Evolving from Agility to Organizational Resilience

The change has happened.

People have been wondering for years when Agile will begin to either phase or evolve and that time is now.

Have you encountered that company yet who doesn’t even want to hear the words Agile or Scrum? The guest list is growing by the day. But why?

I’ll give you two reasons:

1)??????? Bad Agile – A company either tried to implement a tiny bit of agility with little, or inexperienced, assistance and didn’t give it the support it needed to create momentum. Or, they went the other way and bit off more than they could (or should) chew with a bulky Agile framework that created more complexity than value.

2)??????? Agile as the Solution – Agile was billed as what the company needed to propel it into the future, but it came in a package of frameworks and tools that simply didn’t apply to every aspect of the organization; regardless of what the framework prognosticators said.

A company doesn’t simply want to be able to adapt quickly, they also want to be successful in doing so for the long term. It’s true that resilience includes adaptability, but it also includes synonyms like strength, durability, ability to last. Rigidity is the opposite of resilience and unfortunately, some companies have embraced the idea that certain Agile frameworks must be applied throughout the company in a uniform fashion for complete success.

Rigidity in the name of flexibility? No wonder people have started backing away.

Companies are realizing it takes more than one single way to achieve resiliency in a complex enterprise. I like to use the phrase of being “Unified over Uniform”.

What we want is an organization who is completely unified in what we are trying to accomplish, what our priorities are, is collaborative and lean in its processes, architectures, policies and products. And when, not if, we are required to change, we have the right mindset and data to make those changes baked into our cultural DNA.

I like to use the CLEAR principles as an example of simplified enterprise-wide resiliency.

We’ve learned over time that a principles-based way of working is more successful than a rule-based way. People look for ways to get around rules and process. Especially if it was imposed on them instead of getting to be included in the development of the rules and process.

But by using principles, people are given the autonomy to develop the rules and processes that give us the outcomes, and accountability to the outcomes we expect in a resilient organization.

As an example, CLEAR stands for Collaborative, Lean, Evolving, Adaptive and Reportable.

If each part of a company were to focus on outcomes related to those five simple principles, they would be unified in approach without getting bogged down in framework manipulation. Everything we do is collaborative within our own area and at scale. We think in terms of simplicity of plans, procedures, architectures, policies, priorities and products with a mind towards reductions in wasted movement. We structure ourselves to evolve the way we work as the need arises and then, when we see the need, adapt to the changes. Finally, we use good data to continuously reflect and improve ourselves and our products.

Sounds overly simplistic right? But these concepts are not new. They are simply a set of truths that, when made the focus of how we work, create the best outcomes. It takes effort and coaching to understand the individual application areas here too.

Organizations today are avoiding complexity at all costs. Complexity equals expense and often waste. One of the biggest reasons companies aren’t using Agile methods in every department is the complexity of taking something designed for software development and applying it everywhere else without sounding like we’ve manipulated the concept to sell certifications. We even start changing the words in the Agile Manifesto and 12 Principles to suit the audience when there is confusion over how to deliver high-quality software via our HR department or from a construction firm.

Maybe we don’t need to change job titles or roles. Maybe its just a matter of getting people to think differently and creating organizational resiliency as our culture with as simple a concept as possible.

The Agile Manifesto, it’s 12 principles and supporting frameworks will always have their place as a building block to resiliency. But they aren’t the final answer.

Looking down the road for 5-10 years, agility will continue to be a goal for a modern company. But it wont stop there. We need more than that. It’s more than delivering great software faster than the next person. Because the next person is trying to do this too.

We need a mindset that is simple, scales to anywhere in the company and creates accountability towards its success. The end state can’t just be flexibility of delivery. Its has to be sustained successful outcomes for our company and our customers.

I’m not saying changing the nature of how people think is easy. But keeping it simple and truly empowering people, as opposed to locking in a framework and then telling people they are accountable, creates resiliency.

The evolution was inevitable. We cannot call it “Agile” and expect no change.

Processes come and go; many evolve themselves. Instead of simply getting good at a process, let’s make sure the company has the right mentality for the long haul.

Unified over uniform. That’s Organizational Resiliency.