Lessons Learned in Being Big and Agile
Author: Mark Dahl-Jensen, Innovation Roundtable?
Are large organizations destined to be slow oil tankers or can they become fast speedboats? We often find opinions on the topic to be divided. Yet, with each event on nurturing an agile culture, we learn something new, contributing to the Innovation Roundtable? Research Team’s data collection and analysis.
Below are two lessons learned from Microsoft and Volkswagen in building agile organizations at scale, obtained from company presenters at Innovation Roundtable? events. As highlighted by Aaron Bjork, Principal Group Manager at Microsoft during a Bosch-hosted event last year, being big and agile is more of an art than a science – agility should be applied differently based on one’s industry and organizational structure. So, while these lessons may not be universally applicable, they may serve as a bit of inspiration. They also act as a prelude to our upcoming summit, where we look forward to gaining further inspiration on agility as well as a host of other innovation themes.
Microsoft: Autonomy, Mastery, and Purpose
Microsoft's Aaron Bjork highlighted how the Visual Studio Team Services product group (now Azure DevOps) shifted to working in 3-week sprints as opposed to its former workflow of delivering on 4-6-month milestones. Not only that, where teams would previously be horizontal, covering all data, all API, etc., Microsoft now strives to create vertical teams, ensuring ownership of a project from end-to-end.
Rather than a carrot and stick approach to becoming agile, Bjork highlighted that people need to be provided with autonomy, mastery, and purpose. In his division, comprised of 3,000 people, teams are reorganized every 12-18 months. During the reorganization, people are given the chance to change teams. Bjork considers this a great example of autonomy in action, with people actually choosing what they work on. About 80% end up choosing the team they currently work for; yet, they go back feeling empowered.
A pet peeve of Bjork is people’s inclination to attempt to convince leaders to become more agile without providing them with the incentives to do so. Leaders do not care about “being agile”, instead they want a data-based assessment on why it’s a better way of working. Bjork encourages teams who want to scale agile in their organization to spend more time sharing how teams employing agile practices and methods are becoming more efficient and effective (backed up with real data), and less time talking about “being agile”. Being agile is an overloaded and overused term, which people should be careful using.
Volkswagen: Setting Up its Agile Community
Speed, flexibility, and transparency are driving today’s agile movement, but why? The short answer is that the business landscape has become increasingly volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA). Speaking at the Deutsche Telekom-hosted event earlier this year, Stefan Waschk, Head of Volkswagen’s Agile Center of Excellence, voiced that the notion of “fail fast, fail often” is not only hype, but also necessary in stepping into the unknown. A key prerequisite to remain competitive is centered on building a mindset based on collaboration at eye level and courage for experiments. Unfortunately, too many companies consider agility an administrative process, discounting the most essential component: being close enough to the market to gain feedback from external stakeholders and build on lessons learned from these.
Key to becoming an agile organization, according to Waschk, is to provide people with the sense that it truly matters. If attempts are made to integrate agility into an organization full of judgmental mindsets, they will likely fail.
In 2011, Volkswagen looked to create an agile flow across the organization by setting up its Agile Community. Initially, the community was made up of a group of people that got together to discuss how to best foster an agile organization. Out of this movement, the community has grown to comprise 1,000 people, with 100-200 people attending agile sessions every month. Senior executives and employees lower down in the organization get together within the Agile Community to exchange information and understand the needs and strategy in moving forward.
Exchanging knowledge and information on agility shouldn’t only transpire internally. Agile leaders at Volkswagen get together with a network of 30 other companies, allowing them to learn from each other and share both failures and successes. Waschk noted that though there is no blueprint for integrating agility, coordinating knowledge across companies prevents truly expensive failures.
“What is my role in this agile transition?” Often, this will be a leader’s first question. If no clear-cut answer exists, you can be certain that leaders will oppose the transition from day one. Given their position in the hierarchy, they are also very likely to sway such feelings on others. It’s therefore imperative to clearly define a leader’s role. According to Waschk, the new role of agile leaders is to empower people through three key initiatives:
- Heatshield: Provide protection from the non-agile environment
- Experimentation: Delegate power to agile teams by facilitating openness and providing them with the room to make failures and empower lessons learned from these
- Friction: Strike through silo borders to ensure collaboration and help solve problems that could otherwise be considered game-stoppers
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