Chapter 3
Driving Organizational Change
IN THIS CHAPTER
Deciding whether to drive change from the top or the bottom
Using Kotter’s eight-step change model for a top-down change
Changing from the bottom up with the Fearless Change approach
Overcoming common obstacles to big change
Organizations are like cruise ships — they set their course and when they reach cruising speed are slow to change direction. They’re likely to remain on course unless a significant amount of directed energy is applied to make them change direction. In an organization, this impetus typically comes from the leadership of the organization (at the top) or from one or more highly motivated and influential groups or individuals working at lower levels of the organization (from the bottom). Ideally, forces at the top and throughout the organization drive the change.
This chapter provides the guidance you need to determine whether a top-down or bottom-up approach to organizational change management is likely to be most effective for your organization, and it describes two formal change management approaches: the eight-step change model designed by John Kotter for driving change from the top and the Fearless Change approach to drive change from the bottom. Finally, this chapter addresses the obstacles you may encounter as you try to implement a major organizational change (such as enterprise agility) and offers suggestions on how to overcome these obstacles.
Choosing an Approach: Top-Down or Bottom-Up
When you’re transforming your organization into an agile enterprise, you have two approaches from which to choose:
- Top-down organizational change is driven by the business owner, C-suite executives, or top-level managers — an individual in the organization who has a lot of authority. Choose a top-down approach if your organization has a strong control culture and a leader near the top of the organization who’s committed and has the authority to drive the change.
- Bottom-up organizational change is driven by teams, individuals, mid-level managers, or outside consultants — an individual or a group that believes passionately in the potential benefits of the change. Choose a bottom-up approach if you’re having trouble getting support from your organization’s leadership.
Start the process by trying to understand your organization’s culture, as explained in Chapter 2 of Book 6. A top-down approach is generally effective regardless of culture, but if you’re unable to recruit an influential advocate at the top of the organization, your only option may be to start small and demonstrate agile’s value locally before introducing it to the entire organization.
Soon after the Agile Manifesto, most agile transformations started from the bottom up with software developers who knew about the benefits of agile teams from their colleagues. Most managers stepped back and allowed the agile teams to take the lead, because they saw no reason to resist if the teams improved product delivery. Because enterprise agility requires more coordination among teams, managers have a greater incentive to get involved early on, so enterprise agile transformations are commonly driven from the top down.
Top-down and bottom-up organizational change are not about who’s involved in making the change. Both approaches are effective regardless of whether the transformation is initiated at the top or bottom of the organization. An organization may even use both approaches in tandem; for example, a change leader near the top of the organization may decide that the best way to implement the change is to take a gradual approach with a few teams in one area of the organization and extend it after these initial teams experience some degree of success and are able to serve as evangelists and provide training.
Don’t underestimate the work and persistence required. Many organizations approach their agile transformation as a pep rally, bringing in one or more consultants or coaches to communicate their passion for enterprise agility, as if that will be enough to drive the change. That’s not how most large organizations change. Instead, they change direction only through a relentless pursuit of small improvements and over communicating the changes they are making. It’s less like a pep rally and more like training for a marathon. You can’t run a marathon just by being excited about it; you have to hit the pavement every day (maybe twice daily) regardless of the weather, adopt a healthier diet and lifestyle, and build on small improvements. Likewise, transforming an organization into an agile enterprise involves the day-to-day work of pushing the organization in a new direction. Enthusiasm is great for motivation, but it needs to be combined with hard work.
Driving Change from Top to Bottom with the Kotter Approach
You can find plenty of top-down approaches to organizational change, but a recommended approach is Kotter’s eight-step change model:
Create a sense of urgency around a Big Opportunity.
Identify a risk or opportunity and then examine how your organization will be impacted if it fails to respond.
Build and evolve a guiding coalition.
Assemble a group with a commitment to change and the authority to lead the effort. This team should work independently of other power structures in the organization.
Form a change vision and strategic initiatives.
Envision your organization as one that has the ability to take full advantage of the Big Opportunity you identified, and then develop a strategy for transforming your organization from its current state to your vision of the ideal.
Enlist a volunteer army.
Create a group to spearhead the change both by advocating for the change and by adopting and then demonstrating the value of the change. This group needs to lead by example.
