One of the Agile Transformation's Missing Links

First, an apology for the long hiatus in writing. Something transformacional happened over the last few months that required a pause and a reset.

For coaches working with different organizations as part of a coaching group, we tend to see the faults of the "transformation leads" and how they should change their ways to make the transformation more efficient. However, when we get that opportunity to become part of the "transformation leads" group, it is clear that we have no one to blame but ourselves for any shortcomings. We have to deal with the challenges and there are many along the way.

More than ever it is important to listen and be attuned to every aspect of the transformation since those signals are key to providing insight into what works and what does not work.

In the close to 20 years of explicit Agile (i.e. since the manifesto), the results are not too encouraging. Even those organizations that became Agile stars in the years past have stumbled and regressed to the old ways. Companies continue to push transformations that go nowhere, create a great deal of stress and in the end do not achieve the results promised.

The pattern is almost always the same: Agile Coaches work with teams to explain all the values, principles, practices and frameworks available in the Agile Ecosystem and teams get excited about the possibilities until...reality hits the team in the face and all the wonderful Agile concepts fly out the window to be replaced with an amalgam of distorted pieces, most likely named after the Agile gods, but with the soul of the previous gods and demons.

The Agile Coach comes back to the team and makes a futile attempt to rescue what resembles the original agreements only to finally give up or get fired.

We are not stating that there is one silver bullet that solves all the problems in the transformation, but we argue that for sure there is at least one missing link that has caused major disasters in most organizations. We call this missing link: "The Hybrid Servant"

To be clear, this is a role that anyone with the right skills and PUL (Power-Urgency-Legitimacy) in the organization can play so there is no reason to hire people for this "position". However, this type of role has to be very explicit and well regarded.

So, what is "The Hybrid Servant"? This can be described as a very experienced person in the world of traditional management that have learned to navigate the turbulent waters of bureaucracy and politics within organizations. By nature, Hybrid Servants are very curious about Agile, might have marginal understanding of it, but in the end have the resilience to infiltrate the traditional defenses of the enterprise and inoculate people with the Agile change virus. Hybrid Servants are not interested in eating the full Agile enchilada, but rather they want to start the change fire that over a long time will engulf the company. They have the patience and determination to crawl at the very slow pace most organizations move and to inject tiny deviations along the way that become major bifurcations in the culture of the organization.

Isn't this what Coaches are supposed to do? Not really, for several reasons: good coaches are very expensive and Hybrid Servants need to stay with the team ALL THE TIME! ; Coaches are usually seen as external agents that are not part of the team; Coaching is about helping uncover shortcomings and presenting options, not becoming entangled in the political mess most organizations exhibit; usually when Agile Coaches become involved in the bureaucracy and politics of the organization, they are fired!

What about the PO and SM? They already have very specific tasks to keep the teams moving as efficiently as possible. Diverting attention from those tasks will starve the intake for the teams.

Is there any other role in the Agile Space that described the Hybrid Servants? Not really, the assumption in Agile has always been that somehow teams wake up, start scruming and voila! Agile happens.

Our experience has shown that no matter what transformation (TQ, SixSigma, RUP, Agile, Lean, etc.) if we do not have a Hybrid Servant that can bridge the gap between current state and future state, working with teams all the time, adapting Agile to the intricacies of each organization and waiting patiently for the Agile virus to take over, the transformation most likely will fail.

We all know change is very difficult. The world is dealing with many threats to the human experience. In most cases we all know what the ideal outcome needs to be and when someone explains the path to such outcome we become very excited, but then life hits us on the face and we go back to our old less efficient and, in some cases, destructive behaviors. Imagine if we had a Hybrid Servant working with us ALL THE TIME, making sure we get proper sleep, eat well, exercise, etc. It might not guarantee success, but it would certainly make it more attainable.