Alistair Corrie

Alistair Corrie was born in England but spent his childhood in Brazil, where he first learned to read and write in Portuguese. His family returned to the UK when he was thirteen. After King's College London he qualified as a Chartered Accountant with Price Waterhouse, where he also met his wife Sue.

In 2003 they decided they would learn a new skill every year. Along the way they have climbed Kilimanjaro, hiked the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu, learned to scuba dive, learned to ride Harley-Davidsons, taken up sailing and, in 2026, kitesurfing. At the age of fifty Alistair completed an Ironman.

In 2017 Alistair was introduced to agile, and it helped him articulate something he had always felt: that there was a better, faster and less bureaucratic way of getting things done. He also noticed a pattern playing out in organisations everywhere. Brilliant people, hobbled by unnecessary interference.

His argument starts from a simple observation. We were born agile. We were not born bureaucratic. We arrive curious, experimental and collaborative, and somewhere between the ages of five and nine that begins to be blocked. Four walls of interference go up around us, and together they form what he calls the Box of Interference. Most of us spend our working lives inside it.

His definition of agility is disarmingly simple: figuring out the most effective way of delivering an outcome within valid constraints. At its heart is a guiding principle: define the what and the why, then let the doers determine how best to deliver the outcome.

The Born Agile series approaches this from every angle. The Born Agile Field Guide catalogues 60 interference patterns and what to do about them. The Key Elements for Business Agility sets out the 21 elements that block or enable the flow of ideas between minds. The Trust Experiments tells the true stories of six organisations that removed what was in their way, among them Semco, Buurtzorg and W.L. Gore. The Born Agile Canterbury Tales gathers seven masters of natural problem-solving, from Winston Churchill to Richard Feynman. And in fiction, 221B Baker Street, Alex in Workingland and Born Agile: A Time Traveller's Guide make the same case as mystery, satire and time travel.

We don't need to teach people to be agile. We need to stop teaching them not to be.

Now retired, Alistair writes and speaks at conferences internationally, blending neuroscience research with interactive experiments that demonstrate why removing barriers matters more than adding frameworks. He publishes new iterations of his books as readers suggest improvements, and welcomes being told what to fix.

When he's not writing or speaking, Alistair and Sue are working their way through an extensive bucket list. There are frequent rumours of "Corrie sightings" from various parts of the globe.