[Srijan Wednesday Webinars] Transitioning to an Organization-wide Agile Culture

Transitioning to an Organization-wide

Agile Culture

Rajat Lal, @rajatelTRIP

● What it means to build an organizational agile culture

● Agility in Leadership

● Transitioning to an Agile Culture

● Agile across Organizational Functions

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Topics

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Why Create An Agile Organization

Today

● Organizations launch products, observe, learn and optimize... in

hours, not months

● Decisions need to be made quickly… directions shift overnight

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Success today requires the agility and drive to constantly rethink, reinvigorate, react and reinvent

– Bill Gates

Why Create An Agile Organization

What’s needed

● Leadership to build culture, drive initiative

● Infinitely aware of and adaptable to change

● Capture, learn, be flexible and respond to market situations and

customer needs

● Constantly engaging, collaborating and developing

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10 Management Practices that differentiated the most agile from the least agile companies

From OHI scores from a sample of 161 companies in a survey conducted by McKinsey & Co.

OHI = Organizational Health Index

Why Create An Agile Organization

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What It Means To Build An Organizational Agile Culture

TRADITIONAL OR 'WATERFALL' ORGANIZATION

‘AGILE’ ORGANIZATION

CULTURE Corporate culture or ideology, based on the management’s worldview

Values with a deeper emotional connect, shared by the leadership

ORG STRUCTURE Formalized, structured hierarchies

Dynamic, self organizing teams

GOAL Maximising shareholder value Delighting the customer

FOCUS Controlling, directing People and Outputs

Enabling People and Outcomes

COMMUNICATION

Top-down by bureaucracy; rules & plans; and bottom-up reporting

Outside-in from customers; iterative cycles, direct feedback and horizontal conversations

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Agility In

Leadership

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Agility in Leadership

But, that’s just plain vanilla leadership… what’s Agility in Leadership?

@srijan #SrijanWWAGILITY IN LEADERSHIP - WHAT’S EXPECTED OF LEADERS

Agile Leaders…

• Harness their knowledge, observations, experience, instincts and feelings… into situational awareness

• Seize the moment to launch themselves... into wilful action, by example

• Lead and drive collaboration and teamwork... to achieve what’s ‘necessary’

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Agility in Leadership

"There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things."

— Niccolo Machiavelli

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Agility in Leadership

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TransitioningTo An

Agile Organization

• Shared organizational culture

– connect through experiences and leadership storytelling

– confluence of values, business strategy, culture, leadership

• High impact learning culture

– knowledge sharing, building trust, learning from failure

– capture, retain expertise --> build a generation of leaders

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Transitioning To Agile

• Enable people to

– look outside-in

– take initiative

– find purpose to their work

• Build capacity at all levels to enhance and sustain agility

– swiftly assemble cross-functional ‘owner’ teams

– develop and reward individual & team capacity

– enable silo-ed functions adopt agility in their operations

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Transitioning To Agile

The greatest danger in times of turbulence is not the turbulence – it is to act with yesterday’s logic

– Peter Drucker

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So Where Can We Use Agile...

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Agile Across Organizational

Functions

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When hunting... the tiger will hide in bushes or long tall grass closer to its preys… It will slowly and silently sneak ahead towards its prey.. When it's roughly six to nine metres away, it will go down out from its hiding location in an impressive screen of electric power and agility

http://howdotigershunttheirprey.blogspot.in/

Agility in Sales

What’s needed...

● a keen awareness of the customer and market

● anticipation of situations, needs

● capacity to bring all strengths into play

● speed and agility of response

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Agility in Sales

NOT JUST BUT..Follow the ‘Sales Cycle’ Run with the ‘Customer Buying Cycle’

Implement and execute the sales / campaign plan

Strike a balance between what your plan is/was, AND assess emerging situations with high flexibility

Tight territory demarcations Team engagement and lateral accountability

Sales funnel and projections reporting up the hierarchy

Team-wide visibility into each task that needs accomplishing and accountability, up and across the hierarchy

Henry David Thoreau said, “Obey the spur of the moment.”

• Collaborate to map, reach and mine prospects and customers

• Scrum tools (Backlog, Sprints) for Mailing Campaigns

• Track what the customer is thinking… and looking to solve

• Track the market for emergent trends

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Agility in SalesSOME EXAMPLES

AccuRev: Example of a company adopting Scrum processes in its Sales function

http://accurev.sys-con.com/node/1548765/mobile

• ORGANIZATION DESIGN

– Small, empowered, high-performance teams with clear roles & relationships, and self-defined targets

– Transparent information - what are our goals, who is working on what project, who are our experts

– Customer focussed interactions within all teams

– Focus on continuous learning - knowledge sharing culture

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Agility in HR Practices

“The significant problems we have cannot be solved at the same level of thinking with which we created them.”

- Albert Einstein

• Performance management: real-time feedback, development, coaching, & agile goal management

• Roles & functions: focus on behaviors, values & cultural fit over specific skills

• Scenario planning: foster openness to change, innovation, collaboration,

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Agility in HR Practices

DEVELOP EXISTING LEADERS TO BE AGILE LEADERS

• Hire for creativity, collaboration and curiosity

• Look for agility or complex thinking - not just relevant experience and skills

• Hire and promote experts, not general managers

• Implement a strong external employment brand that attracts "the right type" of people

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Agility in HR Practices

HIRE AGILE LEADERS

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Agility in Finance Functions

PROJECT FUNDING

• Treat each project team as an in-house startup

• Task the team with a business problem - and an objective, measurable goal

• At the end of each funding period, re-evaluate the project status to decide on refunding

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Agility in Finance Functions

Foster the ability to make short-term project commitments based on real progress and emerging market realities

INCENTIVIZE TEAMS

• Equity compensation - for value adding products by teams

• Don’t penalize for mistakes - instead encourage analyzing mistakes to add to new tactics

• Incentivize teams working on ideas based on market insights

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In Summary

What it means to ‘be’ agile

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What it means to ‘be’ agile...

To be agile is to

● Think, and to feel… be lively

● Be yourself, express yourself… lead

● Look around.. always learn something… be aware, absorb

● Empty your mind.. be formless, shapeless, like water… adapt

● Train your reflexes, so when you want it, it’s there… be flexible

● If I want to.. I’m going to do it… be determined

● Move, you’re determined to move… quick, well coordinated

● Talk about as it is, without rules.. train every part… learn

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Rajat Lal

Thank You!

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