Agility. Can it be done? What holds companies back? 6 tips from a recent client interaction (and 6 book recommendations to help you get started).

A client recently came and asked about how they could have greater agility in their organisation. Not (just) being "Agile" in a Product Management sense, but greater agility in their processes, decision making and culture.

In response I wrote an email which I thought I could share a few parts of here to help others that are thinking about this and make a bunch of book recommendations that have helped me (at the bottom of this article). If you felt like you had other good tips, feel free to share those and any techniques you find helpful (in the comments), as this list is definitely not intended to be exhaustive.

6 tips for achieving greater agility

1. The first thing I said was that if the whole organisation was paralysed by indecision and marred with treacle-like processes, then doing this ‘large scale’ in one go might be challenging.? "It’s probably worth identifying 1-3 parts of the organisation that already want to champion this new ‘agility’ and then bring in some of the techniques with those teams".??By getting some concrete wins from a few teams, it will give leadership confidence to roll this out more widely, or to apply the same thinking to a wider group.
2. Ensure that teams and individuals are understanding Why you are doing something and Who it is serving, not just “we need to do x” – because lots of people will make their own assumptions about ‘the way its always been done’ whereas with a clear Why and Who teams can be much more agile in their decision making (rather than referring up to layers of bureaucracy, they are empowered with the information already).? Good things here are:? Personas, Journey Mapping, Design Thinking.
3. Develop a Culture where there is ‘permission to fail (fast)’ and then embed this as a Learning culture. ?"Teams are often paralysed because they don’t have enough data points, but failing fast is about having an insight and then testing that as quickly and ‘Lean-ly’ as possible and getting insights from real end users/ clients". ?Often individuals and teams won’t do this because ‘failing’ is seen as bad by management, and not a positive thing. ?As Thomas Edison (inventor of the lightbulb) once said, “I have not failed 10,000 times—I’ve successfully found 10,000 ways that will not work.”? Useful things that can help here are thinking about Innovation Accounting; Product Market Fit; Lean.
4. The client also talked about the decision making Process being slow.? I offered that "it's worth discussing specifically which processes we could identify (or asking colleagues to identify - who are probably closer to the issues than the C-Suite!) that are unnecessarily slow or cumbersome … these could offer some quick Lean re-engineering wins". ?Just identifying 2-3 (or even 1!) that causes a lot of pain, and solve that. I remember working with a insurance client previously where we mapped a process for them and identified a few steps that took way longer than needed in relatively simple decision process and unlocking that lifted the happiness both of the employees and their clients 10x because employees were much more empowered to provide instant responses to the client they were directly speaking to.? Solving one or two will give confidence that it is worth doing more.? Useful approaches here could be: Lean Process Mapping.
5. Overall, I also commented on the general sense of a 'paralysis' that they seemed to be exhibiting. It sounded like they had a bit of a knowledge gap:? They knew it was bad, but: - They didn’t know why and - They didn’t know where it is worstso - They don’t know how to start. ?Some stakeholder interviews (both at the top and bottom) are usually worthwhile (and low cost!) to run some discovery sessions and present back some ideas about top areas to focus on.? This can then be supplemented by a prioritisation workshop with (top and bottom of the organisational hierarchy) to prioritise the list, for value (impact). Inevitably this gives teams and leadership a sense of empowerment (both about having a 'list' and from a 'bottom up' perspective, about being heard) and crystallizes which are the most valuable areas to solve first.? Useful techniques here are: ?End-user-, Stakeholder- (and Client- [if you're feeling brave!]) Interviews. If you have regular quarterly satisfaction check-ins with clients, what are recurring themes across those?; Looking at process data (if they have any of the decision processes in work-flow management then there should be data available about bottlenecks in the process) - you could talk to call-centres and front line staff, perhaps even look at exit interviews!; Journey Mapping; User Experience Maps.
6. Finally, I suggested that identifying another company that they thought they might want to be like could be a helpful way to identify cultural traits in others that they aspire to be like … Execs and teams generally have ideas of their own.? Ask them to say (or better still, write it on a post-it note!) “We want to be more like [X company/ organisation] because __________” (describe some perceived positive cultural trait they have in the gap and ideally some data point to evidence the benefit of this trait). ... This will then will provide a starting point. Caveat: This is not to try to “blueprint” the culture or agility of that other entity, but simply to get to the shift they want to make --- the words they articulate in the gap (above) are key. ?By articulating it at arms length and identifying cultural traits they perceive other companies to have, you might unlock some honesty that they thought they couldn’t say about their own company because they have barriers of the past, i.e. “We could never be more ________, because of X, Y and Z”. Those barriers of course are perception, as they are the leaders or grass-roots of the company, and if they wanted to they could change the culture by starting it themselves!

Let me know what you think in the comments, and what has worked well in your own situations!

Here are 6 books to help you get started on driving greater agility

Good books on these topics which I have read, are below from some of my favourite authors (of course, feel free to share other ideas in the comments below):

• Reinventing Organisations - A guide to creating organisations inspired by the next stage of human consciousness (by Frederic Laloux ).
• LEAN ENTERPRISE - How high performance organizations innovate at scale (by Jez Humble , Joanne Molesky , Barry O'Reilly ).
• Sprint: How to solve big problems and test new ideas in just five days (by Jake Knapp ).
• The Lean Startup (by Eric Ries ).
• The Lean Product Playbook (by Dan Olsen ).
• Sense & Respond - How successful organizations listen to customers and create new products continuously (by Jeff Gothelf and Joshua Seiden ).