7. December 2015
»Agility« has become a key term for anyone keen to show that they are »ahead of the times«. Yet, at the same time, use of the word often elicits negative reactions and rejection. Beyond showmanship and buzzword bingo, however, the term hides valuable notions and concepts that can enable teams, organizations and managers in VUCA situations.
The notion of agility that is often encountered in discussions is usually notably imprecise; this may be so because the term has a wide range of nuances that come out in different given contexts. I will briefly sketch out these different aspects of »agility« in the following in order to bring some clarity to the discussion. At the end of each paragraph, references to earlier texts are included that cast more light on the topic touched on in the paragraph.
»Agile«
The thesaurus provides several synonyms for »agile«: words such as »nimble«, »active«, »spry«, »lively«, »brisk«, »quick«, »swift«, »lithe«, »supple«, »fit«. This range of associations is largely related to activity, which has to do with the etymology of the term: the Latin word agiliscomes from agere, »to do«, »make« or »act«. The current range of meanings emerged primarily from the software industry, where programing and project methods have been »agilized« by way of alternative approaches.
Agile Mindset
In 2001, seventeen persons from the programing sector signed the Manifesto for Agile Software Development, which focused on four points: individuals and interactions were considered more important than processes and tools, just as working software was taken to be of greater significance than comprehensive documentation. Customer collaboration was favored over minute contract negotiation and greater importance was placed on response to changes than following a plan. The manifesto resulted in twelve principles: client satisfaction, openness for change, iterative development, intensive collaboration, focus on a motivating environment, face-to-face communication, working software as a measure of progress, constant pace, technical excellence and good design, simplicity, self-organization and self-reflection. This list provides a good summary of the mindset it takes to achieve success in any agile practice and configuration.
Also see the blog entries VUCA-Aikido, Improvisation, Agile and lean
Agile Practices and Methods
Agile practices and methods are designed to each in their specific way turn the above-named principles into practice. In the software industry this includes approaches such as Adaptive Software Development, Crystal, or Extreme Programming. Scrum has by now emerged for the fields beyond software development. Scrum is the best known among a range of agile methods. It endeavors to reduce effort as much as possible by defining a development framework within which a team of developers organize themselves to work empirically and iteratively in what is known as increments to achieve the product. Each (partial) function of the product should be completed – including planning, development, realization and testing – within short intervals known as sprints (no longer than 30 days each). The team of developers, who organize themselves to deliver the product functionalities, work together with the Product Owner, who is responsible for the product, and the Scrum Master, who ensures that the few existing rules of scrum are adhered to. Together, they regularly reflect on product, process and cooperation in order to increase efficiency and learn from each other.
Agile Team
An agile team is usually a small group of colleagues who have a clear, shared goal that they aim to reach by self-organization without a supervisor. That does not mean that an agile team lacks leadership. Informal leadership usually emerges from within the team or group out of each type of task and situation: one member will adopt topical leadership for a time, for example, but will pass it on once the situation changes. An agile team can, but does not have to, use agile practices and methods. Ideally, however, an agile team will reflect regularly on themselves and will, if necessary, accept supervision. Transparency and an open feedback culture are fundamental conditions for a group to be able to work as an agile team. The team should be as diverse as possible. Ideally, agile teams are interdisciplinary and cross-functional. The members should have different and complementary T-profiles: i.e., all team members are generalists (horizontal bar), but in addition can each provide depth in a different area of expertise (vertical bar). This makes an agile team best prepared for complex situations and unexpected events.
Also see the blog entries Multitude, Pirate Leadership
Agile Organization
An agile organization aims to realize the values and principles of the agile manifesto whilst retaining the greatest possible proximity to their client. While there is no clear definition, most agile organizations are described as decentralized organisms that shift »power« from the center to the periphery. Minor, autonomous units which carry responsibility for themselves closely »dock on« to the client in order to recognize and fulfill the client’s wishes without delay. These »cells« are independent of each other; therefore, the organism as a whole will not be in danger when a single unit is in trouble. At the same time, the minor parts of the organization are able to unite with others by way of collaboration if that brings an advantage to all concerned. This structure makes it possible for the entire organization to be established or disbanded at speed: it can at any moment be rescaled »upwards« or »downwards«. A service platform at the center of the organization seeks to bundle the synergies of the parts of the organization and makes them available to the periphery. At the same time, all organizational units are tied into a dense network so that they can learn from each other.
