First, the question of pulling, pushing, resistance, and steering. This intrigued me. When we focus on organizational transformation (or whatever term you like), all four things come into play.

Pull

The pull comes from the organization’s desire to change. The power of the pull, then, is dependent on their desire and willingness and commitment. Imagine the image at the right – strong desire, willingness, and commitment. Now imagine a chihuahua pulling the plow. Would you achieve the same success in the same time? Probably not.

How about the idea of a plow that is pulled, but not pushed or steered. How would it be if the oxen were left to their own devices here? The plow would fall over, and either they’d keep going until they got bored, or they’d get stuck because the plow got stuck on something.

The importance of pull is that it’s nearly impossible to achieve change without some amount of pull, while at the same time, pull is not enough by itself.

Push

Then let’s consider push. Many of us approach our consulting/coaching roles as if our job is to provide a giant push. This just doesn’t work. If there’s no pull, then no matter how hard we try to push, we’re not going to achieve success quickly. Imagine a cruise ship or one of those massive oil tankers. Yes, their default mode of propulsion and steering is from the rear – push. It takes a long time to change the direction of a ship like that, because of the inertia of the ship and the resistance of the water.

Now imagine adding a tugboat at the front of the ship. While neither push nor pull is enough by itself to make a significant change quickly, working together they can effect the change more quickly than otherwise.

So we have the idea of synergy between the organization’s pull, and the change agent’s push. Together, they produce more change more effectively.

Of course, with pull and push working together, you get a linear motion, right?

Resistance

No matter how willing individual people might be, there will be resistance. Sometimes it’s passive resistance: people just keep doing what they’ve always done, not to thwart the change, but because it’s what they know. Sometimes it’s active resistance: people hold fast to their kingdoms or their safety, and change is threatening. Regardless of the reason, there will always be some resistance. In plowing for planting, it’s the earth itself. In the example of our ship, it’s the water. Neither earth nor water is actively resisting, nor is it malicious. Rather, just like organizational processes, water moves in its own way and earth is static in its own way, and you have to work with it rather than against it in order to succeed in effecting change.

Steering

Finally, let’s look at the part that brings them together: steering. Pull without steering is inflexible. The ship will keep moving in one direction. Push without steering is unpredictable. Whether the vagaries of the waves (change) or running into some resistance, pushing can lead to disaster. Consider the Titanic. While they had push and steering, they didn’t apply the steering until it was too late.

And, of course, there are currents in the water that change, and rocks in the ground that resist progress. It takes some attention and thought to recognize and adapt to those currents and obstacles.

We have to consider, therefore, that change is best effected by a combination of pull – the desire to change, push – the drive and incentive and energy, and steering – the intelligence and experience and attention to make decisions on a moment-by-moment basis.

When we find ourselves in coaching/consulting roles, it is a significant challenge to find the balance, and to find the right people/groups to effect that balance.

• Oxen pulling plow: http://www.hobotraveler.com/2007/02/nepal-plowing-field.html
• Train plow: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mclaren237/3101440372/

Individuals and Interactions over Processes and Tools

For those who are not familiar with the Manifesto, what it says about the value statements is: “…while there is value in the items on the right, we value the items on the left more.”

So this bit says “while there is value in Processes and Tools, we value Individuals and Interactions more.”

I always enjoy this one, when presenting or sharing it. First, because I work for ThoughtWorks, where we are experts on processes and tools. Beyond that, though, is the relevance and power in this value statement.

Why do we have processes and tools? I’d argue it’s in service of having to think about those things – the mechanisms and details – less, so that we are free to be creative, productive, and do things other than thinking about the processes and tools.

It’s like my “shower principle”: I wash myself the same way every day. The process is the same every day. As a result, I don’t have to think about the process, and am free to think about other things.

So from this perspective, processes and tools are enablers. They should free us to do the things only we can do, and save us from spending a lot of time thinking about the processes or tools. Developers will frequently tell you that they have strong attachments to their tools-of-choice. Why? Because they know how to use them and don’t have to think about the tools. As a result, they spend most of the time thinking about their code – how to make it better, how to make it satisfy its goals, how to be more creative,…

One of the many things I like about “Agile” and the Agile Manifesto is that they apply to far more than software development. That’s part of what I liked about my exchange with my brother the other day (see “Family Self-organization“). As a brief follow-up, when my brother said to his daughters “I’m offering my iPhone to one of you and $XXX to the other. You decide which is which.”, the girls decided within minutes.

I like this statement from Simon Baker: “Put the right people in the right environment and trust them to get things done.”

Yes, Simon, yes!

Most of what people hear is foreign to what they’re accustomed to. Among other things, there’s a different way of managing their work, organising their work and their team, and communicating with the rest of the organisation.

Inevitably, someone will ask “Is it possible to be successful in adopting these practices without an organisational culture change?”

That’s a hard one, because achieving culture change in a large organisation is like turning an ocean liner. It takes a lot of energy, and doesn’t happen quickly.

And yet, I would say that it is not possible to adopt different practices and methodologies – in this case, specifically, Agile Software Development – without a culture change.

The interfaces between the levels of an organisation change. People who expect status and progress reports are now going to be told “come look at our story wall and our burn-up chart.”

