Ep. 155: Beyond Tech: Agile for Every Department

In this episode of "Definitely Maybe Agile," hosts Peter Maddison and David Sharrock discuss the evolution of agile methodologies beyond software development. They explore how agile principles can be applied to business processes, such as budgeting, and delve into the challenges of implementing cultural change within organizations. The conversation touches on the importance of collaboration, facilitated workshops, and the need to move beyond rigid frameworks to focus on outcomes and ways of working that drive value.

This week's takeaways:

• Organizations should focus on the benefits and mindset of agile rather than getting caught up in terminology or strict processes.
• Continued efforts to drive cultural shifts are important, even as the initial momentum for change may wane in some environments.
• Instead of fixating on agile terminology or frameworks, organizations should concentrate on fostering collaboration, cross-functional teamwork, and achieving tangible business outcomes to deliver better value sooner safer happier.

Tune in for actionable strategies to foster perseverance and continuous improvement. Don't miss out—subscribe and share with your friends to keep the insights flowing!

Chapters

• 0:04 Agile Mindset in Organizational Culture
• 11:14 Driving Organizational Change and Agility
• 16:17 Investing in Difficult Conversations

Transcript

Peter: 0:04

Welcome to Definitely Maybe Agile, the podcast where Peter Maddison and David Sharrock discuss the complexities of adopting new ways of working at scale. Hello Dave, how are you?

Dave: 0:13

today. Peter, good to see you again.

Peter: 0:16

Good to talk to you. How are you doing? I'm doing really well. It's really good to see you. It's been a week or so, I think. Actually we missed one last week. I think it's been a week or so, I think actually we had this one last week, I think.

Dave: 0:25

Yeah, I think we were just saying it's busy. We've had things going on, but I just really appreciate the chance to just have a chat and see what you're thinking.

Peter: 0:35

Yeah, I mean you were describing as well. We were just catching up and there's some interesting problems you've been dealing with lately for some of your clients and they're there, and it led us down a path of talking about some of the uh things that agile brings to the table, some of the challenges it can help solve and some of the things where maybe it goes a little awry and things like that. But uh, why don't you kick us off with sort of a chat?

Dave: 1:01

about? Yeah, let me try so. So the conversation, the the situation I was describing is got a um small team are going to help them do process improvement, so everything there sounds as normal, if you like, from an agile context that lends. However, the process that we're trying to improve is a budgetary process, an annual budgeting process. It's nothing to do with technology, other than there are definitely technology initiatives in that budgeting pipeline, and it's really all about bringing that lean and agile lens to how work gets done, where work doesn't have to be software product development.

Dave: 1:43

Right, and we always talk about it in that way, but maybe we don't always look at it and recognize just how much value is generated there. So the story really came to like. The reason I mentioned it is we just kind of reached the end of the engagement. There was this huge deliverable that in the last 12 months was incredibly painful to reach, very, very distressing to go through that process, and we've gone through a revised, revamped process, iterative, incremental delivery rather than big bang at the end all of those things that we would talk about normally but in a very, very different context.

Peter: 2:19

Yeah, and it's. I think it ties back to this idea that mentally, especially over the last 20, 25 years, people have taken the concept around Agile and they've really tied it to technology delivery. Agile applies to the technology teams and it's about how do we implement this. Whatever framework we decide to pick, it's all about how do we get our technology teams more productive, because clearly they're lazy and they don't do their work well, and so we've got to micromanage every little thing they do well and and it's.

Dave: 2:51

It's a little bit like, you know, lean when it was all about automotive manufacturing, in that there was a very clear context where lean was applied and developed and and excelled and in exactly the same way. Agile's the same way, but lean now we almost think of as and it's almost like an adjective for organizations. We can bring that in, and I think agile's kind of gone in the same way where it's beyond frameworks. So when we think of an agile evolution, we should stop thinking about agile. I mean the way I think of it. It's like fish don't care about water, that's just around them and that's what they do. So maybe we should stop worrying about the term agile and start focusing on the benefits and the ways of working that come around an agile mindset.

Peter: 3:37

Well, I would agree. I mean, I very rarely use agile in a lot of things that I end up talking about, unless that's specifically what the client wants to call it and that's how they're referring to it. Otherwise, I tend to talk about like look, these are the outcomes we're looking for, this is how we're looking at improving, these are the tools and methods and things we can bring to the table. I think there's a key piece, too, that we were starting to unpack as well around the cultural elements of this sometimes get missed as we go through. For example, I've gone through some very collaborative workshops. They've generated some great results, but the organization then just lets it die on the vine, because the organizational culture goes right back into project delivery.

