Lean&Agile approach: a way to move in the “New Normal” World?

? Thanks?? to the pandemic we have been experiencing for the past two years, “thanks” to the severe aggravation in climate issues and “thanks” to the return of state of war… by no doubt now we know that we entered a new era. VUCA is indeed the “new normal” and we better get used to it: is there something Lean/Agile can bring into this equation?

Lean&Agile:?all about learning to adapt??

A rich literature already exists about Agility and Lean, but I could make an attempt at summarizing it in short sentences mocking the Agile Manifesto by saying that both approaches tend to prioritize:

• Decision-making of ground teams over centralized planification
• ?Continuous improvement over predefined processes
• Self-organization over top-down job-sheet
• Measuring the value to the customer

They also have in common of not being “methods”, processes from A to Z, and certainly not “frameworks”, but more “general principles” (continuous improvement), “general orientations” (more this than that), fundamental approaches and empiric-driven propositions that teams are going to operate in their own ways to fit their needs to become better and smarter.

The objective of all this continuous work organization carried by the teams is to adapt to evr-changing environments (economy, culture, resources, climate…): “surviving is learning” as Edward Deming and the Peter Senge said. And what is at the root of this learning? A simple idea: to satisfy the customer in the long run.

Satisfying the customer in the long run: really that simple?

Lean and Agile share a same preoccupation that ca be easily summarized in one sentence : “How can we deliver sustainable satisfaction to the customer?”

By looking more closely to this sentence -piece by piece starting from then end- I will try to explore where it could lead us in term of thinking the future of the organizations in a mutating world.

How can we deliver sustainable satisfaction [TO CUSTOMERS]??

In the end, satisfaction is meant and measure by [CUSTOMER]S. It is by taking the time to listen to them, to validate that what we’re bringing them, to solve real issues and adapting to their needs, that we ensure that we deliver the best value to customers. The value ? Well, what problem are you solving for them.

Let’s make clear that customers are the primary beneficiaries of the satisfaction; not our margin, our organization, or our willingness to stick to the plan we made. And our reward will come from that; our client won’t go to the competition but more over will recommend us: a key behavior in a digital driven world.

In contracting market, competition will concentrate on intrinsic quality, like personalization and specialization… taking into account environmental and geo-political constraints. To summarize it in a poor formula?: from?FMCG (Fast Moving Consumer Goods) to FTSV (Fast?Tailored?Sustainable?Value)…?and obsession for value will be key to operate this mutation.

How can we deliver sustainable [SATISFACTION] to customers?

In a world which has clearly entered a recession mode (look at energy prices, poverty rates, raw material shortages, overseas transportation costs, etc.), more [SATISFACTION] cannot anymore mean more volume, but instead more impact.

This new paradigm calls for a clearer comprehension of what is value (and what is not) and this comprehension is a journey for the customer as well, a journey that needs to be incremental and adaptative, step by step, with intelligence and collaboration.

How can we deliver [SUSTAINABLE] satisfaction to customers?

[SUSTAINABILITY] is the one parameter that has been left out of our mindset in the past 50 years, and we are now in the position to see that unlimited growth in a limited world is at the best fairy tale. Years to come promise to be quite rocking as people, organization, cultures, and governments will have to adapt, unwillingly, to this new reality.

In this situation, planification is a joke and sentences like “Where do we want to be in 5 years” deserved to be laughed at. Short term navigation and constant reinvention become key resources within mind the sustainability of behaviors, offers and value creation.

By working on both the short term and the long term, Lean/Agile brings a clear competitive advantage in terms of dealing with the uncertainty: constantly improving process in order to keep margin maneuvers, to bring value by taking into account the changes of the environment, rather than fire fighting restrictions as they will appear.

How can we [DELIVER] sustainable satisfaction to customers?

In a VUCA world, reality is changing fast and the only way to forecast is to [DELIVER] to the customer, to validate step by step, which is signified by the (C) in PDCA. What is actually tested and bought by the client gives a OK/KO status of the process, wich requires to deliver soon and frequently.

Regularity of delivery of evolutions should becomes a compulsory habit to provide usable and meaningful feed-back; more than being a commercial stake in itself, it becomes a strategic posture developing a strong knowledge of the customer.

How [CAN WE] deliver sustainable satisfaction to customers?

In this part of the sentence, I feel that [CAN WE] is addressing our competency to work as teams in problem solving; an action that assumes high capacities in collaboration. It requires intelligent processes to get the best of intelligent people, one reality feeding the other.

The classical management won’t get unhurt from this root change. Where managers have been tasks distributors/controllers, they will become animators/facilitators of the collective intelligence, securing the vision of the company and the growth of the team.

Going from “I want you to do this” to “How are we going to get better at doing this” is indeed going to be a cultural shock of large magnitude. But it is one required to face the in-depth transformation of organization facing complexity : it’s time to bring back real teams and not outdated matrix organization.

[HOW] can we deliver sustainable satisfaction to customers?

On this last modality of [HOW] lies the center of the problem. For the past 20 years, organizations have been trying to transform, mostly by applying recipes… that only work on Management Best sellers. They look terrific on slides but surprisingly they finish their lives on the shelves where managers put an Operating Model Cookbook they will never use.

Lean and Agile share a common approach in the statement “We start with what we have”, not waiting for a theorical transformation to happen before the practical transformation. Once Teams are formed, then it is time for them to start experimenting, creating and developing standards to bring value sooner.

If frugal is going to be the new normal, then Lean&Agile is designed for it

Resources shortage is our new normal, however happy or sad we feel about it: it applies to energy, but also to time, people and capacity to work together (as we are witnessing it in remote work). In this new eco system, resources need to be taken care of, good decision making being driven by the idea of “just in time”.

In a way it resembles what lead to the launch of Lean in Japan, with the scarcity of post-war economy; or the launch of the agile movement to provide an alternative to failure in computing project.

Lean&Agile aims at deeply changing the culture in the workplace, from a vision of a world guided by processes that could be thought-of in advance to a vision of a world where organizations evolve thanks to the problem solving capacity of the teams, looking for the most efficient ways to solve complex problems by solving them step by step.

And since what we’re experiencing is indeed an “urgent and complex problem”, it may be just the right time to start it.

By the way, what do you think about it?

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* Article initally published in French on Aneo’s Blog in 2021, reviewed and partially rewritten in February 2022?