The 7 Oops of agility - Chapter 5
Which paths lead to more agility? What do companies stumble over time and again? And what do you have to watch out for so that the whole thing doesn't degenerate into a mishap? This is the fifth part of my small blog series on the topic of agile change. In seven chapters, I outline some characteristic phenomena that I experience again and again in my work with various companies. I'm happy if you recognize yourself in one or the other scenario and I'm even happier if you find the prevention and first aid measures I've described useful.
Chapter 5: Living more beautifully
We are all about wholeness!
What exactly do you mean by that? What does the employee get out of it? And how does the customer benefit from it?
We are convinced that satisfied employees are the foundation of our success. That's why culture is so important to us.
In addition to the teams, there is a second instance that is very important in the agile world: the corporate culture. This culture should be guided by strong values, meaningful, democratic or even holistic. Employee orientation is the order of the day, fun at work a central metric, happiness almost a mandatory program.
Of course, it would be difficult to object to this - were it not for the fact that there are a number of points that call such a programme into question.
All in all, it is impressive how much the concept of the workplace has changed in the age of agility. For a long time now, far more has been used for the happiness factor than the obligatory table football, table tennis tables, playstations or dartboards. Nowadays, agile culture manifests itself in the entire office architecture, from the room concept to the indoor plants, the living room-like lighting or the cosy seating groups to the culinary supply via always bulging fridges or even own kitchen teams that blow away the stink of classic company canteens. With often breathtaking effort, new forms of behaviour, new ways of communicating, new attentiveness are cultivated. In the face of such spectacular changes, we can easily overlook the fact that corporate culture can be reduced neither to artefacts nor to individual behaviour. Rather, it is based at least as much on structural frameworks and strategic choices (see our blog "What is agile corporate culture?").
If you look behind the scenes of agile culture, so to speak, you often discover surprising contradictions: For example, the agile development department of a bank offers new, attractively designed communication spaces, but the key decisions are still made top-down; on the impressive campus of a software service provider, teamwork is writ large, but the necessary coordination between the individual teams is hardly promoted; an infrastructure company sets up cool innovation hubs, but their results are politely ignored by the standard organization; the employees of a Great Place to Work winner give each other lots of feedback, but the improvements initiated in the process remain manageable. What do all these different examples have in common? In a nutshell: the external form of the organization does not correspond to its internal condition.
Malicious tongues might speak of a pretence of false facts or of the shrinking of agile culture to beautiful living. At times, it seems as if dysfunctional elements are being prettified rather than dissolved. The silos and lines of traditional organizational structure remain largely in place, and customers don't move to the center of the action either. However, where agile design is not focused on creating better workflows and value streams, it easily risks degenerating into mere pretence. Even worse: the strengthened comfort zone not only covers up process-related and strategic deficits, it also backfires on behavior.
Often the emphasized employee orientation goes hand in hand with a strong harmony orientation. Of course, striving for corporate harmony is also something beautiful. It is not for nothing that we like to use strong guiding principles such as sitting in the same boat or pulling together. Less desirable, however, is the fact that this longing for emotional unity often goes hand in hand with conflict avoidance. Think, for example, of the endless discussions that a consensus-oriented culture entails, of lazy compromises that are made because of false consideration, of withholding personal criticism, or of delaying unpopular decisions (because, after all, one does not want to "offend" anyone).
Everybody's darling is everbody's fool, a well-known politician once proclaimed. What can we derive from this pithy saying for the topic of corporate culture? Perhaps the following: If the culture tempts you to want to please everyone, agility will be a difficult undertaking. After all, agility thrives not only on a supportive environment, but also on discipline, control, and challenge.
The question is, of course, once again what you can do concretely to promote true agility. What should you pay attention to? How do you prevent your employee orientation from turning into harmonization? How do you ensure that agile organizational design, which also keeps an eye on customers and profitability, is promoted rather than just appearances? And what measures are recommended to strengthen a factual culture of dispute, which is based on respect and which nevertheless gives rise to trend-setting decisions?
Do not reduce corporate culture to the employees or their behavior! Instead of making agile culture the projection surface of all possible wishful thinking, you should develop a solid understanding. After all, it is a multi-layered phenomenon that is as deeply rooted in your history as it is broadly effective. It is not for nothing that culture describes the natural way of working in your company, as organization guru Ed Schein has impressively shown.
It is precisely the pursuit of wholeness that obliges you to balance your approach well. Do not reduce the much-vaunted agile mindset to the attitude or mindset of the individual employee. Instead, ask yourself what needs to be improved structurally and strategically in addition to the individual mindset in order for your company to become more agile. How can you ensure that customer orientation is not lost in the midst of employee orientation? What do you do to optimize your value-generating activities in all areas? How do you minimize dependencies and the need for coordination? Which processes do you need to improve first and foremost?
Employee satisfaction is important. However, it depends on much more than a friendly working environment. A clear focus is just as essential for this as the transparency of relevant company data, good information flows, crisp meetings or pointed measurements. Clarity about the bigger picture to which one's work contributes is one of the most powerful, but also one of the most underestimated motivating factors.
It should be common knowledge by now that agility thrives on the organizational framework. However, continuously optimizing these is not always a nice thing to do. In fact, agile improvement sometimes also means that you have to change strategic objectives, adapt processes, reassemble teams, dissolve roles and much more. This does not always lead to win-win situations and requires courage and professional communication skills.
However, courage and competence are not only required when working on the system. Instead, the system also requires the ability to deal professionally with dissonance (more on this in Upps chapter 3: Wash me, but don't get me wet). This ability ranges from the personal handling of differences of opinion to clear processes for dealing with escalating conflicts. Agility is also required here, so that such conflicts can be recognized as early as possible, false dramatizations can be avoided, and fact-based clarifications can be forced.
And here's to the other oops: