Releasing Business Agility
A three-hour business agility session, built around a puzzle game, that shows your team what's holding its agility back and how to release it. Delivered more than 300 times.
The session at a glance
Three hours. One puzzle game. Five questions to release your agility.
Length
Three hours, plus a short conversation beforehand
Group
From a small leadership team to 150 or more per session
Where
In person at your place, with all game materials, UK and international
Who
Leadership teams, delivery leaders, whole departments
Prior knowledge
None, and no framework to adopt
You keep
A shared language, the five questions, and summary notes afterwards
How the three hours work
First hour
Play the game
Teams work through a puzzle game at their tables. No slides, no theory. Just the same pressures most organisations know from their own work.
Second hour
See what happened
A guided debrief. By now the room has felt what holds agility back, so the conversation is about recognition, not persuasion.
Third hour
Release it
Five questions any team can use to release its agility, applied to your own organisation, with a first step agreed before people leave.
The five questions
- 01Where are we heading?
- 02What's in the way?
- 03Who do we need, and what do they need?
- 04What do we do in the moment?
- 05How do we get better?
What the game shows
Every group plays it differently, and every group recognises the same things:
- Alignment drifts, gradually, until it's expensive to win back
- Small misunderstandings grow into delays when feedback arrives late
- Effort goes up while value levels off, and pushing harder makes it worse
- Good work can crowd out the work that matters most
- Fast feedback and visible data change the quality of decisions on the spot
What your team leaves with
- A shared experience everyone can point back to: "it's the game again"
- A shared language for what slows work down, which makes it easier to talk about without anyone getting defensive
- Five questions to release agility, and a first step agreed in the room
- Summary notes for whoever organised the session
Proof
300+
times delivered
3 × 150
people in one global energy company
Induction
a utilities company built the game into how it welcomes new starters
“The place is buzzing.”
Chief Technology Officer, global energy company
It's run by Rob Lambert, formerly VP of Engineering, VP of HR and Head of Business Agility, so it treats business results and keeping good people as the same outcome.
Then take the whole day
Releasing Business Agility shows a room what's holding agility back. The Whole Journey is the full day that follows: your team traces its own work from idea to value, finds where it slows, and leaves with changes it owns. A good pattern is to run this session for a wide group first, then The Whole Journey with the teams that want to go further.
Questions people ask
Is this Agile training?
No. There's no certification and no framework to adopt, and it doesn't take sides between Scrum, Kanban, SAFe or anything else. It sits upstream of those. If your organisation already uses a framework, I'll use its language and examples. If it doesn't, I'll work from first principles. The game and the five questions are the same either way.
How big can the group be?
From a small leadership team to 150 or more in one session, and it repeats well across several sessions so a whole organisation shares the same experience.
How much does it cost?
It depends on the size of the group and how many sessions you'd like, so we agree the price on the 20-minute call.
Start with a 20-minute call.
Tell me about your organisation and who you'd like in the room. There's no pitch and no follow-up sequence. If it isn't the right fit, I'll say so.
Or email info@cultivatednotes.com. I usually reply within 48 hours.
For whoever holds the budget
Releasing Business Agility is a three-hour session, built around a puzzle game, that shows our people what's slowing the organisation down and gives us five questions to release it. No framework to adopt. It's been delivered more than 300 times, including to 450 people at a global energy company, and works for a small leadership team or 150 people at once. Run by Rob Lambert, former VP of Engineering, VP of HR and Head of Business Agility.