All Are Change Agents
What are the challenges in building a culture where everyone is engaged in continuous and sustained improvement?
First, an organization’s leadership must be strong (and united) advocates for agile transformation and must communicate expectations that improvement is a fundamental part of everyone’s job – or as Deming once said: “Improvement is not mandatory – neither is survival.”
If we think of examples of companies that have successfully embedded a mindset of continuous improvement into their cultures, Toyota quickly comes to mind. Much has been written about the famous Toyota Production System (TPS) and its lean pillars, which are frequently boiled down to two fundamental pillars:
- The practice of continuous improvement
- The power of respect for people
Often summarized even further into a single pillar:
Continuous improvement through people.
What ‘respect for people’ really means at Toyota is having an organization where people want to constantly improve, providing people with the skills and tools of improvement, and motivating people to apply these skills every day. Toyota understands that it must have an organization where everyone contributes to improvement. Everyone must be trained in improvement, and empowered to improve. Working at Toyota requires new patterns of thinking – a complete mindset change. Similarly, an agile transformation must not be only about the tactical gains of adopting a set of tools and methods, but must primarily be about re-engineering the culture to where continuous improvement is a way of life. Tools and methods come and go. The goal must be to install a continuous improvement machine within the organization in which everyone plays a part.
Knowledge of agile values, principles and methods is a necessary but insufficient skillset to participate in any successful agile transformation. Leadership and relationship skills are also necessary at all levels of the organization. The ability to make sound decisions, solve problems, resolve conflict, get buy-in and build consensus is going to be instrumental in getting to a successful outcome.
Fundamental organizational transformation can be perceived as an existential threat to members of leadership teams, and middle management. All change is accompanied by conflict. Expect it. When we say “conflict” we simply mean different points of view about strategy, tactics, or how to solve various problems that emerge along your journey . Even when the organization is broadly aligned behind an overarching vision, conflict is still likely in areas of strategy and implementation tactics. However if we expect everyone to be a Change Agent, we also need to equip them with some basic skills for leading change, which means working continuously on alignment, solving problems, resolving conflict, and influencing others.
What are some of the fundamental elements in successful change besides an appeal to improve?
Likely at least 3 things:
- Motivated people. Daniel Pink’s book Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, explores how knowledge workers, like software developers, are more motivated by intrinsic factors like autonomy, mastery and purpose, than extrinsic carrots and sticks of financial compensation and punishment. Leaders neglect the needs of their people at their peril. Steve Jobs famously said: “It doesn’t make sense to hire smart people and tell them what to do; we hire smart people so they can tell us what to do”. Software engineers and other knowledge workers are quick to get the measure of any culture they find themselves in, and are likely to move on quickly when denied reasonable autonomy over their work or feel their skills are stagnating. Having a sense of purpose requires everyone (leaders, managers, product owners, scrum masters, coaches, team members) to be strong advocates for the vision, goals and strategy of the organization, and every opportunity must be used (town-hall meetings, email broadcasts, planning events, one-on-one meetings, coaching and mentoring activities, retrospectives, surveys, organizational pulse checks) to be constantly communicating, engaging and (above all) listening, to promote understanding and support. Being an effective leader makes employees feel like they are constructive, respected parts of an organization. As a result, employees feel like they have more stake in the game, develop greater trust with their leaders, and become intrinsically motivated. This leads to greater productivity. People are more productive when they are intrinsically motivated, as opposed to being motivated by external rewards like salaries. Leaders engage intrinsic motivation by instilling a strong sense of purpose in their employees. Strong relationships between leaders and employees increases employee motivation, and the Pygmalion effect, which describes the tendency to try and live up to positive expectations.
- Relationship skills of conflict resolution, consensus building and alignment.
Organizational Alignment. Often there may be the illusion of alignment, but with discord simmering not far below the surface. Much conflict outside the leadership team is typically over “tactics” i.e. how to achieve an objective, versus the overall vision. Thus it is crucial that leadership teams present a united front on overall vision and strategy to the broader organization. Without alignment on an overall vision, achieving alignment on tactics is going to be rather pointless. Furthermore, people in an organization will quickly sense of any leadership misalignment. When they see mixed messages from the top, they are very unlikely to lend their full support.
Conflict Resolution. Resolving conflict must first be concerned with bringing it to the surface and identifying underlying reasons for different points of view. People are likely to have a commitment to a decision or course of action if they have had an opportunity to make their concerns heard and addressed. Surfacing areas of disagreement can often lead to sounder solutions once all voices have been heard. A decision-making process that is transparent, and based on facts and data, and grounded in guiding principles (like the agile manifesto), is much more likely to gain support than something that is perceived to be arbitrary, non-transparent or politically motivated.
Feedback Loops . Agilists love feedback loops. Continuous examination and re-examination of everything being done to advance the transformation. Progress towards target business outcomes (delivery speed, productivity, flexibility…) should be measurable, and metrics should play a big part in any improvement framework. In scrum, the primary process improvement mechanism is the Sprint Retrospective. Retrospectives can be applied at any level of a transformation, and to any activity, program or initiative. Employee ‘pulse checks’ are another good way to get a sense of the degree of support or other concerns being felt within the organization at large.
3. Emotional Intelligence. Fundamentally, in any transformation, what is being changed is people. That is, it is people that enact changes in practices, methods, organization structures and so on. But change makes people uncomfortable, thus while having the right knowledge, skills, and experience to articulate what changes are needed is very necessary, we also need to have an awareness of the emotional state of the people we are trying to influence. We need to develop the ability to not only read the emotional state of others, but also of ourselves. If you are in a conversation where you sense you are making others uncomfortable, good EQ gives you the opportunity to pivot and change your approach. Learn to be sensitive. Never just launch into a solutions pitch (scrum, SAFe, etc…), always ask questions first to get a read on what people are thinking and feeling. Then tailor your message based on what you hear. When you get to a point where your audience is asking you questions, then you have a real opportunity to be heard.
These skills can and must be learned. You cannot be an effective leader or manager in an agile organization if you are unable or unwilling to acquire these skills, and to be able to use them to coach or mentor others.
