YOUR AGILE TRANSFORMATION KEYSshift314.com/downloads/Your Agile Transformation Keys - A... · 2020....

YOUR AGILETRANSFORMATION KEYS

You are a leader and part of an Agile Transformation in your organization. If you are normal, your organization’s Agile Transformation is not

delivering the results that you expect. After years of research, working with organizations like yours, training, and certification of thousands of

leaders worldwide in Agile Leadership, we have a solution.

A WHITEPAPER FROM SHIFT314

of 16© COPYRIGHT SHIFT314 2020

fter almost twenty years, success with

Agile has remained challenging and elusive. Our

“Agile Transformation Keys” provide specific

guidance on how to steer your current

transformation away from failure and accelerate

it towards success.

We offer you the keys to unlock the success of

your Agile Transformation. Our keys will have

you rethink your approach and redirect your

transformation to produce tangible and

extraordinary improvements in organizational

results.

Agile represents a new way of working together

and leaders are the ones that have the most

A difficult time with the shift to the new way.

The typical techniques and behaviours that

have rewarded our leaders in the past won’t

work in an Agile organization, and they won’t

work when trying to bring Agile into an

organization either. Everyone who aspires to

become an Agile organization desires a higher

level of organizational high-performance

labelling “business as usual” to be

low-performance. The unfortunate trend has

been that thousands of leaders have failed trying

to replace “business as usual” by using a

“business as usual” approach. These answer

keys provide leaders a new way to lead others

and be successful in their Agile Transformation;

to go beyond “business as usual” and to lead a

high-performance organization.

YOUR AGILE TRANSFORMATION KEYS

01. Agile as an EnablerAgile is not a goal

02. An Evolution program Replace your rollout plan

03. Iterate where the interest is Don’t mandate Agile

04. Improve daily work Avoid the big organizational transformation

05. Include the Agile Mindset Not just doing Agile

06. Start with the Leaders Don’t start with teams

07. Focus on Culture and the People Beyond Tactics & Strategy


KEY #1

AGILE AS AN ENABLERAGILE IS NOT A GOAL

Although no one intends it, many Agile

Transformations end up with “Agile” as a

goal. Most leaders we work with have Agile

mandates and quotas for a percentage of Agile

coverage, and declare Agile as a way to go for

portions of their organizations. Most times, a

top executive whose career depends on pushing

Agile on everyone to achieve an arbitrary quota

is leading the Agile Transformation.

At first it sounds hard to believe but as we work

with our clients, it becomes clear that no leader

wants “Agile”; they don’t want DevOps, Lean, or

Digital. What leaders of organizations want

instead are the benefits that come from these

programs; not the programs themselves.

We asked thousands of leaders from around the

globe involved with Agile what they really want,

and the answers across industries and countries

are consistently the same:

1. Speed

2. Responsiveness to Change

3. Work Productivity

4. Engaged and Happy Employees

5. Team Effectiveness

When we create initiatives or transformation

programs about rolling out Agile, we distract

leaders with secondary goals typically in conflict

with the organization’s primary goals and

purpose. Essentially, when we create such

programs, we impede the organization’s ability

to achieve organizational goals; something no

leader wants to be responsible for.

Agile is a means, not a goal. A racing team never

makes changing their vehicle a goal. Achieving

the fastest race time is the goal, and any

modification to the vehicle is a means to achieve

the goal.

The solution is deceptively simple. When Agile

is no longer a goal but a means to a goal, people

will include Agile only when it

would deliver value in

achieving the organizational

goals they already have.

Once Agile is no longer a goal,

conversations about including

Agile come up only in the

service of improving the

organization’s ability to achieve its goals. Once

we take off the “Agile Blinders” we create a

space for the exploration of what will better

serve the organization. We can start having real

conversations about what will help us and what

will get in the way.

We run “Why” workshops to help organizations

establish the ‘why’ of their Agile

implementations. When the ‘why’ lines up with

organizational goals, the shift to Agile is

appropriate, purposeful, smooth and effective.

By establishing why people want Agile, we

maintain the organization’s focus on its key

goals.

1


Although no one intends it, many Agile

Transformations end up with “Agile” as a

goal. Most leaders we work with have Agile

mandates and quotas for a percentage of Agile

coverage, and declare Agile as a way to go for

portions of their organizations. Most times, a

top executive whose career depends on pushing

Agile on everyone to achieve an arbitrary quota

is leading the Agile Transformation.

At first it sounds hard to believe but as we work

with our clients, it becomes clear that no leader

wants “Agile”; they don’t want DevOps, Lean, or

Digital. What leaders of organizations want

instead are the benefits that come from these

programs; not the programs themselves.

We asked thousands of leaders from around the

globe involved with Agile what they really want,

and the answers across industries and countries

are consistently the same:

1. Speed

2. Responsiveness to Change

3. Work Productivity

4. Engaged and Happy Employees

5. Team Effectiveness

When we create initiatives or transformation

programs about rolling out Agile, we distract

leaders with secondary goals typically in conflict

with the organization’s primary goals and

purpose. Essentially, when we create such

programs, we impede the organization’s ability

to achieve organizational goals; something no

leader wants to be responsible for.

Agile is a means, not a goal. A racing team never

makes changing their vehicle a goal. Achieving

the fastest race time is the goal, and any

modification to the vehicle is a means to achieve

the goal.

The solution is deceptively simple. When Agile

is no longer a goal but a means to a goal, people

will include Agile only when it

would deliver value in

achieving the organizational

goals they already have.

Once Agile is no longer a goal,

conversations about including

Agile come up only in the

service of improving the

organization’s ability to achieve its goals. Once

we take off the “Agile Blinders” we create a

space for the exploration of what will better

serve the organization. We can start having real

conversations about what will help us and what

will get in the way.

We run “Why” workshops to help organizations

establish the ‘why’ of their Agile

implementations. When the ‘why’ lines up with

organizational goals, the shift to Agile is

appropriate, purposeful, smooth and effective.

By establishing why people want Agile, we

maintain the organization’s focus on its key

goals.

“Agile”is a means,

not a goal.


KEY #2

AN EVOLUTION PROGRAM REPLACE YOUR ROLLOUT PLAN

There are two significant problems that

arise when there is a “rollout plan” for

Agile Transformation. The first is the word

“rollout” and the second is the word “plan”.

Using the word “rollout” reveals an underlying

belief that leaders can manipulate and control

the organizational system and the people in it

like a piece of machinery. This traditional and

simplistic approach does not recognize the

substantial operational complexity of

organizational systems and assumes that one

can predict or engineer human behaviour. When

transforming the organization, a leader’s goal is

to elevate beyond the traditional mindset, and

Agile is the opportunity to do so.

A transformation is a fundamental shift in

functioning that comes from changes to mindset

and practice. Agile is a new mindset and

practice. Using a “rollout plan” is a traditional

business model and a mindset contrary to Agile

itself. You can’t use “business as usual” to go

beyond “business as usual”.

Using the word “plan” impedes the very progress

intended with Agile. When we look at the

definition of Agile in the Agile Manifesto, we see

that there is more value in “Responding to

Change over Following a Plan”. To achieve

high-performance, healthy Agile teams always

have plans yet they place much more value in

responding to feedback, lessons, new

2


information, new ideas, and innovation.

When we do new things, we always learn more

about how and what we should do as we go

along. When Agile teams create their plans, they

hold full intent to “Respond to Change”

and adapt as they make progress

on what they do and how

they do it. Agile teams

quickly adjust their plan

in real time to

capitalize on

everything they learn

along the way.