Enable action by removing barriers.
Remove organizational obstacles standing in the way of change, encourage risk taking, and get people talking about agile.
Generate (and celebrate) short-term wins.
Create opportunities to show improvement. For example, you can create a new metric and then work to show improvement on meeting that metric. Recognize and reward others for being part of the improvement.
Sustain acceleration.
Build on short-term wins and try to use them as evidence that you can make further changes. Try to create momentum to change structures and remove policies that could undermine the vision.
Institute change.
Make the connection between the successful changes and the organization’s success. Promote employees who share the vision and are helping to generate the wins into management positions, so they have more authority to drive change.
The creator of this approach, John Kotter, referred to the steps collectively as XLR8 (accelerate), with each step serving as a change accelerator. Kotter’s early book was called Leading Change. He refined his approach in a later book titled Accelerate: Building Strategic Agility for a Fast-Moving World (XLR8). Each step flows to the next, almost like a classic waterfall model (see Chapter 1 in Book 6). Most organizations that try the Kotter approach think of it as a big one-time event. It’s used as an organizational shakeup, which is why many companies take this approach only if they feel their core business is in danger.
Change is not a one-time event. As shown in Figure 3-1, change is an ongoing process, and the steps, though sequential, form an ongoing cycle.
Step 1: Create a sense of urgency around a Big Opportunity
For the Kotter approach to be successful, you must be or recruit a strong leader at the top of the organization who has the authority to drive the change, and this leader needs to create a sense of urgency. This person has to convince the rest of the organization that the change being proposed is essential to the organization’s continued success. In many ways, the change leader serves as a field commander, rallying the troops and then providing direction, so that they can implement the change.
The problem is that most organizations don’t have field commanders with free time. The types of leaders who need to drive this change are usually CEOs or high-level managers. In large organizations, leadership is almost always tied up with strategic initiatives and financial concerns and is often unaccustomed to leading what they view as changes to operations — something they delegate to lower-level management. As a result, top-level leaders try to outsource this leadership role to outside consultants or change-management firms. Unfortunately, these outsiders, while they certainly have the required expertise, lack the recognition and authority to drive the change.
© John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
FIGURE 3-1: Kotter’s eight-step change model.
Don’t try to delegate change leadership to someone outside your organization, such as an Agile Coach. Instead, choose a leader or build a coalition within your organization and give it the authority to drive the change. This same individual or group will take the lead on all eight steps of the Kotter change management approach.
Step 2: Build and evolve a guiding coalition
A guiding coalition is a powerful, diverse, enthusiastic team of volunteers from across an organization that serves as the social leaders of the change initiative. In enterprise agile transformations, the guiding coalition is typically called a center of excellence (CoE). The Scaled Agile Framework® (SAFe®) calls this the Lean-Agile Center of Excellence (LACE).
Expect your guiding coalition to represent roughly 5 percent of the overall transformation. For example, if you have 100 people involved in product delivery, the coalition may include about 5 people. If 1,000 people are involved, you’ll want about 50 people in the coalition, but a group of 50 probably won’t get much done, so break them up into smaller groups of no more than 9 people per group.
Divide the coalition into those who contribute ideas (everyone in the coalition) and a small subset responsible for driving the change. Keep in mind that most of the people in the group have other full-time responsibilities. You want to get their opinions, but don’t expect them to serve as full-time change agents.
As you recruit volunteers for your CoE, try to achieve diversity. You want your CoE to include Agile Coaches, practitioners, and some domain and technical experts to connect agile to the larger organization.
Coalition members should follow these guidelines:
- Share ideas without trying to position yourself as an agile leader.
- Work with fellow members to craft ideas and try to solve complex problems about how to increase organizational agility.
- Standardize your ideas so that the organization can have a shared understanding of what the changed organization will look like.
- Align with Lean-Agile principles of continuous improvement and inspecting and adapting. The team should come up with an initial plan that everyone knows will evolve through its implementation.
Watch out for HiPPOs (highest-paid-person’s opinions)! The CoE’s focus should be on learning and on reaching consensus regarding the change initiative. The coalition shouldn’t be merely an extension of management that does what the CEO instructs it to do.
