Limits to business agility

(There is also a Dutch version of this blog)

For every organisational change, the leaders are confronted with the limits the environment sets on the viability of their vision. This also applies to an agile change, and there are different ways of handling this. A most common strategy is the change agent, who sets requirements on the environment, for example by demanding executive support. If that succeeds, then it certainly helps the progress of the change. Often, however, it does not work, and the organisation falls back into the familiar old behaviour. For me, the announcement that the executive board has to have an agile mindset, when they don’t do what the change agent wants to, is not sufficient. The same is true of the grumbling that starts when team members do not take responsibility for the self-management in the team.

An important characteristic of the agile leader

One of the most important aspects of agile working for a leader is that you work with what is available, instead of what you need. In most cases, the management of the organisation sees agile as a solution to a problem. The same applies to self-steering teams; but when they do not deliver, then management will pull the plug, at the same time reverting back to the old-fashioned model of enlightened despotism. This has serious implications for every agile leader. I am now talking about the new role that IPMA has introduced, which requires some explaining as agile leaders are something different than people who ensure that scrums are held, or that we user non-violent communication. I shall attempt to explain this new role.

Minimal viable definition of agile leadership

A first minimal viable definition (MVD) of this new role: The agile leader bridges the gap between a old paradigm and the new one.

Currently, waterfall, command and obey, management and suchlike are part of the old paradigm. The scientific method, autonomy, self-steering and other principles now form part of the new paradigm. Possibly, in ten years’ time, everything that is now new will be considered old. The MVD for Agile Leadership is, therefore, separated from what we now think about what agile is. It is a leadership that bridges gaps. This has nothing to do with finding a hybrid solution; it is reconciliation between two apparently incompatible worlds. It is the solution to a non-existent duality. What does this mean in practice?

Why, in fact, do we want to be agile?

Why does a company want agile? Why business agility? In order to be able to adjust to the environment. In order to move with a changing market. In order to adjust to change.

If you want to be agile, you have to start somewhere. The one uses a big-bang approach and asks all managers to re-apply for their jobs, and the other does it step-by-step and starts with a few small teams. Yet another implements a scrum studio. In fact, it does not matter, but each one will, over time, come up against a boundary. There are limits to agility. The strange thing is that those on the other side of the gap are expected to adjust, and that, dear reader is not agile! The agile worker makes the adjustment, not the reverse. The agile mindset requires that you embrace change, also in your expectations. If an assumption is wrong, then you appreciate that and you adjust accordingly.

Agile’s greatest weakness

This is unpleasant and herein lies the greatest weakness of agile working, namely not being able to live with an environment, which does not move accordingly! Therefore we need a new role, and I am pleased that IPMA has accepted the challenge and is busy working out this role. There where agile has reached the limits, the agile leader takes it on! In previous, current and future blogs, I am attempting to philosophically justify this role, by sharing my thoughts out loud and looking for a logical story. In the coming weeks, I shall work out this role by researching which gaps the agile leader has to bridge.

Mission, vision and strategy

(There is also a Dutch version of this blog)

In order to go somewhere, you have to know where you have come from. If the destination is a moveable goal, you regularly change direction. We expect leaders to offer us a path, which leads to a good future. The CEO leads his company to more profit in a, per definition, uncertain future. Pursuing such a future is the same as shooting at a moving target. Not infrequently, when the current goal is out of sight, the executive has to search for a new goal. Similar to what the hunter must do when his prey is too smart for him.

The mission is the starting point; the organisation’s right to exist. The vision is the future as we see it, and the strategy is the plan that we believe we must follow to achieve that vision. At least, that is what the professors at the business schools will have us believe. Think up the mission and strategy and during the execution achieve the vision. The reality, however, is many times more complex than the study books promise us.

Waterfall and future tolerate each other badly, very badly

It is tempting to think that if you spend sufficient time in advance thinking about the vision and the strategy, and you then plan these very well, that you have a better chance of achieving these compared to just getting on with the work. The conviction that you can plan and design a great deal in advance is what we call the waterfall method, which is still highly popular. But something that perhaps works for simple projects, no longer works when the project has a long duration. Then, all sorts of things can happen which can throw a spanner in the works of all the wonderful plans which were made to begin with.

A good strategy is always agile

Because the future is unpredictable, the organisation’s management must regularly adjust the vision according to the changing circumstances. This is one of reasons why agile has had an opportunity at all to make inroads into our organisations. When the vision changes, there is a significant chance that the strategy will also change! An organisation, which has a problem adapting itself to this arbitrariness, has an enormous problem.

I was recently at an organisation, which found it necessary to make its project managers agile. I questioned them further about the reason, but no clear answer was forthcoming. It transpired that, on average, making a decision took an average of one and a half years, and then the implementation by the project managers was carried out pretty quickly. When I proposed that it was perhaps better to spend some time looking at the decision procedure, everyone looked at me sheepishly. I seldom have an easy message to tell.

The mission is more certain than the vision

It is not about the vision and the road leading to it. The basis of a versatile strategy is a stable and solid mission. Knowing what your right to exist is, and from there ‘conquering the world’ step-by- step. The strategy emerges and meanders slowly towards the horizon, which we shall never reach; behind each horizon is another new horizon.

If, as organisation, you do not know what your mission is, then success is often nothing more than sheer luck. If you dare to decide what your mission is, then you have a handle for making progress and overcoming setbacks. With a mission you are able to achieve something, and when fate happens, the mission keeps you going.

Four basic questions we have to ask

Who are we? What are we capable of? Who do we know? What do we want?

Who we are determines what motivates us, and how we want to do things; an important ingredient for a good mission. But now, the following:  what can you bring to this world, and what is the organisation able to do with the resources available to it? Without co-operation, you cannot get anywhere, and it is the people in your network, therefore, who can help you in achieving your goals and fulfilling your mission. If you have an answer to the first three questions above, then there is no longer any difficulty in answering the fourth question.