When working within a

complex system such as an

organization of people, it is very

unlikely one could predict how to shift

the organizational system towards higher

performance. The level of complexity of an

organizational shift is very high because of the

enormous number of permutations between

human relationships, group dynamics,

operational interactions, and external

influences. The Cynefin Framework by David

Snowden and his call for an emergent approach

is an invaluable source of insight. In complex

systems, success comes when leaders shift from

a paradigm of “We have got this” to “Let’s

continue to discover how to move forward”.

To unlock high-performance, replace your

“Rollout Plan” with an “Organizational

Evolution” program. Use “Inspect & Adapt”

cycles and small “safe-to-fail” experiments

(which we like to refer to as “safe-to-learn”

experiments). Design these experiments to

understand more about the

organizational shift and with the

lessons learned, continue to

adapt and evolve towards

the desired state.

The key to

organizational

evolution – like any

other complex project -

is learning. The Agile

Manifesto is about

“uncovering better ways of

working”. To leverage the essence of

Agile to succeed, leaders confident with a clear

vision must invite and inspire others to help

them learn how to achieve it together.

The key to

organizational evolution

– like any other complex

project - is learning and

adapting.


KEY #3

ITERATE WHERE THE INTEREST IS DON’T MANDATE AGILE

Agile has proven to be an effective

approach to how people organize

themselves around any kind of project to

increase performance; it is not just for software

projects anymore. Agile is a best practice to

support business agility in a broader sense.

Many leaders keen to maximize operational

efficiency and performance of their

organizations have taken steps to begin

initiatives to have the whole organization do

Agile. The conclusion assumes that if Agile is

such a good thing for all, that it would be best if

everyone standardized on it immediately.

Decades of practice in organizations have

demonstrated that mandating Agile turns out to

be detrimental and counter-productive. In fact,

the very act of mandating Agile is contrary to

becoming Agile; that’s like trying to use water to

make things dry. Mandating Agile is a “business

as usual” behavior trying to improve on

“business as usual”; it is easy to recognize the

paradox and conundrum.

Research in trends today reveals considerable

“resistance” by people involved with Agile

Transformations, with very rare exception.

People in these transformations aren’t resisting

Agile, they are resisting the change because

mandated change typically adds work, adds

ambiguity, and can sometimes be scary. In

contrast, the Agile mindset aims to involve

people in efforts to improve how things work.

3


The Agile mindset is about improving people’s

working conditions so they can reduce the

amount of work, be adaptive, and be successful;

people typically embrace, not resist Agile. The

truth of the matter is that mandating Agile is

NOT AGILE.

Mandating means making people do something,

in fact, you are forcing them.

An Agile approach to change

would be to include and

empower the people in the

process of change.

Instead of a mandatory “big

bang” approach where every person and every

team has to move to an Agile way of working,

start with those individuals and teams keen to

make a change. What leads to big shifts in

organizational performance is to include the

people and use an iterative and incremental

approach to evolve towards Agile – which is

what Agile is all about, anyway. Team by team,

the organization will move piece-by-piece,

where it makes sense, incrementally, towards

better ways of working for long lasting change

and far better results.

INVITEGet started with the people who are already

excited about making a change and help them

be successful. Everyone wants to be successful.

Some people need more time or want to see

how it goes for others first. As a leader, make

that OK, so nobody is lesser for sitting and

watching first. When they see others improve

their performance, they will usually do so

themselves.

ITERATEHelp the team start with the Agile practices that

make sense to them – not everything. Then help

them evolve and extend what

they are using over time. As the

team iterates, they evolve their

work practices as they learn

how to work better together

and with other groups. There is

no value in mandating a team to use a practice

that does not help them.

INCREMENTLaunch teams with Agile incrementally and

enable them after they feel they are ready. As

your teams change and produce results, they will

inspire others to do so. As a leader, manage your

rate of change to balance the gain of maximum

benefit from each increment without stagnating.

