Our Agile Tales

Welcome to Our Agile Tales as we continue our conversations with Rich Sheridan, founder, CEO and chief story teller at Menlo Innovations.

Aside from founding and leading Menlo Innovations, Rich is also the author of the bests-selling books, Joy Inc. and Chief Joy Officer, whose message is that joy is essential to productivity and profitability in the workplace. Rich recounts his journey from early programming success and a rapid rise to VP to feeling despondent amid chaotic, late, over-budget software delivery, which sparked a search for better ways to organize people. 

In this episode Rich argues that fear shuts down the brain functions organizations need—creativity, imagination, invention, and innovation—and describes common, often subtle, fear-inducing management behaviors like overload, ambiguity, and constant reprioritization. He shares a Menlo Innovation story where he inadvertently scolded an employee under a poster reading “It's okay to say I don’t know,” and how a long-tenured teammate compassionately held him accountable, leading to an apology and learning. 

Using an airplane analogy, he maps organizational success to increasing human energy (lift) over bureaucracy (weight), strengthening purpose (thrust), and reducing fear (drag). He explains how Menlo pumps fear out through pair programming, frequent pairing rotation, an interview process emphasizing helping others succeed, leading without bosses, and replacing long status meetings with a short daily standup that exposes problems without solving them in-meeting.

Key topics and timestamps:

• 00:00 Welcome to Our Agile Tales
• 01:46 Fear Kills Innovation
• 04:59 Everyday Fear Triggers
• 08:04 Owning Your Mistakes
• 12:19 Why Fear Lingers
• 13:59 Airplane Forces Model
• 19:05 Defining Human Energy
• 21:22 Pumping Fear Out
• 24:41 Leading Without Bosses
• 27:17 Meetings That Drain Teams
• 27:37 Daily Standup Fix
• 29:54 Closing 

About Rich Sheridan

Rich Sheridan is the CEO and Chief Storyteller at Menlo Innovations and the best-selling author of Joy Inc. and Chief Joy Officer. He has spent years traveling across four continents and nearly 20 countries, helping organizations rethink not just how they work, but how it feels to be part of them. His core message is simple: joy isn’t optional—it’s essential to productivity, profitability, and real team energy.

Rich’s ideas have been featured in Forbes, Inc., NPR, and Harvard Business Review. What sets him apart is that he’s been living these principles for over 20 years at Menlo, the company he co-founded in Ann Arbor, Michigan—now known worldwide for its uniquely joyful culture.

Follow Rich Sheridan at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/menloprez

You can check out Menlo Innovations tours and workshop at: https://menloinnovations.com/tours-and-workshops

Music: https://www.purple-planet.com

Visit us at https://www.ouragiletales.com/about

Welcome to Our Agile Tales as we start off this new season with Rich Sheridan, founder, CEO and chief story teller at Menlo Innovations.

Aside from founding and leading Menlo Innovations, Rich is also the author of the bests-selling books, Joy Inc. and Chief Joy Officer, whose message is that joy is essential to productivity and profitability in the workplace. Rich recounts his journey from early programming success and a rapid rise to VP to feeling despondent amid chaotic, late, over-budget software delivery, which sparked a search for better ways to organize people. 

He defines workplace joy as externally focused delight in serving end users, distinct from perks or simple happiness. He describes an “aha” moment when his eight-year-old daughter observed that no one could make decisions without him, revealing a hero-based organization, and a “click” moment in 1999 influenced by Kent Beck’s Extreme Programming Explained, IDEO’s Nightline segment, and meeting his co-founder, James Goebel.

Rich details early resistance to pair programming, how experiments and a “Java factory” open-room approach shifted behavior, and how the internet bubble burst led him to found Menlo Innovations in 2001. He explains how IBM tours and a conference invitation launched his storytelling and how Edison’s Menlo lab inspired Menlo’s name, concluding that the risk of change was less than the risk of staying the same.

