Leading Agility "Inside-Out"

This presentation
was given at
RallyON 2012 in
Boulder, CO.

I have include help
text for those not
attending to “hear
my voice over”
through the
slides...

Leading Agility “Inside-Out”
@petebehrens

© 2012 Trail Ridge Consulting, LLC

Adopting Agility

Why is it that some organizations grow
and thrive on agility while most plateau
and lose their agility over time?
Sustainability

Why?
Agility
Training &
Coaching

Internal Learning

0 1 2 3 4 5
© 2012 Trail Ridge Consulting, LLC Years

Most Agile Adoptions

Ou Process
tsi
de
-In
Structure
Most agile adoptions
leverage an “outside-in”
approach. Starting with Culture
a process like Scrum or
Kanban, they expose
impediments within the Values
organization.

Roles

Behaviors


“Outside-In” Adoption

Agile doesn’t stick because this
outside-in approach runs into
systemic structures and values
of the organization which don’t
align to agility.

Agility
Training &
Coaching

Internal Learning

0 1 2 3 4 5

“Inside-Out” Adoption

Process

t
Structure -Ou
An “inside-out”
ide
approach looks takes a Ins
different approach. It
starts with an Culture
assessment and
discussion of culture
and values within the Values
organization, then looks
at the structures to
support those values. Roles

Behaviors


“Inside-Out” Adoption

With an “inside-out” approach, agile sticks
because it builds on values and creates an
organizational architecture to support
agility - much like a software architecture
supports scalability and growth. Sustainability

Agility
Training &
Coaching

0 1 2 3 4 5

The Golden Circle

Process
Simon Sinek
talks about
an inside-out Structure
approach
and how
people align Culture
with leaders
who drive What How Why
organizations Values
in this way.

Roles

Behaviors
Simon Sinek - The Golden Circle


Starting with Why

People align with shared values
imbedded in a message about
“why” we do what we do.

t
ha
Leader

W
ow
hy

H
W

Simon Sinek - Start with Why


Steve Denning

Value

t
ha
e
riv

W
ow
D
hy

H
es
alu
W

V

Stephen Denning reiterates this same message in
his recent book. Leaders must focus on values to
drive business value.


Culture

We start with “why” - Culture


A language for Culture

William Schneider - The
Reengineering Alternative William Schneider provides us a model for evaluating
organizational culture.

Think of culture as a “personality” of an organization. They
are not right or wrong, just different ways to succeed.

Control Culture

Socialization base in military organizations
Structured hierarchically, focused functionally

Control Culture

t ive” ” ”
rita “Sys
tem cess
“A utho “Pro

Control cultures are impersonal and focused on
the systems and processes to create predictability
and performance through repeatability.


Collaboration Culture

Socialization base in the family or athletic team
Strong focus on people and interactions
Success through building and developing teams

Collaboration Culture

e o ver 5”
” “Peopl +2
=
“ We cess
” “2
Pro
Collaboration cultures are personal cultures who
value the relationships and people over the
process and systems. They believe teams are
stronger when they work together.

Competence Culture

Socialization base in the university
Strong focus on expertise and knowledge
Value competition against a standard of excellence

Competence Culture

” ”
ar y O ut
s io n or
“ Vi ce” “Up
ellen
“ Exc
Competence cultures are impersonal and focused
on the work products or research. It is less about
the people and more about what they accomplish.
They are intense and competitive environments.


Cultivation Culture

Socialization base in religious institutions
Strong focus on growth and faith
System of beliefs to accomplish goals


Cultivation Culture

ef ul” n ic
”
ive”
s a t
Pu r po “Org “C rea
“

Cultivation cultures are personal and focused on
growth of people and of the world beyond their
organization. They are quite fluid and organic
structures and value learning and growing.


Core Culture Overview

Actuality
COLLABORATION CONTROL

Impersonal
Personal

The dimensions of culture...
Personal vs. Impersonal (left to right)
Today vs. Future (top to bottom)

CULTIVATION COMPETENCE

Possibility

McKinsey IT Culture

This is a cultural signature of a
very agile company. They have
Control been agile for over 4 years.

Collaboration

Competence

Cultivation

10 20 30 40 50 60
Percent Response

Cultural Visioning
They vision for cultural change every 18
months - this is a sample cultural visioning
session using a Sailboat metaphor.


Cultural Visioning
Based on the visioning, they foster agility teams to focus on growing their
culture - in this case through recruitment, globally integrating their offices,
expanding beyond their organization and getting past “good” to be “great”.

They will support 4 separate agility teams to work on these for 18 months.


McKinsey IT Agile Path

Their agility has not only grown
within IT, but now as multiple
Org growth
services they sell to their clients
through agile coaching and 150 -> 400!
software development projects.

Org growth
9 presentations at
75 -> 150!
Presented AgileIndia 2012
@Agile2009 - 2011
Agility

0 1 2 3 4 5

Salesforce R&D Culture

Here is another signature of one of the
most documented agile companies in
Control the world - Salesforce.com

Collaboration

Competence

Cultivation

10 15 20 25 30 35

Percent Response

SaaS R&D Competence Culture

> 1,500 in R&D,
IT, Ops, Mktg

Agility
250 in R&D

Salesforce.com is highly competitive. Not only in their marketplace, but as
a culture in their every day work. Working at Salesforce.com is intense.