Step 3: Form a change vision and strategic initiatives
The first order of business for the CoE is to create a mission statement. Keep it short and simple, as in the following example:
Sandwich Shop Enterprises is an organization that develops a software program to compare the menus of different restaurants. We’ve created a Lean-Agile Center of Excellence (LACE), which is a full-time, cross-functional, self-organized team that is driving the change to improve our organization’s Lean-Agile mindset. We will provide guidance on Lean-Agile to the rest of the organization related to training, process improvement, tools, culture, and governance.
Next, create a whiteboard with the following three columns and brainstorm the CoE’s scope of responsibility in each area:
- Doing: List everything the CoE plans to do to achieve its mission; for example, leadership and team training.
- Not doing: List areas that are outside the coalition’s sphere of responsibility, such as managing teams.
- Success metrics: List measurements of success, such as the percentage of people who received agile team training or the number of agile teams.
Reach a high level of agreement on any major decision, such as the mission statement and the coalition’s responsibilities. Strong agreement among coalition members ensures consistent messaging to the rest of the organization.
Step 4: Enlist a volunteer army
Kotter’s fourth step is about creating a mass movement around your change initiative. How you accomplish this goal largely depends on the size of your organization:
- Small organizations: If your organization is small, consider hosting monthly “lunch and learns” — optional meetings during which coalition members give presentations about the overall change vision. Free pizza or sandwiches are usually an excellent motivator to help increase attendance.
- Large organizations: In a larger organization (thousands of people), communicating a clear vision across several CoEs can be challenging. Consider establishing a guiding CoE in the largest location, preferably the location with the most managers (not necessarily the most practitioners). Note that the Kotter approach is top-down, so work on coaching more managers to drive change. The guiding CoE can standardize the ideas among all CoEs to ensure consistency across the group.
Try to keep your CoE meetings fun and informal. Lunches and morning breaks are usually the best times to have productive, creative discussions about organizational change management. Keep meetings festive, as you would an office birthday party, substituting the cake with bagels, pizza, or sandwiches. Avoid scheduling meetings late in the week or late in the workday. Late Wednesday mornings are often a good choice, because they provide everyone with a break in the middle of the workweek.
Don’t overtax your army of volunteers. You’re asking people to add to their workload without shirking their regular job responsibilities. They may need to expand their energy and expertise to 120 to 150 percent above current levels, which is what often happens in a well-functioning system, but try to remain consistent with an agile mindset — respect your people, give them the freedom to be creative, and enable them to make an impact.
Step 5: Enable action by removing barriers
When you’re driving a change initiative, remove any barriers that may get in the way, including hierarchies and inefficient processes. Kotter recommends creating a dual operating system (see Figure 3-2):
The basic structure is self-explanatory: hierarchy on one side and network on the other. The network side mimics successful enterprises in their entrepreneurial phase, before there were organizational charts showing reporting relationships, before there were formal job descriptions and status levels.
— Excerpt from Accelerate: Building Strategic Agility for a Faster-Moving World by John P. Kotter
© John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
FIGURE 3-2: A dual operating system.
Your organization can maintain the traditional hierarchy while your CoE, army of volunteers, and influential members of the hierarchy form a network of entrepreneurs and leaders who work to make large-scale changes. This strategic network doesn’t have a typical command-and-control structure. Instead, it focuses on individuality, creativity, and innovation.
In a sense, Kotter is suggesting that you split your organization in two. The one side holds your management, organizational structure, and legacy ideas (hierarchy). The other side should run like a startup organization (network). It should be free to make, and to some extent, break the rules.
The CoE is part of the network, but be sure to include people who have the authority to make changes.
Although you want corporate leadership to be part of the network, don’t let the network become the executive arm of the hierarchy, merely following orders. People will be willing to volunteer and take on extra duties when they believe that their ideas will have a real impact on the success of the organization, but they’ll be less likely to volunteer if they’re being “voluntold” what to think and do.
Step 6: Generate (and celebrate) short-term wins
John F. Kennedy popularized the saying that “victory has a thousand fathers but defeat is an orphan.” In most organizations, everybody wants to be on the winning team. In fact, if you have a lot of wins, you’ll have an easier time recruiting volunteers, even those who were early skeptics. Nobody wants to miss out on a chance to contribute to the organization’s success in capitalizing on a Big Opportunity.
