode covers inspiration: how to engage people in the expedition toward agility by creating an enticing destination that encourages them to leave the safe harbour.
This episode highlights growth: how to foster agile individuals, teams, and leaders by embracing continuous learning, prioritizing workplace happiness, and boosting engagement.
This episode focuses on the organization: how to transform bulky organizations (like oil tankers) into lightweight, agile ships with simple structures and governance. In short, it’s about de-organizing to become more agile.
- Expeditie wendbaarheid – Sustain
In this episode, we explore sustainability: how to build a network of “friends of change” who use their collective power to drive continuous improvement, learning, and discovery. Keep sailing, keep discovering!
Each episode offers concrete insights and practical tools that you can apply immediately. Discover how you, your team, and your organization can stay agile and navigate the challenges of tomorrow!
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Invitation Agile Connect event 30 Januari
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It’s Almost Time! 🚀
Our next Agile Connect Event is happening on Thursday, January 30th, from 3:00 PM to 5:00 PM. This online event offers an exciting opportunity to engage in lively discussions and share ideas about Agile in practice.
Join the Conversation! 💬
During this interactive event, everyone will have the chance to bring up challenges or propose discussion topics. Not feeling like contributing this time? That’s perfectly fine too! Feel free to join in to help others with their challenges or simply gain inspiration from the group.
Together, we’ll inspire one another, uncover fresh insights, and learn from each other’s experiences.
Why Join? 🌟
This event provides:
✨ Inspiration from the experiences and perspectives of others.
✨ Opportunities to discover new ideas and solutions for your own challenges.
✨ A chance to connect with professionals from other organizations who are also working to make their organizations more agile, step by step.
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The carpet of connection
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In the book Expedition Agility, you’ll find numerous exercises designed to tackle the shift toward agility in a playful and lighthearted way. Each blog article highlights one of these exercises to inspire you and encourage experimentation. This time, we’re diving into the exercise called “The Carpet of Connection.”
Barriers and Obstacles
In many teams, barriers and obstacles sneak in unnoticed, preventing members from responding effectively. This exercise helps you address these barriers, enabling you, your team, and your organization to become more agile.
Barriers and obstacles are often accepted as “just the way things are” and fade into the background. No one mentions them anymore, and sometimes they seem to be swept under the proverbial carpet. This pattern can create a culture of stagnation, where the discomfort of change seems greater than the benefits of progress.
However, this situation offers an excellent opportunity to dig deeper into some critical questions. Why don’t we talk about these obstacles? What underlying fears or unspoken concerns are holding us back? By initiating these conversations, teams can not only identify barriers but also begin actively working to remove them.
Using the exercise “The Carpet,” you can explore the unspoken obstacles in your team in a playful and visual way. Together, you’ll make visible what often remains unsaid and take steps toward meaningful change.
Exercise: The Carpet
Organize a team session with a group that has started adopting an agile way of working. Ensure you have an actual carpet for the session. Don’t have a carpet? A bath mat will do!
- Identify barriers. Ask the team to identify barriers or obstacles that are currently preventing the quick delivery of value. Write each one on a separate sheet of paper (A4) and slide these under the carpet.
- Discuss what’s hidden. Talk about what lies under the carpet: which barriers or obstacles have been known for a while but keep getting swept under the rug?
- Choose one to address. Decide as a group which sheet of paper you’ll pull out from under the carpet to address the “unspoken” conversation. You don’t have to tackle everything at once; it’s already a win if you bring one issue to light and take action on it.
- Ensure a safe environment. Agree that the unspoken conversation will take place in a safe space. Only what the group agrees to share will be communicated outside the room.
- Reflect on the reasons. Ask the following questions as a group:
- Why was this barrier swept under the carpet?
- Why is it painful to bring it to light?
- Who or what has been protected by keeping it hidden?
- What sustains this situation? In other words, why is it easier to leave things as they are?
- Share personal reflections. Invite team members to reflect on which answers impacted them the most. Share these insights with the group.
- Return to the original issue. Bring the insights back to the original problem. Are you willing to truly solve this issue?