Unlike McKinsey IT, when Salesforce.com grows in agility, they look at it to
be the best agile company in the world. That’s their culture.

0 1 2 3 4 5

Salesforce.com Results

They look to measure their success internally...

of respondents would recommend ADM to
94%
their colleagues inside or outside
Salesforce.com Source: Scrum Gathering 2008 - Salesforce.com Keynote Address


Salesforce.com Results

And externally. They are one of the fastest
growing companies in the world since their
adoption of agile in 2006.


Salesforce IT Culture

But not all of Salesforce.com is culturally
aligned. Their IT staff shows a cultivative culture.
Control This exposed challenges in shared projects.

Collaboration

Competence

Cultivation

10 15 20 25 30 35

Percent Response

Salesforce Acquisition

Control

In addition, a significant acquisition they were
merging indicated a strong control culture. Their
Collaboration initial goal of a 3 month integration was pushed
back based on this information...

Competence

Cultivation

10 15 20 25 30 35

Percent Response

Cultural Discovery
Visualizing and discussing culture provides extremely
useful information - similar to having a personality
assessment help you in working with others.

Before we can talk about “how” we work and “what” we
do, we need to understand “why” we do it.

R&D Acquisition


Cultural Visioning
Here are a couple of fascinating cultural visions
balancing the distinct strengths of different cultures...


Structure
We execute by creating agile structures (an
organizational architecture) to support agility


McKinsey IT

Control Back to McKinsey IT ...

Collaboration

Competence

Cultivation

10 20 30 40 50 60
Percent Response

Organizational Roles

Looking at roles in an organization is one way
to evaluate agility. Here there are too many
roles with management bottlenecks.


Reducing Roles

McKinsey IT removed all of
Fewer their roles - people are
now “Team Members” and
Roles they use a shared wiki to
Increases form small 3-4 person
teams which discuss
Communication shared responsibilities.

No longer do they
distinguish business
analysts, developers,
testers, etc.

Source: 2004 Patterns of Effective Organizations by Neil Harrison


Sharing work across roles
Sharing Work
across Roles
Increases This allows them to
share responsibilities
Communication across all team
members creating more
flexibility and
adaptability.

It also drives more
integration and learning
in the organization, both
personally and
organizationally

Source: 2004 Patterns of Effective Organizations by Neil Harrison

McKinsey IT Support 2.0

This organizational flexibility
allowed them to smash support
with architecture to re-invent
support 2.0.

They reduced support costs by
a factor of 400% through better
integration of roles.


Salesforce R&D

Reducing roles would never work at
Control Saleforce.com. Their competence
organization thrives on individual
excellence and roles play a major
role in that feeling of identity.
Collaboration

Competence

Cultivation

10 15 20 25 30 35

Percent Response

Organizational Structures

1. Functional Teams Like most companies, Salesforce
was a Functional Matrix organization.

2. Functional Matrix Most Common

3. Balanced Matrix
4. Project Matrix
5. Project Teams
Source: Winning at New Products (3rd Edition, 2001) by Robert Cooper


1. Functional Teams Studies show, however, that project
related teams handle complexity
better. They are more integrated.

2. Functional Matrix
3. Balanced Matrix
4. Project Matrix
Best suited for
complex projects
5. Project Teams


1. Functional Teams
2. Functional Matrix And more productive...

3. Balanced Matrix
Most
productive
4. Project Matrix for new
products
5. Project Teams


1. Functional Teams
Salesforce.com found a sweet spot.
Balance the matrix...

Sweet Spot
2. Functional Matrix
3. Balanced Matrix
4. Project Matrix
5. Project Teams

Salesforce.com Balanced Matrix

At Saleforce.com, we separated the
responsibilities of “how” people do
Focus on their work as coached by their
“How” managers, and “what” they work on
as defined by their agile teams.

This allows their culture to hold with
individual competence, and agility to
grow through team-based self-
organization.

Focus on
“What”


Process
Last (and least) we focus on process...

“Get Comfortable with being uncomfortable”
Michael Meissner, Omnyx @ Agile 2011


Focus on Learning

Organizational Heartbeat

Org Review Cycle

Program Review Cycle

Sprint Cycle
May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun

Every organization I work with we put in a shared learning cycle - called an
organizational heartbeat. This is another architectural structure that allows
the process to learn and grow faster and more integrated.


Focus on Learning
This is an example of incorporating cultural learning and
growing in all aspects of the agile release/sprint cycle.


Adopting Agility

So what is the difference between companies who try, but fail to sustain
agility and those who continue to grow and thrive?

Sustainability

Why?
Agility
Training &
Coaching

Internal Learning

0 1 2 3 4 5

“Inside-Out” Agility

It is leadership transitioning to agility from the “inside-out”. Starting with
culture and building an organizational architecture to support agility.

Culture Structure Process

Visualize Culture Integrate Silos Plan for Change
Focus on Values Create Flexibility Focus on Learning


Leading Agility "Inside-Out"

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