Just because it worked at Spotify doesn’t mean it will work for you

Believe it or not, Spotify wasn’t trying to create an agile model or framework.

Spotify is in the business of creating the best music streaming platform on the planet, and unless you are too then your framework and agile approach will inherently need to be different from theirs.

Spotify started with Scrum, and could see the benefits of it. As Scrum spread across the organisation, Spotify realised some things weren’t working for them — so they broke the rules.

They dropped titles like ‘Scrum Master’ and created roles like ‘Agile Coach’ — which might make more sense given the idea of servant leadership.

You may be familiar with the Japanese concept of Shu-Ha-Ri. Basically, it’s the 3 different stages of learning and mastery.

Shu — Follow the rules precisely.

Ha — Branch out, get new learnings from elsewhere, and start to bend the rules.

Ri — Create your own approach. Adapt what you’ve learned for your own context. Transcend.

This is what companies like Spotify have successfully been able to achieve. They adopted Scrum, promoted it across the organisation, changed the rules so it worked better for them, and ultimately developed their own way of working loosely based on Scrum and other methodologies.

There’s countless examples of organisations that focus too much on the framework and not on the outcomes they’re trying to achieve. Does running stand ups and retrospectives make you an agile organisation? It most certainly does not. What are the business problems you are trying to solve, and what are the outcomes you’re aspiring to achieve? It might be a cultural change, an innovation agenda, or simply more transparency and collaboration. Either way, if all you do is focus on the framework without thinking about the ‘why’, and how you can change it to work better in your company, you’ll be lucky to achieve 20% of the big outcomes you were aspiring towards.

Spotify took the concepts of Scrum and worked out how they could make it work across their entire organisation. That’s the idea, and that’s what you need to do. Trying to replicate the model Spotify created won’t necessarily work for you.

You can’t try and retrofit something that has worked in another organisation and expect the same result. Organisations are not machines — they are complex ecosystems. You’ll want to find a solution that works in your ecosystem — and when you do, that’s when the magic happens.

So how do you do it? Start small.

Adopt Scrum and Kanban practices at a team level. Help it grow organically. Increase collaboration. Minimise the processes and add to them over time. It’s about the people — not the process. Do the basics well before you try to scale. Break down silos between teams and departments. Keep what works for you, and change what doesn’t. Remember, you are not trying to replicate the Spotify model. You are trying to create your own model.

This can be hard. You might not know where to start, or you might not know how to make agile work for you. Partnering with a team that has done it before and can help you get there is the key. Find a partner that can help co-design a model that works for you.

Too many organisations hire a consultancy that is rigid on a framework, try to retrofit the same solution in every organisation, and then usually disappear right before 1 of 2 things happen — either teams crash and don’t know how to fix the problems they see, or they stop doing it all together and revert back to what they were doing before.

We want to go back to basics. If we look at Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, we see security and psychological safety at the core. Creating an environment where people feel safe to freely express who they are, as well as their ideas — without fear of jeopardising their reputation or status — is the kind of environment we need to create.

Enabling open communication between people and teams is right at the core of an agile way of working. Once you have the basics down pat, then you can start working your way up the needs triangle towards self actualisation. In this case, that would be creating your own model, similar to Spotify, and realising your organisation’s full potential.

This level of maturity can only result when you nail the fundamentals first and then eventually break the rules so that agile can work for you.

Hi, I’m Rob. By day, I’m a General Manager at Beaker & Flint, where I help organisations unlock their potential and get on the digital front foot. By night you can find me making a bbq or planning my next overseas adventure.

If this post sparked a question or idea you want to run by me, I’d love to chat it over with you. Reach out via the comments below or by email here.