Some "Wisdom" applied to transformation. Starting from the top.

Transformation is everywhere, yet tangible results are questionable. Despite the tremendous amount of money invested in Agile coaching, digital transformation and so on, when it comes to measurable results that can be compared to the investment, the cost (both financial, social and human) and the previous situation, it is still risky to state that companies are getting worthwhile results or put simply: game changing results.

The first reason is that many companies are now trying to transform. And all companies are mostly doing the same things! You cannot be more than marginally better (at best) than others if you apply the same solutions. So it's a no go for a positive market benefit but a requirement for survival. Yet this is all it is about : survival ; and the promise of market advantage or benefits is more elusive than ever.

The explanation to this situation can be synthetized that way: Intelligence without Wisdom. Occidental societies are taught to be smart, to improve their IQ and EQ. But wisdom is a word that disappeared from the landscape, along with its meaning. Charles Haddon Spurgeon, a renowned 19th century preacher, said: "Wisdom is the right use of knowledge. To know is not to be wise. Many men know a great deal, and are all the greater fools for it. There is no fool so great a fool as a knowing fool. But to know how to use knowledge is to have wisdom."

Intelligence without wisdom can lead to insanity (total unconscious foolishness) and to corruption (intelligence applied to oneself benefit and detrimental to others).

Looking at the trends in consulting, it is easy to see where is the problem. People want solutions without having to think. This is one example of foolishness to believe that a miracle solution exists that can be copy/pasted and change the life of the company.

When you look at who asks for transformation and what profile is required, it is often an IT/delivery manager (or rebranded transformation manager) who decides to do things by himself with Agile coaches and other consultants. But using Scrum or frameworks is hardly “transforming”. It is the responsibility of a Delivery manager to adapt the way its teams are working (then it raises the problem of pushed solutions vs self-emerging, it’s another story). Nothing new here.

So what about Agile at Scale frameworks? I will give my personal opinion: None of them is built for “you”. True story.

I personally like LeSS in its spirit, yet I would not implement it. Despite my many experiences, I never met a single situation which made me consider any of the existing Agile frameworks as an optimal solution for a company.

More recently (well, it's been a long time since it has been stated for the first time) it became obvious that the first thing that needed to change is the head of the company. While the statement is good: “fishes always rot from head to tail”, the solution is never clear nor obvious. Personal coaching of executives hardly achieves significant results if said executive is not already minded for the solution. If executives were to change the way it is expected, we would get to the psychoanalysis step pretty quickly. Becoming “Agile” is abstract at CEO level (especially if there is a confusion between agile, agility, lean, framework, transformation, digital transformation…) and CEO's daily work-related considerations appear to be more appealing than what is seen as a "cool" mindset change. And I am not even sure it is the right thing to be looking for. If I could give an advice, the CEO may consider hiring a Chief Organization Officer as a right arm in order to manage the organization as a system and support his strategy. That would be a fine solution, yet probably not the best.

I am creating an organization Model called “Wisdom”, (for obvious reasons). It is the result of years of experience, analysis, observations and contradictions. I will try to deliver a first insight here as a piece of advice.

1 .      Set your expectations sky high

There is no achievement without ambition and a vision is defined by its level of expectations. It is key for a CEO to expect a really game-changing result when investing in a transformation or any strategic decision. With high expectations comes the ability to commit to deep changes. That is what makes the difference between success and various levels of questionable results. This is the same psychological rule that makes you listen to a consultant you pay 5000 usd per day and not even agree for a meeting with a consultant at 500 usd per day (it’s a pretty gross example I know). The level of investment and expectations are directly related to your ability to agree to meaningful changes.

2.      Learn to think and to deeply question your opinions and habits

It is pretty safe to state that the world we live in is quite “insane”. People looking for a meaning in their life and at work are everywhere. The very way our societies are being built is to provide power to some and to use the masses to achieve that power. Companies are structured in the same logic, departments built around a centralized political power. People see the reality by the keyhole of their conditioning. I have asked some executives how they would setup a new transversal department and they’ve built it around a budget and political definition. When confronted to an external proposition, they systematically divided simple solutions into power dominions with a high control level. Even if it made no sense on an organizational and efficiency point of view. Even worse, the overcost induced by the changes were easily reaching 500% of the original financial investment. So I’ve read about other consultants and I guess we usually get to the same point save some lucky few.

If you ask your fellow executives about what to do and how to do things, they will most likely give their very personal opinion, yet if their solutions were good, you would not have these questions to ask, nor actually any problem to talk about. The lesson is that companies cannot be built based on personal opinions. Being free from personal interests, ego and political games is required in order to step up and expect strong results. Somehow there is a no go at listening people who are not knowledgeable or wise in the domain you question them. I know that some people may jump on their chairs, but when it comes to specific domains, experts remain the key (as long as you can find them).

