Agile transformation

The 5 Why’s Approach – Building a Culture of Learning

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the-5-whys-approach-building-a-culture-of-learningIs an initiative failing? We knew it! Was a mistake made? By who? If a mistake happens, we typically look for someone to blame. In turn, many of us will avoid risks or will play it safe to avoid being pointed out. Progress suffers from fear of taking action. Making this even worse, the finger-pointing kills curiosity and with it the chance to learn. What can we do to prevent this?

If We Want Progress, Mistakes Must Happen

Mistakes happen. And if today we preach risk-taking, speed and experimentation, we have to expect even more mistakes. Giving people more responsibility while enabling autonomy, means giving more opportunities to fail.

A person who never made a mistake never tried something new.

The number of failures is an indicator of risk-taking along with initiatives to explore new and better ways of doing things.

Some companies aim for a defined number of mistakes/failures to encourage employees to try more “new” things and to think in even wider and various directions. A nice example is the Google Graveyard, which lists projects “Killed by Google”. A sign of Google’s exploratory ambition.

Looking at the average organization, the risk (in cost, credibility and reputation in the market, etc) is often too high to encourage a high number of attempts with very low probability of success. However a “failure friendly culture” is also about simply being bolder in ideas and execution, about the courage to experiment. It’s about being able to react more quickly to changes in customer needs, technology or the market by taking risks and relying on trial and error. Their focus is on promoting an adaptive organization, a learning organization. Thus, it is above all about appreciating mistakes as opportunities to learn.

Learning from a mistake or failure begins with reflection. Many objective but also subjective (non-judgmental) impressions must be obtained and analyzed from different perspectives. Where was the cause? Can a pattern be identified (in the case of several such events)? How can we eliminate or neutralize the cause in the future? What can we learn about ourselves and our work that will help us do better in the future?

Blame Causes Defensiveness and Blocks Reflection

If we are too busy trying to find someone to blame, we don’t really ask ourselves the above questions in the first place. And the one who could have given important input to the questions – is too busy defending themselves. Or worse yet, that person might be influenced by the company culture and is getting ready to point fingers at someone else. In many companies, a culture of blaming is the result of a tradition of punishing mistakes. People lose their jobs or reputation (or both), and experience minor negative consequences.

In order to prevent a culture of blame, there also needs to be an atmosphere of openness, psychological safety, to be able to reflect and learn. Finally, practice is needed here. Helpful techniques can also rekindle curiosity and exploratory ambition in the workforce.

A number of techniques can also be found in the case of, but not limited to agile methodology. Let’s look at this one, the “5 Why’s” – Five sequential why questions (aka Root Cause Analysis), illustrated by the much-told example of the Lincoln Museum.

The 5 Why’s Example

“The National Park Service was faced with a problem that the exterior of the monument was deteriorating rapidly. To address the wear and tear, the stone would require periodic costly replacement or restoration. Via the 5 why questions posed by Park Service leaders to the maintenance crew, the problem was more easily resolved.

1- Why is the material deteriorating so quickly?

Answer: Because of the high-powered sprayers used to clean the monument every two weeks.

2- Why are high-powered washes required every two weeks?

Answer: Because of the amount of bird droppings on the stone.

3- Why is there so much bird droppings?

Answer: Because many birds come to feed on the spiders.

4- Why are there so many spiders?

Answer: They are attracted by the many insects that are all around there at night.

5- Why are there so many insects?

Answer: They are attracted by the powerful spotlights used to illuminate the monument at night for tourists.

Instead of turning the lights on two hours before sunset, they were turned on 30 minutes after sunset and turned off thirty minutes before sunrise in the morning. The number of insects was reduced by 90 percent – problem solved.”

This example points out that the focus should be less on jumping to conclusions and giving out guilty verdicts, and more on better understanding (and then influencing) the circumstances that lead to the mistake.

Treat Mistakes As a Cognitive Challenge – Be Curious!

Curiosity – how did the failure occur? Why did an idea fail? Analyzing the circumstances together to find the weak points. Accept failure in the past as a cognitive challenge to become smarter and better. Over time, the lack of placing blame and shame on people will support a learning orientation in the organization – a common eagerness to draw the most helpful insights from the event and to derive from this the best measures for the future.

Read more about dealing with failure and creating organizational agility on a behavioral level in the book “The Agile Culture Code – a guide to organizational agility ” (Puckett, 2020).

