How to grow your organization resilience and anti-fragility

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How to grow organizational resilience and anti-fragilityOr why does it matter to your organization? What can agility help you to achieve…


The World around us is changing faster than we think…


Technology can be one of the main drivers in this change…


And most of the time it is considered a “commodity” which we are willing to compromise and outsource…


What is Fragility?We are trying to reduce the impact of volatility by controlling the knows… forgetting that when the unknowns are hitting us, they will generate immensely more harm…


Fire…


Fighting…


Prevention…


Brush…


So what are Resilience and Anti-Fragility?Let’s try to understand what these two words mean and how can help us improving our organizations…


“Resilience is the capacity of a system to absorb disturbance and reorganise while undergoing change so as to still retain essentially the same function, structure, identity, and feedbacks.” [Brian Walker, 2004]


“Antifragility is a property of systems that increases in capability, resilience, or robustness as a result of stressors, shocks, volatility, noise, mistakes, faults, attacks, or failures” [Nassim Nicholas Taleb]

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Individuals & interactions

Working software

Customer collaboration

Responding to change

Processes & tools

Comprehensive documentation

Contract negotiation

Following a plan

o v e r

We recognize the value here...We value

this more….


Client & Value focus

Self-Organization

& Autonomy

Iterative & Incremental

change to reduce the

risk

Continuous Im

provement


How to improve resilience and antifragility of a team?Ever experienced teams of champions not delivering as much as expected? Here is a couple of reasons why…


What makes a team fragile?

Notice that they are sinking…

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Lack of understanding of customer’s needs

What is this?

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self-

organi

zed

managed

leader


Team size between 5 and 9 people, why?

Relations of trust: n*(n-1)/2

1Resilience:

Antifragility:

Low

High




3Resilience:

Antifragility:

Low

High




6Resilience:

Antifragility:

Low

High




10Resilience:

Antifragility:

Mid

High




15Resilience:

Antifragility:

Mid

High




21Resilience:

Antifragility:

High

Mid




28Resilience:

Antifragility:

High

Low




36Resilience:

Antifragility:

High

Low


Specialization makes a team more fragile…

I

People Profiles

T X

Evolve Evolve

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Enabling Constraints

Clear Direction Creative Environment

CDE Containers…

How to foster self-organization?


Encourage t

o

retrospect

often


Encourage

forming

Community

of Practice


If people fear to fail, they will fear to change… and if they never change, your organization will not evolve

Encourage Team ExperimentationAllow for failure to happen fast and often

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Forming Storming Norming Performing

Tuckman, Katzenbach & Smith…

Perfo

rman

ce

Team Effectiveness (Maturity)

WorkingGroup

PseudoTeam

PotentialTeam

RealTeam

HighPerforming

Team

Antifra

gility

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Tuckman, Katzenbach & Smith… (with Coaching)

Perfo

rman

ce

Team Effectiveness (Maturity)

Forming Storming Norming Performing

PseudoTeam

PotentialTeam

RealTeam

HighPerforming

Team

WorkingGroup


How to improve resilience and antifragilty of an organization?Can we really design an organization which is ready and prepared to recover from failure? Can failure make your organization stronger?


Hier

arch

y

Compliance

What makes an organization fragile?

Rig

idity


1st Principle: focus on small incremental changesWhenever changing from one way of working to another, we will go through a hybrid situation where the coexistence of two different ways generates attrition, duplications and other forms of waste. The awareness of this fact should push us in delivering changes fast and in small increments…


The traditional approach to change management…

…focused on standardization, before stabilization…

t

Design

Documentation

Rollout

Fix Issues

> 3-4 months…


The agile approach to change management…

…focused on stabilization with emergent standardization…

Design

RolloutDoc

RolloutDoc

RolloutDoc

Coach

≤ 12 weeks t

Design Coach

RolloutDoc

RolloutDoc

Experimentations allows for better approaches to emerge


Goal PSF NC

Agile Strategy Map™

Define the Goal we want to achieve

Possible Success Factor (PSF) represents a hypothesis about a key factor that would enable us to achieve the Goal

Necessary Condition (NC): what is needed in order to fulfill the Success Factor


Strategy Map from March 2014

• The Goal for 2015 has been established

• The Transition Team identified at least 7 PSFs that would provide a powerful leverage to achieve the final Goal


Strategy Map June 2014

• Break out groups worked on detailing the various PSFs into actionable experiments to validate the hypothesis for organizational improvement

Safe-To-Fail�Experiments


2nd Principle: focus on value and organize accordinglyFocusing on value means to make sure that there are as few obstacles as possible in the direction of the value streams…


The matrix organization…

Sub

Syst

em 1

Sub

Syst

em 2

Sub

Syst

em 3

Infra

stru

ctur

e

Ope

ratio

ns

PMO

Project 1

Project 2

Project 3

… optimized for utilization, not value delivery…

Handovers and coordination

Value

Client

Push in the lines


Stream 1

Stream 2

Stream 3

The agile organization…

Sub

Syst

em 1

Sub

Syst

em 2

Sub

Syst

em 3

Infra

stru

ctur

e

Ope

ratio

ns

… optimized for value delivery and time to market

Value

Client

Pull on the streams


Opportunity Canvases to create context and focus on Customer Value…

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Opportunity Name (title)

1. Opportunity 2. Customer SegmentsWhat is the problem to be solved? What type of customers & users will

benefit from this solution?

How is the customer solving the problem right now?