Whenever your organization makes even the smallest step forward on its path to becoming more agile, celebrate. This is no time to be modest. On the contrary, have an “arm in the air” fireworks display to communicate your win to the rest the organization. Don’t be afraid to fist pump even your modest wins. People have a much higher tolerance for listening to good news and self-promotion than you might think.
Also celebrate individuals and not just the entire team. Call out some of your most valuable contributors as a way to reinforce their commitment to the change. Acknowledging people’s contributions is one of the easiest ways to keep people motivated and engaged.
Step 7: Sustain acceleration
After a few wins, a team begins to gain momentum, but many CoEs become satisfied with their contributions and take their foot off the accelerator. They may even disband before they make a real impact on the organization. It’s at this stage where Kotter pushes for getting everyone thinking about sustained acceleration. In fact, this is one reason he made “accelerate” such a big part of his updated change management approach. Sustained acceleration is about maintaining a steady string of wins, which Kotter refers to as “sub-initiatives.”
Celebrate wins but never declare victory. You don’t want to be the team to throw a party with the big banner that says “Agility accomplished!” Instead, focus on smaller, more discrete wins and act as though victory is just beyond your grasp. Celebrate when someone in your organization has received agile leadership training or when you release your first product delivered using an agile mindset. You need to celebrate a steady stream of these sub-initiatives as fuel that will accelerate your overall agile transformation.
Step 8: Institute change
As the network part of your dual operating system gathers momentum, point out the connections between the new ways of thinking and working and the organization’s success, so the changes you’ve implemented become strong enough to replace old habits. It’s at this point your change initiative transitions from becoming a movement to becoming the organizational culture. Think of it as achieving critical mass — the minimal size or amount of something to spark change and maintain its momentum. Your CoE should begin to push these agile principles, values, practices, and behaviors into the very culture of your organization.
Maintain your organization’s dual operating system. You can keep your organization’s hierarchy in place while nurturing networking through communities of practice to ensure that the dialog that drives change in your organization continues. If the networking part of your organization’s operating system disbands, all you’ll be left with is a hierarchy, which tends to lean toward a control culture that resists change.
Organizational changes are always uphill and against the wind. The best change agents usually have more patience than passion. Respect others and work to make small incremental improvements. Above all, enjoy the process and remain positive and upbeat. People are much more likely to join your effort if they see you having a good time.
Improving your odds of success
If your organization is using the Kotter approach or something similar, here are a couple of tips for improving your odds for success:
- Make sure the agents of change have the authority to make changes. What often happens is that an executive delegates the change initiative, which works only if the organization has a strong control culture. If your organization is more collaborative, people will have a tough time accepting one person as the change leader.
Think of change as ongoing. People who use the Kotter approach often think of it as eight sequential steps at the end of which you have a big change, almost like a deliverable. In reality, change is something that constantly churns throughout an organization.
Don’t think of change as one big event; think of it instead as a part of the normal workflow.
Driving a Grassroots Change: A Fearless Approach
In their book Fearless Change: Patterns for Introducing New Ideas, Linda Rising and Mary Lynn Manns examine several different patterns that emerge when large organizations try to implement major changes. They point out that one of the big sources of resistance is fear — fear of the future and of the unknown. Their Fearless Change approach recommends that organizations try to instill faith in the organization — a belief that the change will be good for the organization and good for its employees.
People mistakenly think change requires a strong leader with a clear vision. They think everyone will listen to the leader and bravely fall in line behind the change. In reality, an organizational change is more like group therapy. You have large groups of people who fear the change. They’re not afraid for the health of the organization; they’re afraid for themselves. Organizational change often casts doubt on the employee’s future, making the person wonder how the change will impact his job.
People don’t want to be fearful. They want to feel empowered to move forward, even if they have to do so unwillingly at first. Instead of a strong leader, you may need a leader who’s empathetic and reassuring.
Don’t ignore the fear factor. If you do, you’ll be blindsided by those who want to stall or undermine your change initiative.
Recruiting a change evangelist
To take a fearless approach to change, you need to recruit a change evangelist who can establish an emotional connection with the others in the organization the change will impact most. Look for someone who has the following characteristics:
- Someone within the organization, not an outside coach or consultant. An insider is much better positioned to connect emotionally with others in the organization.
