How do we navigate the Agile Industrial Complex to make sure we are getting the right people and solving the right problems? Most of the A.I.C. revolves around a coach or a team of coaches. I’m going to talk this week about how to go about starting a turn towards agility.
Before you start, make sure you are focused on hiring help for an organizational problem, not a departmental or team problem. I wrote a blog post on this last week, make sure you check it out.
If you are asking an organization-level question – and you understand that you’ll be changing the way the entire organization works (this means the entire corporation: marketing, sales, HR, finance, no really… everything) in order to achieve better results – then you’re ready to look for some coaches to help you through it.
By now you know that this isn’t going to be easy. Having some help is a good thing.
The first thing to understand about an agile transformation is what I call the Transformation Paradox:
You become agile by being agile.
What this means is that agile is not a noun. It is not a person, place, or thing. It is an adjective. You use agile practices, behaviors, and mindsets applied to the action of accomplishing your organization’s goals. It’s not about being agile. It’s about being better at reaching your goals.
My first piece of advice: Avoid choosing an agile framework when you first start out.
Do not get tempted by SAFe, Scrum at Scale, or any other framework. There is no framework for “Agile practices at company XYZ”. You and your team, guided by a good coach, help you author this.
Instead of trying to find a framework, you want to find one coach, or maybe a few at most, who can do the following:
- Work with you to flesh out the desired measurable outcome of the effort invested in moving to a more agile way of working.
- Build a trusting relationship with you and the rest of your executive team.
- Chemistry and trust are critical to success but are hard to objectively measure. You have to be able to work with this person.
- Chemistry and trust are critical to success but are hard to objectively measure. You have to be able to work with this person.
- Objectively, and honestly, look at the flow of work through the organization and spot the issues affecting it.
- The coach has to have access to all corners of the organization. The coach has to be able, to be frank with you, and you have to listen. This is why having the correct problem to solve is so important.
- The coach has to have access to all corners of the organization. The coach has to be able, to be frank with you, and you have to listen. This is why having the correct problem to solve is so important.
- The coach needs to have experience and knowledge of multiple patterns, tools, practices and can use his or her experience, backed by data and facts, to present a unique combination of actions and behaviors that bring your organization closer towards an agile mindset.
The best way to find these coaches? Look towards individual coaches or small, independent practices. Individual expert coaches will have a profile site, some sort of an LLC, or otherwise are incorporated, and should have a portfolio of previous companies where they did work.
Here’s a quick tip: Surf Twitter and LinkedIn agile groups.
Watch for those who ask good questions and foster good discussions, and start from there.
If a coach or agile practice leads with a pre-made, certification-heavy framework rather than a business outcome that they worked with you to create, reconsider whether working with them is in the best interest of your organization.
A lot of large staffing agencies have started to build or purchase agile practices. Their recruiting network can get a lot of coaches in front of you quickly, and it can be easier to have another organization do the vetting for you. But take heed. They also have disadvantages. Sales staff, tempted by sales goals, may advise you to hire more coaches more quickly than is appropriate, leading them to push quantity and not quality. Trust, but verify.
I personally believe you have enough problems as a business leader without also dealing with a third party organization trying to hit some sales goal that is not aligned with your business outcome.
Like my tip above about surfing Twitter and LinkedIn, you can help detect certification factories by what they post. If they post lots of certification classes, offer an “easy button”, and put more emphasis on their title than their outcomes, then consider what their focus is.
They should be focused on you.
Finally – do not set aside a huge staff budget for agile transformations. Most successful agile transformations start with a single team experimenting outside the normal constraints of the organization. A single coach can run this experiment. This is how your organization discovers what will actually work in your real, actual business.
If you hire ten coaches all at once, you invite a lot of thrash and chaos into your organization as they try to figure out what works. Please don’t do that.
Run one experiment, with one, or maybe a few senior-level coaches. Then work with them on how to scale what is proven to work, by having done it already at your company.
Hire a coach. Work with that coach to determine a definition of success, a logical first step, and then fund and support that step.
Plan. Do. Check. Act. Repeat.
Photo by Micheile Henderson on Unsplash