Contributing Author

Dr. Stefanie Puckett has lived and worked globally for several consulting firms, in management and global roles for a Fortune 500 company and ran her own business. She is a psychologist that turned to agile once she saw that decades of organizational psychology research are basically summed up in the agile manifesto. Since then, agile transformation has become her passion as a consultant and executive coach. Stefanie is author of “The agile culture code – a guide to organizational agility” (BusinessVillage, 2020) and co-author of “Agile Leadership – leadership competencies for the agile transformation” (BusinessVillage, 2020).

[Image courtesy of Stuart Miles at FreeDigitalPhotos.net]

How Agile Leadership Can Be Learned – A Quick Guide

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There are many organizations need or would like to achieve greater agility. However, in order to achieve it, leadership style and corresponding principles need to be revisited. Therefore if we want agility, we need to demonstrate agile leadership as a result. But how exactly? A global study delivers a behavior-based competency model. The good news is that competencies can be learned.

how agile leadership can be learnedThe Global Center for Digital Business Transformation wanted to find out, what exactly does agile leadership look like. The IMD Business School in Switzerland teamed up with metaBeratung, a specialized consulting firm in Germany, to conduct a global study (Neubauer, Tarling & Wade, 2017). Leaders from all over the world participated while having one thing in common: they operate in a highly disruptive market, which is where organizational agility is considered to be needed the most.

The theoretical foundation relies on IMD’s concept of Digital Business Agility (Bradley et al., 2015) that defines three behaviors that help companies in highly disruptive markets to survive. This study confirmed the relevance of these three behaviors.

Overall 19 expert interviews with digital leaders and data from a global survey with 1042 leaders where analyzed. Beside the three behaviors, four core agile leadership competencies were identified.

Digital Business Agility – The Three agile Leadership Behaviors:

1. HYPER-AWARENESS

This would entail constantly monitoring and evaluating changes in market conditions, developments in technology, and customer needs. It would also include observing trends, identifying and watching dominant factors. Consequently this means that there would be a need to set up supporting processes and investing the necessary resources.

2. INFORMED DECISION-MAKING

This would entail making decisions based on facts and real-time data. Ensuring information is available, analyzed and considered in strategic and day-to-day operative decision making on every level.

3. FAST EXECUTION

This requires prioritizing speed over perfection. Prioritizing faster delivery value over planning and documenting, while ensuring fast decision making and preventing the organization from overburdening bureaucracy.

These three behavioral aspects will equip the leader to steer diligently in volatile markets. However, to lead people and create agility in the workplace, four related competencies are necessary to define the core of agile leadership (HAVE model; Wade et al., 2017; elaborated by Puckett & Neubauer, 2018/ 2020).

Four Competencies of Agile Leadership – The “HAVE” Model

1. ADAPTABILITY

This requires that leader not shy away from changing directions and revising decisions taken when circumstances change, or when new information becomes available. Further, this requires making sure processes, products, and/or services remain flexible enough to include feedback and adaptability to changing circumstances.

2. HUMILITY

This competency values feedback and input from others while being aware one’s own limitations. At the same time this requires the need to keep learning and treating others with equal footing while ensuring inclusion.

3. VISIONARY

This would require leaders to think big, find their vision and wear it on their sleeves while setting the direction and inspiring others.

4. ENGAGEMENT

This competency requires the need to stay connected, to grow and strengthen networks inside and outside the organization. At the same time this would require keeping in regular contact with customers and stakeholders while staying connected to the pulse of the market, such as relevant expertise and knowledge.

Agile leadership can be learned and demonstrating the three behaviors is a matter of effort and focus. Smart leaders will get their teams on board and together will find ways to create and sustain hyper-awareness, to ensure informed decision making and enable fast execution.

Competencies by definition can be learned. Step-by-step leaders can achieve mastery in playing the leadership role and spectrum. Leading agility does not necessarily mean every good idea or measurement has to come from or be managed by the leader. In face it’s quite the opposite. Good agile leaders understand their limitations and they might be highly visionary and very engaged but have difficulties adapting fast enough. Or they might be very humble and adaptable but not highly visionary. Yes, good leaders invest in their own development and grow in each of the four competencies. However, it must be understood that no one can be a star in all four dimensions. Agile leadership means to enable and inspire your people to step up and help build these competencies in your organization overall.

In order to excel in this most important leadership task, agile leaders must invest in their company’s culture to prepare the right conditions for people to grow – and through them attain agility (for more see “The agile Culture Code” Puckett, 2020 b).