Key topics and timestamps:

• 00:00 Welcome to Our Agile Tales
• 00:22 Meet Rich Sheridan
• 02:30 From Programmer to Burnout
• 05:53 Defining Joy at Work
• 08:21 Aha Moment Leadership Shift
• 10:36 Click Moment XP and IDEO
• 12:53 Pairing Experiment Begins
• 15:54 Java Factory Culture Change
• 19:19 Menlo Innovations Is Born
• 20:59 Joyful Workdays No Overtime
• 22:38 Tour Guide to Storyteller
• 28:04 Risk of Change vs Staying
• 30:05 Closing

About Rich Sheridan

Rich Sheridan is the CEO and Chief Storyteller at Menlo Innovations and the best-selling author of Joy Inc. and Chief Joy Officer. He has spent years traveling across four continents and nearly 20 countries, helping organizations rethink not just how they work, but how it feels to be part of them. His core message is simple: joy isn’t optional—it’s essential to productivity, profitability, and real team energy.

Rich’s ideas have been featured in Forbes, Inc., NPR, and Harvard Business Review. What sets him apart is that he’s been living these principles for over 20 years at Menlo, the company he co-founded in Ann Arbor, Michigan—now known worldwide for its uniquely joyful culture.

Follow Rich Sheridan at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/menloprez

Music: https://www.purple-planet.com

Visit us at https://www.ouragiletales.com/about

Welcome back to Our Agile Tales as we continue our conversation with Bjarte Bogsnes, exploring case studies from his latest book, This Is Beyond Budgeting. The book distills nearly three decades of experience challenging traditional budgeting, targets, and control-based management.

In this final episode of the series, we discuss with Bjarte what distinguishes business models (external interaction) from management models (internal organization). He introduces the Viable Map, inspired by the Business Model Canvas, to help management teams assess their management model against the 12 Beyond Budgeting principles, considering business environment from SUSO (simple, understood, stable, orderly) to VUCA and employees on a Theory X–Y scale. He emphasizes the need for coherence between values/purpose-based leadership claims and often “fixed” budgeting processes, calling mismatches “poisonous gaps.” He argues listed companies can adopt beyond budgeting, as markets want sustainable performance, and recommends starting by separating budget purposes—targets, forecasts, and resource allocation—implemented in parallel. He contrasts beyond budgeting’s enterprise-wide focus with Agile’s origins in software, shares disappointing and rewarding client experiences, and points listeners to bbrt.org and key books.

Key topics and timestamps

• 00:00 Welcome and Guest Intro
• 01:09 Business vs Management Models
• 01:59 Viable Map Framework
• 05:16 Assessing Coherence Gaps
• 08:02 Empowerment Needs Process Change
• 09:40 Markets Wall Street Myths
• 12:08 Why Beyond Budgeting Sticks
• 14:34 Where to Start Separating Budgets
• 17:45 Pilots vs Big Bang
• 19:12 Disappointing Transformation Story
• 21:20 Most Rewarding Successes
• 23:06 Learn More About Beyond Budgeting
• 25:20 Wrap Up and Next Series

About Bjarte Bogsnes

Bjarte Bogsnes is Chairman of the Beyond Budgeting Round Table, a former global finance executive, and a leading thinker in management innovation. He is the author of Implementing Beyond Budgeting and This Is Beyond Budgeting, showing how organizations can replace rigid, calendar-driven systems with models built on trust, transparency, and adaptability — creating companies that are both more responsive and more human.

Follow Bjarte at:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/bjarte-bogsnes-41557910/

Music: https://www.purple-planet.com

Visit us at https://www.ouragiletales.com/about

Welcome back to Our Agile Tales as we continue our conversation with Bjarte Bogsnes, exploring case studies from his latest book, This Is Beyond Budgeting. The book distills nearly three decades of experience challenging traditional budgeting, targets, and control-based management.

