The Unbroken Chain of Why

"The first step to getting the things you want out of life is this: decide what you want."

— Ben Stein

Many large organizations are undergoing transformation. They are driven by an urgency to be more responsive to rapidly changing customer needs, attacks by competitors, and the impact of emerging technologies on their industries.

As part of their journey, these firms often adopt and adapt practices—such as daily stand-ups and sprints—that fall under the banner of agile, lean, or a similar rubric. However, until an organization fully internalizes the core principles of agile, no amount of standing up and sprinting is likely to have much of an impact. The promised benefits are seldom realized without applying a full understanding of why agile works.

At their core, agile principles emphasize that customer collaboration (from the Agile Manifesto) and customer satisfaction (Agile Principle #1) are of utmost priority. The customer is the primary source of purpose for many agile organizations.

Agile also embodies the idea that work done with purpose creates better outcomes. Effective agile organizations rigorously start with why. They establish and clearly communicate their reason for existence. They set goals that directly support their purpose, and define how success will be measured. Empowered agile teams become accountable for achieving these outcomes. Business people and technical people work together every day (Agile Principle #4). Leaders continuously reinforce the linkages between purpose, outcomes and work, establishing an unbroken chain of why.

The president of the retail business at a large bank in North America recently recounted how he had dropped in on an agile sprint review. He had seen some early positive results from his group’s agile pilot programs, but he was still wrapping his mind around what it all meant. In our work, we strongly encourage senior leaders to join sprint reviews. We also carefully coach these executives on how to participate constructively by asking powerful questions of the team.

The team was chartered with achieving an important business outcome: shift customer requests for debit card support from the call center to the website and mobile app. This would be a win-win, since customers’ digital experiences are generally better than their call center interactions, and digital support is less costly for the bank.

The team had been empowered to work out which specific software features, operational changes, and promotional programs would drive a 10% reduction in call center traffic over the next six months, while increasing customer satisfaction with those transactions. The latter would be measured by surveying customers directly.

The president asked the team to talk about what they were doing. More importantly, he also asked them to say why they were doing it. Every member of the team was able to tell a short story that connected their work to the team's target outcomes, and thereby to the bank's overall purpose—to delight its customers.

For example, one team member said, “Our research with customers indicates that they prefer to use the mobile app to put a debit card on hold. I'm helping the team to test different app interfaces with users to make sure that the result will be easy to understand and navigate. Given the findings, we expect that we could significantly ramp up adoption of this feature.”

Another team member explained, “Call center associates want to know how to educate customers who don’t know how to use the mobile app. The team has been sitting with the associates, watching how they work with the support apps, harvesting the test cases from actual customer interactions, and noting how the associates would like to see the support apps work. I'm translating these findings into scripts that will help reduce the number of customers who call more than once with the same questions.”

Still a third member said, “The team wants a visible way to track our progress toward our goal. To address this, I'm creating a dashboard that will show the percentage of debit card resets that are flowing through the call center versus the website and mobile app. This will be like a speedometer, and it’ll be displayed on the wall in the team room so that everyone can see the progress all the time.”

After the review, the executive said, “Now I understand why we’re adopting agile. The clarity of focus and purpose in that team is what it’s all about. They're creating value, not just delivering features. The light in their eyes shows how much they care about what they’re trying to achieve.”

Maintaining an unbroken chain of why is easier said than done. As the bank president later reflected, “For leaders, alignment is the work. We need to set the vision and define the outcomes that connect what we do to our purpose. Then the teams will show us the way.”