Sources:
Bradley, Loucks, Macaulay, Noronha & Wade (2015). The Digital Vortex. https://www.cisco.com/c/dam/en/us/solutions/collateral/industry-solutions/digital-vortex-report.pdf
Puckett (2020). THE AGILE CULTURE CODE – A guide to organizational agility. BusinessVillage.
Puckett & Neubauer (2020). Agile Leadership – Leadership competencies for the agile transformation. BusinessVillage.
Wade, Tarling & Neubauer (2017). Redefining Leadership for a Digital Age. Copyright: IMD, metaBeratung, Global Center for Digital Business Transformation. https://www.imd.org/dbt/reports/redefining-leadership/

Contributing Author

Dr. Stefanie Puckett has lived and worked globally for several consulting firms, in management and global roles for a Fortune 500 company and ran her own business. She is a psychologist that turned to agile once she saw that decades of organizational psychology research are basically summed up in the agile manifesto. Since then, agile transformation has become her passion as a consultant and executive coach. Stefanie is author of “The agile culture code – a guide to organizational agility” (BusinessVillage, 2020) and co-author of “Agile Leadership – leadership competencies for the agile transformation” (BusinessVillage, 2020).

[Image courtesy of Ambro at FreeDigitalPhotos.net]

Company Culture Is NOT An Excuse! Leverage It For Organizational Agility

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The more experiences companies create through agile transformation the importance of organizational culture becomes clearer. It is the number one challenge. It’s true, it could be the very reason why we can’t change, and subsequently why agile won’t work. However, working on our culture will also open the path forward. A closer look at agile organizations reveal that it is culture that builds the common ground and acceptance for agility.

company-culture-leverage-it-for-organizational-agilityOrganizational development has always taught us that change is achieved sustainably when it starts with the people. Agile transformations are no different. On the contrary – the Manifesto for Agile Software Development already brings this focus to the surface. And the more we learn, the clearer it becomes, that organizational agility is a question of how people think and act; a question of organizational culture. Thus, it is not surprising, that agile organizations have little in common in terms of structure and governance (see e.g. Kimes, 2009; Aronowitz, De Smet & McGinty, 2015). Having the right culture helps us achieve organizational agility.

What is Organizational Agility?

Organizational agility is not Scrum at scale. It is not about individual agile methods at all. It also has little to do with table-soccer and couch-corners, nor with dogs-allowed-in-the-office.

Organizational agility is actually about one thing alone: adaptability. The market is changing. Technology offers new possibilities to produce the old things more efficiently, faster, more customer-specific and to develop the new things, demands on the organization or other circumstances that are changing. The organization reacts by adapting. Its strategy, products, processes and structures adapt. If we look at concepts of business agility (according to the Agile Alliance), or the concept of digital business agility (Global Center for digital Business Transformation; Loucks, Macaulay, Noronha & Wade, 2016), we need to add one more aspect to the definition of organizational agility: the ability to identify internal and external changes early on and to derive new opportunities to create new or greater value for customers.

Ultimately, it is about how people work, how individuals, teams and the organization as a whole behave. Do we plan on foresight and focus in on developments step-by-step to explore and learn along the way? Do we monitor what is going on outside? Are we willing to change direction to keep up with the trends? Can we react and execute quickly?

Corporate Culture as an Opportunity, Not an Excuse

How we work, how we behave, that is corporate culture. If an organization wants to become more agile, then it is either the biggest impediment or the most powerful lever.

“The importance of investing in culture and change on the road to agility cannot be overemphasized.” (Brosseau, 2019). Even if it is only about individual agile projects, an organizational culture that does not support agility is one of the most common reasons for failure, as the Project Management Institute (PMI) observes.

So Why Don’t we Tackle Culture?

This is often because culture is understood – or not understood at all – as a spongy, soft, feel-good concept. It’s also because, although we have a vague idea of what an agile culture looks like, somehow hip and start-up-like, it is firstly (and often) so far removed from our own reality and secondly, this image does not offer us any concrete starting points.

Often people in the organization react to the topic of culture with a resigned shrug of the shoulders as an expression of “That’s the way it is with us, it can’t be changed”.

Organizational culture is more often seen as an excuse than an opportunity. Culture is seen as a rigid mass, as a historically-grown, and fossilized skeleton. A culture came into being at some point – in its basic features – and has continuously developed, polished, deepened and specified. An inert mass, but a living one. Culture has to do with people, with the system, with circumstances and structures, but it is more than the sum of its parts. Culture is alive and what is alive develops, and therefore can change.

Culture is a result of collective learning.

