Confused about adoption vs. transformation?  Check out ways to make progress with Culture Gaps.

Agile Mindset – Do you want it?

Jon shows the following short video of IDEO design group to illustrate the Agile mindset and the type of servant leadership needed to support it.

After watching the video with executives who want Agile, he checks in with them:

• “Is this what you really want?”
• “Are you prepared to change your own behaviour to support this?”
• “Are you ready to go first?”

The approach outlined here is to go big or go home. Go big means to help transform an organization or division. Go home, means that rather than help adopt a few Agile practices that may disrupt the organization, to stop work and looks for clients who really want Agile.

Leaders Go First!

The remainder of the presentation is about how leaders can go first by adopting Agile principles as a management team. Jon summarizes this as:

• Live the values
• Lead by example
• Be as transparent as the teams they lead

Here are some example activities for the management team:

• Public display of values
• Visualize projects and plans
• Visual management of key information: people, technology, etc
• Daily stand-up meeting in public place

Thank you Jon, for sharing this at Agile 2011.

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The essential message is that we can create positive environments and emotions to create an upward spiral of openness, resilience, and better performance.

This is in line with my use of Agile as a way to transform the world of work. And of getting innovation and results through play.

The flow of the diagram below is: Positive emotions –> Expand’s Awareness –> Other thinking –> Mind Meld

Dr. Fredrickson argues that Positivity is a lifestyle change that can result in a upward spiral of positivity with all the associated benefits. Masking the negative does not help, we actually need to focus on the positive – at least three positive events for every negative event.

I really appreciated Barabara’s message, however, the one part I will differ on is that in many environments we need to create trust and safety to reduce the background noise of negativity. This needs to happen in tandem with positivity.

You can learn more through Barabara’s website or book.

Update: Full Video is available on Agile Alliance Website.

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This video is pretty long, but the best bits for me were in the first 12 minutes. Some great parts:

• Letter using Remember the Future for remembering why the student will have been wildly successful (3:43)
• You can give an “A” grade to anyone – to transform the relationship (4:25)
• “How Fascinating!” as a celebration of errors to maintain an available state (10:53)

Also, Benjamin Zander has a book with this title (haven’t read it yet).

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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.

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For more information, please see Agile Culture Series Reading Guide.

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In this post, we’ll review some common strategies for handling cultural mismatches.

The Big Pitcure

I almost posted this blog without a summary picture and I am glad I stopped myself. Once I made the drawing below, I saw there are two main strategies (adoption and transformation) and sub-strategies within them. This post will walk you through the options and when to use them.

Work with your Culture

This is the recommendation from Schneider’s book – How to make your Culture work: work with your culture; don’t fight it. I’ll outline some ways below.

#1 Build on Your Current Culture

The idea here is pick an approach that is compatible with the current culture of the organization.

One way I interpret the diagram on the right (see related article) is a prescription of what aspects of Agile/Lean to focus on based on company culture:

• Control Culture? –> Lead with Kanban
• Competence Culture –> Lead with Craftsmanship
• Collaboration or Cultivation Culture –> Lead with aspects of Agile that align with the organizations culture. e.g. Vision and Retrospectives for Cultivation Culture.

Kanban? But it’s not Agile!

Some really smart Agile folks think than Kanban is a sell-out: That it is a watered down, inferior form of Agile that doesn’t measure up. (I mostly disagree with this sentiment).

This reminds me of a story Craig Larman shared at a local user group meeting: “My favourite process is Unified Process. I do it in a very Agile way. But, I never recommend it to my clients since it is too easily interpreted as Waterfall and they won’t get the benefits. Instead I use an explicit Agile method. It’s not my preference, but I use it and it is better for my clients.” So, even if you like Scrum better, your client may thank you for helping them with Kanban.

So my view on the topic is that it doesn’t really matter which is better in some abstract sense. All that matters is what will help this client the most and make peoples lives better. See Kanban is a Gateway Drug for more thoughts on this topic.