- Empathizes with those who may be the biggest skeptics. Someone who has a history with the organization, has seen changes succeed and fail, and understands the emotional factors that have led to past success and failure is likely to have the requisite empathy.
- Is respected and well-liked by her peers.
- Is passionate and enthusiastic about the change being considered (in this case, transforming the organization into an agile enterprise).
A change evangelist makes an emotional connection. She understands both why people are likely to resist the change and why they should embrace it. She acts as a bridge from skepticism to faith, which is a difficult role to play.
Changing without top-down authority
In many ways, Fearless Change is much more realistic than top-down methods, regardless of whether the change is being driven from the top or bottom. Why? Because top-down change often fails for the following reasons:
- Lack of executive buy-in: Other members of the leadership team don’t believe in the change, so the change initiative lacks impact. One of the only surveys on this topic suggests that the lack of executive buy-in is one of the most common reasons for a failed transformation. (See the later section “Seeing how culture can sink agile.”)
Lack of follow-through: The CEO or other change leader initiates the change and then gets busy doing other things. With nobody in place to drive the momentum, the change stalls. Even in a strong control culture, people respond to change on an emotional level. The people who have the authority to make big changes don’t have the time to evangelize to individual teams.
Your change may be at great risk if a champion goes missing!- Unaddressed fears: Even when you have a strong change leader rallying the troops, that person may encounter resistance at all levels of the organization due to fears among employees and leadership regarding how the change will impact their jobs.
Regardless of whether you have a strong change leader in the upper echelon of the organization, Fearless Change may be the best approach. You can connect with people on an emotional level and use that connection to gain acceptance and start to recruit advocates.
Making change a self-fulfilling prophecy
Ovid’s Metamorphoses includes a poem about a young sculptor named Pygmalion, who created a statue so beautiful that he fell in love with it. When he tried to kiss the statue, the goddess Aphrodite willed his beautiful sculpture to life. In the poem, Pygmalion created something beautiful, and his expectations brought the sculpture to life.
When you’re making a large organizational change, you can benefit from the same “Pygmalion” effect. You can create a self-fulfilling prophecy where your enthusiasm helps recruit others to make changes. This is one of the key roles of change evangelists. They need to have a contagious excitement that wills the change into existence.
Your change evangelist is the key player in Fearless Change. Look for someone who has the enthusiasm to bring the vision to life.
Looking for change patterns
In their book Fearless Change, Rising and Manns describe several change patterns — how people respond to change — and they present various techniques to address these patterns. The following sections present two common change patterns.
Accepting change at different rates
People accept change at different rates. You may present an idea to a large group and have people leave the presentation with varying degrees of enthusiasm. Some in the audience will be convinced after seeing the first two slides, while others will see the full fireworks show and still walk away unimpressed.
Connect with both fans and skeptics. If you talk only to the people excited about the change, you’ll get the mistaken impression that the transformation will be easy. Even worse, you won’t know the source of resistance.
The diffusion of innovations theory
Fearless Change relies on a 50-year-old diffusion of innovations theory created by Everett Rogers, an assistant professor of rural sociology at Ohio State University. He identified five groups of people who respond differently to innovations:
- Innovators quickly embrace new ideas.
- Early adopters are interested in new ideas but like to hear a little more before they decide.
- Early majority like to see what other people think before they make up their minds.
- Late majority accept an idea only after the majority of people accept it.
- Laggards must be dragged kicking and screaming into any new change.
These groups aren’t good or bad. An organization needs laggards as much as it needs early adopters. The company would be in chaos if everyone adopted every new change. At the same time, the company would probably not be around very long if it didn’t make any changes. You shouldn’t try to sort these groups into good and evil. There are no heroes and villains, but you need to take a different approach when introducing the change to each group.
Recruiting innovators and early adopters
One strategy to accelerate change is to recruit innovators and early adopters and have them convince the late majority and laggards. The late majority is usually swayed by greater numbers of people, but anyone who resists change is likely to be more receptive when hearing about it from an enthusiastic supporter.
After turning a skeptic into a believer, recruit your new convert to become an advocate for change. Newly converted employees may be your most enthusiastic supporters.
