Develop an Agile Culture

This is the third and last part of the series on my top 3 attributes of a dream company.

Agile means “Fast and Well Coordinated”. Most people think that individuals or small teams can be Agile, but not large organizations. But large organizations can be fast and well-coordinated provided they develop the right mindset in the organization.

Photo by Proxyclick Visitor Management System on Unsplash

What is Culture?

Many people ask “What is this culture you keep talking about?” Let me elaborate.

Culture is a value system that the organization agrees to espouse for the foreseeable future. All behaviours and practices originate from these values.

This value system is not created overnight. In fact, it is always a work in progress. It requires continuous efforts from the leadership to establish the values, build a broad consensus, incrementally update and periodically reiterate them. Slowly but surely, there comes a point when most of the parts of the organization start living these values.

Is Culture Visible?

Culture is not a set of behaviours per se. It is more than that. It is about the collective atmosphere across the organization. It is about how everyone feels when working for the organization and when working with the organization. Sometimes, behaviours trigger feelings, but many times, there is no trigger, it is just the way people feel within the organization. There’s a strong vibe around everyone in the organization. Everyone strives to keep it going. It is a positive spiral effect that's at work.

Any outsider can instantly sense this in the shortest of interactions. In one of my organizations, every visitor to our office used to say this — “Hey, there's something about you guys that just makes it feel so vibrant and warm. You guys are special. What do you do differently?”. And I am not just talking about the high profile visitors who get treated well everywhere, but even our food vendors, interview candidates, HR consultants and temporary staff mentioned this to us unsolicited. Being an insider, I knew that this wasn't by chance. It was years of hard work by the leaders and people that created that vibrancy. And yet, nobody could put their finger on the one thing that made this possible. It is not just the behaviours or things that we do, these values manifest themselves in the following ways:

• The way we talk
• The way we listen
• The way we frame policies
• The way we communicate internally
• The way we write emails
• The way we organize ourselves
• The way we ask questions
• The way we welcome visitors
• The way we treat housekeeping staff
• The way we innovate

Everything that we do or think is coming from this collective culture that has been nurtured over a period of time.

Culture is certainly visible, not just to the eyes, but to the heart!

A lot of people think we are creatures of habit but we’re not. We are creatures of environment— Roger Hamilton

What is Agile Culture?

A culture that is built on the principles of Agile is an Agile culture. These principles are well explained here. Any organization can evolve into this culture by doing the following consistently:

• Live the Principles — It is one thing to follow the Agile manifesto and Scrum guidelines mechanically and a whole different thing to appreciate the reasoning behind doing these behaviours and doing these with conviction. One common example is the stand-up meeting that is ubiquitous in Agile setups. At most places, this meeting becomes a status meeting for managers to question and probe the team members. The intention of this meeting is NOT to take status. But it is to help team members if they are stuck somewhere. Instead of asking “What did you do today?”, we should change the question to “How can I help you accomplish your task today?”.
• Build Relationships — Trust, Honesty and Credibility are the cornerstones of any positive culture. These are not possible without strong human relationships across the organization. Leadership should invest time in understanding their people and encourage activities to bring people together emotionally.
• WE > I — Always think about how your actions will impact your team members, your managers, your customers and your reports. Just thinking about these 4 sides every day will enhance the aura around you. Leadership needs to demonstrate this quality consistently.
• Make it Safe to fail, Make it fast to fail — When you experiment, you are bound to fail before you succeed. The organisational culture should be conducive for those who want to experiment. One common and genuine concern is the amount of investment that may go into such experiments and innovations. But Agile has the perfect solution — innovate in small increments and make it fast to fail. This allows for quick course correction and limits the investment required for innovation.
• Reduce Hierarchy, Remove bureaucracy — Hierarchical structures are inherently anti-agile. They do not let the teams be self-organized, they constantly seek status, they resist change and they create too many approval systems.
• Encourage Sharing — Working Fast and well-coordinated requires a lot of sharing. Fortunately, technology to share information is quite mature today. Organizations should reward behaviours that demonstrate sharing and caring among their people. Right investments in technologies should be made to ensure that sharing does not become information overload. Chat applications with categorized channels and relevant customizable notifications are a must in today’s age.
• Share Vision, Objective, then Delegate and Trust — If you are a leader, your most important job should be to share the organization’s vision with everyone and ensure that it is understood unambiguously. Focus on fine-tuning the message, bring clarity and explain the ‘Why’ behind every decision. Once the vision is clear, leaders should delegate and decentralize decision making, enabling the people on the ground to be in charge of their results.
• Make it FUN — Work should not be sombre, but serious and FUN. Activities that increase the fun quotient like gamification, events, birthday celebrations, etc should be encouraged. This is especially important in the current scenario where everyone is working from home. A strong HR team plays an important role in developing and maintaining the right culture.
• Encourage Continuous Learning — Last but not least, encourage Learning at all times. Everybody should always have a learning goal. A healthy investment in learning can be easily justified if you have a long term strategy (like the 3 Horizon’s model explained here).

If you do not create and control your environment, your environment will create and control you — Dr. Marshall Goldsmith

Culture is Addictive

Creating such a culture may seem difficult, but just starting with the basics is enough. Later there is no other way you will enjoy it. It is addictive. Wherever you go you will want to recreate it. You will assert yourself until it is created. And that for me is an Agile mindset — one that constantly pushes its boundaries to create a larger good. No organization is perfect, but if you are making small incremental changes in the right direction, you are being Agile and great success awaits you!

This concludes the series of articles about the top 3 attributes of my dream company:

1. Leadership — should be seen to be done
2. Innovation — the only way to survive and thrive
3. Agile Culture — an environment that creates a positive spiral effect

Go to Part 1 — Leadership

Go to Part 2 — Innovation