In this episode, we discuss with Bjarte  how target setting evolved at Equinor from 2005 onward through separating target setting, forecasting, and resource allocation, including allowing indicators without targets and emphasizing team-set, often more ambitious goals and relative “reality targets” versus peers. Bjarte says Beyond Budgeting adoption spans many industries, is stronger in Europe, and is equally relevant in the public sector, citing Norway’s NAV contact centers eliminating cost budgets and a 12,000-inhabitant municipality using self-managed teams, continuous decisions, and stakeholder alignment while still submitting an external “budget.” He argues budgets embed distrust and predictability assumptions, making true agility impossible without Beyond Budgeting, challenges absolute annual financial targets, and advocates relative targets, holistic evaluation, and common incentives. Finally, he describes surveys by Boston Consulting Group and Bain & Company linking Beyond Budgeting to benefits like higher sales and leading financial planning practices.

Key topics and timestamps

• 00:00 Welcome and Guest Intro
• 01:06 Evolving Targets at Equinor
• 03:39 Who Adopts Beyond Budgeting
• 05:14 Public Sector Breakthroughs
• 05:41 NAV Pilot No Cost Budgets
• 07:10 Municipality Self Managed Teams
• 10:00 Funding Constraints Not Earmarks
• 14:24 Why Budgets Block Agility
• 18:24 No Budget No Targets
• 22:09 Forecasting and Ambition
• 23:28 Consulting Surveys and Benefits
• 27:16 Wrap Up and Next Episode

About Bjarte Bogsnes

Bjarte Bogsnes is Chairman of the Beyond Budgeting Round Table, a former global finance executive, and a leading thinker in management innovation. He is the author of Implementing Beyond Budgeting and This Is Beyond Budgeting, showing how organizations can replace rigid, calendar-driven systems with models built on trust, transparency, and adaptability — creating companies that are both more responsive and more human.

Follow Bjarte at:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/bjarte-bogsnes-41557910/

Music: https://www.purple-planet.com

Visit us at https://www.ouragiletales.com/about

Welcome back to Our Agile Tales as we continue our conversation with Bjarte Bogsnes, exploring case studies from his latest book, This Is Beyond Budgeting. The book distills nearly three decades of experience challenging traditional budgeting, targets, and control-based management.

In this episode, we ask why Silicon Valley firms rarely appear in Beyond Budgeting case studies; Bjarte posits that these companies excel at technology innovation but fear management innovation, sometimes reinforced by IPO-focused CFOs, though being public is not a true barrier (Many Beyond Budgeting adopters are listed on Wall Street.) 

He explains Beyond Budgeting can improve performance in both good and tough times and cites Handelsbanken’s long-term stability. The discussion covers Morningstar’s self-management and the need for enterprise-wide coherence, then Haier’s radical micro-enterprise model and rapid evolution.

Finally, Bjarte details Equinor’s (formerly Statoil) beyond budgeting journey since 2005 via “Ambition to Action,” integrating strategy, risk, actions/forecasting, indicators, and HR with a 50/50 split between “what” and “how,” emphasizing transparency, event-driven cadence, decentralized ownership, and holistic performance evaluation.

Key topics and timestamps

• 00:00 Welcome
• 01:05 Why Silicon Valley Lags in Management Innovation
• 04:11 Public Markets and Budgets
• 04:53 Boom Bust and Stability
• 06:40 Morningstar and Self Management
• 08:48 Haier Radical Micro Enterprises
• 13:00 Equinor Beyond Budgeting Origins
• 16:32 Ambition to Action Framework
• 20:11 Alignment Cadence and Transparency
• 25:37 Holistic Performance Evaluation
• 28:15 Wrap Up and Conclusion

About Bjarte Bogsnes

Bjarte Bogsnes is Chairman of the Beyond Budgeting Round Table, a former global finance executive, and a leading thinker in management innovation. He is the author of Implementing Beyond Budgeting and This Is Beyond Budgeting, showing how organizations can replace rigid, calendar-driven systems with models built on trust, transparency, and adaptability — creating companies that are both more responsive and more human.

Follow Bjarte at:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/bjarte-bogsnes-41557910/

Music: https://www.purple-planet.com

Visit us at https://www.ouragiletales.com/about

Welcome back to Our Agile Tales as we continue our conversation with Bjarte Bogsnes, exploring case studies from his latest book, This Is Beyond Budgeting. The book distills nearly three decades of experience challenging traditional budgeting, targets, and control-based management.

