Digital Transformation demands Agile...demands Culture

Agile. A word that is sometimes abused and misunderstood. A word that is thrown around without really understanding why it was created and how you apply the principles successfully. Yet there is increasing recognition that there needs to be a shift from project to product to launch and maintain momentum on digital transformation. In a recent CIO article, Michael Bertha talks about the move from project to product and comments “When done right, organizations experience increased agility, happier customers and more successful transformations.”

The Agile Manifesto is surprisingly young. It was created in 2001 by a group of 17 software engineers in response to the need for a different approach to building software in the dot com boom. But in fact agile has a much longer history. Agile was based on ideas from post second world war Japan with ‘Just In Time’ manufacturing to eliminate waste. There are ways of working from the well-known (and highly successful!) ‘Toyota Way’ where we get many of the lean terms such as:

Kaizen improving the business continuously whilst always driving for innovation and evolution; and

Genchi Genbutsu to go to the source to find the facts to make decisions

So if agile has such a deep legacy in hugely successful principles, why doesn’t agile always provide the benefits to organisations? Why is agile put in place and then pulled out again because ‘…it doesn’t work’ or ‘…we aren’t ready for agile’.

From experience, and talking to other professionals, there is a common critical factor - culture. Peter Drucker famously said "Culture eats strategy for breakfast." And agile needs culture to live and breathe.

Culture is not simple, it is highly complex. It is the sum of actions, values, behaviours and attitudes that is created and lives in the minds of the people who work there, as well as in those of their customers and partners.

Thinking about your organisation, how strongly do you agree with the following statements:

1.      A non-directive leadership approach is employed

2.      Employees are given autonomy and are empowered to take risks and make decisions

3.      Knowledge sharing is encouraged and is normal practice

4.      Leaders consult others and encourage their participation in decision-making, solution identification and strategy development

5.      Employees are encouraged to be creative, use their initiative, take calculated risks and try new approaches

6.      Collaborative working is highly valued; there is a widespread belief that better solutions are generated when groups of people combine their expertise

7.      Unwanted outcomes are viewed as learning opportunities that provide stepping stones to future organisational growth. Employees are not blamed for unwanted outcomes

8.      People in the organisation believe that career progression is more likely from sharing and working together, rather than by competing with others

The more strongly you agree with the statements above, then the firmer the foundation is for agile and the more successful the digital transformation. I had a light bulb moment recently when I realised that the above statements equally describe an organisation with a coaching culture.

The global coaching leader, Lin Tan, commented in a Forbes article in April 2020 that,

“.....leaders today need to:

• Believe in and know how to harness collective wisdom
• Involve and include their people in problem-finding and solving
• Unlearn the need to know or provide answers
• Make a constant choice to explore and discover in order to adapt to this VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous) environment”

The statements above from Lin Tan could equally have been written by a CIO, CTO or Chief Product Officer in relation to agile. The title of the article was ‘A coaching culture is no longer a choice, it’s a necessity’. Many CIOs and business leaders now believe exactly the same should be said about agile for transformation.

We are facing a world of enhanced volatility, uncertainty and fast change as a result of Covid-19. Companies that use the traditional plan, build, run operating model have found digital transformation a struggle. It is time to look to agile. The benefits of agile don’t come without effort and demand a willingness to challenge the status quo of the organisational culture. It's time to put a coaching culture at the top of the CIO and Chief Product Officer agenda.

 About the Author

Jacqui Rigby (PhD) has more than 20 years’ experience in transformation in digital product, marketing and business development. She has worked in sectors as broad as legal, insurance, retail, financial, travel, pharmaceuticals and funerals. For the past 6 years she has provided specialist senior interim skills, bringing together teams across the business to drive change, establish agile teams and develop innovative digital products driven by solving customer problems