Why You Should Treat Your Organization Like a Fine Wine
For Agile transformations to be effective, we must remember that organizations are complex ecosystems built from politics, goals, beliefs, and hierarchies.
What makes an organization’s culture?
It’s easy to view companies as numbers on a balance sheet, a stock price, or an employee count. While this data is important, we mustn’t forget that organizations are also complex cultures; ecosystems built from politics, goals, beliefs, and hierarchies. It is with this lens that Slalom views any Agile transformation. And it is with this lens that any cultural transformation succeeds or fails.
But what is an organization’s culture? Is it the people, the products, the cool offices?
The culture of any organization is a consequence of its terroir. In the world of wine, terroir is the aggregate characteristics of the environment in which a wine is produced, including the regional and local climate, soil, and topography. When we look at an organization, direct comparisons exist. For instance, climate is the political climate inside and outside an organization. An organization’s soil is its system of employee growth — just think of the language “growing our people.” The topography of an organization is its divisions, groups, teams, products, etc. The combination of all these things make up its terroir.
Agile transformation is cultural transformation
Using terroir as a model to understand culture, it’s easy to see how an Agile transformation becomes a cultural transformation. As an organization moves from a non-Agile one to an Agile one, the fruits of its labor change. Just like a soil becomes acrid and a wine’s profile changes. Agile asks for more speed, accepts more failure, and expects more dynamism. The expectations of employees change, the way they work changes, and thus their output changes.
When considering an Agile transformation, it is vital to consider the system holistically. A simple heuristic when considering this is, “Will an interaction between party A and party B change?” A common example is the interaction between developers within IT and their business counterparts. In waterfall methodologies, the interaction between IT and business is heavy on the front end with the creation of requirements, timelines, and budgets. With Agile, the interaction changes to one that is iterative and collaborative.
Understanding your organization’s culture
Culture can often be overlooked because it’s seen as difficult to measure. The Slalom team uses five measures to describe any organization’s culture: incentives, interfaces, data, resources, and expectations.
- Incentives are what drive your people. They are one of the most important factors in an organization’s culture. Incentives can be financial, like a person’s bonus, but also social, like receiving praise. Incentives can be subtle; when a person shows up to work and when they leave can be a hallmark of what kind of incentive exists for being looked at as “hard working.” Incentives are powerful influencers. Nonetheless, it is important to note that not all work should necessarily be incentivized. If your organization’s culture meets the expectations of your people, then they will automatically have a desire and passion to deliver.
- Interfaces are the ways people interact with one another, with the organization, and the organization’s interactions with outside parties like customers. Interfaces are the vectors of communication. Does the organization love meetings and meetings for meetings, does email rule above all else, or are people getting information at the watercooler? Interfaces are the ways people connect. If connections are broken, then the way information flows is broken.
- Data are inputs used to make decisions. But data alone isn’t enough. Many organizations have terabytes worth of data, but it’s only as useful as oil in the ground. Your organization should strive to turn data into information, turn information into knowledge, and knowledge into wisdom. This progression is the ability to look outside and see a beautiful sunny day and know it is winter and frigid.
- Resources are what an organization uses and needs to do the work. Resources can be cash, tech, space, intellectual property, etc. But be careful not to conflate resources with people. Resources are expendable, people are not.
- Expectations are what the organization deems to be the right way. Think about the difference between “always be closing” versus making sure you give what the customer needs. Expectations aren’t just an organization’s goals, but how it demarcates the right paths to reach them.
These five measures provide the fundamental building blocks of culture. Incentives plus resources create politics. Data plus interfaces create communication practices. When we look at these five elements, we can demystify culture and more importantly demystify how we can change it.
In summary
Treat your company like a fine wine; not just when you open the bottle. Treat it like a wine all the way from when you plant the seeds, to when you cultivate the grapes, to when you’re finally sipping it and experiencing that hard work come to fruition.
Slalom is a global consulting firm focused on strategy, technology and business transformation. Learn more and reach out today.