#2 Work with Compatible Cultures

Consider the diagram to the right. It shows that although the easiest option is to work with the existing dominant culture (in this case Control) it is possible to explore adjacent cultures since these are more aligned. Choice of direction may be guided by what the secondary non-dominant culture of the organization is. The idea here is to work with the culture, and not go against  the grain.

#3 Create Adapters between Different Cultures

Another way to handle this problem of cultural mismatch is to create barriers between different cultures. The idea here is to create a firewall or facade that lets the different cultural groups function with little friction.

Israel Gat talks about creating a boundary object such as automated tests and technical debt measurements to avoid conflict between development (collaboration) and operations (control). For this, and more on ways that you can make your culture work see Israel Gat’s presentation and conference session.

Joseph Pelrine has a great video on InfoQ – Dealing with the Organizational Challenges of Agile where he talks through some models including using people as buffers (Scrum Master) to translate between internal team culture and the external culture of the team. This is an amazing video that goes into much more theoretical arguments well beyond culture, so consider watching the full one hour.

One successful pattern I have seen is for Agile teams to create Gantt charts to keep the PMO happy. In some companies, this is necessary waste. It brings no value to the organization, but it is currently required for the organization to function. Of course you could stick to your principles and refuse, however, you may find that when the organizational antibodies that attack, they are stronger than your management support. Or it’s not worth the fight at this time.

Change your Culture

OK, this is hard. Really hard. Culture is singularly persistent in organizations.

What about Visionary Leadership?

Conventional wisdom is that innovative companies with visionary leadership can also transform to Agile. This is why you will often hear Agile coaches say that you need strong management support. But is this true?

Some people might point to the success of a company like SalesForce.com as an example of how they were able to change their culture. On the other hand, in the article Six Common Mistakes that Salesforce didn’t make, it is stated that “The leadership saw the transformation not so much as a wholly new approach, but rather a return to the firm’s core values.” So, this would then not be an example.

I vaguely recall a similar story about getting back to the original culture with Yahoo, who also did and enterprise transition to Scrum.

If you have any case studies, please feel free to share via email or comments.

Welcome back, Kotter

No, I’m not talking about the TV show. I’m talking about the Kotter model of organizational change. It recognizes the eight stages that are seen in successful organizational change efforts.

Some coaches in the Agile community are aware of the Kotter model and a few are actively using it to help companies achieve an Agile mindset. I am not aware of any case studies where a company has undergone transformation to Agile using this model (but we don’t do a good job as a community collecting case studies so it is unclear how heavily to weight this).

So, if you are thinking about changing company culture, this is pretty much the only clear transition model available. And yes, if you are a coach, you do need to understand organizational development to do your job well. Sad, but true.

So what?

As a coach, you need to know what game you are playing. Are you helping management transform their organization or are you helping them adopt a culturally-fit approach? Hopefully, you are not rolling the dice with inspect and adapt.

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Why do nearly all software projects fail to balance short term choices with long term consequences?

Through game-play you will experience how hard it is to make effective choices. Game learnings will be tied into well-known models in and beyond software such as Technical Debt, Stephen Covey’s Production Capability, and Alistair Cockburn’s theory of competing games.

Recipe

• Game Objective: Participants experience the attraction of short-term thinking and feel the long-term consequences. The game helps executives and managers understand the importance of investment in sustainable development practices. The game is intended to help them get through a Red Pill, Blue Pill moment.
• Number of participants: 6 to 50 (Has been playtested with 40 at XP Toronto User Group Meeting).
• Team size: 3 to 5 people per team.
• Duration: 90 to 110 minutes
• Materials: Game cards (can print or write by hand), pennies (15 per team), dice (two per team)
• Setup: (optional) video projector, tables for group work, whiteboard or flipchart.
• Credits: This game was created by Alistair McKinnell and Michael Sahota.

Session Timetable

1. Intro & Motivate Game [3 min]
2. Break into teams of four or five people. [2 min]
3. Setup Game [5 min]
4. Year 1 [30+ min]
5. Year 2 [20+ min]
6. Year 3 [15 min]
7. Debrief [15 min]

There is a backdrop story that motivates the game situation and is used throughout the game to provide entertainment and inject new rules.

What’s Your Choice?

