Ask for the moon

…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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• Medium » Joshua Kerievsky » Ask for the Moon