In this episode, Bjarte discusses David Lloyd Clubs’ Beyond Budgeting shift starting in October 2019 and how it helped during the 2020 pandemic through greater local autonomy and faster, more continuous funding decisions. He explains the core change of separating budget purposes into distinct processes for target setting, forecasting (as non-binding forecasts), and resource allocation, with more local decision-making and a revised cadence beyond annual budgets. Bogsnes addresses budget gaming by isolating it to target setting and using relative performance and transparency to encourage improvement while avoiding naming-and-shaming, emphasizing holistic performance evaluation when measures are absolute. 

The conversation also covers beyond budgeting relevance to the public sector via a pilot in Sogndal Municipality, Norway, and TDR Capital’s role as a private equity owner encouraging portfolio companies to adopt beyond budgeting, including examples like Stonegate and BPP.

Key topics and timestamps

• 00:00 Welcome
• 01:06 Pandemic Autonomy Lessons
• 02:54 Separating Budget Purposes
• 06:11 Funding Autonomy And Cadence
• 07:28 Stopping Gaming With Benchmarks
• 12:31 Transparency Without Shaming
• 14:24 All 12 Principles In Practice
• 15:05 Beyond Budgeting In Government
• 20:04 Collaboration And Member Impact
• 22:45 TDR Capital’s Playbook
• 25:41 How To Start The Journey
• 27:15 Private Equity Differentiator
• 28:11 Wrap Up and Conclusion

About Bjarte Bogsnes

Bjarte Bogsnes is Chairman of the Beyond Budgeting Round Table, a former global finance executive, and a leading thinker in management innovation. He is the author of Implementing Beyond Budgeting and This Is Beyond Budgeting, showing how organizations can replace rigid, calendar-driven systems with models built on trust, transparency, and adaptability — creating companies that are both more responsive and more human.

Follow Bjarte at:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/bjarte-bogsnes-41557910/

Music: https://www.purple-planet.com

Visit us at https://www.ouragiletales.com/about

Welcome back to Our Agile Tales as we continue our conversation with Bjarte Bogsnes, exploring case studies from his latest book, This Is Beyond Budgeting. The book distills nearly three decades of experience challenging traditional budgeting, targets, and control-based management.

In this episode, we examine Beyond Budgeting through two case studies: Miles and David Lloyd Clubs.

Miles is a Norwegian IT consulting company founded in reaction to command-and-control micromanagement. It operates without budgets and with minimal KPIs, guided by an evergreen financial ambition of maintaining a profit margin above 10%  without cascaded targets or bonus links. Employees enjoy wide autonomy, with transparency as the primary control mechanism: purchases and training costs are posted on the intranet for shared learning.

Miles places strong emphasis on recruitment and cultural fit, taking at least ten references and interviewing for beliefs, values, and attitudes. Employees assess technical skills and can veto candidates. The company invests heavily in social cohesion, including spouse-only events, and practices servant leadership, with the CEO retitling himself “Chief Servant Leader.” Bjarte notes that Miles was essentially “born beyond budgeting” and has sustained its principles through growth by consciously resisting bureaucracy, including internal leadership succession.

The second case study, David Lloyd Clubs, a high-end UK gym chain with around 300 clubs, represents one of the fastest Beyond Budgeting implementations Bjarte has seen: launched in October 2019 and fully budget-free by January 2021. The model helped the company not only survive COVID-19 but emerge stronger.

Key practices included increased club autonomy, strong internal benchmarking, transparency, and local involvement in KPI selection. Central target setting was reduced, with emphasis on relative performance rather than detailed annual targets tied to bonuses.

Ownership by private equity firm TDR Capital supported the shift, focusing on leadership and management improvement rather than cost-cutting.

Bjarte attributes the speed to strong owner backing, a capable controller leading the effort, and a supportive CEO, while noting that mindset change takes longer than process change. HR played a key role in shifting performance evaluation toward relative measures and maintaining shared club-level bonuses instead of individual incentives.

