Agile Roles, Rules and Processes
Choose a project that creates real value for a customer.
It could be a product, a service, or a piece of one. Now compare that network with the org chart representing where people sit daily. How many teams does it touch? What is the cost of ownership, speed, and coherence handoffs? In an ideal state, your day-to-day value-creation structure — where people spend their time — and your workflow are the same. Nothing but Projects.
Is an organization nothing more than a series of projects?
The traditional definition of a project says it must have a beginning, an end, and a defined scope and resources. Have the discipline to make bets in good times and bad.
Workflow is the fuzzy logic between our value-creation structure and our value-creation process. It’s how the work flows through the organization. Since the team working on the project isn’t a team, we appoint a project manager to shepherd the herd. Of course, they lack the authority to lead the effort because all the participants’ allegiances lie with their functions.
Still, it gives us someone to hold accountable.
And while we’re at it, wouldn’t it be nice if all these projects used the same “efficient” process? This is what passes for workflow innovation in corporate America today — an extra layer of bureaucracy.
You’re hurt if your team is structured and doesn’t reflect how your organization creates value. Flow Interrupted.
What has been implicit that you can make explicit?
This happens at every level: the organization, the team, and the individual — scenario Planning. Your purpose is clear. Your essential intent is well-defined and tuned. Using these beacons, people are “voting with their feet” and energizing the projects that matter most.
Gather any colleagues and ask them to design the competitor that would bury you. You’ll be amazed at how (and ) they jump to the task. Their enthusiasm is proportional to the amount of org debt you’re carrying.
Let teams take ownership of their local expression of strategy and operations.This will leave space for the emergence and harness the full potential of your membership.
What is our current strategy?
How does our purpose inform our system? What critical factors will mean the difference between success and failure? What are the trade-offs we’re willing to make? How do we develop, refine, and refresh our strategy? How do we communicate our system? How do we use methods to filter and steer day-to-day? How does our approach inform our planning process?
Recognize that sound strategy depends on our ability to perceive what’s happening.
Accept that in areas of rapid change, your process is only as good as your ability to learn and adjust course.
Organizational culture isn’t a problem to be solved; it’s an emergent phenomenon we must cultivate.
Our way of working was created by gurus, industrialists, unions, and universities — generations of managers and workers who came before us. We can thank them for what still serves us and change the rest. To the legacy leader, everything still looks like a factory. And all our problems can be fixed if we work long enough hard. But our bureaucracies are different from complexity.
Bureaucracies can’t handle the surprises we face every day, and worse, they’ll never surprise us with an unexpected breakthrough. This brings us to one of the most important things leaders and teams need to internalize: our way of working is made up. This is different from how it has to be or has always been.
A complicated system is a causal system subject to cause and effect.
Problems with complicated systems have solutions. Complex systems comprise many interacting components. That exhibit adaptive or emergent behavior without requiring a leader or central control. As a result, complex systems are more about the relationships and interactions among their components.
The natural barrier to progress in the twenty-first century is us.
The man who grasps principles can select his methods. Stop trying to borrow wisdom and think for yourself. Face your difficulties and think and think and think and solve your problems yourself.
Suffering and difficulties provide opportunities to become better.
Success is never giving up. We are addicted to the idea that the world can be predicted and controlled — that our stoplights are the only way to keep things in check. But when you view the world that way, today’s uncertainty and volatility trigger retreating to what has worked in the past.
We need to hire more capable leaders. We need to squeeze out a little more efficiency and growth. We need to reorganize.
Organizational debt is any structure or policy that no longer serves an organization.
Within that definition, we see it manifest in many different ways at many other times.
Corporations want share prices to move only up and to the right. They need to move the needle now, which means revenue or earnings growth. Executives are compensated in stock to align their interests with those of shareholders. They all fall victim to a kind of collective quarterly myopia.
The antidote to the diminishing returns of the status quo is to think.
To avoid the pitfalls of organizational debt, we need constant and vigilant simplification. We must create agile roles, rules, and processes — built to learn and change. Org debt creates bureaucracy, and bureaucracy protects org debt. It’s a tragic love affair.
Considering the modern world of work, the assumptions of Theory X still feel present.
Our job description tells us what to do. Our manager tells us how to do it. Our office hours tell us when to come to work. Our meeting invites tell us which conversations we can take part in. Our performance review tells us how to learn and grow.
They are all distrusted from believing we cannot take responsibility for our contribution and growth.
Increase autonomy, and motivation thrives. Decrease it, and motivation erodes.
Treat them like all-stars, and they will become all-stars. To be People Positive is to assume and expect the best of everyone.
[¹]: Brave New Work: Are You Ready to Reinvent Your Organization?
