This is Why Your Agile Transformation is Failing
James Halprin, helping organisations through Lean-Agile Transformation
Does this scenario sound familiar?
As the rate of change continues to spiral out of control, the old ways of doing business just aren’t cutting it any more. Perhaps you’re struggling to deliver value to your customers early and often, or maybe you’re not getting enough bang for your buck from your IT investment. Whatever the challenges the rapidly changing environment are throwing at you, the net result is that you need to change if you’re going to stay relevant in this brave new world.
So the decision is made to go Agile.
It’s the flavour of the month and everyone is doing it so how hard can it be, right? If you’re luckier than most, leadership has bought into it, at least to some degree, and may have even agreed to bring in some consultants to provide that all important training and coaching to get the ball rolling.
While the move to Agile may be causing some trepidation in some corners of the organisation, one or more teams of early adopters are chosen to pilot this new way of working. All the attention that these new Agile teams are getting is creating a buzz in the office and Agile is becoming a popular topic of conversation at the water cooler. Given the initial teams were carefully selected and are getting lots of attention, they are starting to chalk up some early wins. Based on this early success the decision is made to scale out Agile to more teams and programs of work across the enterprise.
So far, so good.
Fast forward a couple of years and things don’t look quite so rosy. While more teams are Agile, maturity and implementation varies. Further, the Agile buzz in the halls has faded, it’s not getting the attention it once did and no-one seems to own the overall initiative. The teams are surfacing problems and yet there doesn’t seem to be a mechanism in place to resolve them. Political factions have drawn their battle lines. In short, the early wins we had achieved just didn’t seem to scale and ultimately we’re not seeing the business outcomes we’d hoped for.
We had leadership buy in, we piloted Agile on some teams before we went ‘all in’ and the initiative had energy and focus, so what went wrong? Why are we still on this journey 2+ years later and sliding sideways?
The answer — change management!
While we can point fingers in a lot of different directions, the biggest culprit is likely to be that the Agile transformation was never viewed through the critical lens of change management.
Make no mistake — transitioning a traditional organisation to Agile ways of thinking and working is an enormous multi year exercise in change management that extends well beyond sticking a card on a wall and rolling out daily stand-ups. But does that mean we have to wait years to see the results? Of course not! In fact it’s critical that we generate short-term wins along the way, but more on that shortly.
Much insight can be gained from John Kotter’s eight-stage process for managing change as described in his seminal book, ‘Leading Change’, which Time magazine listed as one of the 25 most influential business / management books ever written. Note that the book is called, ‘Leading Change’, not ‘Managing Change’ as successful transformation is 70–90% leadership, and only 10–30% management.
So let’s look at Agile transformation through the lens of Kotter’s eight-stage model.
Successful change in organisations will go through all eight steps. Although these phases are sequential, one normally operates in multiple phases at once. But beware — skipping even a single step or getting too far ahead without much progress in an earlier phase will very likely create problems. The first four steps are aimed at ‘defrosting a hardened status quo’. Phases five through seven are where the new practices are introduced and the final step is where the changes are anchored in the corporate culture.
As we explore the model, contrast this with the Agile transformations that you are familiar with and consider whether one or more of the steps have been skipped along the way in those transformations. I think you’ll find the answer to this question is a resounding ‘Yes!’, and in so doing you’ll walk away with a lot more insight into actions you can take to put your transformation back on the tracks.
1. Establishing a sense of urgency
Meaningful change requires a substantial effort over an extended period time, which is often measured in years. Without a strong sense of urgency driving the change, the risk is that inertia and complacency will set in and ‘the momentum for change will probably die far short of the finish line.’ A sense of complacency will make it all too easy for the change effort to be deferred as everyone is focused on the tyranny of the now.
2. Creating the guiding coalition
While our popular psyche is full of examples of the transformational leader such as Steve Jobs of Apple, Jack Welch of GE or Lou Gerstner of IBM, we shouldn’t fall into the trap of assuming that a single charismatic leader is required for successful change. Rather, the key is to build a cross functional guiding coalition of the willing that functions as a high performing team, is empowered to lead the change and has the credibility and expertise to pull it off.
3. Developing a vision and strategy
What are you ultimately trying to achieve and how are you going to get there? A strong vision will clarify the direction, motivate people to take action and help align and coordinate the actions of everyone without the need for ‘a zillion detailed directives’. Characteristics of an effective vision include that it is imaginable, desirable, feasible, focused, flexible and communicable.
4. Communicating the change vision
‘The real power of a vision is unleashed only when most of those involved in an enterprise or activity have a common understanding of its goals and direction.’ While the need to communicate the vision is generally recognised, the trap many managers fall into is to drastically underestimate the amount of communication required. Successful change initiatives often require tens of thousands of communications that go well beyond mentioning the change at a company meeting and posting a blog on the intranet. Managers, supervisors and executives need to build the communication into their daily activities.
5. Empowering broad-based action
The solid foundation built in the first four stages has already gone a long way toward empowering employees, however many obstacles can still impede progress. Specifically, there are four key barriers to empowerment that will likely need attention. These include changing any formal structures in the organisation that could make it hard to act, identifying any skill gaps that may require training, updating personnel and information systems that work against the change e.g. compensation schemes that motivate self serving behaviour, and being aware of managers that discourage actions aimed at implementing the new vision.
6. Generating short-term wins
No matter how great an impact the change will ultimately have on your organisation, planning to deliver short term wins along the way and celebrating the wins is crucial to success. There are six advantages to be gained from generating short-term wins including providing evidence that sacrifices are worth it, rewarding change agents with a pat on the back, helping to fine-tune the vision and strategy, undermining cynics and self-serving resisters, keeping bosses on board and finally, allowing us to build momentum.
7. Consolidating gains and producing more changes
You’re doing well if you’ve made it this far, however now is not the time to take your foot off the pedal as organisational resistance still lurks around every corner. Successful change efforts in this stage will be generating more rather than less change, more people will be joining the change effort, leadership will be strong from senior management as well as lower in the hierarchy, and to make the change easier there will be a focus on removing unnecessary organisational interdependencies.
8. Anchoring new approaches in the culture
‘Culture refers to norms of behaviour and shared values among a group of people.’ Given culture evolves over many years, then it will likely require many years of a new experience to create a lasting change, which is exactly why cultural change comes last rather than first in a transformation. Further, cultural change will depend on being able to demonstrate clear benefits from the change, will require lots of talk, it may involve staff turnover, and succession planning based on those that can model the new behaviours and practices will be critical.
Now that we’ve painted the broad brush strokes of Kotter’s eight-stage model, how does your Agile transformation measure up?
I’d love to hear about your stories, feel free to post them in the comments section below.
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