If you succeed at getting through your own conditioning and can challenge the logic behind trendy topics and consulting speeches (like this one!), you are getting on the right path.

3.      Make sure things are as “simple” and straightforward as possible

There is always a good reason to make things sophisticated and complex. But simplicity is the key. When looking at something that becomes too complex, you probably look at a bad solution. Being simple means having the simplest yet the most meaningful and wise approach to problem solving. Straightforward means limiting the level of communication as much as possible. Direct communication being the best and each communication vector being a power scaling factor of cost and inefficiency.

4.     Observe and get inspiration from what has been working just perfectly fine for a long time.

Most efficient businesses are the smallest ones or… The army! Many technological innovations come from the military domain. But this is where the best and only example of leadership exist too. Would the army teach just about everything to the private world ? After trying to find better examples, I may be inclinded to say yes. Armies are the only organization that can put in motion thousands of people and assets in a second and achieve unbelievable results in hours with no need to transform. And yet they adapt and engage fast and deep reforms to keep up with the mutations of their potential enemies nature and tactics. So how do they do?

First, military corps are defined by a mission. A mission is the ability to engage actions in autonomy and to achieve results. For them, it’s the ability to achieve operational defense objectives which are defined by the doctrine.

Basically, a bakery will take in charge the entire bread creation process as well as the sales. Somehow a mission ends up being money in the company purse.

Each army corps is "customer centric" (they address specific targets and situations) and able to fulfil its missions without having other corps involved. Air force, Navy, Marines… Moreover, each of this corps owns all the skills required to succeed. IT guys are present in every corps, pilots too, communication specialists, commandos, etc. No department centralizes one skill for the whole army.

5.     Rewrite your whole organization model

Most organizations are built around the concept of “unicity”. Departments are specialized in a segmented knowledge/skill domain and none of them is able to fulfil a mission in autonomy. Let’s take a basic example of executive segmentation:

• Operations
• Finance
• HR
• IT
• Marketing
• Distribution
• Any specific activity related department

So basically, the organization is built around information and skills silos, each related to a premium technocrat sitting at the board. The organization as a silo pyramid is built for greater control, not for efficiency. It leads to benefits going to the top and being fed by the people down the line. In order to get power, benefits, money and status, someone must have many people under its command and "climb the ladder", thus enforcing even more the rigidity of the system. Each of the departments act as a client or provider to the others, giving a very conflictual communications and relationships. It is hard to find executives having their usefulness questioned. But at the same time, “doers” on the bottom line are easily removed or hard pressed with a huge amount of pressure being set on the lower steps of the pyramid, the worst falling on the “Project Managers”.

When it comes to “change”, people hardly step out of the system because it is a risk. Psychological and overall safety make people follow the lines. When agile coaches try to break silos, they ask people to take personal risks. Trying to remove silos often reveal the approbation of people, but the resistance of the system they are tied to. At the very moment someone step aside from its allowed square, that person can become the pawn of various political interests. This is a dangerous game for someone looking for safety.

By its very nature, a silo organization is change-proof, meaning that every "evolution" or soft-change is basically going to revert back to its initial state or to serve the system in an other way. In other words, this system cannot be changed, so it might as well be replaced by something else.

One of the usual mistake is to order people to change, to revamp a service or two or to think that problems come from employees. If someone is abusing its power and position, it’s because the system allows and reward that person in doing so. If you want to achieve results, just like Jurgen Appelo says: you should manage the system and not the people.

This is why there is a deep contradiction within the agile market too. Agile coaches are missioned to bend people instead of the system (we want a coach to teach team members how to work with feature teams/scrum/kanban…). A good system is almost self-explicit and Experts should help in designing such system with and for the people (thus making it self-emerging), and not be called to make people follow guidelines.

In conclusion, you may well consider revamping your entire organization/executive structure. That means replacing all existing departments by something customer centric in order to achieve your missions, starting by defining what are these missions your company want to fulfil and what make each department able to complete all these missions with its specific way.

To be applied, this requires a fast and firm decision, so the solution should be as close from "best" as possible and change might happen in a short timeframe. You cannot afford to change your company structure everyday, and you should think about the consequences at keeping a structure that prevents you from evolving.

This is the first step of the “Wisdom” approach I am developing. I will try to address other aspects in the future and I may rewrite anything if I think a better solution arises.

Please, feedback if you agree or not, any point of view help me in challenging my thoughts.