Why do startups need more agile ways of working?

The startup needs innovation to survive in the ecosystem if the innovation flow dries, the business dies!

Innovation is no more individual’s work, it has grown into more Teamwork.

A startup survives based on the innovative ideas brought into the table and validated those hypotheses with the legitimate consumer by moving to market as quickly as they can.

Though many technology companies believe they know more about customer needs because they influence the customer to buy technological products and solutions. As Henri Ford said, if I ask my customers, they would say, they need the fastest horse! perhaps true, perhaps not in today's context.

As we know, solutions developed into a better product based on the three aspects, feasibility, viability and desirability. When all these elements meet its sweet spot, we build world-class products and solutions which customers buy.

We may build an extraordinarily valuable technical solution, but if it does not sell, organizations would not last long. It is the conjunction with the market and sense, where we are heading, will set the team for success.

To achieve this sweet solution and scale up to get millions of $, we require to strongly hold each other as a team and create a culture of innovation.

It is a journey of forming to the performing stage. Innovation is a precondition into the DNA of the teams, and teams need to collaborate and co-create the technical solution with end-users.

Individual EGO plays an integral role in such an environment. The big corporation recognizes the advantage of a small team and startup culture. Large enterprises are breaking themselves into a small startup team and implanting an entrepreneurial mindset into the team to rapidly build innovating product and solutions.

Why Agile?

Agile culture is all about collaboration culture. People collaboration and developing the appropriate solution together. Agile culture does not encourage heroism in a team.

When we are together, we are more innovative.

How agile ways of working will create more innovation?

Innovation must come from multiple sources, both internally and externally. When individuals and their diverse points of view and experiences converge, they discover the types of innovations that individuals could not have done or found alone.

Innovation requires tearing down the primitive rules of understanding and establishing fresh ones. This means each member of the team must become more transparent than ever before. As such, each member of the team must trust themselves enough to trust each other.

Collaboration is not just about working intimately together, but also about taking leaps of faith together to discover new ways of thinking and create greater outcomes.

Communication play a key role in team innovation, Communication means a lot, the way in which we communicate sets the style and propels thinking in a variety of directions that contribute to fresh innovations.

Team members must challenge each other to think more critically and think through a lens of continuous improvement. Looking through this lens requires the mindset of a “Bold, strong enabler” – one who takes charge and embraces the role of a change agent in the encouragement of constructive disruption that finally makes things work better and enhances performance.

Google led a two-year research project with 280 teams. They discovered only one distinction between innovative and non-innovative teams—psychological safety. Teams have psychological safety when their members feel they have approval to candidly share ideas and try new things without fear of negative effects. This is completely true given the attempt to create such safety does contribute a team to engage in overly consensual discussions where every idea that emerges is a valuable one.

Innovation requires the capacity to see how something that exists could be better. For this, one requires to associate with the world,with the customers and step into other people’s shoes, to understand their lives, and identify problems that may exist from their perspectives. Through empathy, one can understand what people “Do”, “Think”, and “Feel”, and, in turn, open themselves up to new creative possibilities that lead them to innovate.

Team members must allow themselves to ask stupid questions and propose stupid ideas. For that, we undoubtedly have to trust that others won’t make fun of you and, even worse–share your stupid ideas and questions outside the team and the meeting. 

Most of us like the traditional way of managing things. We do not have to leap over a learning curve, nor do we have to try new ways of doing things. New ideas often receive indifferent reactions at best and hostile responses at worst. We need to change the way of thinking as a team(From doing something to being new-thing).

“I see true innovation to be made up of three ‘creativities’ – creativity in technology, product planning, and marketing.” ~ Akio Morita

What kind of leadership support do we expect? 

Since primitive days, individuals have flocked closely in tribes to pursue security in an ecosystem of plenty of trouble, life threats, and challenges. Those tribes were not detached, but they had both conflicting and friendly relations with other tribes. However, it was in this environment where individual beings set up innovating with things like the wheel, weapons, construction, or transport, driven by the desire for survival. This kind of innovation would not have been feasible by isolated individuals; Hence, it is meaningful to recognize that innovation is not about sole genius but about collaborative genius.

For generations, mankind has been noticing and rewarding creative individuals, but the truth is that innovation seldom takes place without cooperation and collaboration.

Thus, it sounds straightforward to understand key elements of innovation is the collaboration. 

Therefore, in this case(Tribal Leadership stages), stages 1 and 2 represent a situation with no teamwork and collaboration.

Stage 3 shows a typical organization where there is very limited teamwork and management approach is command and control.

Stage 4 is a stage where teamwork happens, and high-performing teams can definitely be represented here.

Stage 5 for us represents collaboration communities where different nodes connect each other to work together.

In this context, innovation happens within organization in a very limited amount in stage 3 (i.e., military environment); however, within organizations, innovation is strongly happening in stage 4 (i.e., 3M, Google, Microsoft, etc.).

Maximization of innovation can only happen in stage 5 where collaborative economy, exchange of ideas, shared trust, open frameworks, and creative environments are the norm (i.e., Silicon Valley). 

This type of leaders is also mentioned by Collins where he identified organization with higher performance than similar companies during 15 years in a row. These companies were led by 41 CEOs labeled by their employees as quiet, humble, modest, reserved, shy, gracious, mild-mannered, self-effacing, understated, did not believe his own clippings, and so on. He mentions that these successful leaders put their ego away, focusing in the “we” more than in the “I.” 

Essentially, leaders in stages 4 and 5 set up a tone in the organization where purpose, shared values, and rules allow to create the conditions for the ideal behaviors and thinking process to come up.

Those leaders are masters managing the inevitable tensions that arise between the individual and the group, and they do it by clearly setting purpose, defining clear values, setting example, and being able to manage the group behavior and psychology.

Research shows that teams functioning within strict environments with definite processes and protocols are less likely to obtain their goals and generate new ideas.

Give your teams the freedom to think differently, using the tools they need, the way they want to. More uncertain the environment is , more we need to give freedom, trust has to be high.Then team will come up with innovating solution.

With the help of each other we create a learning organization and grow fast.

Robert F. Brands, author of “Robert’s Rules of Innovation II,” says that it’s important to first understand that individuals and organizations may be their own worst enemies when it comes to creativity and often set up their own innovation roadblocks.

Look at your own setup and see what can be done better to create an innovative startup mindset and get into the Being agile.