Dave: 4:25

And we've got to be done by this date and we've got to Well, what I'm hearing and I completely agree, which is what I'm hearing you say is there's an expectation today that wasn't common 20 years ago, 10 years ago, as we were kind of developing in our own journey there around collaboration and facilitated workshops and the benefit of, say, a mix of senior executives working together with operational folks and all of the benefits that we really kind of fine-tuned around some of the frameworks that we were using and so on. But if you strip away those frameworks and just say, hold on, this is really about bringing smart people together, individuals and interactions right, it's about being responsive to change all of the things which are in that Agile manifesto, without necessarily labeling things and so on. Now there's an expectation. That's the way we work until it bumps into the culture.

Peter: 5:26

Yeah, yeah. And then the culture says, nope, I ain't having any of that. And so the pieces where I mean this does come into like sort of the change management aspects of this too. Right, there are elements of, well, start small, build the culture, grow from there, iterate, learn, all of the pieces around that within the culture. But if the culture of the organization and it nearly always is will resist that, because people tend to resist change, and so unless you've already managed to build an organization that naturally thrives on change, then if you bring in new things, people are going to say, well, I don't want to do that anymore, or then something will happen to stress the system and they'll go back to the way they know that they're comfortable with that, they feel safe.

Dave: 6:15

there's I mean, this is just natural human nature yeah, but one thing that I would sort of add into that conversation is the thing that organizations and people teams go back to that they feel safe and comfortable with now includes collaborative workshopping and facilitated spaces and coordination across cross-functional teams in a broad understanding. They may not necessarily be able to use the terminology that we're used to around it, but again, another conversation I had this morning is with a change agent in an organization and they're being drawn into a whole bunch of facilitated conversations. That would have been meetings in the past. That would have been quote-un, unquote workshops where everybody turned up and they had an agenda and they just talked at one another and now people are going no, we, that's not the norm.

Peter: 7:10

What we want to do is something different yeah, and I think there's a piece there where, where they built that up, I think what I'm we're talking about two slight things in there, in that if a if the organization hasn't built up that culture, there isn't anything else to fall back to. So what they end up falling back to is whatever was predecessor to that. So where there is that understanding of it, that the organization's invested in that because I've also worked with organizations recently where they don't have that there is none of that culture. In fact, sometimes that can actually be a detriment, because I've also walked in thinking much in the same way that doesn't everybody know this stuff by now? Haven't we been at this long enough that the message has got out that this is a better way of working?

Dave: 7:53

But there are still quite a lot of organizations out there that are not necessarily aware of sort of this type of functioning and working, but I I think that I mean I would, I'd suggest that a lot of them have a there's at least a perception that there's a different way. I'm not saying better, worse or anything, but there's a different. They've heard the words. They've kind of have people in the room that that are saying things like you know, I've had really good experiences with having this, that and the other, whatever it might be, um backlogs or focusing on one initiative at a time rather than having everything up and running and so on. It doesn't mean they can institute change in their organizations, but one of the things that I am often looking for is some sort of discussion or terminology or vocabulary around it, because now we know that first step of awareness is well in the way and I think that one that is permeating many organizations now that the what you do with the outcome of, of one of those wonderfully facilitated collaborative events totally different thing, right?

Peter: 8:58

yes, yeah, can they then take that and run with it and, uh, buy it in?

Dave: 9:03

let's say, there's always that, that challenge right, I was just going to say that was your opportunity. Let talk to uh me and I will help you well.

Peter: 9:12

For example yes, yeah, well, I did. It's funny, I've just been doing that this week and the outcome, one of the outcomes of that was like okay, with the, with the for one of the lines of business, if we're going to set this up, we need to set this up with all of the pieces to make sure that this gets executed on when we get the outcomes we know we're going to get, whatever they may be, we need the systems and the practices and the support in place to make sure that this gets embedded into the organization, that we continue and we build on all of the value that we know we're going to get.

Dave: 9:42

Now, if I just spin that one around just slightly, because I think what you're describing is that sort of the off-ramp that we want to take, that the organization doesn't know quite where it's going to go, but we recognize the need to do it and I think that's a great place to be, but it's definitely not the only thing that happens. So there are many other organizations where they're kind of going. I'm not wanting to look at that off-ramp, I just don't want to think about what that would look like. It seems, and the way I think we were chatting about this, it feels like the hard work needed to get through whatever is identified from the outcomes, to get to those outcomes, still feels pretty spooky, pretty tough to tackle.

Peter: 10:21

Yeah, and I think this is where I think some of the if backlash if I can use it against some of the agile pieces is there where the process parts of it and the tooling parts of it are put into place, but the cultural elements of it and the changes in behavior that are required to support that are not, and there's still a lot of work to be done in that space.