Tailoring your message
As you speak with different groups and individuals, tailor your message to your audience. Don’t continue to sell to innovators and early adopters who are already on board. You may need to shift from sales to education and training or to recruiting your new advocates to help spread the word.
When presenting to the late majority and to the laggards, find out why they’re resisting the change. Maybe similar initiatives have failed in the past and they’re convinced that “nothing’s going to change,” or they’re afraid of how the change will impact them. After figuring out the reason behind their resistance, tailor your message to show that you understand and empathize and then present information that addresses their concerns. Let them know that it’s okay to be hesitant about the change.
Don’t ignore, dismiss, or make light of people’s concerns. However unrealistic the concerns, they’re still valid, because they reflect how people feel. Your job is to provide information and insight that alleviates the concern.
You can help convince the doubters by showing them that the proposed change is actually the best option (or the least unpleasant option).
Steering clear of change myths
In Fearless Change, Rising and Manns present several change myths (misconceptions) that can impair your ability to transform your organization. This section presents six change myths you’re likely to encounter as you start to transform your organization into an agile enterprise.
Keep these change myths in mind when you’re starting your enterprise agile transformation so you’ll be less likely to succumb to their influence.
Thinking change sells itself
The first change myth is the notion that if you have something that adds value to the organization, it’ll be easy to convince others to accept the change. To avoid falling victim to this myth, keep in mind the following two points:
- Not everyone will see value in your change.
- Even those who see value in the proposed change may not agree that the change is right for the organization; for example, someone may say something like, “I’m sure agile works fine for companies like Google, but this is an office supply business.”
The change won’t sell itself. You need a change evangelist to sell it and to keep selling it until you get enough people on board and enough energy to overcome any remaining resistance to the change. You may give yourself a headache repeating the value of the change, but that’s a necessary discomfort of being a change evangelist. You may not convince everyone that the proposed change is best, but it will at least give people the opportunity to oppose it for the right reasons.
Thinking people knowing about the benefits is enough to change
Educating people on the benefits of change isn’t always enough. Some organizations encounter this challenge with their Agile Coaches. The coach spends considerable time training and developing an effective plan but far too little time giving employees a forum for expressing their concerns. The employees end up knowing what to do, but having little motivation to do it.
Organizational change requires a combination of training and group therapy. Big change results in emotional upheaval as much as it requires a reorientation to process. If you fail to address the emotional factors, you’ll end up with well-trained employees who are reluctant to change.
Believing change requires charm and PowerPoint
Agile transformations have failed in several large organizations because the most influential people were apathetic about the change. They would respond to presentations about the agile mindset like Bill Murray in the movie Groundhog Day, in which his character was forced to live the same day over and over again. They’d seen it all before. They wouldn’t oppose the change, but they weren’t excited about it either.
If you’re the change agent, try not to rely too much on personal charm and PowerPoint presentations. Instead, position yourself as an approachable outsider — someone who’s knowledgeable but not overly friendly. Let people know you’re aware of their concerns. For example, you may say something like, “I know you’ve probably heard this all before and nothing ever seems to change, but … .” Then try to recruit these longtime employees and see if you can drum up some excitement.
Trying to steamroll over skeptics
Many change leaders try to steamroll over the skeptics to push change through the organization without addressing their concerns. This approach often increases resistance instead of reducing it. When you’re starting an organizational transformation, try to see your skeptics as a positive force in the organization. In many organizations, the skeptics are the ones who are most likely to be right. Always try to engage them in open forums. In most organizations, skeptics are like icebergs. The ones you see often represent a small portion of the group that’s actually there.
Encourage the skeptics to open up, so you know the source of their resistance and can address their concerns. Your skeptics can be a valuable resource in helping you choose changes that have the highest chance for success.
Relying too much on one change agent
Rarely can a single change leader push change through an organization, even in an organization that has a strong control culture. The myth that a single person can make or break an organization comes from stories about legendary executives who turned their companies around, such as Steve Jobs (Apple), Lee Iacocca (Chrysler), and Dan Hesse (Sprint).
The problem with these stories is that very few executives have what it takes to become a legend or they’re working under entirely different circumstances. Effecting big change as an individual requires a rare combination of vision and authority. Most change evangelists will never enjoy anything close to that level of authority.