The Pandemic Crisis as Opportunity to Tackle Culture

Today, facing a global pandemic that throws us into crisis, we learn very quickly to adapt to new ways. We also learn a lot about ourselves and about the way we work together. We learn a lot about our culture, we learn where its strengths lie and what is holding us back or slowing us down in becoming the best possible company to deal with today’s challenges. We learn new things. Learning is developing.

Let’s reflect on and build on those learnings and allow them to allow us to shape our culture.

For a company’s culture to support agility, three elements are needed which are illustrated in the “Agile Culture Code”, the TEC model (Puckett, 2020) Three Company Culture Elements Increased Agility Can’t Go Without: Transparency, Empowerment and (conditionless) Collaboration.

Please don’t change your mindset!

We humans do not have to change. Actually, we usually behave “TEC-compliant” when we want to solve a problem or achieve a goal privately:

  • Before we get started, we first inform ourselves and make sure that we have access to all relevant information – in order to define and plan the scope and to be able to recognize the need for corrections early on. Once we get started, we regularly check that we are on the right track, that our approach or the solution we develop is working (testing, obtaining feedback, observing reactions). (Transparency)
  • That and the problem we want to tackle we have decided ourselves, we have chosen it and set the goal ourselves. We decide ourselves how we want to proceed, when, where, with whom we will work on it and it is our decision to adapt methods, goals and scope in between. (Empowerment)
  • We look for people from whom we can learn something in the matter, or those who encourage or support us. (Collaboration)

We need to know what is going on and measure our impact. We need to be empowered not only to do things right but to do the right thing. We need to be able to connect and team up with others to focus on contributions rather than roles.

So, no, we don’t need to change. But change has to happen in the organization. To create an environment that inspires us and allows us to bring all our talents to the table and be at our best. 

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

Sources:

Aronowitz, S., De Smet, A. & McGinty, D. (2015). Getting organizational redesign right. McKinsey Quarterly. June 2015.
Brosseau, D., Ebrahim, S., Handscomb, C. & Thaker, S. (2019). Accessed February 2019. The journey to an agile organization. McKinsey & company. May 2019.
Jurisic, N., Lurie, M. Risch, P. & Salo, O. (2020). Doing vs being: Practical lessons on building an agile culture. McKinsey.com. August 4, 2020.
Kimes, M. What admired firms don’t have in common. Fortune. Released: March 2009. archive.fortune.com
Loucks, J., Macaulay, J., Noronha, A & Wade, M. (2016). Digital Vortex. How Today‘s Market Leaders Can Beat Disruptive Competitors at Their Own Game. DBT Center Press, Plano/Texas.
Manifesto for Agile Software Development. agilemanifesto.org
Puckett, S. (2020). The agile culture code – A guide to organizational agility. BusinessVillage.

Contributing Author

Dr. Stefanie Puckett has lived and worked globally for several consulting firms, in management and global roles for a Fortune 500 company and ran her own business. She is a psychologist that turned to agile once she saw that decades of organizational psychology research are basically summed up in the agile manifesto. Since then, agile transformation has become her passion as a consultant and executive coach. Stefanie is author of “The agile culture code – a guide to organizational agility” (BusinessVillage, 2020) and co-author of “Agile Leadership – leadership competencies for the agile transformation” (BusinessVillage, 2020).

Three Company Culture Elements Increased Agility Can’t Go Without

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It has been over a decade now that surveys reveal – again and again – the one biggest challenge when transforming to agile: an organization’s culture. No surprise, since organizational agility arises not from doing agile alone but from being agile. So, let’s look at how agility can be anchored in the company culture, so it becomes a lever, not a challenge in achieving agility.

three-company-culture-elements-that-increased-agility-cant-go-withoutIf an organization is agile, it can be seen in how aware they are about trends and developments on the market, how quickly and flexibly they can adapt to the changes they sense around them, and how spot on they come up with their solutions. Structure and process can help to set the organization up for agility, agile methodologies and tool support.

Agility does not happen through structure or tools; it happens through people

However, the heart of agility lies simply in the way people in the organization think and act. What they pay attention to, how they prioritize, how they get stuff done, how well they plan by sight and keep their eyes on the customer. Agility happens through people. By being agile, they form an agile culture in the organization. Intuitive, right? A lot about agility is intuitive. This is why it works so well.

For such a culture to grow and sustain, three elements, summarized in the TEC culture code (Puckett, 2020) are needed.

