The COVID 19 pandemic poses a serious challenge. It has forced leaders to rethink how to manage their business in a new environment. An environment where stability has been replaced by volatility. Certainty replaced by uncertainty. Being able to maneuverer around volatility and uncertainty by being agile is no longer an option. It is now a fundamental requirement. Being agile is a prerequisite for survival in such an environment.
Faced with the dire consequence of not being agile, leaders invest heavily on training employees on adopting agile approach at work. This may result in employees undertaking agile practices. The assumption is that by doing work using agile practices, the workforce becomes agile.
Doing agile occurs when employees are required to change what they do and follow strictly agile approach based on agile practices and routines. This leads employees to believe that leaders knows best and they oblige blindly without internalizing the principles of agile. This is where the problem lies. What is needed is agile leadership that shifts from merely adopting a short term tactical to engaging in a long term cultural focus.
Short Term Tactical Focus
When engaging in a short term tactical focus, organizations merely seek to revamp their processes and practices based on agile best practices. Attempts are made to upskill staff quickly. Many employees are sent to be certified as agile professionals. Kanban boards, daily scrums and sprints are introduced. The result is improved visibility and communication with some ability to adapt to changing priorities. However, such an approach delivers an improvement of merely 20% at best.
What hampers greater improvement is not a lack of skill but a lack of will of employees to learn, unlearn and relearn on their own. This is partly attributable to leaders being unwilling to relinquish their command and control mode of leadership.
Consequently, improvements made are sporadic and short term. The excitement and novelty wears out with time and in some instances organizations are forced to revert to the old way of working as it is better and more predictable. All efforts that have been invested are lost.
Long Term Cultural Focus
Agile leadership calls for disbanding a short term change focus to a long term cultural transformation focus. The focus should not be limited towards establishing how work should be done or what has to be achieved in the short term. The focus should be on what the company aims to be in the long run. This requires a focus towards developing an agile mindset among everyone and embracing agile values and principles rather than merely engaging in agile practices.
When adopting such a focus, there is a pronounced improvement in employee engagement and empowerment. Customer delight is achieved from better values obtained from services and products delivered. Gradually a culture of collaboration and knowledge sharing manifests leading to almost 200% benefit compared to what was achieved previously. The benefits obtained gradually embolden employees to immerse themselves completely within an agile framework that improves with time.
Shifting from a short term tactical to long term cultural focus
To enable a long term cultural focus to emerge, a gradual shift is required. One that involves shifting from profit focus to customer value focus, introducing processes that embrace agile principles and adoption of tools and techniques customised to suit the needs of the organization in question.
Leaders expect bottom line results to be achieved under all circumstances to sustain profit. They need to be made aware of the long term benefits of more customer value that leads to repeat business occurring at lower cost. This is best established by delegating work to self-organised teams, collaborating more with customers and being able to achieve more with less.
Processes being used should be carefully redefined to gradually introduce agile practices to enable the development of “hybrid” processes that include both traditional as well as agile processes. The agile practices will gradually be introduced in tandem with the readiness of the employees level of engagement in agile.
To facilitate the increased employee engagement in adopting agile requires tools to be provided that facilitate such engagement. These tools and techniques should be carefully selected based on ease of use and applicability in the working environment. Through constant use, the psychological and physical engagement levels of employees in their work based on agile practices increases.
Moving the needle on all three parameters simultaneously without disrupting the gradual shift calls for expertise in agile coaching. Such coaching is premised on expertise in mentoring employees and leaders on best agile practices, carrying out the necessary assessments to demonstrate value delivery as well as addressing impediments that could derail the shift from tactical to cultural focus.
In summary refocusing the purpose of embracing agile requires expertise in helping leaders recognise the benefits of customer value focus, coalescing changing processes as well as customisation of techniques in tandem with the demands of the business. Unless this is done, organizations will continue doing agile and will never be agile.
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Dr. Rumesh Kumar,
PMP, SCT, Agile Coach, Director
Sharma Management International