- Take action. Solve what can be solved, using questions like:
- What could we do more or less of?
- What should we stop doing?
- What should we start doing to address or resolve this barrier?
A Shift Beneath the Carpet
When teams find the courage to look beneath the carpet, something extraordinary happens. Barriers that once seemed invisible take shape and become topics of discussion. More importantly, the team reflects on the deeper causes: why were these obstacles hidden for so long?
By consciously engaging in this process, not only does the team’s agility grow, but a culture emerges where members are open about barriers and actively work on solutions. This approach creates space for genuine progress, where everyone contributes to an environment where obstacles are no longer swept away but are instead tackled head-on.
The carpet no longer symbolizes something that conceals but rather something that connects and opens up possibilities.
Source: Expedition Agility
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Expedition agility as a culture accelerator: How to change mindset and behavior in your organization
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Changing the culture in an organization is a challenging process, especially when it involves embedding an agile mindset. The book Expedition Agility offers concrete tools for sustainably shifting mindset, attitude, and behavior. In this blog, I’ll share an inspiring approach based on a successful real-life experience that can help you and your team make progress toward an agile culture.
Theme: DO! What we agreed upon
Cultural transformation often starts with a clear theme and an inspiring slogan. In this case, the theme was “DO! What We Agreed Upon.” This focus helps teams work together on concrete actions and make visible changes.
What we aim to achieve
To become an agile organization, it’s essential that mindset, attitude, and behavior are aligned across the board. The core question becomes: How can we help everyone not only understand what’s needed but actually DO it? The solution started with recognizing the problem and defining the desired change;
Problem: A lack of follow-up on agreements, a tendency to take on too much at once, and an absence of a culture of accountability.
Desired mindset and behavior: A continuous improvement mentality in which team members demonstrate ownership. We wanted to see everyone working together on one priority at a time, fulfilling agreements, and holding each other accountable.
From X to Y: The movement we’re looking for
To make the cultural shift concrete, we clarified the specific transitions we wanted to see. This included:
- Moving from “starting many things” to “finishing one task before beginning another.”
- Shifting from “not speaking up” to “holding each other accountable when agreements aren’t kept.”
- Changing from “focusing on problems” to “seeking solutions and opportunities.”
By naming these concrete differences, it becomes clear to everyone what is expected in the new culture.
How we measure the change
Behavioral change also requires measurable moments, such as structured reflections. In this approach, feedback loops were built in—discussing progress during lunch sessions or reflecting on cultural changes in retrospectives. This makes the change visible and helps the team stay focused.
The intervention: A playful start with behavior cards
To make the desired behavioral change tangible, we used a creative method: behavior cards. These cards serve as a tool to talk about behavior in a playful way within teams.
Workshop idea – behavior cards in action:
- Preparation: Use behavior cards (or create them) with examples of both desired and undesired behavior. Allow the team to select or add what they consider typical behaviors of their team, both positive and negative.
- Choose and discuss: Ask each team member to pick one desired and one undesired behavior card. Place the undesired behavior cards in the “Do Less” column and the desired behavior cards in the “Do More” column.
- Dive into the behavior: Together, choose a behavior to explore (desired or undesired) and answer these questions:
- What are the possible reasons this undesired behavior persists?
- What benefits could a shift to desired behavior bring? What could we achieve?
- What do we need to make this change?
- Define actions: Have the team formulate actions to transform undesired behavior into desired behavior. Think about ways team members can keep each other on track.
This method raises awareness, stimulates open conversations, and makes behavioral change accessible and engaging. By involving leaders actively, you foster a culture of role modeling.
Final thought
Expedition Agility is not only a book but also a guide to achieving cultural change together. By fostering ownership and embracing continuous improvement, your organization can think and act agile. Ready to get started with behavior cards or another idea? Every step toward agility begins with action.
Do you want to know more about agility? Then take a look at our book Expedition Agility and visit the website amigos.nu/book for more tools on desired and undesired behavior.
Written by: Els Verkaik
Els collaborates with Edwin Clerkx and Jeroen Venneman as part of the friends of change at amigos.nu
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