The interfaces between the different peer organisations change. If one organisation is still working in the “old” way, then there are serious challenges in working together with an agile organisation that is doing iterative work.

The interfaces between the agile organisation and its external vendors/partners change. Sometimes, it forces a change of vendors. In the Toyota world of the Toyota Production System, their vendors/partners/suppliers not only had to adopt TPS, but were also treated as though they were part of Toyota. As with so much else in agile, there’s far less us vs. them and far more us.

Recognition changes. Instead of a culture of heroism and a culture of blame, we have a culture of shared commitment, shared responsibility, and shared ownership. As a result, recognition and accomplishment go to the team instead of the individual.

Can it be done? Can you adopt “agile” without an organisational culture change?

I’d say no.

When talking about Agile teams as compared to Waterfall teams, one of the things that has become apparent is that Waterfall is also a Culture of Heroism. In fact, in many ways, much of Western culture is about heroism. We laud the star athlete, the exceptional business person, the standout author, and so on. In many cases, it seems to be recognition and acclaim for the individual over the group, or at least the individual separate from the group.

Agile teams foster a culture of collaboration and cooperation. That’s not to say that there’s not room for individual excellence, effort, and achievement. I would say that high performant teams tend to focus on the success of the team over the individual. Is Agile more socialist, while Waterfall is more capitalist? I’m not sure, but it seems that way.

Regardless, there are a number of side effects of a Culture of Heroism:

• Ego-driven achievement
• Unhealthy competition (although sometimes it’s quite healthy)
• Rewards that – in recognizing the individual – discourage the others on the team
• A focus on the individual rather than the group goals

This is an interesting thing for me, because I’m highly competitive, and am happy to have individual recognition. On the other hand, I believe strongly in subordinating my ego to the purposes and goals of the team, and that the success of the team is what’s important*. Since my ego still wins out at times, I recognize that this is not just a struggle for me, but for others as well.

We’re raised in a culture of individualism and heroism, then we are invited into the Agile fold, and asked to shift our focus and our energy from ourselves to our teams.

I’ll continue to explore this as I get the opportunity to work with more teams. I will say that I’ve seen the culture of heroism everywhere I’ve gone, in one form or another, and believe firmly that the change to a culture of collaboration must come from the leadership as well as the team.

At 11am, I was on slide 4 in the PowerPoint deck. The reason it was moving so slowly is that these people are STARVING for information and guidance. They know they’re doing “quagile” (quasi-agile), they want to move closer to “real” Agile, and they are interested and eager and articulate.

It fascinated me all day, as they took what I was presenting and ran with it. Some heated discussions, some passionate, some involving the whole group of 15, some a subset. It went on all day.

It’s frustrating to me that they’re so eager, and facing such challenges in achieving Agile adoption. And yet it’s the same pattern…

The development team wants it, the QAs want it, the BAs and PMs want it – the “business” and the “customer” want the same old thing.

Sigh.

This is very cool stuff.

When I get to the Agile Manifesto, I dig into what the four main concepts mean to us as we embrace Agile.

Right now, what’s on my mind is the third value: customer collaboration over contract negotiation.

Here are some of the key points that I find in this statement:

1. Contracts are only put in place so that we can enforce them when we believe that the other party has not met their obligations under the contract.
2. Contracts imply a lack of trust.
3. If you’re actually talking to your customer on an ongoing basis, then contracts generally become superfluous.
4. Requirements specs and design specs are software contracts.
5. See point #3.

As I’ve been doing coaching and training, I’ve had the opportunity to see a variety of different organizations and situations. What has become clear to me is this:

Some organizations that embrace Agile have a culture of openness, safety, respect, and friendliness, where the people who work there are happy to go to work each day. Those employees have a feeling of pleasure and pride in what they do and the people they get to do it with.

Then there are organizations that are built upon a Culture of Blame.  Contracts are about blame.  Specifications are – at least to an extent – about blame. Project plans, which on the surface are about predictability and budgeting and resource allocation, are also about blame. What I’ve seen happen in these organizations, more than once, is that Agile adoptions fail in the worst case, and struggle in the best case.

The problem is that their “leadership” (quotes intentional) are mired in Waterfall practices. The irony of this is that – while management is operating under the fallacious assumption that these practices work – these practices have been demonstrated repeatedly and measurably to fail.

“The first formal description of the waterfall model is often cited to be an article published in 1970 by Winston W. Royce (1929–1995), although Royce did not use the term “waterfall” in this article. Royce was presenting this model as an example of a flawed, non-working model (Royce 1970).” (from Wikipedia)

What seems to go hand in glove with this Waterfall mindset is the contract. These managers need to have specs and project plans so that they can figure out who is at fault when the project is late, over budget, or of low quality. Sadly, those of us who have embraced Agile – and many who still live in the Waterfall world – would tell you that at least one of those three – lateness, over budget, or low quality – is pretty well guaranteed.

Someone asked me recently whether it was possible to succeed in adopting Agile without there being a cultural change.

My answer is a resounding “no!” Without the move to a culture of trust and respect, without the true support – not just lip service or permission – of representatives of “leadership” at all levels*, Agile adoption is very unlikely to succeed.

A Culture of Blame is not always obvious – although frequently it is obvious. But there will generally be smells that a reasonably discerning individual can detect that make it clear that the Culture of Blame is present.