by Steve Denning
Republished from Forbes, February, 26, 2018
As Agile eats the world, many organizations are faced with the prospect of an Agile transformation. This is a major challenge—one that will involve deep change over many years. If the organization has been traditionally managed, it will include radical shifts in attitudes, values, mindsets, ways of thinking and ways of interacting with the world, in effect a change in organizational culture.
Where to begin? The scale of the task can be daunting. But the alternative—corporate death through failure to continuously adapt to a rapidly changing marketplace—can be even more frightening. The real option is when and how to change, not whether.
The successful Agile transformations that I have seen in large organizations have typically begun without authority or budget resources. That’s because at the outset the organization usually doesn’t understand what Agile is or what it is getting into. This can lead some despair among Agile coaches as to whether Agile transformation is even possible in large organizations.
I was involved in a conversation yesterday where some Agile coaches were concerned that Agile transformations would inevitably come from the top and so they would inevitably fail. The top would set about implementing Agile as a blueprint, forcing people to ‘apply’ Agile, since they’d seen or heard about it working in a corporation they admired, or because they were listening to what some consulting firm was advocating (“Don’t worry: hire us and we will make your firm Agile!”) The coaches were rightly concerned that “Copy&Paste doesn’t work at all.”
In fact, a comprehensive survey of successful organizational change in large organizations by Larry Prusak and Tom Davenport back in 2003 concluded that deep change rarely begins at the very top of a large organization. In part, that’s because the CEO is usually too busy to understand what’s involved or give it the commitment that it needs. It’s also because, if the change is led from the top, it risks being perceived as “just another command-and-control brainwave.”
In theory, the change could also be led by someone at the lowest level of the organization, though it can be hard for people at that level to see what’s going on beyond their own unit, or to acquire the organizational knowledge or the social capital to mobilize broader support.
So typically, the change begins at the middle, or upper-middle, of the organization and follows a certain pattern. The pattern is similar to what I saw in a large and very change-resistant organization— the World Bank— where I was working in the late 1990s and where I—quixotically—set out to effect a change its strategy, without any budget resources or authority to do so. The organizational transformation in question wasn’t Agile, but it was a big, deep change involving a shift in organizational culture.
The World Bank was an organization that had always seen itself as a lending organization and I was asking in effect: “If our goal is to relieve world poverty, shouldn’t we focus primarily on sharing knowledge?” The initial response, not surprisingly, was: “This is the World Bank. Get that? We’re a bank!” The top management didn’t want to hear about it. Yet four years later, the change had actually happened.
Since then, the dynamic that I experienced in the World Bank—the whips, the scorns, the opposition, the skullduggery—is something that I’ve seen play out in many organizations implementing Agile. If your challenge is an Agile transformation in a large organization, here are ten fundamental characteristics that you are likely to encounter,
First, the impetus begins with a single individual—a champion who sees the need for change and passionately believes in making it happen and is willing to fight for the idea, no matter what. That individual may be anywhere in the organization. it is likely to be someone in middle management. Too high up, it risks being seen as command-and-control. Too low down, and the change risks never have another space to grow the change organically.
Change begins when this individual takes responsibility for the future and decides: “This needs to happen, and I am going to help make it happen.” It involves the courage to tell the truth to power, along with the smarts to do so at the right time and the right place and in the right way. Leadership storytelling.will play a major role. It will involve perseverance, rather than patience. It will need urgency, drive, passion, energy, and an ability to inspire excitement, along with the realism to recognize the scale of the task and the time it is likely to take.
Second, the change needs to happen organically. One person starts talking to and inspiring other people, who in turn have the courage, determination, and communication skills to inspire fresh groups of people to imagine and implement a different future. In turn, they become champions and inspire others.
Third, the champion will need co-leaders—a small group that shares the passion and the vision will be needed to inspire and guide implementation. Dutiful or representative performance won’t get the job done. This will be a group that is creative and energized, trusts one another, and is willing to do whatever it takes.
Fourth, the change will happen quickly or not all. Once organizational change takes off, it will happen rapidly. The process is viral in nature. The idea is either growing, spreading, and propagating itself, or dying and de-energizing people and spawning new constraints. There isn’t much in between. A top-down process that is grinding it out, step by step, unit by unit, is usually generating massive quantities of antibodies that will lead to mediocre implementation or even total failure.
Fifth, the change idea itself will steadily evolve. This is not a matter of crafting a vision and then rolling it out across the organization. It’s not a mechanical eight-step program. It’s about continuously adapting the idea to the evolving circumstances of the organization. As the organization and everyone in it adapts the story of change to their own context, each individual comes to own it.
Sixth, the change process will run on human passion—a firm belief in the clarity and worth of the idea and the courage to stand up and fight for it. No template or detailed rollout plan can inspire the energy, passion, and excitement that are needed to make deep change happen. Most of the paraphernalia of the top-down change programs will in fact be counterproductive to authentic implementation and will generate deep-seated opposition to the change.
Seventh, it will be focused, disciplined passion. This is not an approach where anything goes. There will be a tight focus on the goal and continuing alertness to head off the diffusion of energy into related or alternative goals. Progress will be assessed and adjustments made based on what has been learned. There will be systematic feedback on what value is being added. There will be freedom to create, but within clearly delineated, adjustable limits.
Eighth, outside help will be used but not depended on. Because there is nothing new under the sun, the experience of others should be drawn on. Intellectual energy is generated by cognitive diversity and interactions with people with different backgrounds and ways of looking at the world. At the same time, it is equally dangerous to follow external advice slavishly and let others dictate the change. The external advice will be received, evaluated, and adapted to local needs. In the process of adaptation, the idea will become owned. Things are not done simply because outsiders say so; they will be done because they make sense for this context.
Ninth, the top of the organization must support it and be supported. Although implementation of deep management cannot be accomplished by top-down directives or roll-out programs, the support of the very top of the organization is key to creating the umbrella for change, for setting direction and heading off the inevitable threats to the idea. This support isn’t needed at the start but it will be needed as the change spreads. .
Finally, the idea must be seen as more important than any individual. Top-down change programs typically die when the manager leaves. The replacement manager is a new broom who sweeps clean what has gone before. By contrast, when a change has taken root in an organic fashion, the idea continues to live because it is owned by wide array of people.
Keeping those ten characteristics in mind may help you figure out what an Agile transformation will look like in your organization. They may also help develop a sense of perspective of what’s involved and how long it will take.
Leaders in the Agile community often seem discouraged by what they perceive as the slow pace of change, along with the difficulties and setbacks that occur as Agile is implemented. My own take is that if we look at other deep organizational changes throughout history, particularly changes in mindset involving large numbers of of people, we can plausibly argue that the Agile movement is proceeding rather fast. Today, firms practicing Agile have already displaced the lumbering industrial giants of the 20th Century as the largest organizations on the planet. The reality is that Agile is indeed eating the world. Time to get started.