From Big Goals to Real Results: Leadership is the Missing Link
You’ve seen it before: big goals meet a complex organizational system that wasn’t designed for speed, learning, or scale. Change stalls, teams burn out, and “agile” becomes a label for frustration while transformation investments fail to pay off.
The reason? Most organizations try to install agile practices — but organizational systems and leadership behaviors quietly undermine them.
True agility isn’t unlocked by better practices or new frameworks. It’s unlocked when leaders learn how to shape the system — decision rights, incentives, feedback loops, and cultural signals — so teams can move fast without burning out or fragmenting the organization.
This workshop covers all the material required by the Scrum Alliance for its Certified Agile Leader® (CAL 1) certification. But it’s not about adopting a framework. It’s about removing the organizational constraints that prevent agility from paying off. It will help you reduce decision drag, restore alignment and help your teams deliver results, without change theater.
This Certified Agile Leader® (CAL 1) course is for leaders responsible for outcomes in complex organizations — leaders who need agility to deliver results, not just practices. It’s for those who want to unlock measurable breakthroughs in decision latency, alignment, and reliability — in themselves, their teams, and their organizations.
Through real world examples, practical exercises, peer discussion, and guided reflection, you’ll discover how to:
Recognize the patterns that limit agility in your organization, and cultivate the influence to change them.
Build trust, psychological safety, and alignment to grow meaningful autonomy in your teams.
Lead coordinated change across culture, structure, strategy, and systems — the levers that deliver results that matter and build teams who thrive.
Shift from managing performance to creating conditions for performance. You’ll understand how people, systems, and culture all connect. You’ll leave with techniques to identify, describe, and shift leadership behaviors and organizational systems so agility shows up in decision speed, stronger alignment, greater trust, and reliable execution — not just language. You’ll be able to articulate and apply specific shifts within your current constraints.
Grounded in Experience, Built for Results
This course brings agility out of the abstract. You’ll see how agility actually functions inside large, complex organizations — including real stories from billion-dollar businesses operating with weekly iteration cycles. You’ll work with real scenarios and practical tools you can apply the next day, connecting leadership concepts directly to your business reality.
This is not a theory session — it’s a workshop built for people who lead real change.
Who Should Attend
This course is designed for leaders accountable for outcomes in complex organizations — directors, senior managers, executives, and leaders who need agility to deliver results, not just practices. It is especially valuable for leaders navigating decision bottlenecks, misalignment across teams, stalled change, or burnout driven by competing priorities and unclear systems.
Workshop Schedule: 4-hour Sessions
March 9, 2026: 11:00 am - 3:00 pm EST / 8:00 am - 12:00 pm PST
March 10, 2026: 11:00 am - 3:00 pm EST / 8:00 am - 12:00 pm PST
March 11, 2026: 11:00 am - 3:00 pm EST / 8:00 am - 12:00 pm PST
March 12, 2026: 11:00 am - 3:00 pm EST / 8:00 am - 12:00 pm PST
All sessions include breaks of about 9 minutes each hour. Whole-day sessions also include a mid-class break of about 45 minutes.
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Schedule doesn't fit? See this link for other dates/times.
What You’ll Take Away
You’ll leave with clarity, confidence, and capabilities to:
Diagnose cultural and systemic blockers with clarity Learn to spot the hidden structures, incentives, and leadership patterns that silently stall performance — and know exactly where to intervene for the highest leverage.
Turn strategic intent into aligned, actionable focus Gain techniques for translating high-level direction into coherent priorities that teams can actually execute, reducing churn and restoring momentum.
Build the conditions to balance autonomy and accountability Discover leadership moves that increase trust, decision speed, and ownership across teams — without sacrificing alignment or transparency.
Lead change across hierarchies even without positional authority Use practical leadership techniques to shift behaviors, norms, and expectations across your organization, even when you don’t control all the levers.
Lead with Clarity. Shape the System to Deliver Where It Counts.
Be the leader who catalyzes breakthroughs — not by pushing harder, but by leading smarter. Learn how to shape culture, enable flow, and help your organization deliver results that matter and transformation that lasts.