Key topics and timestamps

• 00:00 Welcome
• 01:07 Miles Overview
• 02:47 Transparency Over Budgets
• 04:15 Recruiting and Culture
• 06:05 Servant Leadership
• 06:46 Born Beyond Budgeting
• 10:37 Sustaining Beliefs at Scale
• 12:23 David Lloyd Clubs
• 13:09 Rapid Rollout
• 13:56 Benchmarking and Rhythm
• 17:41 Why It Worked
• 20:53 Relative Performance
• 24:45 Transparency and Learning
• 26:47 HR and Rewards
• 28:15 Results and Conclusion

About Bjarte Bogsnes

Bjarte Bogsnes is Chairman of the Beyond Budgeting Round Table, a former global finance executive, and a leading thinker in management innovation. He is the author of Implementing Beyond Budgeting and This Is Beyond Budgeting, showing how organizations can replace rigid, calendar-driven systems with models built on trust, transparency, and adaptability — creating companies that are both more responsive and more human.

Follow Bjarte at:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/bjarte-bogsnes-41557910/

Music: https://www.purple-planet.com

Visit us at https://www.ouragiletales.com/about

Welcome back to Our Agile Tales, where we continue our conversation with Bjarte Bogsnes to go over case studies from his latest book, This Is Beyond Budgeting. His new book distills nearly three decades of real-world experience challenging traditional budgeting, targets, and control-based management.

In this episode of 'Our Agile Tales,' we welcome back Bjarte Bogsnes, Chairman of Beyond Budgeting Round Table, to explore the principles and practices of Beyond Budgeting. Bogsnes shares his extensive experience and insights on how Beyond Budgeting can drive performance by empowering employees and promoting coherence across management processes. The conversation delves into Handelsbanken's unique approach to employee bonuses, performance reviews, promotions, and training, highlighting the bank's emphasis on long-term employee development and consistent management philosophies. This episode offers valuable lessons for companies looking to create more adaptive and human organizations.

Key topics and approximate timestamps

• 00:00 Introduction to Our Agile Tales
• 01:20 Beyond Budgeting and Performance Reviews
• 01:54 The Common Bonus Scheme
• 03:29 Coherence in Management Processes
• 05:46 Handling Non-Performance
• 07:48 KPIs and Performance Enabling
• 09:59 Sales Commissions and Career Paths
• 16:49 Training and Onboarding at Handelsbanken
• 20:58 Final Thoughts on Handelsbanken
• 25:02 Episode Conclusion 

About Bjarte Bogsnes

Bjarte Bogsnes is the Chairman of the Beyond Budgeting Round Table, a former global finance executive, and a leading thinker in management innovation. He is the author of Implementing Beyond Budgeting and This Is Beyond Budgeting, where he distills nearly three decades of real-world experience challenging traditional budgeting, targets, and control-based management.

Bjarte's work demonstrates how organizations can replace rigid, calendar-driven systems with models built on trust, transparency, and adaptability. The result is creating companies that are not only more responsive but also more human.

You can follow Bjarte Bogsnes at https://www.linkedin.com/in/bjarte-bogsnes-41557910/

Our music is from https://www.purple-planet.com.

Visit us at https://www.ouragiletales.com/about

Welcome back to Our Agile Tales, where we continue our conversation with Bjarte Bogsnes to go over case studies from his latest book, This Is Beyond Budgeting. His new book distills nearly three decades of real-world experience challenging traditional budgeting, targets, and control-based management.

In this episode, we discuss the ingrained corporate budgeting practices, their inefficacies, and how to shift towards more adaptive, event-driven planning. The conversation also delves into the performance management debate and examines Handelsbanken's exceptional model, a bank that has successfully operated without traditional budgets, targets, or individual bonuses since the 1970s. Bjarte emphasizes the importance of separating accounting from forward-looking planning and highlights the impact of empowering employees and fostering transparency in achieving organizational success.

