Andrea Provaglio
Executive Business Agility Advisor
Edition
ACE! 2025
Topic: Us with Them - Tomorrow’s Business Organizations
This talk puts a little twist on the conference theme “Us and Them”. It explores the common threads that connect or differ from yesterday’s, today’s, and tomorrow’s organizations, management practices, and leadership styles.
The message is mainly addressed to tomorrow’s potential leaders and managers without neglecting the current ones. The content draws from my decades of experience working in a mentoring role with many companies of all sizes, shapes and cultures – plus my long-time, first-hand, deep involvement with the Agile movement.
There are a few key points that we’ll touch upon: the fact that despite the appearances, for the most part, we’ve been facing the same challenges for decades; that for most of this time, we have repeatedly run into the same pitfalls; that some of the lessons we have learned from the Agile movement, and some of the mistakes, are invaluable for future organizations; and that in a world of increased technological complexity, the human factor (which includes respect, real communication and a sense of belonging) is arguably the most critical differentiator.
I intend to share some of the wisdom I acquired over the years and offer some reflections and practical advice, staying away from the familiar platitudes on all these topics.
Biography:
I work with leaders, executives, managers and teams in organizations that create intellectual products (mainly but not only in IT). I help them rethink their organizational dynamics, mindset, processes and practices, so that they can do business effectively in the 21st century.
I work closely with executives, owners, managers and operative teams and I do a number of things including one-on-one coaching, team coaching, consulting on specific practices and, occasionally, hands-on training.
I’m especially interested in distributed leadership and self-organization for knowledge-based organizations, a topic that touches on a number on subjects, including non-conventional organizational structures and individual and collective communication and social skills. And, I’m a long-standing Agile practitioner.
In over 20 years of professional experience, first in IT then in Agile in the broader sense, I worked with organizations in three different continents, as big the United Nations’ FAO and as small as dynamic post-startup companies. I have a wide range of expertise, in both the public and private sector, with both large and small organizations and with different cultures.
I’m based back in Italy but I’ve also worked for four years in the USA on a O-1 visa for “extraordinary abilities in Sciences”.