Riina Hellström, twitter @extemporea riina.hellstrom@peoplegeeks.net www.peoplegeeks.net

How does it feel being the emperor without clothes?

Because that is where many executives are

heading towards in the midst of your

Agile Transformations.

You. Have.

No. Idea.

Whatsoever. What. Agile.

Means.

You are trusting your experience and management

skills, which brought you this far.

Of course you are. Who would not?!

Guess what?

The exact thing you regard your strength,

your long business experience and through that,

the behavior based on that experience is what is breaking the

agile system.

Obnoxious, you say?

Ignorant, I say.

I am sharing some thoughts here.

What I am learning… listening to most Agile coaches and agilists…

Is that many people talk about “Agile”

But very few have deep understanding of

what it means

And guess what I heard, too?

You are making large-scale

organizational design decisions on the basis of that

(limited) knowledge.

Whoops.

My question for you is…

Would you want to have a strong common understanding in

your executive team about agile, before deciding on

organization restructuring, investments, infrastructure for work and management roles?

Agile is not…

Faster

A methodology

A form of organization

“Not planning”

“Working as you want” Unstructured

Without controls

“modern offices” or “working distantly”

I dare you. Try this out:

Ask your Executives to explain Agile in 10 sentences

or less, individually, in writing.

Are you getting a coherent answer?

I thought so.

Still want to make long lasting plans on how to build the organization

based on your common (mis)understanding?

Maybe time to revise your way forward?

Agile is different than you are used to

Agile is a different way of

being, thinking, behaving, acting, working, agreeing, planning, deciding following up, investing time & money, communicating, reporting, resourcing

managing, leading, following.

Agile is holistic

If I told you Digital & Agile

is the biggest change in organizations, management and

work behavior….

… Since the year 1911…

Would it change how you approach this?

Would you stop to learn?

You can’t delegate it.

You have to understand agile to

lead it.

You can’t ask fish to make plans on how to climb up a tree

Because the fish have never seen a tree

or never been climbing.

You have very talented fish

Smart fish

Who have been swimming and have been amazing fish

all their careers

You are hearing that that all the other digital fish are

starting to climb trees now.

Companies are going “agile”

But that fishy experience of yours is of no good use for climbing trees.

You’ll go visit companies and see artifacts of agile work.

Whiteboards

Burn-down charts Org talk about “squads”, “chapters”, “trains”, “PI-planning”

Coaches Post-its Demos

Executives explaining how “agile” their organization is

Looks good from the outside.

Now your brain wants to tell you that you get it. Because you saw the

whiteboards and the big four* corporation slides on

the Spotify organization model. (*The consultants who you expect to sort this out for you)

“Now I know what agile is about”

you say.

But there is so much more to it, than

The “Spotify” organization or

SAFe® as a scaled agile framework

Tampering with organizational models

or frameworks is just your usual way

of thinking about changing behavior.

The big four consultants (*) are playing a cheap trick on you.

They are showing you the large scale artifacts of truly agile organizations.

But what they are not telling you…

* Exaggerated and dramatized a bit, to induce emotional reactions, good or bad.

…is that these organizations have been building

the agile culture for YEARS.

I haven’t seen a McKinsey-, Deloitte-, EY- or BCG speaker in a single agile conference I attended.

In fact – I met my first (and only so far)

Deloitte agile people in an agile conference in Toronto 2016.

In 6 years.

Well enough about that. Let’s get to the point.

For me, it sounds like many organizations and

executives are…

… driving head on into the usual

traps of agile transformations.

The one where the word “agile” is used everywhere.

But where it means…. absolutely nothing.

Or, even worse..., “Agile” means anything.

Such as “flexible”, “fast”,

“reactive”, “customer focused”, “unstructured” “self-organized”, “empowered”, or a new organization model.

(It does not)

To understand AGILE…

You have to STOP

(Because, man, you guys are overloaded with unprioritized

projects clogging your organization.)

Take out focused time

And learn.

No. I’m not talking about the “management bullshit bingo-”

level-learning

Where you sit in a boardroom, listening to a consultant

showing you pretty slides for two hours.

You giving smart comments

and nodding your heads.

Nothing ever changed with that learning.

And will never change.

Learning agile takes you 3 years of mindful practice.

And even then you will continue to learn.

I’m talking about

Learning as you learn to play a new sport. Playing the piano. Learning to build.

It includes taking out time. For learning.

Daily. Weekly. Experiential insight.

Really understanding.

I’m talking hands on. Common understanding.

Clarity.

Focus.

Priorities.

Fun!

Aha-moments!

Pain of letting go of certain things, you considered “normal”.

Transparency so it hurts your head.

Letting go of you status, building it up again with new pieces.

Ouch. I know.

It does not sound tempting seen from the corner room.

Realizing the options.

What is agile for?

What is agile NOT for? (Just as relevant, if not more important)

Ask yourself…

How will I, as an executive / director / manager,

change my behavior now when we are going to “be agile”?

Only when you know the concrete* answer to that

(*Concrete = You know which behaviors and choices change in your

daily and weekly schedules and actions)

…Only then you can lead

agile.

Agile is a learning journey

You need to learn how to climb the tree

by actually climbing.

Understand WHAT

Agile is on team level

Understand WHY

Agile exists

Understand HOW

Agile changes management…

And Then TRY.

PLAN. DO. ACT.

LEARN ITERATE. REPEAT.

Peoplegeeks are happy to support you on this learning journey.

Because you know what?

It will be awesome.

Mostly tough.

But still,

awesome.

Riina Hellström, twitter @extemporea riina.hellstrom@peoplegeeks.net www.peoplegeeks.net