#149: How Agile Action Drives Strategy with Boris Gloger

What does it really mean to have a bias toward action and how do you build that into your culture without skipping strategy? Boris Gloger joins Brian Milner for a deep dive on experimentation, leadership, and the difference between tactical work and true strategic thinking.

Overview

In this conversation, Brian welcomes longtime Scrum pioneer, consultant, and author Boris Gloger to explore the tension between planning and doing in Agile environments.

Boris shares how a bias toward action isn’t about skipping steps—it’s about shortening the cycle between idea and feedback, especially when knowledge gaps or fear of mistakes create inertia.

They unpack why experimentation is often misunderstood, what leaders get wrong about failure, and how AI, organizational habits, and strategy-as-practice are reshaping the future of Agile work.

References and resources mentioned in the show:

Boris Gloger
LinkedIn
Leaders Guide to Agile eBook
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This episode’s presenters are:

Brian Milner is SVP of coaching and training at Mountain Goat Software. He's passionate about making a difference in people's day-to-day work, influenced by his own experience of transitioning to Scrum and seeing improvements in work/life balance, honesty, respect, and the quality of work.

Boris Gloger is a pioneering agile strategist and Germany’s first Certified Scrum Trainer, known for shaping how organizations across Europe approach transformation, strategy, and sustainable leadership. As founder of borisgloger consulting, he helps teams and executives navigate complexity—blending modern management, ethical innovation, and even AI—to make agility actually work in the real world.

Auto-generated Transcript:

Brian Milner (00:00)
Welcome in Agile Mentors. We're back for another episode of the Agile Mentors Podcast. I'm with you as always, Brian Milner. And today I have the one, the only Mr. Boris Glogger with us. Welcome in Boris.

Boris Gloger (00:11)
Yeah, thank you, Eurobrein, for having me on your show.

Brian Milner (00:14)
Very excited to have Boris here. For those of you who haven't crossed paths with Boris, Boris has been involved in the Scrum movement, I would say, since the very, very earliest days. He's a CST, he's a coach, he's an author, he's a keynote speaker. He had a book early called The Agile Fixed Price. He runs his own consultancy in Europe. And he has a new book that's been, that's going to be coming out soon called strategy as practice. And that's one of the reasons we wanted to have Boris on is because there's kind of this topic area that's been percolating that I've heard people talk about quite often. And I see some confused looks when the, when the topic comes up, you hear this term about having a bias toward action. And, we just wanted to kind of dive into that a little bit about what that means to have a bias toward action. and really how we can apply that to what we do in our day-to-day