Author: Erika Bjune
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Innovation Without Boundaries: Growing Ideas Together
As someone who has spent years nurturing growth in organizations, I’ve come to realize that the best results come not from controlling every detail but from creating the right conditions and trusting in people’s potential. In an organization, as in life, the most successful growth happens when we create an environment where ideas can emerge…
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Creating Impactful Products and Services
What makes a product impactful? It’s a question that stretches beyond the basics of market research and profit margins. When I talk about impactful products and services, I’m talking about creations that resonate with people, solve real problems, and align deeply with a purpose that goes beyond the balance sheet. Impactful products don’t just happen…
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Agile Isn’t Dead – We’re Just Doing It Instead of *Being* It
I keep hearing that Agile is dead. Honestly, I’ve been hearing this for years, and lately, it seems louder than ever. But I have to disagree—and not just because I’m an Agile practitioner. You might think, “Of course, you’re going to say that. You’ve been in this game for 15 years.” And yes, Agile has…
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Cultivating Empowered Teams: The Key to a Thriving Business
Imagine your team like a garden. You can choose to plant each seed in a neat little row, fencing them in with strict boundaries, hoping they’ll grow on their own. Or, you could prepare rich soil, give each plant room to spread, provide the water, nutrients, and sunlight they need, and watch as they grow…
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A Startup Scaling Crossroad: Self-Management vs. Hierarchy
Startups are exciting, fast-paced environments where people wear multiple hats, collaborate at high speed and work closely together to bring a vision to life. But there’s a pivotal moment—right after launching a Minimum Viable Product (MVP)—when things begin to change. You need to grow, scale, and bring more structure to how work gets done without…
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Celebrating a Decade of Frederic Laloux’s Reinventing Organizations: A Personal Tribute
“As human beings, we are not problems waiting to be solved, but potential waiting to unfold.” – Frederic Laloux This week marks the 10-year anniversary of Frederic Laloux’s groundbreaking book Reinventing Organizations. As I reflect on the impact the book has had on my personal and professional journey, I feel a deep sense of gratitude.…
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Horizontal Leadership: A Gateway to Self-Management
If you’ve ever felt stuck in a bureaucratic organization, trapped by rigid hierarchies, or stifled by an “it’s not my job” culture, you’re not alone. Many of us have experienced the limitations of traditional top-down leadership—where decisions are made far away from the real work, and agility is a far-off dream. But what if I…
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Leading with Love: A Better Path to Leadership
The word “love” in a business context often raises eyebrows. For some, it may feel like an overly soft, inappropriate, or even irrelevant concept in the hard-edged world of corporate leadership. But if we peel back the layers of what love really represents—vulnerability, compassion, empathy, trust—we realize these are the very qualities that define strong,…
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Planet as a Stakeholder for Agile Teams
I am excited to announce that I am now offering a powerful new workshop through Transformetic called The Planet as a Stakeholder. This unique initiative, developed by my good friend and fellow Agile coach Marjolein Pilon, takes a sustainability-driven approach to Agile development, inviting teams to integrate environmental consciousness into their workflows and making sustainability…
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From Boss to Coach: Easing into Self-Management
In traditional, hierarchical organizations, leadership is often synonymous with control—leaders issue directives, make high-level decisions, and manage subordinates. However, in self-managed teams, leadership takes on an entirely new form. For those transitioning from hierarchical organizations to self-managed ones, this shift can feel daunting, even threatening. Many leaders, especially those with long-standing experience in executive roles,…