Here is a photo showing the project choices available to management teams:

Game Narrative

Year One

Resources

• Sustaining Agility Game Options – PDF to print 3″ x 5″ index cards (one set per team)
• Sustaining Agility Score Sheet – Excel spreadsheet to print (one sheet per team)

Facilitation Tips

• It is useful to create memorable even stereotyped characters to help participants connect with the storyline. e.g. CEO has a Texan drawl, CFO is from NYC, Consultant is from California.
• Write Rule fragments on flipchart or whiteboard so everyone can see the rules. I suggest skipping text and just put keywords such as “Invest –>+1D6 Production Capacity”.
• If you have not played the game before, I suggest you playtest it on your own.
• It may be helpful to write up rules on flipchart in advance and then share them when it is time.

Feedback from first run (XPToronto)

• “Fantastic, Magical” – Jorgen Baker
• “Real pressures bottled up” – Alex Aitken
• “Good fun, valuable, opportunity to learn” – Tom Huras
• “Thought-provoking, Fun, Interesting” – Nick Faulkener
• “Lively, Interactive, Team-focused” – Hedi Buchner

Feedback from second run (Agile Games 2011)

• “This game relates hugely to my current work situation where we struggle daily to do thing the right way or increase our technical debt. This game can give great insight to our companies leader to make the right decisions as much as possible.” – A.F.
• “Very interesting game. I’m going to try it myself.” – A.J.
• “Good mix of presentation and game. Provided great thoughts about career goals, revenue and investing in production capability and the future.” – J.V.
• “Great, practical game about strategy and the impact of long-term choices and short-term consequences” – T.M.

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Today, I am likely to ruffle a lot of feathers by observing that Kanban aligns well with control culture. So, if you are a consultant or coach, this is good news since Agile plays badly to companies that have a control culture. I view todays post as a refinement of my earlier post – Scrum or Kanban? Yes! – where I argued that some situations are a better fit for Kanban vs. Scrum.

What is Kanban?

I am choosing a recent and very insightful post by David Anderson – The Principles of the Kanban Method as the basis for my analysis. David is arguable the leader of the Kanban/Software school with his book, very active mailing list and Lean Software and Systems Consortium.

Kanban is mostly aligned with Control Culture

The cultural model used in the analysis below is based on the work of William Schneider. If you are not familiar with it, I suggest you check out my summary of his book. The terms I am using have a very precise meaning, so please refer to this for additional context.

As you can see the main focus is about Control. Control cultures live and breathe policies and process. Kanban has this in spades. Control culture is also about creating a clear and orderly structure for managing the company which is exactly what Kanban is about.

Control cultures focus on the company/system (vs. people) and current state (vs. future state). This is a good description for the starting place for Kanban.

What is really interesting from a cultural analysis perspective is the principle: Improve collaboratively using models and scientific method. These two concepts really don’t mix, so how can this work? According to Schneider, other cultural elements can be present as long as they support the core culture. So having some people focus is fine as long as it supports controlling the work.

The notion of evolutionary or controlled change can also be compatible with a control culture if it is used to maintain the existing organizational structure and hierarchy.

Wait a minute, Kanban is Agile, isn’t it?

Mike Burrow’s made a very influential post: Learning together: Kanban and the Twelve Principles of Agile Software. In it he argues that Kanban satisfies each of the Agile Principles. Now that I am studying this from the perspective of culture, I see that this is in fact not the case or perhaps only weakly the case.

Agile and Kanban for sure share a common community, and many practices may be cross-adopted, however, they are fundamentally promoting different perspectives. Agile is first about people and Kanban is first about the system. Yes, people are important in Kanban too, but this is secondary to the system.

So is Kanban Agile? I used to think so. I don’t any more.

Addendum

This is an update to this post where I need to clarify a few things:

1. I love Kanban and think it is great. We need more of it in the world.
2. I am not saying people who use Kanban are control freaks or prefer command and control. What I am saying is that if your client has a control culture, then Kanban is a good thing to talk to them about (vs. Scrum).
3. I am not saying Kanban is incompatible with Agile. I am saying that they are complementary perspectives.

So What?

