Ask for the moon

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…in a large, complex organisation, you’re invited to start and lead an large scale agile transformation. Multiple teams and dozens or hundreds of people need to become more agile.

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Organisational change is hard and complex. Making sure the essential start conditions are in place boosts the chance for success. Some organisations are unfit to start such a change, so any effort is just a waste.

A list of essential and optional ‘asks’ to discuss during your first engagement.

  • asking for optimal conditions for kicking butt;
  • talking about ideal executive support;
  • people who are excited to try a new way of working (rather than have a process imposed on them);
  • a genuinely cross-functional community of dedicated people (“everyone needed to be successful”);
  • an ideal workplace for collaboration and concentration;
  • training to help develop essential agile skills;
  • coaching to help cement those skills;
  • chartering to align everyone on a clear vision/mission/objectives;
  • retroprospectives to help the community continuously improve;
  • coaching-the-coaches to help the organization build capability to help others learn genuine agility.

Essential for success is:

  • Executive Support, in order to:
    • slay any impediments;
    • take quick and decisions and secure its implementation;
    • lead by example.
  • Assessment, in order to:
    • gauge organisational fitness for adopting agile;
    • provide a safety tool to discover whether people want to improve;
    • find out how we may best go about making improvements;
    • get people to know each other better in other ways;
    • improve understanding of the current and desired state of affairs;
    • explore problems;
    • consider future directions;
    • educe effective and pleasant ways of working rather than imposing it;
    • excite the majority to move forward—creates energy.
  • Cross-Functional Community, in order to:
    • perform as a committed, cross-functional community;
    • focus on a whole product rather than individual tasks;
    • delight customers with amazing products and services that fulfil needs.
  • An Awesome Workspace, in order to:
    • allow focused work as a small group or individually;
    • create a commons where people collaborate naturally;
    • publish information radiators for key information;
    • facilitate mobbing and pairing.
  • Training & Coaching, in order to:
    • maximise the return on coaching instead of wasting it;
    • make the training practical and making it stick;
    • expose the whole team of teams to agile & lean leadership, planning, evolving;
  • Chartering, in order to:
    • co-create, refine and live a shared vision, mission, objectives, key results, and outcomes, as well as community working agreements;
    • foster connective tissue between all levels;
    • facilitate rapid and sound decision-making near the action as well as decision-making with oversight;
    • secure aligned autonomy.
  • Retroprospectives, in order to:
    • continuously evolve and improve;
    • boost the flow of value creating work by an infinite stream of experiments, small and large;
    • fuel the joy of meaningful work.
  • Coach-the-Coaches, in order to:
    • accelerate agile adoption;
    • free up the mercenary, often external, coaches—autonomy;
    • make agility stick organisation-wide.

Therefore:

Organisational change is hard and complex. Making sure the essential start conditions are in place boosts the chance for success. Some organisations are unfit to start such a change, so any effort is just a waste.

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