How habits are blocking Agile Transformations and how to deal with it.

Did you know that Agile and Agility are against our nature? THE reason why can we end up in AINO Agile In Name Only). Your Brain, or better said, your Instinct does not like Agility at all!

For your instinct, every change is bounded with risk(s). How bigger the change, how bigger your instinct is preserving this threat will be.

Transforming to an Agile organization is a big change...

Why your instinct doesn’t like change

Change is perceived by your instinct as a threat, your instinct will prevent you from change and wants to keep things how they are right now. Especially when what you are doing right now is not harming you at this moment.

For instance, when you are young and you start drinking a lot of alcohol at parties on Saturdays, then you may experience a reduction of stress. While stress is a real threat for you and your liver is still working fine at this moment, your instinct does not perceive alcohol (yet) as a threat, on the contrary, it perceives it as good because stress levels go down. So you keep doing it, whatever people say to you how bad it is for you in the long run.

Dangers in the future are not experienced as at threat by your instinct at this moment,?so your instinct is not aware of them.

Your instinct is not yet aware of the danger, yet it experiences the benefits of what you are doing right now. So, your instinct “motivates” you to keep doing what you are doing. In this case, drinking lots of alcohol on Saturdays in order the achieve stress reduction.

This is why your instinct does everything to avoid changes?and does everything to keep things how they are (even when they are not good for you in the long run).

And with everything I mean literally everything, like; manipulation, exclusion of people, aggressive ways of talking, etc., etc. For the instinct, everything is allowed in order to survive. We see this day in day out all around us all over in the World.

Why does your Human brain (IQ) loves change

But... the human brain (neocortex a.k.a. IQ) is fully aware of the risks of not changing!

When you are not able to change, you are not able to adapt, when you are not able to adapt your chance of survival declines rapidly!

Adaptation is key to being able to survive, knowing your IQ. This was valid in the past, is still valid right now, and will stay valid in the future.

For hundreds of thousands of years, you could only survive when you belonged to the ‘fittest’. Only then you could win in the race of ‘The Survival of the Fittest’. Adaptation makes it possible to belong to the 'fittest'.

An internal conflict is born.

Your IQ is fully aware of the need to be able to change, but your instinct wants to keep everything the same.

You can see the effects of this internal conflict all around you and in what you do yourself.

For instance, you want to eat less, but after a couple of weeks, you find yourself not doing it. Or, you know that should work less, but you don’t. Or, you know that you should drink less alcohol, but you don’t. Or, the organization knows that they should adopt Agility, but it doesn't.

Now we are moving to a ‘XX In Name Only.

How the internal conflict is affecting Agile transitions

Now we understand what is going on in our brain, we start to understand why so many Agile transitions end up in AINO - Agile In Name Only. A situation where an organization at best is doing Agile but is not Real Agile.

It is hard for an organization to admit that they have ended up in AINO. It is like with the plan to stop overeating. The IQ is so aware that it needs to stop with overeating, that it starts to proclamations out loud, to everybody, that NOW he/she will stop overeating! But when they find themselves back, a couple of weeks later, in a known fast food restaurant, they feel that they have failed.?

Failing means for the instinct that you are not able to adapt, and not being able to adapt is “life threatening”.

This is one of the reasons why people and organizations are having trouble recognizing it, let alone acknowledge it.

Organizations are not run by managers, they are run by Human Beings, and human beings all act according to these behavioral laws of nature.

So, please do not blame your C-Level management or your middle management level so harshly when you see that they are not capable to adopt the change end end-up in AINO. :) And how honest are you to yourself, is it possible for you to really adopt Agile?

Managers are, just like you, humans who are struggling,?just like you, with this internal conflict.

Their IQ says, “We need to transform to Agile! Then we are able to adapt to the ever-faster changes and we are able to survive!”?

Their Instincts says, “Are you nuts!? That is an enormous change with enormous risks!! No, we keep it the same!”

Now we see contradictory things being said and done. We call this, "They do not walk their talk." But to be honest, do you always walk your talk?

When you see others not walking their talk, then you know now that it has nothing to do that they are stupid or weak. It has all to do with the internal conflict, between their IQ and instinct, playing out.

The path towards an AINO organization is born.

We try to implement Agile in a non-empirical way

When you have read this article till this so far, most likely your IQ has now got an insight.

Fear is preventing us from change,?

when we feel save enough with the change?we are able to change.

In order to feel safer with the upcoming changes, our IQ tries to reassure ourselves. Organizations are doing that by hiring Agile Coaches, consultancy firms, creating a solid Agile (waterfall) transition program, etc., etc.?

All these actions feed information into the IQ. When thoughts start to arise like: "I think this Agile transition could work..." then that is a sign that the IQ is fed with enough information and starts to believe. Now the IQ set the signs on Green and this is the sign for the instinct not to fight it (so hard) anymore.

But the instinct stays cautious because the instinct did not experience himself yet that it is save and good.

IQ related actions does not let us feel that it is save,?we know that it is safe, this causes a bias in yourself.

(By the way, this addresses also the core of what Agile and Agile Scrum is all about; empirical learning… it is not knowing where the music plays, it is the experience where the music plays.)

Without really being aware of it, we try to introduce (empirical) Agile on a non-empirical way.

The effects of this bias are devastating for the Agile transition, while;

• Instinct tries to move managers back to know and save habits, meaning the old way of (waterfall) working
• IQ lets managers say things about what they going and believe in (which they do), things that their instinct is not allowing or is reluctant to do (do we get our work done in time?)
• Management are not walking their talk, they do not become living examples
• The Scrum teams feel "We need (must) to do Scrum, but THEY don't do it themselves. THEY don't understand how it works and come up with things that do not work." (And the Scrum Teams are right in that)

How to avoid this trap?

These are proven steps with which you can avoid ending up in AINO;

1. Awareness of what is going on is the first and most important step
2. Acknowledgment that you are perhaps following the path of the knowledge instead of the path of experiencing
3. When acknowledgment has occurred, the Human Brain automatically starts searching for solutions for this problem. Without much effort, the IQ starts to deliver solutions how the organization can use empirical learning. Hence starting to create a certain path towards Real Agile.

How can you create a certain path towards a Real Agile?

Knowing this all, the question can arise; "How to avoid ending up in AINO?"

Because this article is getting quite long already, I will dive into that deeper in the next article.

At this moment I can tell you already that the solution is based on our;

1. Brainstem (a.k.a. Instinct)
2. Limbic brain (a.k.a. Mammalian Brain)
3. and Neocortex (a.k.a. IQ and Human Brain)