Agility Reflection: The way I see it...

The way I see it, Enterprise Agile is at a crossroads… We got this thing started and we can’t find a way to stop it long enough for us to keep it from going the wrong direction. And the difficulty is, to borrow an old Chinese saying…

  “When the wrong person uses the right means, the right means works in the wrong way.”

There may be flaws in the way we think about Enterprise Agile. We tend to think about problems in isolation, and in our effort to help our enterprise organizations we may be making things more messy, complicated and even more broken. So, what is it that makes Agile activities so messy for Enterprise organizations? 

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The way I see it, we have invented a wonderful agile understanding to solve a wicked problem that we faced, in a specific role, every day for a very long time. And we created a whole new language, methodology and output or performance metrics to measure our agile success. But it also runs the risk of being…

1) too simplistic, to deal with all the complexities of our enterprise-wide problems, and

2) we are liable to confuse, and view all, enterprise problems with our agile perspectives.

I like to compare it to the confusion that people have with the purchase of big-ticket items that have both a buy-price and cost-price. Some people, enthusiastically jump at opportunities to “buy” something, based on a buy-price, which they believe to be a good deal. However, they may not be factoring in the “total cost-price” (hidden-costs for taxes, maintenance, shipping fees, expertise training, etc.). Afterwards, “the good deal” does not seem so great. The buyer may be remorseful and be forced to invest far more than the great buy-price, or they may simply need to “walk away” because the cost-price was too high. 

Similarly, it is no wonder that many “successful” agile-community leaders, in enterprise organizations, who often struggle with the cost-price of holistic organizational change. The cost-of-change may be too high for unmotivated organizations. It is not uncommon to find high-value change-leaders at odds, or getting frustrated, or feeling cut-off from...

1) “comfortable” organizational leaders who like their traditional practices, while wanting modernization, and

2) “slow-moving” strategic corporate discussions, that claim they desperately need more agility.

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The way I see it, it comes back to the way we view ourselves. We need a view of ourselves that reflects who we really are “in” an enterprise organization. A microorganism that is functioning “in and with“ a whole complex environment. We need to see ourselves as a funny little initiative, that lives inside a powerful and complex enterprise ecosystem.

But how are we going to do that…if we hope to help transform the whole enterprise organization…

• We can’t really understand all the process problems across all our enterprise silo’s…
• We can’t really connect with all the groups across the whole organization…
• We can’t really change and align the behaviors of everyone in our globally distributed communities…

And yet, it is absolutely critical that we do…and we must! If, we are going to help and empower our enterprise organizations to re-invent themselves so they can pivot-quickly when markets change, and bravely explore unexpected innovations when they burst on to the scene. If our enterprise organizations are to survive and thrive, in their volatile market landscapes, it is absolutely necessary for us to participate in their bigger agendas.

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The way I see it, there is not one-way to make this change across all our enterprise organizations. And I can’t tell you what to do next in your specific situation. But I do suggest, that before we think about funding, supporting or starting to make changes to address any “single” problem…that we first realize that many of our “single-problems” and fix-it efforts (with our “output” performance benefits) are simple isolated patch efforts, are often part of bigger corporate challenges. And that success needs to be measured in “outcomes” that benefit the whole organization.

It is absolutely necessary that we see the needs of the whole organization, and take the time to learn how each group impacts others and how we can best align and contribute. Before we start anything, we need to take a step back…and pause. And consider the outcomes our enterprise organizations need…and collaboratively participate in building successful organizations, that are pivot-ready, customer-centric…and connects all of us…to all of this.