Achieving Change By Being Agile (As Well As Lean)

Personnelzone recently listed an article entitled Change Management by Philip Black as one of its 10 most accessed of the past year, and some key observations it shared were

Change management is a topic with which every organisation grapples. In today's environment we are seeing traditional marketplaces undergoing significant change in competitors, customer expectations and business models. All this requires comprehensive change in process, culture, behaviour and direction. Change management, it seems, is more important than ever. 

Lean - and increasingly, Agile - are methodologies being used in business transformation programmes that encourage collaboration, communication and focus through certain practices and techniques. Agile may be new to some readers so it is worth a brief introduction. Agile hails from the software development world where it was pioneered over a decade ago as a means to accelerate IT projects and support focused,  incremental and valuable deliveries. Agile itself is a change programme that challenges traditional thinking, and is expanding beyond the realms of IT and challenging how projects are delivered. It is outcome oriented, and relies on cross-functional teams solving problems together rather than handing work across organisational boundaries.

Cross-functional teams are a core part of agile methods. They focus on a goal and use each other's strengths to deliver quickly in order to learn. The beauty of this is that all the while everyone's knowledge and skills are increasing through shared working and understanding of the different domains of business. This is a powerful tool when delivering change.

The idea that cross functional teams would solve problems and deliver change by leveraging each others strengths and their shared understanding of different business domains is a compelling one, but for many organisations it's not always a dynamic that is easy to create. To achieve these outcomes, the work that FranklinCovey does with the individuals involved is to first consider their mindsets and their belief in the potential for '3rd alternative outcomes' and the value these can deliver, both for them and their organisation. In our experience, it is only if they perceive this value that the team members involved are likely to invest time and energy in the new ways of working that will help them interact with greater levels of trust, communicate more effectively and in turn channel their diverse perspectives into real synergy for the business.