Key topics and approximate timestamps

• 00:00 Introduction to Agile Tales
• 01:08 Challenges with Traditional Budgeting
• 02:04 Separating Accounting from Forward Planning
• 03:49 The Importance of Dynamic Management
• 05:47 Rethinking Performance Management
• 09:42 Case Study: Handelsbanken
• 13:50 The Origins of Handelsbanken's Approach
• 17:59 The Evolution of Beyond Budgeting
• 20:46 Handelsbanken's Unique Management Model
• 29:30 Episode Conclusion

About Bjarte Bogsnes

Bjarte Bogsnes is the Chairman of the Beyond Budgeting Round Table, a former global finance executive, and a leading thinker in management innovation. He is the author of Implementing Beyond Budgeting and This Is Beyond Budgeting, where he distills nearly three decades of real-world experience challenging traditional budgeting, targets, and control-based management.

Bjarte's work demonstrates how organizations can replace rigid, calendar-driven systems with models built on trust, transparency, and adaptability. The result is creating companies that are not only more responsive but also more human.

You can follow Bjarte Bogsnes at https://www.linkedin.com/in/bjarte-bogsnes-41557910/

Our music is from https://www.purple-planet.com.

Visit us at https://www.ouragiletales.com/about

Welcome to a new season of Our Agile Tales. 

We have brought back Bjarte Bogsnes, Chairman of Beyond Budgeting Round Table, and is a popular international business speaker and Beyond Budgeting coach. He is an award-winning author and long-time champion of more adaptive human organizations. In this series of episodes, Bjarte reflects on 25 years of management innovation and the evolution of Beyond Budgeting far beyond its financial origins.

Our episode starts with a refresher on what Beyond Budgeting is, and why it is so often misunderstood as "just a finance thing." From there, we explore how deeply traditional management assumptions shape behavior, trust, and decision-making inside organizations. Bjarte uses metaphors, real-world examples, and decades of experience to explain why many well-intended Agile and Lean transformations stall or fail if they don't address and rethink the management processes. We dive into Theory X and Theory Y, the hidden damage caused by fixed targets and calendar-driven planning, and how separating targets, forecasts, and resource allocation can fundamentally change behavior. Throughout the episode, Bjarte makes the case that true business agility requires coherence and alignment between leadership principles and management systems. Without this alignment, successful long-term transformations will not be achieved.

Key topics and approximate timestamps

• 00:00 – Introduction to Our Agile Tales
• 01:52 – Why Beyond Budgeting is not about finance—and why the name still matters
• 04:30 – Challenging traditional management assumptions: trust and predictability
• 07:10 – Leadership principles vs. management processes: where companies break coherence
• 10:00 – Why Agile and Lean need Beyond Budgeting to scale at the enterprise level
• 13:21 – Theory X and Theory Y: how beliefs about people shape management models
• 16:40 – The problem with combining targets, forecasts, and resource allocation
• 18:30 – Gaming, sandbagging, and unintended consequences of budgeting systems
• 20:24 – What's wrong with traditional targets—and how relative targets change behavior
• 23:10 – Moving from calendar-driven planning to business- and event-driven rhythms
• 26:00 – Continuous decision-making as a Beyond Budgeting version of continuous delivery
• 28:29 – Closing reflections and broader implications for adaptive organizations

About Bjarte Bogsnes

Bjarte Bogsnes is the Chairman of the Beyond Budgeting Round Table, a former global finance executive, and a leading thinker in management innovation. He is the author of Implementing Beyond Budgeting and This Is Beyond Budgeting, where he distills nearly three decades of real-world experience challenging traditional budgeting, targets, and control-based management.

Bjarte's work demonstrates how organizations can replace rigid, calendar-driven systems with models built on trust, transparency, and adaptability. The result is creating companies that are not only more responsive but also more human.

You can follow Bjarte Bogsnes at https://www.linkedin.com/in/bjarte-bogsnes-41557910/

Our music is from https://www.purple-planet.com.

Visit us at https://www.ouragiletales.com/about