“Mandating Agile,

is not Agile”


KEY #4

IMPROVE DAILY WORKAVOID THE BIG ORGANIZATIONAL TRANSFORMATION

Statistics reveal an extraordinarily high

failure rate in Agile Transformations. The

first challenge organizations don’t realize they

face is with the word ‘Transformation”, as there

is usually organizational fatigue around all large

change programs. Most change initiatives

usually miss the mark and cause just as much

harm as good because they begin without the

input and involvement of the people they affect.

In fact, they often interfere with getting work

done. As a result, most people are so well

conditioned that they will consider any

transformation initiative negatively and resist

consciously, or unconsciously.

The second challenge is that it is normal for

people to react with fear when they are told that

they need to undertake a transformational

change because it seems so daunting. This fear

works against you, as when people are in fear

they cannot function at their full potential.

There is scientific evidence that a reduction in

one’s psychological safety will reduce their

ability to reason. When leading knowledge

workers, it is critical to avoid fear as a product

or by-product of strategy.

In high performance organizations, improving

how things work is part of everyone’s job and

for most of those in the organization, it is their

desire. When you create a work environment

where people have the opportunity to improve

how the organization is functioning, you achieve

4


long-term gains in performance. Effective and

powerful change comes from many small

improvements, not big dramatic changes.

Instead of investing in a large transformation,

make many small investments in time to allow

people to make things better in their daily work.

When all levels of management are focused on

improving the daily working conditions in the

organization,

performance will

increase. Change

becomes much more

natural and effective

when people work with

their leaders and

managers and

continuous improvement is integrated into

work. Learning cultures are a virtue of

high-performance organizations and this

approach embeds a learning culture in your

organization.

“Daily improvements

lead to big shifts over time.”


KEY #5

INCLUDE THE AGILE MINDSET NOT JUST DOING AGILE

It is common that Agile Transformations

focus on Agile process and practices and

made structural changes that create new groups

to place people in cross-functional teams. It is

common to make strategic decisions on the use

of Scrum or Kanban and decided on either the

distributed, centralized or hybrid approach to

introduce certified ScrumMasters and Agile

coaches into the organization. In most cases,

Agile Transformations deploy new software to

support new Agile operations. It is likely your

Agile Transformation has done the same.

If this remains the scope of your Agile

Transformation, these changes will achieve

limited - if any - improvements in organizational

results. It is likely any improvement in

organizational results will not meet your

expectations. Almost all Agile Transformations

disregard the most significant part of Agile.

When you admire an incredible photograph,

you could mimic what the photographer does

yet as circumstances are always different, you

will achieve limited results. Without knowing

why they do what they do, you cannot achieve

their results. Something hidden underneath the

surface of the techniques, processes, and

practices of what the photographer does is the

reason for their success.

Agile is both “doing” and “being”. Leaders

typically support Agile initiatives with people

5


“doing Agile” - which includes the techniques,

processes, practices, job descriptions,

organizational structure, and software. With a

focus on “doing Agile”, the “being Agile” usually

gets lost and Agile Transformations fail unless

both parts are included. Being Agile or the

“Agile Mindset” is the more elusive yet valuable

of the two parts and will produce the results

everyone aspires to.

If you are not sure what the Agile Mindset is or

how to introduce it, then what you are probably

leading is an “Agile Adoption”

program and will achieve limited

improvements in organizational

results. If you want to lead a

program to achieve substantial

improvements in organizational

results, you would require the organization’s

fundamental shift in mindset.

The mindset of being Agile incorporates how

people behave when leaders aren’t looking. It is

the values and how people choose to work

together. Agile is about placing value in people

and finding ways to help them get their work

done.

For a full explanation of the di�erences between

Agile Adoption and Agile Transformation, please

reference the book: Sahota, Michael, “An Agile

Adoption & Transformation Survival Guide: Working

with Culture”.

“Agile is both doing and being.”


KEY #6

START WITH THE LEADERSDON’T START WITH TEAMS

When we approach Agile from a Team

Perspective, the role of the leader usually

becomes an afterthought. The usual approach to

Agile which is to train and coach teams to move

to an Agile process is backwards. Rarely do we

support the leaders.