Get a taste of the instruction style you'll experience with this short video that shows the growth possible as you shift culture and systems AND where you can start:
Here's what students say about our online workshops:
"If you're taking this course, "you're in the right place"... Thank you for providing a safe environment to learn new skills. It's crazy how a good teacher can help you learn new things without making it feel like a chore. Take this course, you won't be disappointed." -- Christina Monti
"This class is worth EVERY PENNY! Bernie is a great instructor that keeps the class entertaining but also provides useful application for real world scenarios." -- Jascelyn Gause
"Multi hour sessions are undeniably daunting, but within the first 15 minutes I was interacting, laughing, and learning. ... I can feel myself using some of the techniques of your flavorful delivery with my team already - and it's making a difference." -- Craig Cochran
Bernie's career started with a flash and a bang. Literally. His first position was designing devices that protect telephone networks from lightning strikes. A few career pivots later, he had a flash of insight: it was possible to tap into latent potential in every person, every team, and every organization.
The teams he’s worked with have grown businesses to beyond $100 million, delivering products from consumer electronics to network infrastructure to services & payments at firms including TiVo, Cisco, Wells Fargo and more. He consults and teaches workshops including Agile Product Development and Agile Leadership at Stanford Continuing Studies.
As an Agile Leadership Coach, Bernie helps clients achieve performance breakthroughs with their teams, their organizations and themselves. More, he believes that Accelerating Genius℠ is possible in every person and business, and leads both to outrageous effectiveness, and a whole lot more fun.
Anil Jaising
Anil's been tinkering with code, infrastructure and product development from the beginning of his career with expertise in both financial services and startups.
In the early 1990s he worked to develop a product that distributed messages worldwide within 3 seconds. He's led cloud transformation programs across 250 application teams for one of the world's largest banks. With his deep experience in Agile, DevOps and leadership, he's helped to guide multiple organizations to achievements in market focus, productivity and quality gains.
Anil has a deep interest in instructional design. In addition to his CST® credential, he's also a certified Training from the BACK of the Room trainer. He teaches in the graduate program at New York University and is well regarded as an Agile, Executive and Technical Coach.
The Fine Print
FAQ
How soon can I get my CAL® 1 certification? At the end of the workshop, we will let the Scrum Alliance know of your successful completion of the course. You'll receive an email from them to setup your profile on the Scrum Alliance website. There you'll accept your license agreement with Scrum Alliance and activate your new certification
Wait! Don't I Need to Take an Exam to be Certified as a CAL 1? No. Currently the only requirement to earn the CAL 1 is the successful completion of the full course, including exercises.
Can I Miss Several Hours of the Workshop and Still be Certified? No. Because Scrum Alliance requires 16 hours of instruction, if you miss more than 15 minutes of the workshop, you will not be eligible for certification, and you will be welcome to attend the rest of the workshop. Don't worry - if something big comes up, we'll move you to a future workshop at no cost.
Can I Make Up Missed Material by Attending Part of Another Workshop? No. Amongst other factors, each class moves through the material at different paces. This means it's unreliable to predict a clear window where a set of previously missed LOs will be covered. There are further complicating factors in partial attendance. For the smoothest experience for all, you're welcome to make up missed material by attending a future workshop in full at no charge.
What do I need to bring to class? You'll need a computer with microphone, camera & speakers. Use https://fast.com to test your internet connection. After the download numbers stop, use the "more" option to calculate your upload speed. You'll need 5 down / 1 up - and more is better. Now, while in class, you'll be actively using your computer to participate in exercises, so plan to peek at your email only during a break or at lunchtime.
Cancellation Policy
We understand that things can change, and we strive to be as agile as possible with respect to registrations. Please email us no later than 5 business days before the start of the workshop and we'll arrange a refund or transfer to a future date. Cancellations received within 5 full business days of the start of the course will receive a credit (no cash value) towards a future workshop. Please request changes by emailing [email protected].
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Anil
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Mon Feb 09 - 12, 2026
4:00 PM UTC