You may be burning with curiosity about what the implications of this are. Stay tuned for upcoming posts.

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What do we discover about Agile culture when we apply the Schneider model? How does this inform us about approaching Agile adoption or transformation?

Michael Spayd has done the community a great service by undertaking a culture survey of Agilistas. The results are very striking: it shows that the two dominant cultures are collaboration and cultivation, with competence a distant third and control barely even on the map. So one can say clearly, Agile is all about the people. Interestingly, the survey included Scrum, XP, as well as Lean-Kanban folks. So thanks, Michael!

What does the Agile Manifesto and Principles informs us about Cultural?

I took a look at all the values and principles and plotted the ones that show a cultural bias on the following chart:

The chart illustrates  the same finding as Michael Spayd’s survey – Agile is all about the people. It is aligned with a company cultures of collaboration or cultivation.

An Explanation Please!

Some of you may be curious as to how I arrived at my result.

For each value or principle, I analyzed how well it was aligned with each of the cultures. If there was a strong affinity, I associated it with that culture. For example, Customer Collaboration was very easy since it has the word collaboration in it and identifies success through people working together.

Some items seemed to be orthogonal to culture. For example, working software, didn’t really seem to suggest one culture over another. Well, it may weakly suggest competence culture, but only a bit.

Other items were a best guess based on my current understanding. It would be great to have a workshop to see if we can come up with an even better model.

I could go through each item and argue why I placed or chose to omit it. But that’s pretty boring and wouldn’t really change the result much.

So, there you have it: Agile is about people!

So what?

Consider for a moment what happens when foreign cultural elements are injected into an organization. Well, it’s like the human body: unless the body can be fooled into accepting the foreign tissue, it will be rejected.

More on what this means for Agile adoption and transformation in upcoming posts.

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I finally had time to read The Reengineering Alternative: A plan for making your current culture work by William Schneider. If you are at all concerned about successful Agile adoption, then this is a must-read.

Before reading the book, I already had a pretty good idea about it thanks to a private seminar with Michael Spayd and a conference session by Israel Gat – How we do things around here in order to succeed. But when reading the book, I crystallized my thinking about a whole number of disparate experiences and open questions.

In this post, I will cover the key concepts of the book. Analysis and connections to Agile will follow in subsequent posts.

Schneider Culture Model

In the diagram below, there are four cultures depicted – one in each quadrant. Each has a NAME, a “short quote”, a picture, and some words the characterize that quadrant. As you read through this, you may will get a sense of where your company is.

There are also two axis that indicate where the focus or an organization is:

1. Horizontal: People Oriented (Personal) vs. Company Oriented (Impersonal)
2. Vertical: Reality Oriented (Actuality) vs. Possibility Oriented

This provides an a way to see relationships between the cultures. For example, Control culture is more compatible with Collaboration or Competence cultures than with Cultivation culture.

Key points about culture

• Management guru Peter Drucker says “Culture … is singularly persistent … In fact, changing behaviour works only if it is based on the existing ‘culture’”
• No one culture type is better than another. The book details the strengths and weaknesses of each so check it out if you are curious to learn more.
• Depending on the type of work, one type of culture may be a better fit.
• Companies typically have a dominant culture with aspects from other cultures. This is fine as long as those aspects serve the dominant culture.
• Different departments or groups may have different cultures. (e.g. development vs. operations)
• Differences can lead to conflict.

How to make Culture work

The starting point for making culture work is understanding it. The book describes a survey you can give to staff (Example Survey from Book in Survey Monkey – N.B. You can’t see the results). The book suggests using this as a starting point for culture workshops with a diverse group of staff.

There are several suggestions for using cultural information to guide decision-making:

1. Evaluate key problems in the context of culture. Sometimes changes are needed to bring the culture into alignment with the core culture.
2. Sometimes the culture is too extreme (e.g. too much cultivation without any controls – or vice versa!), and elements from other cultures are needed to bring it back into balance.
3. Consider the possibility of creating creating interfaces/adapters/facades to support mismatches between departments or groups.

Well, that’s the book in a nutshell. More to follow on how this relates to Agile.

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