Also see the blog entry Organism
Agile Strategy
Agile strategy goes beyond exact planning by defining a fuzzy vision (Bouée) that is broad enough to permit a range of approaches. The primary approach is one of effectuation. The actors are guided by the means that are already available and identify the potential that is inherent in all potential goal options. Financial planning is not focused on return on invest but on the maximum affordable loss: this minimizes risk. Strategy is implemented iteratively, step by step, employing efficient tactics and putting circumstances and coincidences to use rather than trying to eliminate them. The establishment of trusting partnerships that use co-creation and risk minimization make a solid base for such an effectuation strategy.
Also see the blog entries Chinese Strategy, Narration, Effectuation
Leading Agility
Agility can only be fully realized by an alternative form of leadership. Management will no longer position itself above the team and at the head of the organization, but instead will lead from the side or out of the center. Leading agility means to trust in and enable the potential of the employees’ intrinsic motivation and the abilities of individuals and groups to organize themselves (Theory Y). A leader who supports agility curates topics, is available to coach the team and will provide and accept detailed and intensive feedback. Such kind of leaders consider themselves the organization’s gardeners: they foster and cultivate a culture of trust and appreciation within which the entire employees’ potential can come to full bloom…
Also see the blog entries In-Waste-Ment, Curation (German), Irreparability, Pirate Leadership
Agile Transformation and Agile Culture Coaching
Companies and organizations who want to establish agility usually face a massive cultural shift. Agile transformation means generating change in many aspects of agility at the same time: bringing people into a new mindset and introducing agile practices into use, building new teams and re-configuring organization, creating new strategic plans and leadership models. These changes can be professionally designed with the accompanying help of experts who have substantial knowledge on the topic of agility and are able to deal with people, organizations and cultures out of their experience with processes. In order to support agile transformation from within companies, SYNNECTA will offer a new qualification in agile process accompaniment (including preparation for Scrum Master Certification) from April 2016: Agile Culture Coach Training.
More information on Agile Coach Training available here (German).
Johannes Ries
3. July 2015
Applying what is proven and exploring what is new.
(SYNNECTA’s long-standing claim)
Ambidextrous organization: this term was coined by Robert Duncan in the 1970s and picked up by James March in the 1990s and more recently by several other authors to describe a core future competence of organizations. The word ambidextrous comes from the Latin ambo (both) and dexter (right hand) and designates the ability to use either hand with equal skill. In the context of companies, ambidextrous organizations are simultaneously efficient and flexible, adaptable. They can make maximum use of what is there (exploitation) and explore what is new (exploration).
My blog contributions so far have focused especially on the aspect of adaptability and the potential for exploration by companies in a situation marked by volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity (VUCA), as well as the search for adequate forms of behavior in the face of VUCA, e.g., in the realms of strategy, organization, cooperation and leadership. I remain convinced that companies will in the future be confronted more and more frequently with VUCA situations and that, therefore, exploration will gain importance. At the same time, I do not mean to say that we should forget exploitation. Companies will continue to act largely in situations characterized by being stable, secure, simple and explicit (SSSE). In such situations, it is sensible to act differently than in a VUCA situation.
In order to chose the right approach, it is initially important to be able to define the situation one is in at all. The Stacey matrix (named for Ralph Stacey) can help to do so: Stacey established a correlation between the degree of agreement on the path to be taken and the degree of certainty of that path. If, for example, all parties in the company agree on which path is to be taken, and if it is also clear how this path should be taken, the organization is in a simple situation, in which it makes sense to rely on tried and tested standards, submit these to tight monitoring and continuously improve them. The situation is different when there is disagreement on the path, for example because of great diversity among the stakeholders. If the path to reach the goals becomes additionally more uncertain – for example, if there is not enough information available or technologies to reach the goal have yet to be developed, the organization is entering an increasingly complex situation (and if disagreement and uncertainty both increase to the maximum, the environment even becomes chaotic). Standards are of little help in a complex situation. It makes more sense to »negotiate« paths via open forms of cooperation and to foster creativity and innovation.
Welshman Dave Snowden set out the Cynefin Framework, in which he similarly differentiates between four different domains for organizations: obvious and complicated domains are clear enough to be able to establish what needs to be done out of best, resp. good practices. Complex and even more so chaotic domains lack in clarity so greatly that only emergent resp. novel practices can help. The difference between the first two and the last two domains is the following procedure: in simple and complicated domains I see what is happening, categorize and analyze the reality I have sensed and then react with reference to the results. In complex and chaotic domains, on the other hand, I begin by probing and acting. Only then do I sense what happened and react accordingly in my next step.
