Changing Mindsets To #Agile Needs A Backlog

On this speaking tour I’m about to wrap up, a number of engagements have been about Agile as WOTforWOW (Way of thinking for the way of working) and as a result, many very interesting conversations ensued. 

Ironically, the enterprises not yet on the path and even the “little bit Agile” ones are the easier ones to deal with. It’s either “do it by the manifesto or don’t do it at all” or “stop and think or the cargo will destroy you” for them in the way of practical advice but most organizations are elsewhere on the path where there is quite a hefty amount of goodwill, but the progress and the status depend on many complex factors. Most of those factors are organizational and political and all of them are connected to the monumental mindset change that’s needed. 

I find it no less surprising and indignant than a few years back when I first investigated the topic, that none of the many consultancies that insist on SAFE or the like, found their way to dig into and solve the deep organizational issues that may paralyze any serious and lasting roll out, but do instead publish stats about in-successes. I don’t know if this is a calculated and malefic purposeful move on their part, where it makes more sense to sell armies of coaches and leafy transformation 3.0 decks, or simply the result of their own organizational issues, where their teams tasked with selling Agile or digital are not mandated to be culture and organizational development doctors. 

Irrespective of why, the status quo is the same - if you’re out there looking to roll out Agile and talk to one of the consultancies you’ll get a hey-ho to begin with as to why it’s important, a wishy-washy presentation to the board that gives them permission to still think of Agile as a bit of a hippie fad, then a strategy deck with exact and often murderously proprietary frameworks to implement an exact rigid process and a bunch of coaches to carry this out every day. What you won’t get is a set of the infamous “best practices” with a semblance of a list containing do’s and don’t ’s, ideas to attempt and tools to try out at the end of a surgically honest analysis about the organization as a whole. No practical work on the insides of the enterprise. No analysis and fixing of the oftentimes sick soul of the organization. No help demystifying the many flavors to create an own version that works best with the core principles at heart. 

With no such ideas-repository and no creation of a practice where you’re expected to make your own version employing enough empathy for your own organisational set-up and enough critical thinking of all processes out there to design a version that fits the manifesto and your own situation at the same time, is it any wonder that the stats are stupendously flimsy when it comes to amounts of true winners?

Some of the big common themes I’ve seen many grapple with are:

• To process or not to process - manifesto or verbatim consultancy deck? - There is nothing in the Agile Manifesto to say one should do X or Y in terms of process. That’s not a glaring oversight but the whole point - the way in which we arrive at the relentless focus on the customer is irrelevant, keeping the principles in mind is the only thing that matters. Nonetheless, collectively, we so desperately want directive and exact formulas it is little wonder why simply doing Scrum as we were told or rolling out some proprietary lean with a Kanban board on top is so attractive. If only there were a way to lift whatever precise process that any of these heralds, and implement it verbatim to our business and then instantly be propulsed in the “elite performers” group who kills it Agile wise, then of course that would be awesome but alas, that will never happen and implementing some type of exact process is precisely what it is not and what will not bring us there. In fact, it’s more readily conceivable that in the future, the winning organisations would have allowed every part of the business, every department, every product and even every team to have their own version of an Agile process as long as there is common way that they communicate amongst each other when it comes to the customer, than it is to believe that implementing some scrum version blindly at scale with no true buy-in will work. 
• Management and authority versus servitude and autonomy. - This one goes against the grain of everything from teachings in business schools to a need to find culprits and deflect negative consequences from ourselves. Starting with the educational system and continuing in business the culture we live in, is firmly that of sticks and carrots with a lot more in the way of the former than the latter. Blame cultures can’t innovate and create freely and ultimately can't thrive. We know that instinctively, but we don’t dare to make an honest ideological jump to the alternative. “One neck to choke” doesn’t work in Agile. “Command and Control” doesn’t work in Agile. Micromanagement doesn’t. Performance reviews don’t. Menacing people with dire consequences instead of lifting them up, doesn’t. Asking who can be punished and if that is the product owner, the scrum master, the team leader or the delivery manager, is an antiquated, unproductive and ultimately bankrupt stance. We all instinctively know and trust that servant leadership and team empowerment is the way to go, but we don’t know the path to get there and we’re afraid to let go. Eliminating some management layers or renaming functions isn’t changing the culture of authority, finding ways to challenge our need for it and reframing around the wins of servitude may.
• Translating the old world of sequential and predictable KPIs into VUCA-fit OKRs. - The planning and the execution in waterfall happening sequentially bred blessed predictability. That was in the old world where the speed of execution of both an idea, a plan or a product was slow enough to allow for it. Today we no longer have the luxury of time. “Festina lente” is dead. What needs to happen today, needs to happen violently fast. Sometimes in the absence of a plan. Sometimes despite the plan. Always for the end result and always ready to be utterly changed. Pivoted or ripped apart with nothing but the customer in mind, not slightly adapted at the end of a consensual requirements redesign meeting that gathered all the stakeholders once enough markers have been ordered for the only flipchart available in the approved meeting room. 
• Passion and courage for purpose and vision - or how to take it to heart not only to mind. Far from just the fluffy part, this is the engine behind any of it. Without the bravery to employ vast amounts of critical thinking and experiment relentlessly, there’s no Agile. Without the passion to power the daring, there’s no Agile. Above and beyond talking about the mindset over the theory, creating both needs approaching with the practical mindset of a backlog. We need everyone who is serious about Agile to have as many design sprints as they need to in oder to figure out how to dig deep to get to the essence of their humans again. How to give them permission to be their best selves, how to redefine development plans to focus on what used to be soft skills, how to reaffirm allowances for autonomy and relentless curiosity, how to encourage and en-harten (sic). Methods, talks, books, software tools, exercises and obvious new KPIs, and engagement models. All need to get be tried and tested and all need to hang in the “Doing” column. Whatever taking it to heart practically means for your organization, for your team and for you as an individual needs doing and doing fast and deeply. 

I say this over and again, but it isn’t surprising that Agile is so uncomfortable for so many - it challenges who we are as people, who we are as organisations, our willingness to admit everything is changing, our ability to invest with extreme purpose, our capability of staying present and human. It’s a lot. 

Someone described it to me last week as trying to speak a difficult new language with a completely new alphabet and structure. There are no grammar rules and no advice on how to do it other than “read more poems and do more thinking” and none of it seems to make proper sense but we can see an entire group of people succeeding at communicating in it and we read it will be the universal language of choice for us all soon. Where do you really start? They asked if it was with believing the last part. Whether that intense understanding of there not being any plan B helps decipher exceptions and idioms. It does. It should do. But is it enough? No. Practice and experimentation are needed on top of it. And I would argue learning with peers in a team that’s psychologically safe enough to do so is equally sine qua non. 

I don’t know if the language analogy works best but if it does for some it’s worth thinking of. As are all the others that make sense to others. Whatever it takes. Because we’re worth it.