Agile or Fragile?

Every large organization strives to be agile in a fast-moving world. They applaud the Apples, Googles and Spotifys of this world and want to be more like them. They want passion, creativity and innovation. And intrapreneurial spirit. They want employees who go the extra mile for “their” firm.

And the great news is they can actually have it. Pockets of innovation, driven by passionate people who envision a future they’d like to bring to life. An impact they can quantify concretely, a benefit for the firm that is measurable. A differentiated client experience that is tangible. A business impact that can be tracked. Real change, real potential. So what does it take?

It’s actually easy. An ACTIONABLE idea that can be articulated in a concrete business plan. MEASURABLE milestones. Resource allocation and accountability in the hands of ONE person. A SMALL leadership team of two or three people driving the effort forward. FAST decision taking. Constant DIALOGUE with clients who give feedback on the progress and on the value of the new solutions provided. Quarterly (rather than monthly) reporting to senior management showing transparently what worked, what didn’t, status and next steps. If it’s working, keep going. Done is often better than perfect. 

These simple ingredients make for a fun, dynamic, committed working environment. People who have experienced it say it’s like working in a startup but with the benefit of having the resources of a large organization at your fingertips. It’s the best of both worlds. High motivation levels, overflowing willingness to go the extra mile, abundance of creative problem solving, and a heavy does of accountability keeping you with feet on the ground. Crowned with the deep satisfaction of shaping something with your own hands. Corporate bliss!

It’s not actually hard to do - but it takes a HUGE leap of faith by senior management. Agile management is indeed about creating value, not extracting value. Letting go of control is key to successful innovation. No micro management, no “killing by committees”, no passive obstruction, no delays due to indecisiveness, no punishment for failing 1 thing out of 10 (that still means that 9 things worked), no endless buy-in processes with people who are not going to lift a finger anyway, no polite hindering masked by encouraging comments. Trust in the fact that committed people want to do something good, and enable them to do exactly that.

The less great news is that when they have this kind of agility and disruption from within, large organizations tend to kill it. 

Because nothing is trickier to deal with than fast paced change in a large organization. Too many people have something to lose: stability, influence, status, money, power. Or too many people want to suddenly get involved - and as the saying goes, too many cooks spoil the broth. Moreover, after innovation is successfully incubated, it takes transformation on a massive scale to adopt the new ideas/practices/processes across a large organization and adapt them successfully to local cultural contexts. This is usually the point where large organizations don’t cope well. Often because of one missing ingredient: stability. 

This sounds like a paradox. Why would stability be critical for change? Because you need committed people to drive change and to see it through. Adoption on a global scale will most likely take years. Yet in large organizations, there is high management turnover. Quarterly pressure, combined with the need for mid term renewal, results in frequent organizational realignment. On the one hand this brings a lot change and new impetus, but on the other hand it threatens innovation adoption. When a new initiative works, it needs fast and systematic adoption - whereas new managers have one thing and one thing only to prove: that they are going to do things differently. So when a large organization has an agile future within reach, it often ends up killing it. 

In my experience, the five most common pitfalls for agility are the side-effects of such instability:

1. "Lengthy learning curves": new managers first need to understand their new business remit. Very often this means that adoption of any existing initiatives is at best delayed, and at worst parked (see below). New managers should carefully consider the benefits of letting initiatives continue until they have a clear view on what they plan to do: keep, adapt or kill. This has the added benefit of keeping up momentum and motivation within the first 90 days at least. Even if an initiative is no longer pursued, people will understand why and will have something new to refocus on. 
2. “Let’s see” cemetery: when indecisiveness prevails, disruptive initiatives cannot progress and adoption is stalled. Motivation, momentum, and ultimately people, are lost. At this point there is no going back anyway, without losing face. So managers don’t look back and move on. People damage done is often swept under the carpet of “non regretted leavers”.
3. “Not invented here” syndrome: unless new managers have a high respect for the past, there is a tangible risk that they want to do away with the past. Ctrl+Alt+Delete, Exit program. Adoption falls off a cliff. Much energy and resources are lost by stopping and restarting initiatives. Knowing it all better is fine, actually doing it better is another matter entirely and that is what people then want to see. (What these managers often don’t realize is just how high a bar they set for themselves). 
4. “Why not me?” syndrome: some managers are keen to get involved in driving the innovation forwards or taking the lead for a growing opportunity. This can accelerate adoption in many cases. Yet in certain situations, if they insist on reinventing what has already been planned, adoption can be severely delayed even with the best intentions. This creates a tension which is a fragile balancing act. In extreme cases it becomes a power play where it is not the best ideas that win but the loudest voices.
5. "Too little, too late": adoption delayed or paused for any other reasons can result in a strategic initiative being adrift for months, before it is either dead or firmly back on everyone’s priority list - in whichever shape or form. The key concern in these cases is that momentum within an organization is very hard to sustain. Rebuilding employee motivation it is harder the second time round than it was to start with. It is easier to change the course of a strategic initiative than to stop it and restart it.

So large organizations need to find new ways to protect innovation from the side effects of both centripetal and centrifugal forces: allow pockets of innovation and disruption to emerge while avoiding dilution of innovation adoption (agility does not mean anarchy).

Firms also need to find ways to constantly nurture people’s passion for innovation despite continuous disruption: innovating means running ahead at the risk of getting it wrong, because it has never been done before. The worst that can happen is if passionate people slow down and wait, rather than run ahead. Importantly new managers shouldn’t confuse passion and drive with the abundance of “eagerness to please” that surrounds them. Mistaking the latter for the former is more prone to subduing innovation than enabling it. Genuine passion is uncomfortable for managers. It’s the expression of people who just can’t sit still, who always want to move forwards, who want to go above and beyond. The ones who challenge, comment and criticize. Rightly or wrongly - but they are viewing today through the lens of tomorrow, and they see possibilities that others do not. To lead these kind people, the more you “let go”, the more inspiration you “let come”. 

As Gary Hamel rightly says in the forward of “The Age of Agile” by Stephen Denning: “Make no mistake, the management revolution is well under way. The only question for your organization is whether it is going to LEAD or FOLLOW.”