Artificial Intelligence: Accelerating an evolution in agile change

I.????????????? Introduction

Over the years, methods to implement change have followed a shift from the traditional Waterfall project management methods, with its linear and sequential approach, to Agile methodologies, characterised by more adaptability, faster delivery, and closer collaboration with customers.

This evolution was not only a change in project management techniques, it reflected the dynamically changing political, economic, social, technology, environmental, and legal environments of the time. It was a deeper transformation in how organisations responded to an accelerating scale and pace of change.

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More recently, attempts to scale Agile methodologies organisation-wide have often faltered or failed, sparking debates about the need for new methods or adapting existing ones to better meet the complex needs of today’s organisations. This comes at a time when Artificial Intelligence is accelerating opportunities and challenges still further, begging the question:

How do organisations adapt to an accelerating scale and pace of AI-driven change, and what lessons can we learn from the past to ensure they can evolve?

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This article explores the lessons from the evolution of Agile change and offers a way forward for organisational adaptability into the next AI-powered one.

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II.???????????? Projects of the 20th century

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The Waterfall model dominated project management from the 1970s into the 1990s. It was a linear, sequential approach, where projects moved through a series of distinct phases, with each needing to be completed before the next began. This method is suited to projects with well-defined and clear requirements. Waterfall is a good choice if you want to build a road bridge, for example, in an environment that is stable and where the benefit is clear and unlikely to change in the long-term.

However, its rigidity became a significant drawback in rapidly changing environments, leading to issues with adaptability, delayed feedback, and difficulty accommodating any changes once the project was underway. Waterfall, and adaptations of it, are still used today, however, within complex, uncertain or dynamically changing environments the promise of a linear and sequential approach often provides false-assurances. It results in escalating costs, reduced value and extended timelines.

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III.?????????? The transition to Agile

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The limitations of Waterfall paved the way for the development of Agile methodologies in the early 2000s. Agile emerged as a response to the need for more adaptability, faster delivery, and closer collaboration with customers. It introduced principles such as iterative development, where projects are divided into small, manageable increments, allowing for frequent reassessment of project directions and requirements. This enabled teams to adapt quickly to changes, incorporating regular feedback, and improving customer satisfaction through closer engagement and faster delivery of value.

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IV.????????? Attempts to scale Agile organisation-wide

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Despite the advantages, Agile hasn't been without its criticisms and challenges. As organisations rushed to adopt it, many encountered obstacles, including poor implementation due to a lack of understanding of Agile principles such as decentralised decision-making and collaboration. There was resistance, or ignorance, to the cultural change needed and difficulties with scaling Agile practices across larger and complex projects. This has highlighted a mismatch between Agile methods and certain projects or organisational environments.

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Further, the emphasis on speed and flexibility sometimes came at the expense of quality or strategic alignment. Agile requires strong leadership support and active customer involvement, without which projects can lose sight of their intended goals. Although statistics about project failure rates should be used with a high degree of caution, reports suggest significant shortcomings. To illustrate, in a Forbes June 2022 article [1] it was reported that:

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“A whopping 47% of agile transformations fail.”

The failure to consistently implement Agile or to adapt its principles and methods to the specific context of the organisation has led to a growing perception that Agile is ineffective. This has sparked widespread discussions about the need for new methods or the adaptation of existing ones to better meet the complex needs of today’s organisations, including The Post That Went Viral [2] on LinkedIn, which reviewed responses to a claim that the Agile movement is in decline.

Organisations lack sufficient focus on developing the behaviours and mindsets necessary for scaling agility. Merely adopting tools and methods cannot achieve the level of organisational adaptability required to keep pace with AI-driven change.

V.??????????? AI: Accelerating an evolution in change

“It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent; it is the one most adaptable to change.” ?[3]

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The transition from Waterfall to Agile was in response to the world’s accelerating scale and pace of change.? As we explore the AI-era, both the challenges and opportunities facing organisations are significantly magnified. AI presents a transformative potential to redefine business models, operational processes, and customer engagement strategies - if organisations can adapt at the pace of its development.