Believing people will stay convinced
Perhaps the most dangerous change myth is that once you convince people they’ll stay convinced. An agile transformation is almost like trying to maintain a healthy lifestyle. You may lose 50 pounds, but trying to keep it off requires persistence. You may convince most people in your organization that change is needed, but they may have deeply ingrained work habits that take a long time and a lot of effort to change. If you stop pumping energy into your change initiative, people are likely to drift back to comfortable behaviors.
Overcoming Obstacles Related to Your Organization’s Culture
Your organization’s existing culture can create a great deal of inertia that your organization needs to overcome in order to change direction. In fact, an inability to change an organization’s culture is one of the leading causes of failed enterprise agile transformations. This section explains how cultural factors can undermine an enterprise agile transformation, and it provides guidance on how to overcome cultural inertia.
Seeing how culture can sink agile
According to an annual survey conducted by VersionOne on the state of agile, the number one challenge companies face when they attempt an enterprise agile transformation is “Company philosophy or culture at odds with core agile values” (see Figure 3-3). Number four on the list is a “General organization resistance to change.” Further down at number six is “Insufficient training.”
© John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
FIGURE 3-3: The top challenges in an agile transformation.
Most organizations understand and are willing to embrace a more agile mindset. The real challenge is overcoming cultural inertia. The organization wants to adopt enterprise agility, but agile conflicts with a deeply engrained incompatible mindset.
Acknowledging the challenge
The first step to overcoming cultural inertia is to confront it. Many teams try to change culture through training. They think that once individuals understand agile they’ll be more likely to embrace it. Unfortunately, more training is rarely the solution. Even when all employees in the organization understand agile and appreciates its potential benefits, they often feel that it’s not a solution that’ll work in their organization. They lack faith.
If you think about it, this feeling makes a lot of sense. A lot of organizations have a strong control culture. Some of agile’s key values may be in direct opposition to long-established practices. A culture that puts a lot of emphasis on hierarchy and accountability, for example, is going to have a tough time embracing self-organized teams and distributed authority.
Prioritizing the challenge
When you start your agile transformation, make culture your number one priority. Agile teams always begin with the highest value items first. Training is number six on the list of common challenges, and culture is number one. It’s clear that you need to start with culture. Your effort here will make or break your enterprise agile transformation.
Build on your success. If you’re considering an enterprise agile transformation, you already have at least one agile team in your organization, and now you’re looking to scale agile to work on larger projects. Leverage the success of your existing agile team(s) to drive cultural change throughout the organization.
Gaining insight into motivation
Managers and developers often clash on the enterprise agility battlefield because their motivations differ. While management often embraces big organizational change and enterprise agile frameworks that promise improved productivity, quality, and customer satisfaction, developers often want management to get out of their way so they can do their best work.
Management
High-level managers are the first to embrace big changes. It’s not because they’re less conservative or more adventurous. It’s because they’re evaluated by how well they improve the organization’s processes. When they can take a group of people and change the process to improve results, they see that as good management and strong leadership. Large frameworks, such as Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) and Large-Scale Scrum Huge (LeSS Huge) are like catnip for these high-level managers.
Developers
On the other side, software developers and engineers see themselves as craftspeople. They want to build something that’s elegant and satisfying, and they often view a large framework as a way for management to gain more control over their work. If you’re a craftsperson, the last thing you want to do is create something ugly because someone forces you to make a quick fix.
Large-scale organizational changes often create a tension between managers who want to rewire the machine and developers who want to create a world with fewer wires. Developers want agile, and they may think of enterprise agile as an attempt by management to make them less agile.
When you’re starting your enterprise agile transformation, take a long objective look at each of these groups’ motivations. If you have a manager who wants to make big changes, prepare yourself for a lot of communication and pushback from many of the developers. If the change is driven by developers, be prepared to convince the managers that this is a worthwhile change.
People often assume that others share their motivation. Managers assume everyone wants a big framework, while developers assume that everyone in the company wants (or should want) to deliver beautiful, elegant software. The truth is that the two aren’t mutually exclusive. You can have a large framework that provides developers with the creative freedom they crave.
Whether you try the Kotter approach or Fearless Change, think about your particular organization and how each group feels about the change. Both of these approaches push you to better understand everyone’s motivations so you can mitigate resistance and avoid unpleasant surprises.