How to build a pigpen

Blending the AO Method (Adaptive Organization) with the allegorical, story-driven tone of John Kotter’s Our Iceberg Is Melting, this book uses the fable of building a pigpen as a metaphor for organizational design, team learning, and adaptive transformation.

In the evolution of the AO Method (adaptive org), the Agile Animal Farm game came first as a simulation to test assumptions about what makes an organization truly agile. Through repeated runs of the game, patterns emerged: to become adaptive and responsive, behaviour always reflects its context—the conditions and constraints in which people interact. What I call “behaviour” here is the quality and nature of interactions between people inside a system, whether we label it team, organization, or structure.

" A group of farm animals must redesign their pigpen after a storm destroys it. Each animal represents a common organizational role or mindset — the visionary rooster, the cautious cow, the practical pig, and the reflective goat. Guided by an unexpected newcomer — a sparrow who has seen “adaptive farms” elsewhere — they learn how to build not just a pigpen, but a smarter way of working together. "