How do you overcome the challenges of scaling agile across multiple departments and locations?

The absolute first thing is to be clear about 'what' agile are you talking about. IT agility is different from project agility, marketing agility and business agility. Its a bit like saying let's enter the Le Mans 24hour race......with a mini. A great car for its purpose......but....

I agree, but in my view first step should be to share the common view of the organisation itself based on it's purpose, but also set up. With regards to purpose it would be aspects related to what is our mission and vision, what are our current goals and why. What is our strategy? Set up would be related to the organisational view of the supporting infrastructure, business and teams behind it. Therefore involved parties would see the baseline, but also review markets needs and trends to see what is it that they need to do and why in order to enhance existing strategy and broadcast it.

Scaling agile is an iterative process, and learning from each iteration is important. Encourage teams to reflect on their experiences, identify areas for improvement, and adapt their approach accordingly.

Following on from my first point, agile approaches should not be lifted out of IT, Scrum and SaFE, and dropped into other business areas. Far better to start with the Agile Manifesto and adapt it. Horses for courses. And if a consultant tells Scrum is project management, sack them.

Framework adoption would require first deeper dive into current organisational governance ad review what is not working to support defined now new, or enhanced vison and the strategy. Framework adoption would need to synergise other methodologies currently used within the company internally , but also with consideration the suppliers, or customers suggesting most scalable approach, also consideration of people and organisational culture, as new methods adoption can be easier in adoptive to the change culture.

Absolutely, but first to define what are current organisational roles company wide and how they can be adapted and upskilled to the framework needs. Ensuring that people aren't performing duplicated roles for too long and are understanding the purpose and North Star.

Agility requires a collaborative culture, if there isn't one and the leadership won't, lead a change, stop. Don't waste your money, or the clients until the Board get fully behind Agility....Head AND heart.

Cultivate a culture that values collaboration, knowledge sharing, and cross-functional teamwork. Encourage departments and locations to work together towards common goals. Use town halls, shared Slack channels or show-and-tell meetings to celebrate successful collaborations.

Flip this thinking. Instead of "finally," think "first." First, scaling an agile mindset across all design dimensions of an enterprise begins with monitoring and solving performance and outcome problems. A collaborative culture will be an outcome, not the source,?of solving your "Mirror Problems." Mirror problems are those that reflect the faultlines in your culture most clearly. The uber mirror problem is suboptimization. When the sum of all individual teams' "success" never adds up to enterprise progress, you are suboptimizing. If you want to scale adaptive agile change navigation and make real progress, start by solving your organization’s mirror problems.

Start small with MVP and pivot the approach, as of when required. Be flexible and communicate through the collaborative culture learnings.

What's missing here is identifying individuals within each department and location who can act as agile champions. These individuals should be knowledgeable about agile methodologies and can help drive the adoption and implementation process.