transform together – the podcast meetup about organizational development

AI can make individuals faster. But can it help teams and organizations create more value? In this episode of transform together, Johannes Schartau talks with Dave West, former CEO and Product Owner of Scrum.org, about what Scrum, product development and organizational design need to become in the age of AI. Dave reflects on what he learned during eleven years leading Scrum.org, why Scrum became a convenient villain, what current AI development playbooks get right and what they leave out. He explores how Product Backlogs may shift from task lists toward intent, outcomes, measurement and context, whether much faster learning cycles change the purpose of the Sprint, and why accountability cannot simply be delegated to an agent. They also discuss the risk that AI makes individuals more isolated while producing artifacts so polished that teams stop challenging them. Looking further ahead, Dave considers the growing importance of design, flow metrics, Evidence-Based Management, visualization and shared models, as well as the harder question of whether organizations will actually change their structures to benefit from AI.

AI is joining our teams. But does adding more agents, more tokens and faster output actually make us smarter together? In this episode of transform together, Johannes Schartau talks with Dr. Babak Hemmatian, a research associate at Stony Brook University's AI Innovation Institute, about what happens when people and AI reason as a group. Rather than treating AI as a replacement for an individual worker, Babak looks at the relationships among people, agents, information and decisions. They explore where humans and AI differ in memory, attention and reasoning; how arrangements such as the "centaur" and AI information broker change collaboration; and why adding too many AI agents can undermine trust. Babak also explains why clear context, deliberate redundancy and human-paced checkpoints may make work more reliable - even when they look inefficient at first. A conversation about designing hybrid teams for better judgment, not just faster output.

Self-organization sounds promising. Until disagreement gets uncomfortable, conflict disappears underground and everyone starts wishing someone would just make a decision. In this episode of transform together, Johannes Schartau talks with Richard D. Bartlett about how to have better fights: conflicts that bring important differences into the open without destroying trust or relationships. Richard explains why psychological safety should not mean avoiding disagreement. It should give people enough confidence to be honest, notice anger before it takes over and say what they are trying to protect. When differences can be expressed with both courage and curiosity, conflict becomes a source of collective intelligence, creative tension and better decisions. Together, they explore how Fight Wise helps habitual conflict avoiders practise assertiveness, how to surface unspoken tensions in groups and why temporary leadership can help self-organized teams move forward. They also discuss authority baggage, developmental “speed wobbles” and the growing temptation to replace difficult human interactions with agreeable AI assistants. A conversation about disagreeing more skilfully and why healthy collaboration may require us to get a little better at fighting.

In this episode of transform together, Johannes Schartau talks with Nancy White about moving from traditional strategic planning toward a more adaptive and participatory “strategic way of being.” They explore why strategy begins with purpose, how the six questions of Strategy Knotworking help groups navigate complexity, and why noticing, learning, and adjusting are more valuable than pretending the future can be planned in detail. Nancy explains how Liberating Structures such as Ecocycle Planning, Creative Destruction, and Wicked Questions can uncover hidden tensions, challenge comfortable assumptions, and turn disagreement into a source of learning. The conversation also explores why alignment does not require complete agreement and how organizations can replace three-year master plans with meaningful first steps, shared ownership, and continuous reflection.

In this episode of transform together, Johannes Schartau talks to Simon Flossmann about Evidence-Based Management, Scrum.org’s framework for connecting goals, measures, experiments, and actual value delivered. Many organizations are very good at producing output: more features, more projects, more initiatives, more meetings. But how do they know whether any of this actually creates value? Simon explains how EBM can help teams and organizations move beyond “we shipped it” and toward better conversations about customer outcomes, product value, learning, and decision-making. Together, Johannes and Simon explore what “evidence” means in the messy reality of product development, how EBM relates to Scrum, Product Goals and Sprint Reviews, and why measuring value can become deeply uncomfortable. They also talk about the difference between being busy and creating impact, why leadership often prefers opinions over evidence, and how teams can start small without turning EBM into another framework rollout. The conversation touches on current value, unrealized value, customer behavior, confidence in assumptions, outcome-oriented Product Goals, organizational change, AI transformations, and the awkward but necessary moment when evidence shows that something simply is not working. As always, the episode is both practical and reflective: less about installing a new method, and more about asking better questions. How do we know whether our product delivers value? What would change our mind? And what can we learn before we spend even more time building the wrong thing?