The usual approach with Agile is to set up

autonomous self-organizing teams. The official

role for a manager in Scrum – the most popular

version of Agile – is nothing. There is no role for

a manager.

VersionOne’s research shows that 45% of

organizations report the “Lack of Management

Support” as a challenge experienced when

adopting and scaling Agile (VersionOne, 14th

Annual State of Agile Report). Often, their roles

become conflicted as they do their best to bridge

between the existing power structures and the

new Agile ones. With Agile, managers who are “in

charge” of the organization are being

dis-enfranchised and labeled as resistors.

The process level training for Scrum or SAFe

(Scaled Agile Framework) is meant for teams and

products and not for managers. Teams get

specific training and coaching and managers are

unlikely to have any significant help to make the

shift to a new way of working and being.

Managers are the leaders of organizations. They

are put in charge of what happens because of

their intelligence and experience. To put the

Agile Mindset at the forefront, have managers

lead and help guide the introduction of Agile in

ways that actually fit their organizational context.

Have them responsible for modeling the Agile

Mindset of learning by running experiments to

iteratively and incrementally change the

organization.

When managers - like teams - are provided the

intensive training and coaching

to support their jump to the Agile

Mindset, they would learn how

to create a healthy environment

for Agile, how to evolve the

organization and how to lead in a

new way. Ultimately, there will

be team level training and

intensive coaching, but this will happen as

leaders are able to support team transitions.

For both in-progress transformations and

established Agile organizations, a strong focus on

leaders is often the missing piece for unlocking

success and taking growth to the next level.

Starting with leaders will be the most effective

approach, however, it is better late than never.

When consulting with organizations, we have

found this to be a very practical and powerful

approach – Consciously Approaching Agile. We

have received extraordinary feedback on our

public training from managers around the world.

Managers can see not only how they play a key

role in the organization's future but how to lead

the new way of working and being.

6

When we approach Agile from a Team

Perspective, the role of the leader usually

becomes an afterthought. The usual approach to

Agile which is to train and coach teams to move

to an Agile process is backwards. Rarely do we

support the leaders.

The usual approach with Agile is to set up

autonomous self-organizing teams. The official

role for a manager in Scrum – the most popular

version of Agile – is nothing. There is no role for

a manager.

VersionOne’s research shows that 45% of

organizations report the “Lack of Management

Support” as a challenge experienced when

adopting and scaling Agile (VersionOne, 14th

Annual State of Agile Report). Often, their roles

become conflicted as they do their best to bridge

between the existing power structures and the

new Agile ones. With Agile, managers who are “in

charge” of the organization are being

dis-enfranchised and labeled as resistors.

The process level training for Scrum or SAFe

(Scaled Agile Framework) is meant for teams and

products and not for managers. Teams get

specific training and coaching and managers are

unlikely to have any significant help to make the

shift to a new way of working and being.

Managers are the leaders of organizations. They

are put in charge of what happens because of

their intelligence and experience. To put the

Agile Mindset at the forefront, have managers

lead and help guide the introduction of Agile in

ways that actually fit their organizational context.

Have them responsible for modeling the Agile

Mindset of learning by running experiments to

iteratively and incrementally change the

organization.

When managers - like teams - are provided the

intensive training and coaching

to support their jump to the Agile

Mindset, they would learn how

to create a healthy environment

for Agile, how to evolve the

organization and how to lead in a

new way. Ultimately, there will

be team level training and

intensive coaching, but this will happen as

leaders are able to support team transitions.

For both in-progress transformations and

established Agile organizations, a strong focus on

leaders is often the missing piece for unlocking

success and taking growth to the next level.

Starting with leaders will be the most effective

approach, however, it is better late than never.

When consulting with organizations, we have

found this to be a very practical and powerful

approach – Consciously Approaching Agile. We

have received extraordinary feedback on our

public training from managers around the world.