3. Possible SolutionWhat are the key points of a possible solution to the presented problem?

4. BenefitsWhat are the benefits for the customers?

6. Measuring SuccessWhat metrics will be best measure the success of the feature?

5. Business ReadinessWhat steps are required from the business side to be able to use this capability?

7. Cost of DelayWhich profile better represent the cost of delay (CoD)?

8. Costs StructureHow does the cost structure look like for such a feature? One time, ongoing costs, contractors expenses, development costs?

9. Value to Customer and BusinessWhat are the expected incremental revenue for selling this feature, and what are the strategic and tactical benefit? What are the intangible values (usability, performance, customer knowledge obtained...)

Opportunity Owner (name)

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Unified Portfolio and Program System to increase transparency, to visualize Customer Value and dependencies


3rd Principle: decentralize control whenever possibleDecentralization of control and decision making, reduces the feedback loops, and enables faster reaction times. It requires defining goals and constraints to allow for autonomous decision making.


Control !

Worker 1

Sub 1

Worker 2

Sub 2 Sub 3

The hierarchical organization… Centralized Control, ends up overloaded, introducing delays

Reque

sts

Authorization

the design is based on mistrust…

Info

rmat

ion

& p

ower


Container for empowerment

Worker 3Worker 2

The agile organization… Decentralized Control reduces overhead, and encourage collaboration

the design is based on trust…

Worker 1

Collaboration

Info

rmat

ion

& p

ower


• Both on the “budget” level, as well as on the expected delivery and preparation levels

• This level of transparency allows to build trust between Portfolio Management and self-organizing teams

• Clear Policies describing the range of autonomy the teams have


• Every team has two “avatars” to volunteer on upcoming Opportunities

• The Opportunity Owner will get in touch with the team to get their input and enrich the backlog


And don’t forget about culture and context…Ok, now you get which patterns can help your organization and your teams improve their resilience and antifragility so what do you need to make it happen?


5th Principle: make your culture explicitOrganizational culture exists, whether we acknowledge it or not, and making explicit allows for better alignment and context creation


“This is how we do things around here…”

Culture is the set of behaviors that have been established and accepted within an organization


Culture Type: Hierarchy Orientation: Controlling Leader Type: Coordinator, Monitor, Organizer Value Drivers: Efficiency, Timeless, Consistency and Uniformity Theory of Effectiveness: Control and efficiency with capable processes produce effectiveness

Culture Type: Market Orientation: Competing Leader Type: Hard driver, Competitor, Producer Value Drivers: Market share, Goal achievement, Profitability Theory of Effectiveness: Aggressively competing, customer focus produce effectiveness

Culture Type: Adhocracy Orientation: Creative Leader Type: Innovator, Entrepreneur, Visionary Value Drivers: Innovative outputs, Transformation, Agility Theory of Effectiveness: Innovativeness, vision, and new resources produce effectiveness

Culture Type: Clan Orientation: Collaborative Leader Type: Facilitator, Mentor, Team Builder Value Drivers: Commitment, Communication, Development Theory of Effectiveness: Human development and participation produce effectiveness

Flexibility & Discretion

Stability & Control

Inte

rnal

focu

s &

Inte

grat

ion

Exte

rnal

focu

s &

Diff

eren

tiatio

n

Organizational Culture Profile (CVF)


Organization Cultural Profile (CVF)

10

20

30

40

50

60

10

20

20

20

10

10

30

40

50

60

30

40

50

60

30

40

50

60

Ad-hoc

racy

Hierarch

yMarket

Clan


Stability & Control

Inte

rnal

focu

s &

Inte

grat

ion

Exte

rnal

focu

s &

Diffe

rent

iatio

n

Most of mature organizations today have a strong Hierarchy oriented profile

They struggle to introduce a more agile and lean approach to work, because the hierarchical culture is not supportive of agile values and principles

Agile Values & Principles


Organization Cultural Profile (CVF)

10

20

30

40

50

60

10

20

20

20

10

10

30

40

50

60

30

40

50

60

30

40

50

60

Ad-hoc

racy

Hierarch

yMarket

Clan


Stability & Control

Inte

rnal

focu

s &

Inte

grat

ion

Exte

rnal

focu

s &

Diffe

rent

iatio

n

Most of the organization today have a strong Hierarchy oriented profile

They struggle to introduce a more agile and lean approach to work, because the hierarchical culture is not supportive of agile values and principles

To create the right context to move toward a more agile and lean culture, we need to transition toward Clan or Ad-Hocracy


“If you can make culture explicit, you can agree where you stand, and where you want to go…”

There are two ways of encouraging behaviours within an organization: 1. Story telling and role-modeling (e.g: empathy and tradition, walk

the talk) 2. Ritualization (e.g: Scrum events, Ritual Dissent, Open Space)


6th Principle: create the appropriate contextOften time we have the instinct to define processes, rules and even culture, independent of the context in which we want to apply them… We learned that the context matters, and can be a great leverage for you to succeed


OrderedUnordered

Obvious

ComplicatedComplex

ChaoticSense�Categorize�Respond

Best�Practices

Good�Practices

Sense�Analyze�Respond

Probe�Sense�Respond

Act�Sense�Respond

Emergent

Novel

Disorder

Cynefin Framework


t

Context dependency

Early AdoptersEarly Majority

Late Majority Laggers

Chas

m

Cultur

eTo

ols

Ad-hocracy Clan/Market Hierarchy Hierarchy

Chaotic

(Novelty)

Comp

lex

(Eme

rgent)

Complicated

(Good Practices)Obvious

(Best Practices)

Rapid Prototyping/XP

Scrum/XP

Scrum/Kanban

Kanban


Thank

You!


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How to grow your organization resilience and anti-fragility

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