Interested in starting your own entrepreneurial journey but unsure what to expect? Then read up on our interview with Cliff Berg, Co-Founder of Agile 2 Academy, located in Reston, VA, USA.
What's your business, and who are your customers?
We help organizations to achieve true agility. Instead of using opinionated "Agile" methods, we use ideas from organizational culture theory, behavioral psychology, operations research, and cognitive science. Our customers include multi-billion dollar product companies, mortgage servicers, medical research companies, Fortune 100 fintech companies, and others.
Tell us about yourself
In 2019 I launched a global initiative to re-envision "Agile" because "Agile" approaches, as advocated by the companies that provide Agile training and so-called Agile "frameworks," has not worked well. My own personal goal is nothing less than transforming the industry's approach to Agile. This is because organizations need true agility, and the current approaches are holding all of us back.
What's your biggest accomplishment as a business owner?
I put together a team of diverse skills, and created Agile 2, and published the Agile 2 book. I then created a company, Agile 2 Academy, to help organizations use those ideas well. The first thing we did was to partner with experts in organizational culture - Human Synergistics - because we knew that organizational culture was a critical element of the transformation of any kind. We then created a model of agility that includes organizational culture, behavior, and knowledge+expertise.
These comprise our core offering: an approach that we call Constructive Agility. We are only a year old but have been using this approach to help our customers to achieve true agility - breaking from the standard process-centric approaches such as SAFe and Scrum. This is an accomplishment because our customers tell us how strongly our approach resonates with them.
What's one of the hardest things that come with being a business owner?
It is finding the people who make a difference. It's all about getting the right people. After that, it is getting in front of people to explain our approach. We have an extremely high win rate - our constraint is that we have to compete with the immense noise in the industry that sells the traditional approach that does not work.
What are the top tips you'd give to anyone looking to start, run and grow a business today?
Of course, have a model for how you will market your offering and have a strategy for finding the core team that has the skills that you will need. You will not likely find them all at once, but you can find them over time if you do the right things.
Where can people find you and your business?
Website: https://www.agile2academy.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/agile-2-academy/
If you like what you've read here and have your own story as a solo or small business entrepreneur that you'd like to share, then please answer these interview questions. We'd love to feature your journey on these pages.
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