I treat this as just another temporary project with a big, up-front planning and design that I turn into outputs pushed to my people for implementation within clear deadlines.
No. Let's stop here. This is all antipatterns in "Sooner, Safer, Happier - Antipatterns and patterns for business agility" by Jonathan Smart.
Organizations are complex adaptive systems. We need to evolve our ways of working to deliver value in a way that suits the nature of the work (Cynefin framework).
In the Age of Digital, don't use methods from two technological revolutions ago on unique, knowledge-based work that is emergent and full of unknown-unknowns.
Start with the "Why"
Start with why if the why is not already clearly understood, and communicate it three more times than you think you need. You cannot over-communicate the why.
What happens if the status quo is maintained? What’s the “so what”? Why do people need to go through the discomfort of change and lack of mastery? What appeals to the selfish gene?
There should be a compelling why unique to your context and organization, which is the call to action. “We want to be more agile”, “We want to be more lean”, “We want to be more product-oriented” are insufficient calls to action.
A
useful exercise is doing a “five whys”. Break into pairs with the starting
question of “Why change?” and take turns asking why five times with each answer
forming the basis of the next question.
Desired outcomes
Next, articulate and agree on your desired outcomes. Agile, DevOps, Lean and Design Thinking are the means to an end, they are not the end. They are bodies of knowledge, wisdom, principles, and practices to be applied in context to achieve desired outcomes.
Outcomes should be measured and visualized. Focus on the trend over time and relative ranking on improvement rather than on absolutes, as everyone has a different starting point. The goal is to improve over time.
Business
outcomes are hypotheses and they are nested with a lineage up to longer-term,
organization-wide strategic outcome hypotheses. Outcomes are not passed down,
unchanged, in a traditional order-giver, order-taker manner. Instead they
align. They are written and “owned” by the people at each level in the nested
value streams.
Leaders go first
The leadership team is number one. If a leadership team is not willing to role model desired behaviors, why shall other teams do it?
People in senior roles have a disproportionate impact on behavioral norms. Trust and role modeling are essential.
Ways of Working Center of Enablement
In order to be successful, there is a need for people who are dedicated full time in a servant leader capacity to orchestrate the improvement of the system of work across an organization.
For a large organization, the success patterns is
to have federated Ways of Working Centers of Enablement, with one for each
business unit or value stream and a central one providing the team-of-teams
coordination.
The Center of Enablement deal with impediments to achieve the outcomes that bubble up, with a goal of solving them at the lowest possible level. They are not a department of improvement where improvement actions are lobbed over the fence.
There
should be an impediment backlog, with the Center of Enablement orchestrating the right
people in the organization to help alleviate the top-priority impediments where
this is beyond the sphere of influence of a team.
This is leadership
in ways of working, being coaches, guiding people on the journey, sharing
learning internally and externally, communicating, creating community,
rewarding and recognizing desired behavior and outcomes.
Achieve big through small.
Achieve big through small instead of big through big. Minimize time to learning.
Change is hardest at the beginning. There is no one size fits all. Context matters. Every environment is unique. Starting small makes it safe to learn, keeps change within risk appetite, and generates social proof unique to your context.
People have a limited velocity to unlearn and relearn. You cannot force pace of change. If you do, you will only get new labels on existing behavior. Start small and within the risk appetite.
Amplify the experiments that work well, and quickly dampen the ones that don’t. Experiments are then amplified or dampened.
Let the natural champions go first
Allow people to satisfy their psychological need for agency and control, the need to feel in control of one’s own destiny. Allow the Innovators, the natural champions, to identify themselves. They are motivated by the buzz of being first, and have probably been working this way formally or informally for some time.
Invite participation and get behind the champions. Give the champions the coaching and the support they need in order to deliver business outcomes. As the benefits are seen, recognized and communicate via every mechanism available, the early adopters will want to join in. They can see that it’s safe to put a toe in the water. Gradually invite them in too, within the pace of unlearning and relearning and within risk appetite.
Invite everyone from top to bottom
Invite everyone from top to bottom (a vertical slice), don't leave the pressurized middle behind. They have to deliver, come what may, and are now being asked to change ways of working as well as continuing to deliver. It’s a difficult role and is often missed during a change that is sponsored from the top table and implemented at grass roots.
Everyone learns together, and no one is left behind. It's not easy, as the most enthusiastic group of people is at the team level.
Communicate, communicate and communicate
Communicate three more times than you think you need. Use every communication channel at your disposal and add some more.
Use the channels to reinforce the why, the values and principles, the outcomes, to recognize desired behavior and to do story-telling. Have senior leaders recognize the great work of teams in improving outcomes and have teams share their stories.
Stick at it
It requires commitment and resilience. It takes years for sustainable, lasting culture change, for genuine agility.
For a large organization with a tailwind, it’s three to five years, longer with headwind. There are no shortcuts.
In
organizations with traditional ways of working, change is staccato. In
evolutionary biology terms it is "Punctuated Equilibrium" rather than
"Punctuated Gradualism". There are long periods of stasis, then a
burst of disruptive change. There is lack of ongoing continuous improvement.
Become the best at being better.