We all know how to best solve problems. We’ve done it since we learned how to walk

Imagine a project you would like to realize. Any project, business or personal. Often, the very first thought after we come up with an idea is “Can I do this?”

To answer this question, we think:

  • Do we have enough knowledge to understand what we are getting into?
  • Do we have access to all relevant information and data to validate that we are taking the right steps?
  • Do we know what success looks like?

-> This is our way to create the TRANSPARENCY we need to see this through and to self-correct and steer ourselves along the way towards success.

Behind the initial question if we can do this, lies another basic condition. Some very basic thoughts:

  • Can we take that decision?
  • Do we have the freedom and the means to take on and execute the project?

-> This is our way of ensuring that we have full EMPOWERMENT.

Lastly, we make sure we are not on our own. We activate our network or build a network with people that we can use as a sounding board, bounce ideas off, learn from and ask for support if needed.
-> We ensure that we have the COLLABORATION we need.

The common denominator in agile organizations

This is it. This is the common denominator of agile culture –> TEC: Transparency, Empowerment and Collaboration. Manifested as pillars of a company’s culture, they come each with three unique aspects, each that require attention.

The three pillars and nine facets of the TEC culture code

Pillar 1: Transparency

  1. Information: transparency with information and data

Direct line of sight to the customer, access to information about developments in technology and market, knowing what the competition is doing, etc. goes in line with transparent key performance indicators of the company. This allows us to think strategically.

  1. Intention: transparency with intention and plans

To make sure we align forces and act as one organization, we all need to understand the organization’s purpose, its intentions and plans. This way we can channel ideas and align our efforts with the current corporate priorities.

  1. Effect: transparency with results & impact

Feedback is key to be able to optimize solutions on evolving customer needs. A direct line of sight, where possible, allows us to see firsthand how our work is perceived. Knowing where and how the different tasks we are working on play a role, we can self-steer to have maximum impact on value creation.

Pillar 2: Empowerment

  1. Freedom: freedom to adapt and create

Work is more fun if we are in control and can decide or at least influence when, where and how we work. We are also more creative if we have the freedom to try things differently or experiment with something new. Freedom also allows teams to quickly adjust and adapt to changing circumstances, fostering adaptability and speed throughout the organization.

  1. Enablement: empowerment to take charge

Empowerment means not only deciding how to do things right but doing the right thing. Given the transparency that provides a clear line of sight to the customer or access to data in combination with knowledge of the strategy, every team can act as an autonomous unit that works to generate maximum value. Ideas are implemented fast, adaption happens where it is needed most, at the contact point to the outside (e.g. customers).

  1. Ownership: ownership, biased toward action

Where we used to hear “not my job” before, people are now committed to achieving a goal, not to filling a job role. Entrepreneurship is fostered when people take initiative and have end-to-end responsibility.

Pillar 3: Collaboration

  1. Exchange: collaboration through exchange and sharing

One advantage an organization has, is that it can achieve mastery, generate new knowledge and ideas by connecting the many minds within, fostering exchange and sharing.

  1. Contribution: collaboration through contribution and flexibility

Modern organizations focus on value creation. This requires us to think about our skills and how to add value with them. It requires commitment to doing your best (when and where needed), not on doing a certain job in a certain team in a certain role. It also requires investment in building flexible networks that form temporary and open teams to achieve different goals.

  1. Learning: collaboration through learning and growing together

To advance together as an organization, we must learn together. The starting point is taking time and extending trust, to openly talk about mistakes and to learn from them, together. Collaboration also means to support each other’s success and development, and to challenge each other to leave our comfort zone. Growth happens if we take risks and challenge the status quo.

We are the culture!

Achieving the three TEC elements is what organizations strive for. However, we are the organization. We are the culture. Look at your own space to maneuver, at your area of responsibility. What can each of us do to increase transparency, to empower others and to improve collaboration to the next most intense, and most flexible level?

Source: Puckett, S. (2020). THE AGILE CULTURE CODE – A guide to organizational agility. BusinessVillage.
Image courtesy of IndypendenZ at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Contributing Author

Dr. Stefanie Puckett has lived and worked globally for several consulting firms, in management and global roles for a Fortune 500 company and ran her own business. She is a psychologist that turned to agile once she saw that decades of organizational psychology research are basically summed up in the agile manifesto. Since then, agile transformation has become her passion as a consultant and executive coach. Stefanie is author of “The agile culture code – a guide to organizational agility” (BusinessVillage, 2020) and co-author of “Agile Leadership – leadership competencies for the agile transformation” (BusinessVillage, 2020).