A few years ago, I was brought in to be an agile leadership coach and during my time there I was responsible for coaching the Director of Architecture who after meeting me a few times, looked at me and said, ‘as long as I’m sitting in this chair and in this office, you won’t be allowed to do any of the agile things you are talking about. We work the way I say we work, so you can cancel our remaining 1:1’s as we aren’t going to be doing anything agile while I’m here. ‘
I thought to myself, well at least I know where I stand.
I then went to the VP and relayed my conversations with the Director of Architecture and was not really surprised by his feedback. He told me that she was the most important person on his team, and he relied on her to lead architecture over almost everything else. He said she was old school, but they go back many years together and frankly he trusted her more than he could trust me or the agile approaches I was suggesting as he didn’t have any experience working in agile. And worse, he wasn’t willing to support some experiments in visualizing some wins that would help move behavior toward a new normal.
It was during this engagement that I developed what I call the three pillars of organizational change:
Transparency, Accountability, and Predictability.
The transparency pillar is almost entirely focused on leadership and if you can’t get this pillar right no amount of focus on the other two, which are supported by the frameworks will result in real change.
We talk about the failures of agile, they are however often a result of having no consequences for not adopting agile. That organization is still thriving in its industry, could it be doing better, delivering more value? More than likely, but at the end of the day unless there are consequences for lack of change, no change will happen and no amount of coaching can change that.
Real change starts with establishing the transparent reasons the organization needs to move towards agile. Explain the reasons, the challenges, and the outcomes to everyone. Only after you have defined why you need the organization to become more ‘agile’ and the outcomes that everyone will track towards, will the organization have the support of everyone and real long-term change will happen. These outcomes will be a key OKR for your leadership, which will support real change and this must be supported by agile coaches who have been leaders themselves. Unfortunately, most coaches in the industry today do not have any real-world experience in development, organizational change, or leadership. A certificate does not convey any underlying experience.
Agile transformations are sold as a waterfall project, and after 12-18 months your organization will miraculously become agile by implementing ‘x’ framework. You won’t, organizational change is harder and long-term in nature. If you are in the midst of trying to become more agile or just now thinking about it, talk to me. My Soundagile Learning journey is a way for your organization to own and manage your move toward business agility. Check out the learning journey here - Learning Journey — SoundAgile Consulting
Moving towards agility is an evolutionary step that must take into account how your organization works today. Your business has been in a continuous state of evolution from its inception, to think that agile can be implemented any other way is just kidding ourselves.