Agile HR

Part 2 — The epiphany

We started with four big problems: pace, opinions, waste and silos. And no obvious answers. Unexpectedly, we found what we were looking for when we were seeking to understand something else. As we explored what “digital” meant in our world (which is probably an article in itself), we stumbled across the worlds of Lean and Agile…

We quickly spotted that “waterfall” in the world of software development almost perfectly described how we did people development: Business HR defined the problem, a centre of expertise designed the solution, and the Operations team delivered it. This classic HR approach creates lots of handoffs and no accountability. We needed to break it.

Agile, first and foremost, is a wholly different mindset.

1. At its core is collaboration. Real collaboration — not fortnightly project meetings with a collection of individuals, but a team of people working together every day to solve a problem.
2. Agile’s primary focus is on providing value to end users quickly. Our end users were our employees, our managers, our leaders. They were the people in our organisation we were responsible for providing a product or service.
3. It’s about a team doing its own research to understand the problem. Not being told by someone else what the problem is. The goal is to empathise with the end user. You succeed if you solve a real problem they are having. The more data you can get to help do this, the better you can start to solve it.
4. Often the best way to see if you can solve the problem, is to try a bite-size or roughly sketched version of a solution. Did it work? Do people see its potential? Do they want more? Do they hate it? Then it’s about getting faster and more data-driven. You do this by iterating. Iterating is about small changes that continue to add value. And if they don’t add value, then you quickly can them.

Importantly, Agile is the enabler not the answer. If you try and adopt Agile within the existing “best practice guidelines” for HR or L&D, you will struggle. It’s a bit like trying to jazz up a 5-day Test Cricket match (imagine!). You could add a marching band or a celebrity. You could improve the food offering. You might even try and add more cricket. But people are telling you (by not turning up) they want and need a different experience. Adopting Agile to Test Cricket, isn’t the answer. You have to think about other ways in which cricket might be delivered to the spectators. Break the existing rules. In doing so, you might create the One-Day Test or the Twenty-20, for example. These now require a team of people to work together faster to create a value-added sporting experience. Now Agile will come into its own.

Starting to make sense? Check out part 3 for how we got started.