While developing the Agile Transformation Strategy, we require to take care below aspects.
I realize most of the individuals will respond there is nothing like Agile Transformation, it is all about serving the business to perform stronger and better.
Call it anything, Agile Transformation or Business Transformation, we require to avoid these mindset aspects.
It might have worked earlier with such a strategy, but not now.
I am positive, most of us come across the below incident.
Senior Executive or Senior Managers know everything: I have observed while preparing a transformation strategy, only top-level managers are invited in the privilege room. The explanation they made, they are with the system for long; they know the business; they know the end-users; they know the culture so they are the finest individuals to do the Transformation strategy. This is not a fully true thought process. From Lean concepts, we know people who are with the ground and working closely with the system their input matters a lot. Without involving the agent from the whole ecosystem, transformation strategy may fail. We can always change these ways of working(mindset). Have you come across such instances?
Transformation Strategy is an internal affair: "We are cleaning out the house, so we do not choose to reveal our chaotic, ugly experience to the external bodies". This view leads us to miss many vital points that external entities can bring into the table. Especially the end-users, even though it is the internal departmental ways of working changes, involving an external party who is related with the department, should be involved. Most of the time we create transformation among ourselves which does not suit end-users. Have you come across such instances?
Transformation strategy is a 3-5 yrs road-map: It is an ancient school of thought. In today’s dynamic world strategy become obsolete in 6 months because of the new offering, the new tool, a new platform. So we need to be flexible to change the road-map. If any queries raised on the road-map should not follow kill the messenger approach, reduce the noise as early as we can or eliminate the person who is clamoring a lot. Have you come across such instances?
Fail fast mindset is costly and for safety-critical system, we should avoid in all possible ways not to fail: These thoughts from top create panic at the bottom layers. I have been hearing this message from the top saying we are safety-critical systems, human life involvement, experiment with care. They will share, please do experiment but with care. They will be ready with punishment with an insignificant mistake, nobody dares to explore and open their thought or a fresh experiment. The transformation strategy will break down when we do not know what we thought, if all our assumptions are not validated with experiments. There will not be any validated learning. Fail fast is a wallpaper picture on the office campus, but not in the culture.
Data-driven decision making: The transformation strategy need course correction based on the real-time live data collecting from the system. Data is broadly accessible, external, internal, needs to closely reflect the latest status and revise the strategy based on the data. In olden days data extraction was costly affairs. Nobody was cognizant of what is going on at ground level ( real-time) so data was not the no 1 component to be studied. If data appear after 2 months very less can be done, but with real-time data can leader can alter the strategic thinking considerably.
The plan is not relevant, Planning is significant: Transformation strategy plan is not recorded in the rock, and just execute brutally and reward the managers who do it better is not the way. The courage is to change the plan often, weekly and regularly. Most of the time, it has consistently been in theory, but the reality it has less practice. There are 1000 reasons not to modify the plan, as hurdles are remarkably many. Organization will be doomed when leaders have such a mindset.
Governance style: The way monthly executives governance meeting happened based on the strategic execution process, makes a lot of builds or break situation. The wrong questions has been asked, based on that action items rolled down to bottom level. If the thought process of the top is not agile, it will be military-style strategy implementation(Legacy old school of thoughts). Most of the time the discussions are around on time and on budget not on Value generation.
How can an coach alter that end to end transformation flow? Where can we start the coaching and our engagement?
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