Managers can see not only how they play a key

role in the organization's future but how to lead

the new way of working and being.

PAGE 14 of 16© COPYRIGHT SHIFT314 2020

“Managers lead the shift in

mindset”


Agile is about Doing and Being; success

with Agile includes the Agile Mindset. Agile

is about a shift in organizational culture. To gain

value from the new ways of working shown

through Agile, we require a new way of being: a

shift in mindset or consciousness representative

of a high performance culture.

“If you do not manage culture, it

manages you, and you may not

even be aware of the extent to

which this is happening.”

(Edgar Schein, Professor

MIT Sloan School of

Management)

Common of every transformation program is a

tight focus on tactics and strategy while ignoring

culture, or there is a low level of maturity in the

approach to culture itself. Without focus on

culture, the organization loses sight of what Agile

is about: the people.

Peter Drucker said: “Culture

eats strategy for breakfast.” We

add that: “Strategy eats Tactics

for afternoon tea.” To create a

transformational result, it is

essential to focus on culture

first - not as an afterthought.

We need to go beyond the

“If you do not manage

culture,it manages

you”

traditional approaches to culture and leadership.

“Research shows that while organizations expect

new leadership capabilities, they are still largely

promoting traditional models and mindsets”

(Deloitte, Global Human Capital Trends). A

values program is only a part of what is needed to

create a shift in your culture. An integrated

understanding of culture, leadership and

organizational evolution is required to create a

lasting shift in performance.

We unleash the evolutionary capabilities of

people and organizations. Through education,

training and consulting we shift consciousness

and mindset that enable new ways of working to

realize the extraordinary.

Contact us at - http://SHIFT314.com/

Download this WhitePaper at: http://SHIFT314.com/7

KEY #7

FOCUS ON CULTURE AND THE PEOPLE BEYOND TACTICS & STRATEGY

7

Agile is about Doing and Being; success

with Agile includes the Agile Mindset. Agile

is about a shift in organizational culture. To gain

value from the new ways of working shown

through Agile, we require a new way of being: a

shift in mindset or consciousness representative

of a high performance culture.

“If you do not manage culture, it

manages you, and you may not

even be aware of the extent to

which this is happening.”

(Edgar Schein, Professor

MIT Sloan School of

Management)

Common of every transformation program is a

tight focus on tactics and strategy while ignoring

culture, or there is a low level of maturity in the

approach to culture itself. Without focus on

culture, the organization loses sight of what Agile

is about: the people.

Peter Drucker said: “Culture

eats strategy for breakfast.” We

add that: “Strategy eats Tactics

for afternoon tea.” To create a

transformational result, it is

essential to focus on culture

first - not as an afterthought.

We need to go beyond the

traditional approaches to culture and leadership.

“Research shows that while organizations expect

new leadership capabilities, they are still largely

promoting traditional models and mindsets”

(Deloitte, Global Human Capital Trends). A

values program is only a part of what is needed to

create a shift in your culture. An integrated

understanding of culture, leadership and

organizational evolution is required to create a

lasting shift in performance.

We unleash the evolutionary capabilities of

people and organizations. Through education,

training and consulting we shift consciousness

and mindset that enable new ways of working to

realize the extraordinary.

Contact us at - http://SHIFT314.com/

Download this WhitePaper at: http://SHIFT314.com/7

PAGE 16 of 16© COPYRIGHT SHIFT314 2020

Michael SahotaThought Leader, Enterprise Coach, Author and Trainer.

Audree SahotaConsultant, Trainer, Consciousness and Personal Growth Coach, Energetic Healer and Author.

Ron LaudadioLeadership Performance &Executive Consultant, Conscious Agile Thought Leader, and Organizational Transformer.

Mar5,2020

Illustrations by Marc HundlebyA number of the drawings were inspired by the Bikablo publications, www.bikablo.com

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