Dave: 10:44

I'm just saying. You know, doctor who, when the break in some sort of time space continuum opens up and it's only open for a certain short period of time, somehow I feel like it's all shrinking down again. We had that brief opportunity, five or ten years, where significant cultural change was on the agenda, and in the last few years it feels like that rip in the space-time continuum is shrinking really quickly and it's very much harder to imagine that today.

Peter: 11:14

Yes, I think that's a fair way of putting it. How do we deal with some of those challenges? But we do run into the people in the organization. We still run into people who are really looking to try and do that, who are looking to drive the cultural change alongside all the others, and they're doing the work and they're putting in the practices and they're sitting down and running sessions to talk about, like, how do we build up skills outside of even out of technical skills or outside of and think about how does, how do we interact with each other?

Dave: 11:49

No, cultural change doesn't go away. It's always changing the way. I paraphrase that, but also, you know, the the it used to be aided by some form of gravity just drawing us through that and I think it's a little bit more of an uphill battle today. But as an one of the conversations I had earlier this week was around just having conversations around things like cross-functional teams and the difference between that and silo delivery, or just some conversations around topics to almost just paint a picture of the way different organizations work, and part of that was just to start people thinking about some of the other ways that they can view their, their environment, their world yeah, I think that's a very critical piece of it.

Peter: 12:41

I did things similar. We have a? Uh, we have a deck of cards we call culture nudges that we um use in training and training and when we're working with organizations, and one of the ladies that I was talking with in one of the sessions was very interested in what could she do with her teams, what sort of topics could she bring up. And so here's a deck of cards with about 30 or so ideas that you can bring up just little nudges, things that you can discuss with your team, things that you can think about and use to try and drive that forward. So how should we wrap this up?

Dave: 13:16

Okay, so let me think of a couple of things. Let me try and just think of a couple of things. One is agile evolution to get rid of the agile, don't worry about there isn't a phase two in terms of frameworks, I think. I think it's more about removing the vocabulary, of stepping away from that and really understanding some of these conversations that we've had, the need for collaboration, cross-functional work, you know, things like this that people recognize but they don't really think of it as anything other than a good way of working. That was the one thing and that was a terrible sentence. Just to say agile evolution isn't a framework. It's removing the word agile and just thinking of different ways of thinking and working and so on.

Peter: 14:02

Yeah, we still have business problems that we need to solve, and those business problems occur in a variety of different ways. We've got a toolbox full of tools that we know are very effective for approaching, understanding those, looking at processes, understanding how to work better together, how to create organizational culture that can help solve things on an ongoing basis. All of that is true, so there's lots of ways we can help organizations with all of these. So it's really we can apply this to lots of different ways, can help organizations with all of these. Uh, so it's really we can apply this for lots of different ways and help them succeed.

Dave: 14:33

so and that toolbox is broader and it's more commonly understood than we may think yeah just doesn't have a whole bunch of vocabulary with it, and I think the other one is that whole bit about organizational change and I'm going to go back to that terrible analogy around doctor who and the space-time continuum rip. That is getting smaller, but organizational change is back to the norm, which is it's tough to do. You don't have a momentum that's drawing you in that direction, but it's still happening. You need that at a different.

Peter: 15:04

You need that crisis of the lighthouse or the thing that you're going to do, that you're going to tie this to, and we've had, as you say, of 10, 15, with the lighthouse as being. We want to be agile and this is a better way of working, at least within the technology space. Yeah, yeah, so yes, and now it's becoming more about well, I want to see the business outcomes and results from this, and so we still Productivity and outcomes and efficiency.

Peter: 15:29

Yeah, so we still need so. Business agility, I think, is still a thing. I think it's just again, though, because it sort of associates back into the agile space that somewhat perhaps a little tainted with that, but people are still looking for that set of outcomes. They still want to know how can I make my organization more responsive and more agile and more capable of dealing with change. I think all of that is still true.

Peter: 15:51

Do you have a third one? No, I do not. You do not, okay, no, well, I'll add a really quick third one so we can wrap this up, and that was the. People will back away from the harder parts of change at times, at times, and I think the recognizing that and and insisting that you work on it is a very valuable thing to do. Um, because so it can be easy to do the sort of the when we were talking about this last time around too, but it can be easy to look at the things which are easy to get the data for, easy to understand the really tough problems that require sitting down and working through and really talking through those you need to spend the time on and not walk away from.

Dave: 16:37

That's a great point, just the investment of, and creating some sort of reward safety around that, so that it's you know we're not cutting people off but we're actually supporting them as they make those do that hard work.

Peter: 16:51

Indeed. Well, thank you as always, dave, and to all our listeners, don't forget to hit subscribe and tell all your friends and say what a great podcast. You've really got to listen to this, please. Yes, that would be great. Okay, talk to you next time.