Distributed, Agile Transformation: How Change Becomes Routine
Change is not a one-off – it is continuous. Instead of big bang change programmes, we need to make distributed, agile transformation part of the routine management rhythm.
Everyone has a role in continuous improvement
We maintain our buildings better than we do our org structures.
In the past, companies reached for the 5-yearly top-down re-org or change programme when things got bad.
Now we know that these crash diets don’t work, and instead we look to the experience of the Quantified Self, wearables and streak apps to continuously improve through a series of small changes and feedback loops.
What to Prioritise?
Instead of driving change down from the top, adaptive organisations operate a continuous loop of strategy (why), capability goals (what) and a backlog of change actions to create them (how), informed by measurement and feedback.
By distributing transformation throughout the organisation, everybody shares responsibility for moving forward together towards common capability goals.
Using the ‘human sensor network’ to guide transformation
The digital workplace now makes it easier to mobilise our collective intelligence to guide change and suggest new priorities for action. By defining organisational health metrics and asking people to assess how they are changing, we can get a good sense of progress.
Rapid feedback on small changes can help us iterate and improve by applying agile principles to organisational change. No more 5 year plans!
Engagement > Resistance
People don’t usually resist change for its own sake, they resist things that don’t make sense in their context. Invite them to guide change locally and resistance becomes constructive engagement.
This is what meaningful employee engagement looks like, not people ‘liking’ your corporate comms on the Intranet. When people own the outcomes rather than just following the process, they are more likely to identify and suggest ways to improve it.
How We Can Help
At the leadership level
We work with digital leaders to map digital strategy, capability gaps, and cultivate a network of digital guides across the organisation; we also deliver in-depth digital leadership learning and development programmes.
At the platform level
We map the capabilities, services and skills of emerging agile teams, and help assemble them into a service platform that the whole firm can use. We also help design and implement key platform elements starting with a digital learning hub.
At the team level
We help switch from a process-centric work system to a more agile and service-centric approach, identify scope for automation or standardisation of these services, and then create the interfaces and connections with other teams to work better together.
Leadership Development: Designing for Relevance
In this edition, we look at some common challenges faced by L&D functions when designing effective leadership development programs that deliver practical value in our ever-changing digital world. The L&D challenge Business leaders generally agree that, rather...
Scaling Trust Versus Trusting Code
Lee Bryant reflects on divergent visions for the future of the digital organisation. Towards digital organisations in 2022 🎉 2022 looks set to be a year of divergent visions of what a digital organisation means and how it is organised. Most things that matter in life...
Digital Adoption as a Driver for Change
Some notes and links on why top-down change initiatives still fail and some glimpses of a more emergent approach focussed on digital adoption. Plus ça change? It’s been exactly seven years since Gary Hamel and Michele Zanini argued that: 'continuous improvement...
World-Building in Hybrid Organisations
How can we move beyond 'managing' one-size-fits-all workplace culture and think about world-building or cultivating a hybrid ecology in the post-lockdown period? Can online working reach escape velocity? The debate about whether - and how - to return to the office...
People and Machines United in Bloviation
In this edition, Lee looks at different views of GPT-3, and how the acceleration of white collar automation will change both the fitness function for managers and how we value their contributions. General AI: Genius or Bloviator? The new version of OpenAI’s Generative...
Never waste a crisis: how the sudden switch to remote working could enable the shift to truly digital organisations
What and where is your Organisational Fabric? What and where is the fabric of your organisation? How would you describe it? When the buildings are empty and the conference rooms are silent, what actually *is* the organisation? Some might argue it is the...