Always on my mind – is business agility just a set of behaviours?
Websearch ‘business agility’ and the most common message you will find is that it is about changing the mindset, e.g. to more customer centricity. Some descriptions discount processes and even frameworks altogether.
Not surprisingly Mencken is right again and the behavioural view is way too simplistic and is a part – vital – but a part of a whole. Lets look at the whole. The starting point is the Agile Manifesto and its 4 Values and 12 Principles. Still to my mind the most coherent description of agility. While defined for doing software development better, its long been adapted to other areas. Which is what I sought to do in my book for project management– and to an extent – for business agility.
The likes of the Harvard Business Review, Forbes, Gartner, McKinsey, PA Consulting and others have defined business agility with perhaps a surprising degree of commonality. I have summarised it as follows:
Which some boil down to….Getting more from less.
It is pretty obvious from both this and if you look at the Agile Manifesto that agility is about much more than behaviours but I need to add flesh to the bones. Recently I took part in one of APMG International’s LevelUp panels and many of the about characteristics were raised by the panel.
Episode 193 - Level Up your Career - How to create Double the Value in half the time
You can see it on YouTube and there is a link at the end of this blog.
Before I fatten things up I think its useful to understand why business agility is gaining currency, contrary to some views that we are in a Post-Agile world which frankly is nonsense.
Why ?business agility?
There are a number of factors driving a move towards business agility and some key ones are shown here.
Numerous papers and articles evidence the potential value of business agility – IF you get it right. Two 2021 articles from PA Consulting evidence that agile business are more profitable. These are backed by articles and research from such sources as the Harvard Business Review, Gartner and others. Competitive advantage then is a key driver.
It might even be a matter of Survival. Take a look at industry sector disruptors, such as Amazon for retail. Such companies do not define themselves by agility but exhibit many characteristics of agility. Beware agile disruptors not just nibbling away at your profit margins, but taking great chunks out of them.
Digitalisation remains a trend of keen interest to the Board level, particularly with AI in the mix. I will return to this later in the blog. Another increasing trend as shown by the Project Management Institute and others is the Projectisation of work. With more business as usual activity being done within a project wrapper. Getting more from less with projects is clearly referring to project agility.
And we cannot ignore the lasting impact the Covid pandemic is having on not just where people work, but how. The challenges of sustained high performance from remote working, entailing levels of empowerment and trust not seen before. Agile characteristics are clearly recognisable in high performing remote and hybrid teams.
If you accept the case for a move to business agility, how do you do it and what do you need to change? If behaviours are what you need to change, how do you grasp that nettle when behaviour is an abstract noun? Where do behaviours come from?
I saw a comment on LinkedIn today which said that behaviour builds culture. I think its more accurate to say that behaviour is a key manifestation of an organisation’s culture. Unfortunately, that is another term that has many interpretations, only some of them useful.
Mindset and organisation culture
For an organisation I think mindset is the wrong word. Most definitions of mindset refer to individuals not organisations. An organisation’s culture is a far better term and there has been decades of research into it and multiple models are available. Personally, I have used Edgar Schein’s for many years. It has three levels:
ARTEFACTS: The tangible organisational attributes that could be anything from the processes people use to the office environments they work in…..or not if home-working.
ESPOUSED VALUES: Are what the organisation says about itself. The most obvious must be its stated values, such as customer first, we respect each other and so on.
BASIC ASSUMPTIONS: These are the undefined but ingrained beliefs, such as ‘how we do things here’, unofficial relationships between people and teams that smooth things…..or get in the way.
There is a relationship. An organisation’s culture does inform the mindsets of its people (and vice versa) and hence their behaviours. And of course there is a feedback loop as it would be crazy not to think that behaviours can influence culture. What the Board need to ensure is that the tail does not wag the dog.
Edgar Schein said that changing organisation culture is incredibly difficult. But if you can understand how an organisation REALLY works, you can find the levers to pull.
Which is why I like icebergs……
The organisation culture iceberg
Business agility indeed any agility has specific behavioural components. As Steve Messenger, former Agile Business Consortium Chair often said……Agile is a state of mind. But where do Agile behaviours come from and how might changes be achieved? I think an iceberg is a useful model. One thing we know about icebergs – apart from sinking the Titanic - ?is that usually most of their mass is underwater……..unseen, but there. It is the same with how organisations REALLY work.
There are the visible things that the organisation defines. Schein’s Artefacts and Values. And there are factors out of site such as how we do things here (Schein's Basic Assumptions). ALL of these together largely define how people behave. Taken together they also represent the totality of how an organisation works – they ARE the organisation’s culture.
Many frameworks of business agility focus on behaviours but without saying how they are achieved. ?One answer often cited is to reflect agility in an organisation’s values. But that is like telling everyone you should wear a seat-belt or stop smoking. But how do you achieve a state where seat-belt wearing or low levels of smoking are the norms? Both of these behaviours have markedly changed in recent decades, but only as a result of a complex mixture of carrot, stick and communication over time.
