Agile Singapore

Bureaucracy slows decisions, kills innovation, and drives a wedge between organizations and their customers. Yet most agile transformations leave bureaucratic structures intact. They introduce standups, sprints, and cross-functional teams inside organizations where strategy is centrally determined, success is defined by process compliance, and teams never face real customers. The result? Agile theater.

This isn't a new problem. Economists like Ludwig von Mises argued decades ago that without genuine market feedback, rational decision-making is impossible. Organizations that shield internal units from customer reality will become bureaucratic — not because of bad leadership, but because of structural information problems.

In this session, Sohrab Salimi examines what happens when leaders take bureaucracy-busting seriously. We'll look at Bayer under CEO Bill Anderson, who is implementing Gary Hamel's Humanocracy framework at scale — replacing hierarchy with mission teams, eliminating annual planning, and attempting one of the largest de-bureaucratization experiments in corporate history.

You'll leave with a deeper understanding of why agility and bureaucracy cannot coexist, why customer centricity is structurally impossible in traditional hierarchies, and what radical alternatives actually look like in practice.

About the Speaker
Sohrab Salimi is a visionary voice in agile leadership and organizational transformation.

An entrepreneur by conviction, Sohrab has spent over 20 years helping leaders rethink how companies build products, empower teams, and adapt to a rapidly changing world. His mission: to turn agility into real business impact.

As the founder and CEO of Agile Academy, he works with organizations across the globe, from startups to Fortune 500 companies, guiding them through strategic change with clarity and courage. Sohrab combines deep agile expertise, boardroom-level experience, and the mindset of a coach.

Through Agile Insights Conversations, his curated talks with global thought leaders, and his German translations of influential agile literature, he challenges conventional thinking and sparks new perspectives.

Sohrab lives in Cologne, where he balances life as a father of three with his passions: sport, music, and the pursuit of lifelong learning.