Big and small bangs

Throughout my career I have always been a believer in making the shift to an agile mindset iteratively, in small batches. That means, start with a team, follow the pull and support the people that really want a change. The idea is to slowly reach a tipping point where the mindset shift starts spreading on its own. Whenever I have come across managers that want to do an “Agile Transformation” by forcing everyone to change overnight, I have strongly objected. Change takes time, and working in an agile way requires a shift in mindset, leadership and culture that takes even longer time to achieve. The whole notion of labelling a change project an Agile Transformation, and thinking you are done after a year, has gone against many of my beliefs (yes, even after I became part of one myself).

The last year and half of Agile Transformation in a big financial organisation has taught me where the big bang of agile plays an important role.

The Agile Transformation I am currently a part of started as many others — an initiative driven by IT to start working more effectively. The promise of speed and reduced waste attracted managers, the promise of a sustainable working environment and autonomy attracted the teams. It started in small pockets and after years of uncoordinated initiatives it became institutionalized as an Agile Transformation. That meant creating a department that would act as internal consultants, helping other departments to transform. Expertise was hired in (me amongst many other) and in a combination between acting on pull and forcefully approaching departments, we started working to reach a tipping point within the organisation. But in my year and half I keep noticing the same behaviour:

We help departments organise differently, we educate them in agile ways of working, we help them creating a heartbeat, ceremonies and understand the new mindset. We work with management to help foster a new type of leadership and adress the cultural issues. We get great traction and see change starting to happen — until they have to apply for funding. Or create reports to their executives. Or hit their KPIs. Then the whole organisation spirals back into doing things the way they always have, protecting the status quo. The fluency simply isn’t there. We keep hitting the same roof where the structures around the department not only are unsupportive of a mindset shift but forces the department to work in the old paradigm.

So this has gotten me thinking. Can you really do a successful Agile Transformation without changing surrounding structures? And can you do it slowly, little by little?

I have come to realise that agile as an initiative from IT is going to be a failure or have very little effects. Ideas such as the domains of business agility, beyond budgeting and agile HR is paving the way. This is great if you are building a company from scratch with a culture that supports this way of working. But how do you transform into it? I am starting to change my mind about doing the small bangs, and looking for the big bang. Stories such as those told by ING, ABN Amro and others is pointing in this direction. Change everything overnight. Break all structures apart and build it up again. Since it is impossible to build a new system with the same mindset that built the old, we tear it apart and try something completely new.

I am yet to experience this approach myself so if you have been through this kind of transformation I’d love to hear about your experiences.