Some years ago, my book of the year was, “Good to Great: Why some companies make the leap … and others don’t” by Jim Collins. It is a research-based exploration of what it takes to turn ordinary companies into great companies.

A very practical and relevant question is: how does it fit in with Agile? If we are going to the bother of undergoing a transformation, let’s at least make sure we have the right ingredients.

I make the case that an effective transformation needs to bring elements from outside of these systems in order to be great.

First, let’s consider where Good to Great principles align with cultural analysis.

Schneider Model of Good to Great

The following analysis is based on the Schneider Culture Model.

We see that the clear focus is on Cultivation and Competence cultures.

Competence. Good to Great speaks of companies that seek to be the best in the world. They get the right people on the bus. And the wrong people off the bus. Hire the best and the rest will take care of itself. Companies such as Netflix have taken this to an extreme with amazing results. Built on the people is a culture of focus and discipline to be the best.

Cultivation. Good to Great companies have a vision of being the best in something and the passion to pursue it. A sustained commitment to the vision allows such companies to work relentless year by year to build towards success. There is also a strong sense of the need to develop people, perhaps in different roles.

One of the phrases I love most from the book is: “Confront the brutal facts … yet never loose faith.” The idea here is to make visible and deal with all problems – no matter how discouraging or painful – and keep faith that success will come eventually. Faith in success is the key ingredient that allows one to examine the really tough issues.

Level 5 leadership is about unassuming leaders who build great teams around them.

Why it Matters

Agile, even XP, is completely silent on competence as an important trait in company culture. In fact, this notion is at odds with singing kumbaya and holding hands. But as Ken Schwaber said, “If you have a crappy to team, at the end of a sprint, you will get an increment of crap.” And a lot of companies I see are filled with mediocrity. So, if we really want to help build great companies, we need to stretch beyond Agile. Yup, this means firing people. “The most common failure of great managers is not firing people soon enough.”

An even more interesting notion is that the quality of a transformation is limited by the leadership. So, who’s in charge and what they want to accomplish becomes really important. To quote one CTO who wanted the benefits of Agile but was not interested in personal change: “I didn’t hire you to give me feedback on how I treat my staff.”

So, it’s a great book and helps me see the larger business context.

Or Not?

Please check out some of the great comments below – like how some of these companies crashed and burned after the book was written.

StrategicPlay® with Lego® SERIOUS PLAY® is a powerful experiential tool to enhance innovation and business results. This post provides a brief introduction to summarize what I learned when I attended the amazingly good facilitator training with Jacqueline Lloyd Smith last month.

Understand Complex Problems

For me, the heart of StrategicPlay® is that is brilliantly assists a group to create a shared understanding of complex problems and of each other. Consider the complex model constructed below that was evolved iteratively over the course of the day through phases of building, storytelling, and integration. The physical model has no inherent value – it is the meaning the participant place on it, the decisions, and mental models that matter.

Applications and How it Works

Consider the diagram below. The ovals identify some typical applications of StrategicPlay® and below them you can see the mechanisms used to achieve these results.

At it’s most basic, StrategicPlay® is a facilitation tool. Other facilitation tools are sticky notes, GameStorming, and Visual Facilitation.

Why it Works

Below are some of the key reasons why StrategicPlay® works so well. Please read it (click to for full-size picture) as there is too much good stuff to summarize. (If you want a screencast, let me know by twitter or comments).

StrategicPlay® is based on research that shows that this kind of hands-on, minds-on learning produces a deeper, more meaningful understanding of the world and its possibilities. It creates the perfect storm by engaging the brain, body, and emotions of the participants.

On the right is a crazy picture of a homunculus to help you connect with some of the research. This how psychologists believe our brain is connected with our body. Notice that connections with hands is disproportionately large – when we use our hands, we can use more of our brain. We are wired for using our hands, not for sitting around a table talking.

Where did this stuff come from?

Starting in 1999, the Lego® company worked with business consultants and psychologists to solve their own problem of developing and effective company strategy. The outcome was the invention of Lego® SERIOUS PLAY® which was made open source in in June, 2010. StrategicPlay® was created to develop new applications and train facilitators. If you are curious, check out this presentation on the History and Evolution of StrategicPlay®. You may also want to get Katrin Elster’s view on How and Why StrategicPlay® works.

Wow! This is Cool! What’s next?

Good news is that this is really powerful. The bad news is that this is a complex tool and requires significant investment.

It’s not like a lot of Agile games where you check out a recipe on TastyCupcakes.org and then you just do it. Sadly, you can’t just dump a bag of random Lego® pieces on the table and expect results.

So here is how to get started:

1. If you have never had a chance to experience StrategicPlay®, then that’s the first step. You need to get your own sense of how cool this really is. Ask me or another StrategicPlay® facilitator to give an introductory session in our home town or at a conference.
2. Get training in North America (where I went) or in Europe.
3. Buy specially designed Lego® kits. Yeah, they’re expensive and you need ‘em.

Play is a profoundly powerful tool for achieving business results. I think of three main ways to accomplish this: Using explicit play to do work, using play for learning, and building people’s play muscles.

Consider the following diagram:

Play for Work

The goal is here is to take difficult, boring, unproductive work  and create great results through play. In the diagram, I give a few examples of how to make work through play:

• Innovation Games® have a proven track record of using play to help companies understand their customers and build innovative products.
• Planning Poker is a well-established team based estimation technique that is now complemented by other estimation games.
• Lego® Strategic Play® is a hands-on activity for solving tough problems, team development and creating company strategy.
• The world of facilitation provides a host of engaging activities from team retrospectives to Open Space.

For more information, check out some ways I help clients with bring play to work.

Play for Learning

I have been very involved in games to assist people learning about Agile, Lean, etc. I made a helpful diagram that shows different types of games and what they can be used for. Probably the best place to go to find a game is TastyCupcakes.org – it’s a community-driven and has an ever-growing collection of games. I even volunteer my time to make it better for everyone – that’s how much I care and believe in play as a powerful dynamic.

Of course, play goes well beyond Agile through folks such as training master Thiagi and GameStorming. (Both are on my to-learn list)

Building Play Skills

What if you want to build the skills of your team or organization to harness play as part of daily work? To have play and creativity permeate everyone and everything? For this, your best bet comes from dramatic techniques such as ArtfulMaking and DramaTech. Also, strongly recommended are Improv skills. You may notice that these are not just about creativity, they are also about listening and collaboration as an added bonus.

For results, play on!

I recently realized that my use of Agile Games for learning and doing work is part of something much more profound: play. This is one way to support the creation of  high-performance teams and companies. When work is play, people are engaged and businesses get great results.

Stuart Brown shares an insightful quote:

The opposite of play is not work, it’s depression.

In the following TedX video, Stuart Brown explains the importance of play.

Key Take-Aways

• Lot’s of great science on the importance of play for learning and development.
• Play is hard-wired into our brains (stories of Polar Bear with Husky and Mother with infant)
• Use of play skills in children is critical for adult development of problem solving skills. In particular, play involving hands is key.

For more information, there is Stuart’s book Play: How it Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination, and Invigorates the Soul

Many thanks to Yves Hanoulle who first shared this with me.