However, we've seen that you cannot ignore the organisational environment it is being integrated into - the unique cultures, mindsets, and behaviours - nor the skills required to adapt at pace. Lessons from Agile point to organisations needing a fundamental rethink about their approach to people and organisational development, for faster-paced innovation, problem-solving, and value creation.

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There are other people-centric AI issues to wrestle with too, of course, like ethics, legal frameworks, and privacy concerns. Addressing these people-related issues is crucial for successful AI integration but rather than wait for answers to emerge, the pace of change requires organisations to build their own problem-solving, innovative, and creative behaviours to learn and adapt in step with it.

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VI.????????? Evolving for adaptability in the AI-era

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With over 50 years of combined change and leadership coaching and delivery experience, working with c.50 organisations, multiple sectors, within 3 continents, and across the globe we have seen too many organisations struggle to deal with the scale and pace of change they face.

The path forward, however, is perhaps more reassuring than you might think.? Simply put, the answer lies in your people, and largely the ones you already have.? Your organisation is unique, as are the people in it and the ecosystem that you connect to.?Most people in the organisation will understand the current environment, the opportunities, and the challenges being face even if they can't yet imagine AI's full potential.

There is no one size fits all solution for the next evolution in change.

Experience and the lessons of the past point to four key people-centric leverage points, or practices, to becoming an adaptable organisation. But before addressing each of these in turn, first assess your relative strengths and weaknesses across them [4]. That will help to determine the best course of action for your unique organisational environment. The four (interrelated) practices are:

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1.???? Thinking and acting systemically

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AI integration requires a holistic perspective. Understand the internal and external connections between the different parts of your organisation to inform decision-making, improve coherence and align AI initiatives with strategic goals. Thinking and acting systemically can be demonstrated when you have:

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a)???? A learning mindset: Iterative learning, experimentation and feedback loops enable improvements to evolve and adapt in sync with your ecosystem’s changes.

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b)??? Enriched decision-making: ?Understanding the broader context, and the potential impacts on your interconnected parts, helps inform decisions that align across the organisation and with the world around you as it changes.

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c)???? Creative problem solving: Embrace the holistic nature of challenges and opportunities. Remove unnecessary silos and encourage cross-functional collaboration where diverse perspectives come together for innovative solutions.

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d)??? Highlight risks and dependencies: Thinking systemically helps with proactive risk management provides foresight and resilience.

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2.???? Leadership with humanness

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Leadership must demonstrate emotional awareness and empathy that serves, empowers, and motivates people to innovate and experiment. For example, leaders will need to understand and empathetically address people’s concerns about job losses from the adoption of AI, or your skills gap could get bigger. Further, developing existing talent is cheaper, quicker and it improves employee engagement.

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Leadership approaches themselves need to be adaptable, but serving others and decentralising, or democratising, decision-making in the organisation is important for quicker decisions and adaptability. Leading with humanness is also about drawing on our uniquely human emotional intelligence:

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a)???? Putting colleagues first and prioritising their growth and well-being. This allows for the trust and safety needed for collaboration, improving communication and a community-driven ethos.

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b)??? Serving the needs of your teams, empowering, and fostering a positive working environment.

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c)???? Understand how emotions influence decision-making, behaviour, and performance, as feelings and emotions contain important information. This leads to more informed decisions, quicker adaptability, and alignment with dynamic changes.

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d)??? Build positive relationships by recognising the feelings of others and empathising with them. This allows for adjusting leaderships styles to suit the people and situation at hand.

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e)???? Create trust and openness by delivering on commitments. Authenticity encourages honest and transparent dialogue about challenges and opportunities.

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d)??? Consciously manage your emotions. Emotional self-management skills equip you to handle stress and challenges without succumbing to negative emotions. ?Interpretation of events is both made by, and limited by, intelligence, personality, values and beliefs so understanding these helps to understand the conclusions you draw, which may be different from others.

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3.???? Dynamic and Inclusive Teamworking

Teams that are positive, engaged, and well equipped with the necessary skills and mindset for innovation and creativity are more likely to embrace change, learn from experiences, and contribute to your organisation's overall adaptability and success.

