My coaching recommendations for the First Order

Warning: If you haven’t seen the movie there are some spoilers in this post.

Like many people, I recently saw the new Stars War: The Force Awakens.  I was thrilled by the lightsaber battles and it was great to see Han and Chewy again.  I was also comforted to see that many of the same agile coaching challenges existed even "a long time ago in a galaxy far far away."

The First Order has a well-established brand.  They’re also well past their startup phase and well-funded.  It seems they’re ready to commit to a lasting organizational strategy.

I’ve certainly worked for worse.  As a high-profile client, I would be happy to take them on as an Agile Coach. 

I always try to get a sense of an organization and not just focus on the agile practices.  I wouldn’t recommend daily Storm Trooper Scrums, planning poker or greater transparency through screens and burndowns.  Instead, I would ask bigger questions.

Is the First Order ready to be more agile?

These initial meetings are sometimes the first/only meetings I have.  If an organization is not ready to be agile, they’re usually the last to know.  Even after several rounds of coach shopping they’ll struggle to make agile fit their organization and not work hard to embrace a new mindset.

Unfortunately I would see myself having this meeting in the C-Suite.  They have vision, talent and a dedicated workforce, but they're not ready for a wholesale organizational change.  I think they’ll struggle with three main challenges.

A shared objective is not a shared purpose

Blowing up planets is an objective and not a purpose.  An objective is focused only on tasks.  A purpose is a reason to jump out of bed in the morning.  The First Order is only focused on short-term objectives.  With an objective-based strategy they’re likely to have employee retention issues.  It’s difficult to motivate a skilled workforce to join in for mindless tasks.  You see this already with FN-2187.

This is the third of a string of unsuccessful death stars.  This is a telltale sign of objective-driven thinking.  They just keep building the same broken thing.  There is no brainstorming or creativity.  They just make the same failed product bigger and more complex.

They need someone at the meetings asking the tough questions. What is the overall purpose of the First Order?  Without this they will be prone to failed products and management groupthink.  A little time in front of the whiteboard can work wonders.

Storm Troopers are not self-organized

There is a lot of human capital in those death stars.  The First Order is not doing anything to harness the power of these teams.  The Storm Troopers only have the autonomy for senseless killing.  This makes them unable to react to unforeseen events.

The overreliance on hierarchy makes the teams slow to adapt.  There also isn’t any path for lesser experience troopers to master their skills.  Team leaders like Captain Phasma have too many direct reports, which doesn’t give them any opportunity for a proper work/life balance.

The teams are not clustered around high value work

Kylo Ren is focused on finding Luke and General Hux is working to destroy the Republic.  They both report directly to management, but there is no sense of direction or priority.  They exhaust First Order resources with pet projects decoupled from shared value.

Supreme Leader Snoke needs to communicate a shared vision.  He seems focused on immediate objectives (Kylo’s allegiance, Rey’s whereabouts).  There is no high value list like a list of First Order Portfolio Epics or a Death Star Backlog.

A shared sense of priority would help streamline their workflow.  Destroy the Republic or find Luke.  It’s not enough for Snoke  to answer questions via teleconference.  He needs to set direction.  Then Kylo Ren and General Hux can create highly skilled Kanban or Scrum teams to cluster around high value work.

It’s not enough to embrace the Dark Side.  The First Order needs to change their mindset.  Instead of thinking large they should think small.  What is the minimum viable "death" product?  How can they create a shared purpose to spread the Dark Side without losing endless Storm Trooper hours to inefficiency?

A good Agile Coach would really help set direction.