Isn't LEARNING the final "secret ingredient" to succesfull AGILE?

Once you make abstraction of some corporate story telling on “how agile have our teams become”, on the shop floor, it's seldom Agile Paradise … so, where might the problem be?

Yes, my feeling is that 2021 has been a pretty gloomy year in term of “agile development of the workplace”... Not that I have lacked activities in what is my job supposed to be (making teams better and smarter at delivering value, thanks to collaboration), but that those activities have had a lot more to do... with fighting bureaucratic cultures.

Ah! The ??@scale?? fashion...

I’m left with the impression that my feeling is in reaction to the ??@scale?? mania, aka the disillusionnal intent to mix the value of small teams with the ??power?? of large organizations. The ??agile@scale?? proposition poping-up from top consulting companies is to often seen at the final ??magic wand?? to make bureaucracy madness work. Using conventional ?transformation? methods, those programs promise to deploy methods that bring not only a new way of working, but even more ??A new mindset??. -- Guess what? It’s not getting anywhere .

My analysis is that transformation became so obssesed on the "@scaling" that we forgot the essential part: the teams. It's like meddling with the electronic injection of a car, but not caring about the flat tires: -- what do you think happends?

So, what did “ I ” do wrong?

To be frank, I’m not so satisfied with the usual ??They don’t wanna change, they did not get it?? dynamic of excuse you might ear from us, agile coaches. Besides being a bit lame, it just puts us out of the picture of the transformation process as a systemic intervention.

So, I think I need to ask myself reflexive questions: what have I missed in all those transformations I took part of?

I can remember what I struggled at : teams were reshaped to be pluridisciplinary, backlogs were created with features/stories more clearly described, iteration durations were set and gave the opportunity to apply a better workload, a better link with client was build, particularly with the reviews…. Clearly, it should have done some good; we should have seen some strong results coming from all this agile reorg business?

What ??special ingredient?? did I forgot to the recipe ? And may be my colleagues too?

The secret ingredient ?

One end-of-the-year diner with an old friend gave me the clue to this riddle. This friend of mine followed the same training in organizational sociology as I did and introduced me 10 years ago to “agility”. But it turned out that he changed his path and that, rather than pursuing in the Manifesto, he landed into… the Lean approach. Not the 6-bozo Motorola type of Lean* but the ??original 1962 Toyota Production System?? as he likes to name it.

So, at this dinner in an improbable Swiss restaurant in Paris, I asked him the 1-million-dollar question: ??What do you do of your day as a Lean practitioner? ?. And his answer was simple ?Me ??I train managers to help teams solve problems??.

When he speaks about problems, he doesn’t mean ??relationship problems inside or outside the teams??. He specifically talks of production and quality problems, the one that get in the way of the delivery to the client, the stability of the production process, the sustainability of the quality. And, with this approach, the results are there. And they are measurable in terms of Time to market, Return on investment, Net promoter score, etc.

Training managers to help teams solve problems... what is that?

As I left my friend on the sidewalk, trying to recover from our huge ?Swiss fondue ?, what he told me got me thinking… When was the last time I truly facilitated solving a production/quality issue with a result that had a huge impact on a team? And more, what is the actual state of my toolset and approaches to help/facilitate teams to get better at what they are doing by solving their problems?

As I progressed into this reflection, it struck me that lacking of tooling in problem solving may not tbe he only obstacle that gets in my way in bringing this practice to the teams.

1. On first hurdle could be on the way I embraced the psychological relationship aspect of the teamwork. Not that this aspect lacks importance (the famous psychological safety), but in the fact that this aspect is a mean and not a final objective. Am I not taking too much of a good time at playing the “shrink” of the team or its manager ?
2. And this reflection led to a second hurdle. How do I define in my coachings that the teams are going to need to “devote time and energy to the solving of their problems”? In environments where ??time is the essence?? and ??everything is so urgent??, how did I made sure the management accepted that ??making it better and faster?? will only come from ??caring and working about it???

Isn't our approach of "Agile" the problem?

So, I started to think that, maybe, the promise of agility had been overstated, that, maybe, the Agile Manifesto signatory had been simplifying or even omitting some key steps to deliver value. And then, I got a backdraft when I re-read the first three words of the manifesto: ??We are uncovering…??.

Uncovering. Much richer than the French translation of le Manifeste Agile, ??découvrir??, which also means ??to discover??.

??Discover?? can relate to Indiana Jone’s type of scientific journeys where, out of sheer luck, the expedition discovers the hidden temple in the heart of the jungle.

While ??uncovering?? reflects the idea of layers of unknown that you lift one by one to put a light to a subject that had not been yet solved.

If you follow my thinking – which I hope your do after all those lines – it would mean that agility is not only “not a method” (but by now every monkey knows that) but much more: a journey, a path, to ensure never ending learning of the ??better ways?? by enabling the teams to solve problems.

This action is part of the ? work??, form which are issued the famous four sentences about valued behaviors. What's the point of enhancing communication or collaboration but not working on the impediments that stop the flow? At the root of agility, there is a reflection on how to do it by ??better ways??, an approach directly linked to continuous improvement.

?Funnily, it’s also at the root of Lean.

What shall I do with that?

In most environments I worked in, this ??continuous improvement?? business is perceived as a bonus, a nice to have, after the team has delivered the sprint or product increment objectives (aka the real work…). But I have the idea that it should be placed at the heart of what is making teams deliver more value.

What shall I do of this discovery? Since we’re at the beginning of the year, should I be taking advantage of the ??good resolutions?? time to use this discovery to change something in my professional practice?

Here is what I’m coming with:

• - First, I need to work on this ??problem resolution toolkit?? issue. I guess that I could start with a plentiful of Lean literature to make my first steps, and then join a class or some supervising training to bring to experts my hit&misses in my tryouts on the field. Because...

How can I promise a team or a sponsor I will help them get better results without being able to help them solve their problems? Iterative, incremental and adaptative (although fundamental to face complexity) is not enough to bring sustainable quality: establishing and improving the standards is a compulsory aspect as well

• -Second, I need to bring clarity to my practice as an agile coach, to check if my action is even possible if the teams can’t (or don’t want to) get into a serious practice analysis which would lead to continuous improvement. Because...

How can I make the promise that I will help move in the direction of autonomy if the team is not given the permission and protection from its management to dedicate the time to practice continuous improvement? Hoping to change without changing the way you work is pointless: better not start in the first place!

So, this it for now. I’m very interested in getting your feedbacks and comments on those thoughts. If you have any tips/how to/don’t do that about problem solving, please put them in the conversation below, I guess I’m going to be in need of those! ??

And happy new Agile year to everyone. Who knows: it might even be a Lean year!

* Ok. 6-Bozo may be not the nicest way to talk about 6Sigma. But have you had a look at companies that went Full-Throttle with this approach ? Not even mentioning Motorola ?