AI adoption requires designing dynamic and inclusive teams, and interdisciplinary teamwork, which embrace shared ownership of a clear purpose for each AI initiative, helping to overcome its complexities. This can be enabled through clear and open dialogue that's receptive to diverse perspectives so that new and adaptive solutions can emerge. Adaptable teams can be characterised by:

a) Having engaged members with a positive mindset.

b) Roles that are dynamic and adapt based on the needs of the different AI initiatives, enabling them to remain resilient and responsive to change.

c) Continuous learning and developing. Teams that prioritise skill-building and staying current are better prepared to adapt to changing circumstances.

d) Psychological safety creates a safe environment, where teams feel comfortable taking risks, sharing ideas, exploring new approaches and learning from failures.

e) Inclusive teams with diverse members and perspectives enhance problem solving and decision making.

f) Prioritising employee wellbeing, as this contributes to resilience and the ability to cope with change.

g) Goal alignment ensures teams pull together towards a shared purpose. This alignment helps focus efforts on organisation-wide objectives.

4.???? An Evolutionary Approach to Change

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Adopting the right skills, mindsets and approach for the different AI initiatives across the organisation is important, as well as embedding collaborative problem-solving, innovation and continuous learning. This will enable:

a)???? People to reframe ambiguity and uncertainty as an opportunity for innovation and, with a safe environment to learn, to prototype and test ideas for quicker solutions, refining as they go.

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b)??? Team-working to improve creativity, collaboration, and human-centred problem-solving, with the right tools for the task at hand, and not relying on a single ‘n-step model’ for every change.

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c)???? Collaboration to co-create beyond silos, exploring diverse ideas and challenging assumptions.

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Introducing some guardrails early on will remove the fear of failure in adopting the new skills, mindsets and approaches needed, helping to embed them as core competencies for organisational adaptability.

VII.????????? Conclusions

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The transition from Waterfall to Agile reflected the evolving needs of organisations in response to the rapidly changing pace of business and technology. While Agile addressed many of the shortcomings of Waterfall within complex and uncertain environments, its faltering adoption highlights the importance of taking a more holistic approach to organisational adaptability. In short, we have learnt:

Organisations lack sufficient focus on developing the behaviours and mindsets necessary for scaling agility. Merely adopting tools and methods cannot achieve the level of organisational adaptability required to keep pace with AI-driven change.

Assess your organisation's ability to adapt and embed the four key people-centric practices above to create the right environment for continuous change and adaptability. That will make the difference for enabling AI adoption, and helping to achieve:

a) Alignment of initiatives and teams that pull together on the right priority goals.

b) Leadership, teams and team-working that’s productive and positive, improving employee engagement and wellbeing.

c) Increased colleague and customer value with speed and efficiency.?

Your people are the key to exploring, evolving and prospering from AI. Those organisations quickest to unlock this potential will be the ones that survive.

#AI #change #agileleadership #organisationaldevelopment #changemanagement

The Adaptologists specialise in integrated coaching & training that elevates organisations' ability to adapt to the scale and pace of change they face. Get in touch if you'd like to take your next steps towards organisational adaptability.

[1] Forbes, Five Aspects Of A Successful Agile Transformation For Your Enterprise , 3 June 2022.

[2] Cliff Berg's post on LinkedIn , referenced here with his permission, and with thanks for the exchange of messages on the broader topic. The post had 1.3 million impressions in the first four days, over 200 reposts and more than 500 comments in that period.

[3] There is no substantive evidence that Charles Darwin said or wrote this statement to my knowledge, but its key message can be traced to Darwin’s “On the Origin of Species”.

[4] The Adaptologists have a free Organisational Adaptability Assessment available, it takes 3-4 minutes to complete and provides an instant personalised assessment and tips for improvement.

About the authors

Neil Harrison and Amanda Greenwood are co-founders at The Adaptologists . They bring accredited expertise in executive and team coaching, EMCC, emotional intelligence development, change leadership, organisational change management, programme management, benefits management and professional facilitation.

They have over 50 years' of combined practical change and leadership coaching and delivery experience, working with c.50 different organisations, multiple sectors, within 3 different continents, and across the globe.