Agility Will Fail!

Let’s get straight to the point: most agile transformations are shallow, marketing-driven, and designed to attract young talent with the illusion of a dream workplace.

The reality is different: traditional companies, with obsolete management schemes dressed up in pretty offices, with lighting and tables that look more like a trendy local coffee shop than a traditional workspace. But people are still stuck in daily stress, delivery pressure, the urgency that comes from poor organization, and, of course, high turnover.

Agility isn’t a new way to “squeeze” and “pressure” people under the excuse of self-management. If you have doubts, ask yourself this: is the amount of work assigned to you and your team consistent with the working hours available? If you’re still unsure, follow up with this one: are the conditions actually there for those results to be delivered within the available time and with reasonable effort? If you’re thinking “it depends,” you’ve already fallen for it.

How many friends and people do you know who’ve been through an “agile transformation” and whose day-to-day work reality didn’t change one bit? All they got were new management tools and, surely, a lot of sticky notes on the walls.

How Do You Actually Do a Transformation Right?

• Forget the word Transformation and start talking about Evolution. Change is an evolutionary, incremental process. If you want to be agile in your processes, be agile in how you think and act. Doing Scrum isn’t enough on its own.
• A big organizational change takes a lot of time, but small changes can happen right away, and, added up over time, produce that bigger change. Forget about “transformations” that take years, and think instead about “changes” that take days or weeks.
• Think as a team. You don’t need anyone’s permission to work as a team, collaborate, and improve the immediate environment around you. The work environment doesn’t depend exclusively on bosses or executives - from your own seat, you can improve the spirit of the people around you.

What Does a Successful Organization-Wide Evolution Actually Require?

• Support from leaders - bosses and natural leaders alike. People need to actually want the change and be willing to work for it. If leaders don’t actively take part, that’s a clear signal of disinterest.
• Something beyond processes - processes are only an expression of a team’s work. Good processes aren’t the first step toward high performance - good teams are. Don’t confuse processes with teams.
• The organization’s culture - if the culture doesn’t support the evolution, take the time to understand why, and what options you have to deal with that reality.
• Agile isn’t sticking notes on the wall, it isn’t dropping documentation, and it isn’t giving up on working and collaborating. Agility isn’t the absence of governance - it’s building pragmatic governance with less bureaucracy.
• There’s no single agile method. Hybrid is the new Agile. Work with people who have experience, inside and outside your organization, and try to shape that experience to fit your own reality. Small improvements mean you won’t be able to do everything “by the book” from day one.

It saddens me a little to see so many companies start narrow “transformation” efforts with the naive idea of getting results faster. Nobody ever explained to them that we’re talking about “agility,” not “speed.”

A lot of managers and executives just expect faster results, and agility, like any new management model, becomes an excuse to invest less and get more.

Not All Is Lost

Still, among so many of these efforts, some real cultural changes are starting to shine through. An agile mindset resonates not just with new companies, but also with a younger workforce drawn to new principles and personal and professional drivers.

Agility, as a concept, has a lot to offer traditional management models, and teamwork can be strengthened through plenty of common practices and techniques. The trick is to stop looking for magic, instant solutions, and instead face the challenges that human nature itself puts in front of us.