Both the Stacey matrix and the Cynefin framework can be very helpful in organizations in order to identify the current situation, for example in a project landscape. In workshops, it has served me well to use pinboards on which to order the separate (part) projects into the Stacey matrix or the four Cynefin fields with the participants. It was usually easier to decide afterwards which procedure would be best suited for the given (part) project.
In obvious and complicated domains it makes sense to raise exploitation efficiency via standardization, as the situation is sufficiently stable, secure, simple and explicit (SSSE). Efficiency programs, such as those related to lean, are a sensible choice in such cases. Complex domains, on the other hand, are characterized by volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity (VUCA); exploration of agile methods of working will be more useful in these cases.
I will not give a detailed explanation of lean and agile approaches, but I will give a short, differentiating outline of them. The lean approach comes from the automotive industry and is focused on batch and mass production. It is aimed at creating a lean business that uses optimized processes and continuous improvement to produce as inexpensively as possible and in best quality with the fastest processing time. Efficiency is raised through continuous identification and removal of what is considered waste. Standardization plays an important role in order to reduce changes and to generate comprehensive processing security. At the same time, the business will ideally be fully transparent with regard to all figures.
Agile approaches, on the other hand, come primarily from the IT branch for the generation of individual products (which can then be »cloned«). The process is iterative and strongly includes the client, creating the product in continuous increments step by step from the first, rudimentarily functioning raw version to the final version. The agile approach has full flexibility, especially in order to be able to react to altered conditions by changing the product fast and inexpensively. Short cycles include phases of work (often known as sprints), followed by collection of open feedback. This is to avoid running in the wrong direction for too long, and enable early adaptation.
I have found that agile approaches often have to struggle against a reputation of chaos and anarchism in companies (although that is quite unjustified), but are usually not considered dangerous. In contrast, the announcement of a new lean project often has half the employees fear for their workplaces or at least assume that »harder times« are upon them. The creation of transparency is often experienced as an increase in totalitarian control. This is somewhat justified, as many lean projects in Europe really do not seem to be based on the original lean philosophy from Asia. Many lean programs in European companies are in fact squeeze outs that aim to tighten the belt. Again, it is not rare that they are initiated from the outside with the help of consultants equipped with stopwatches and that they are »beaten« into the organization from top to bottom, making extensive use of hierarchical authority.
Lean programs that are implemented in this manner clash significantly with agile approaches. Agile work is not possible when there is pressure from above: Agile work is pivotally based on personal organization in teams and Pirate Leadership, which are utterly necessary (according to the Ashby Law) in order to sufficiently depict the external complexity of the environment inside the organization in order to achieve directive authority.
Let me return to the ambidextrous organizations I introduced at the start: If an organization is able to lead lean and agile at the same time, it can really be ambidextrous in handling exploitation and exploration. Our current use of lean approaches, as briefly described above, however, raises a massive barrier for the realization of ambidextrous action in many organizations. Instead of realizing the advantages of being ambidextrous, organizations often involuntarily establish a Janus face and speak with split tongues. When employees are on the one hand expected to organize themselves, communicate without hierarchy and think creatively (in order to realize exploration and agility), but at the same time are pressed into the organization’s efficiency programs with a heavy hand (and experience exploitation only in its truly negative sense), two fundamentally juxtaposed leadership discourses compete with each other in the same organization. This conflict will not make the organization ambidextrous, but it will generate a double bind in the organization’s culture that undermines the employees and stalls the organization.
Such Janus faces can be prevented if organizations conduct lean projects while focusing on an attitude that was originally at the basis of Asian lean philosophy. With this attitude, lean organizations actually empower their employees. The employees are given a wide range of responsibilities of their own in order to raise potential efficiency. The spotlight is on team work and managers consider themselves supporters and coaches to the employees. The resulting culture of transparency is not experienced as a threat (as it is not a tool for control by authoritarian leadership), but really serves constant improvement together with open feedback in a healthy culture of mistakes. All of that is then compatible with agile approaches.
With this attitude, lean and agile approaches in an organization both display the same, valuing and calculable face of management. It speaks with a single tongue in a clear language of reliable organizational culture. Within this environment, the employees are able to use both their hands to have a strong grip on efficiently exploiting the SSSE world while also successfully exploring the VUCA world.
Johannes Ries
