Observations in Agile Transformation

Posted by Seth Webster in Featured, Leadership | 2 comments

One of the key things I have been focused on during my time at Intuit has been process improvement and transformational leadership activities. Of course, I am an avid proponent of Lean/Agile methodologies and strategies and have applied much of what I havelearned over the years in my approach at Intuit.

Intuit is a great place to work and there are tons of opportunities for testing and measuring different approaches toidea generation, incubation and development as well as for iterating (relatively) rapidly on process improvements.

In this article, I want to put forth thoughts on the Agile Transformation and on re-thinking some of the challenges weface in our day-to-day.

Fear Factor

Bringing an organization into the Agile domain is often very challenging for a variety of reasons. There are practical considerations, roles and responsibilities to define (and un-define), existing dysfunctions, and so forth. However, the root of most of the challenges faced when leading any sort of organizational change is fear.

Why Fear?

Because it means change and for whatever reason it seems like many of the people I have managed, worked with and for, at one time or another fear change. Isn’t it fascinating that we aspire to deliver greatness in what we create, which fundamentally means change of some kind, yet we find ourselves and others fearing the very change required to produce that greatness? I just love these paradoxes!

Why do people fear change?

Besides the obvious reasons — fear of failure, losing job,position, rank, looking bad – I believe that people think they are supposed to find stability. People seek a groove(see: rut) and ride that groove as long as possible. While there is merit in stability and finding your rhythm, there is danger in finding too much comfort there. As stated clearly in the Agile Manifesto, we must be good at responding to change! It is my wholehearted belief that many of our greatest failures come from commitment to a failing approach over being intelligently flexible. Our [work]culture promotes the pursuit of stability rather than the pursuit of agility & flexibility — this creates a collapse when change is thrust upon us.

What if we were comfortable with rapid, frequent unexpected change? How would this change how we feel or respond when blindsided?

Overcoming Fear

Changing the fear-response is an active process of continual reinforcement and of supplanting the undesired response with the preferable one.  As with any other type of change — personal or organizational – reverting into past behavior is a natural reflexive response.  Leading change in this area requires patience and a safe environment; team members, managers and leaders must feel safe to challenge one-another and more importantly, it must be okay to fail.

Fail fast, Learn fast, Change… Rinse, lather, repeat.

Remember: Change is okay – it should mean that we are evolving!

Process Rigidity

Along with resistance to change, potentially rooted in fear, is resistance to changing the way we work.  After all, why should we change what’s already effective?

Effective in isolation

Obviously, the effectuality of a given team, group or process is relative.  Often, you have extremely effective individual contributors and teams within the organization and there’s good reason to fear disrupting that strong performance.  The problem here lies in missing the bigger picture; the groups are generally highly effective — true — but in isolation; the larger organism is still unhealthy because there is very little interaction between the parts.

If the department, division or group’s components only work well in isolation — clumps of medium to high performing isolated teams– peak performance, progress and innovation cannot occur.

“The whole is greater than the sum of its parts” –Aristotle

What fantastic feeling it is to work within an organization that achieves this Aristotelian principle!

Effective in Collaboration

Changing the way people work to incorporate more collaboration and thus sharing results and outcomes is critical to:

• Creating deep cross-functional understanding the problem domain
• Creating accountability inter/intra-organizationally
• Instilling a sense of investment in the work & results
• Turbo-charging innovation
• Destroying silos
• Creating dynamic and flexible teams

Most people and teams are far more effective in collaboration,though there are those folks that do a great job at being turned loose on a problem.  Often, this is best done during the formative stages of a project – learning, prototyping, getting a firm grasp on the problem – but if you look over the course of time, the isolated approach tends to take you only so far and then collaboration of some type is required to elevate to the next level.

It may seem obvious, but we collect ourselves into teams precisely because collaboration yields benefits.  The issue we tend to face here is that when given the choice between grouping ourselves by what we do rather than grouping ourselves by what we’re trying to accomplish we are apt to choose the former. In doing this, we sap our full creative and collaborative potential.  It may feel comfortable to live in a group of like-skilled designers or engineers, analysts or marketers, copy-writers or sales reps — there is a sense of community and collaboration here flows naturally — unfortunately this has ultimately led us to the work request (toss over the wall) processes we have today.  This is because teams are organized by what the members do.

To be clear I don’t want to discourage the highly effective process of growth and development that results from intra-vocational community development.  Designers should challenge one another to achieve each new milestone in thinking and approach.  Engineers should challenge one another inelegance and simplicity, for example. When I think back over my career thus far, I am reminded that most of the life-changing growth I have experienced has been in working with people outside my community of technicians: leaders, designers, analysts and customers!

Fundamentally, hard organizational lines should not drive -positively or negatively – your ability to organize around the goals and objectives after which you are seeking.  Hard reorganizations are costly, time-consuming and can be a total disruption to teams. And, often, you are in a situation no better suited to deliver optimum collaboration and efficacy. What we’re talking about here is creating flexible groups that are “organized”around what should be accomplished, rather than function – this can be done simply by:

• Explicitly, but flexibly defining the teams and team members around the outcomes – team members should represent appropriate functions for the desired results
• Establishing Accountability – Team owns the outcomes, good or bad
• Giving appropriate autonomy – you expect greatness and expert-level contribution
• Expecting and rewarding failure – this is where the greatest learning tends to manifest

Commit like you’ve never committed before

“Aha! You said be flexible and ready to respond to change!”

So I did, and still hold this to be an inalienable truth.  What you and the organization must commit to is working through the challenges that arise in making the change.  Think about what you are asking!

• Accountability – Teams & Team Members will have themselves to thank for success, and conversely, blame for failures
• Trust – In groups that have struggled, trust is a hard commodity to come by; it is, however, essential
• Autonomy – Folks will be required to leverage expertise,innovation, self-discipline and drive. In low performing groups, it may take awhile for people to become comfortable in this space again.  When they do, it’ll be like wildfire!
• Honesty – No more hidden agendas.  Everyone has to be ready to incorporate delivering honest, real-time feedback… and be ready to receive it!
• Accepting Failure – Adjusting to an environment that allows for and rewards appropriate failure – that in failing and learning fast- isn’t easy; especially for overachievers and a-types!

The challenges are all surmountable, the payoff is great and your employees, customers and stakeholders will all be overjoyed to participate in this kind of environment!

Thanks, reader, for making it this far.  I’d love to hear feedback on experiences others have had making this journey.

Note: This work represents my opinion and does not necessarily reflect the opinion of my employer, my wife, or anyone else I know.