An iceberg is all very well to make a point but its not much of an analytical tool.
Modelling how an organisation works
To be more analytical we need to use a model that shows how an organisation works – a Business Operating Model (BOM). There are many and I am going to look at this one first. Here is KMPG’s Target Operating Model and has pretty much everything you need to define the mechanistic aspects of how your organisation might work. And it is a good model for what it shows.
But I suspect Drucker would have something to say……..culture eats strategy for breakfast. Whereas many views of business agility focus on behaviours to the detriment of the mechanistic. This model has people represented in a mechanistic fashion, but not their behaviours.
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So let’s take a different view.
Business Operating Model
To understand how and organisation works first understand what drives it, i.e Vision, Mission, Strategy and Values. I know this is probably grandmothers and eggs but context I am told is everything.
Which brings me to the Business Operating Model that describes how the organization operates to deliver its Strategy in order to achieve its Mission and Vision, while staying true to its Values. I like to use this as the operation of any organisation can be described by its components.
Organisation structure includes relationships and workflows between departments and teams.
People, not just roles and responsibilities, but role profiles, behaviours at individual and team level, flexibility of leadership and so on.
Processes, both operational and for management & administration, that are not one-size fits all but adaptable.
Tools and systems that support flexible and efficient working.
So now we have a way of capturing all aspects of how an organisation - like an iceberg both above and below the surface – really works and how people behave. By delving deeply into each of these and their interactions its possible to identify the levers to pull for culture change.
Simples? Not by several thousand rows of Christmas trees alas, but it is possible, feasible even. So where do you go from here?
Business Agility and the BOM
In my book Agile Beyond IT I show what Agility looks like when applied to the whole of project management. I also show the sorts of changes that need to be made in an organisation to support project agility. Such as empowered decision making, collaborative behaviours and flexible governance.
The same is needed for Business Agility. DO NOT try to lift one type of Agile, e.g. Scrum or even SAFe and drop it into your BOM. Remember there are many adaptations of agility that have developed for different and excellent purposes. Hammers are not great for putting screws into walls – at least not if you want a shelf to stay up. Agile is not A thing unchanging.
Such a notion is clearly not even an agile thought, yet many act as though it is. What all agile approaches (should) have in common are the 4 Values and 12 Principles of the Agile Manifesto, ALL of them. So DO apply ALL of them to your ?Business Operating Model to define how it needs to change for agility to thrive and be sustained. Some examples are:
The title of this VLOG posed the question: ?is business agility just a set of behaviours? I hope I have evidenced that this is a fallacy and that agile behaviour is a key manifestation of agility, but does not define it. Sorry it is not that simple.
On a more hopeful note, I can suggest, even recommend a route to business agility.
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Digitalisation…a vehicle for business agility?
Digitalisation and agility have much in common. Both aim to deliver more value, better and faster. Organisations whose approach to Digitalisation is one of just IT Change are missing the point and probably the boat as well.
Digitalisation should be transformative and impact probably the entire business operating model. Moving to business agility is also transformative, not tinkering and also impacts the entire business model. I would advise considering a win-win of combining Digitalisation and business agility into a single progressive transformation.
How? Well that’s another story.
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Links and more information
The Agile Manifesto: https://agilemanifesto.org/
If you would like to know more about project and business agility the starting point is my book: Agile Beyond IT, finalist in the 2023 Business Book Awards. While its focus is project management agility. One chapter considers how to create and sustain an organization culture that supports project agility.
Signed copies including a dedication if you wish are available directly from me if you live in the UK. Please contact me at: [email protected] .
And if your organisation is considering moving to business agility I have collaborated with Provek to produce two workshops. See the following link:
·??????? Level 1 – Organisational agility for leaders and influencers (half-day)
·??????? Level 2 – Implementing organisational agility workshop (one-two days)
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Good luck on your journey to agility….and getting it right.
Author of 'Agile Beyond IT'
1 年Completely with you David, many thanks.
Senior Learning Specialst and Devops Ambassador, DevOps, Agile, Project, Programme and IT Service Management at QA Ltd
1 年I agree Adrian, we fall back on to our culture to drive our behaviour. Particularly at that unthinking “that’s what we do around here” level. But culture is also the medium in which we all swim. It surrounds us and supports us yet is also sustained and influenced by us. Our conscious decisions and behaviour shapes it, for good or ill. Blaming others is the guilty pleasure that maintains our toxic blame culture. Not blaming and being accountable are the first steps to eradicating that blame culture. Who we are is not just who we were, but who we aspire to be. We model ourselves on the behaviours of others and it is through our example we inspire others. We must be the thing we desire to see. Yes, cultural change is hard. Worthwhile journeys often are. But they all start with a first step.