Same planet different worlds

Agile kicks managers out?

I think there is probably no greater nonsense out there than the narrative “Agile is eliminating management”. In the social networks, I often read advertisements for consultancies and seminars such as: First slowly introduce agile and self-organisation so that you don’t have to abolish management straight away. Managers beware, you won’t have your job much longer!

All agile organisations I know still have a management, even the biggest and oldest agile pioneers in the banking sector. Agile organisations or parts of organisations on the way to self-organisation distribute management tasks differently than usual. This new kind of management is often much more meaningful and valuable than the conventional.

Let’s take a look at some of my experiences and the differences between before and after.

Before: The supervisor draws up a training plan at the beginning of the business year with monthly reports. Of course, there is discussion, but it usually stays with industry-typical trainings that don’t exactly fit the job. The training status is reviewed quarterly.

After: Service champions from the team set the trainings in the learning groups, have short feedback loops, create ad hoc trainings, everything is visually managed. The team leaders’ job is to encourage people, to nudge learning groups at times. Strengthening strengths works almost by itself in agile teams, but reducing weaknesses usually needs coaching from the team leader.

Before: In the case of customer escalations, large groups of senior managers sit together, daily reports are prepared and 60-minute jour fixes are conducted. Only 10% of the reports are really relevant, the meetings tie up resources unnecessarily. Some decisions are made on the basis of second- or third-hand information.

After: Relevant stakeholders incl. customer representatives focus on the most important values, supported by someone who knows Lean/Agile methods. The situation is visualised, everyone can see the current status. The team leader moderates, takes care of tasks that go beyond the team. The team leader often also ensures that decisions once made are maintained, some solutions do not work on the first day.

Well, I think I could fill a whole book with examples like that. In my experience, the different assignment of responsibility and decision-making creates a much better acceptance of the desire for continuous improvement. Management systems like Objectives and Key Results (OKR) almost kick into gear by themselves in such environments, whereas in hierarchical environments they stop at any political traffic light as soon as it is as low as yellow.

Leaders are challenged in their most important role when introducing agile or hybrid-agile working methods: as a protective function for the team. Also as a corrective, so that the newly shared responsibilities are well anchored and lived. If the team moves towards self-organisation, the team leader remains the most important interface and an essential coach. Both for the holistic view of the development of the individual and for the next development step of the team. Not to mention the resolution of conflicts.

I don’t understand why they scare people with the threat “soon no one will need you any more”. Changes are already causing many people to break out in a cold sweat, because the working environment will change. If I think about how I worked 10 years ago and imagine I’m in 2013 and now I’m looking at 2023. So without any prior knowledge now to look at agile presales and sales.

I would find many things great, for example the high efficiency in the team. Some things I wouldn’t understand, for example why visual management is so useful if it sounds like bureaucracy. And some things I would have a lot of respect for, e.g. the example above of putting out a fire together with customers in a room.

By the way, the idea for this article came to me when a co-worker asked for a job reference and I thought: OK, then you write me one too. That’s what we did. Unthinkable in a 60s hierarchy. In a self-organised team, it was a matter of course and a great experience.

I would like to take away your fears if you are thinking in the direction of lean/agile, we agile coaches are there for you. I would be happy to tell you about my first steps.

Agile dreamers vs. industry fake actors

I am always surprised to read postings where agile or “new work” approaches are opposed to other methods or organisational forms. Preferably in overstating phrases like “What the agile dreamers can’t imagine…” or “What will take the new-work generation by surprise…”. The other way round, of course, in articles that prophesy an almost certain collapse of a company in the case of hierarchical leadership cultures or patriarchal leadership figures. The intention here is to create frontiers that are not actually there.

I can tell you from my own experience with my PreSales team what immense potential Lean and Agile have. What a wonderful self-managed working environment is created. What great efficiency potential agile has. Measured in hard business figures, it means more revenue and profit. For me, agile working is an absolutely important factor for modern companies.

However, Agile is not a universal answer to all problems. No agile coach or trainer I know claims that either. Agile has the most potential in complex environments. For example, in the development of future technologies or business ideas. Even with problems whose cause is unknown for a long time because all the variables seem chaotic, an agile approach is more powerful than all linear analysis methods.

Nevertheless, if you have all the data under control and find yourself in complicated or simple areas, it is not worthwhile to tinker with Agile obsessively. Methods are most useful where they come from, here is a typical time evolution:

agile development of a visionary product or service
lean to adapt and optimise the efficiency of this product or service
Six Sigma (or similar) to streamline the quality and cost of the mature product or service.

I hope we now agree that agile is not competing against other methods on the level of methods. Agile is a part of your portfolio if it is done well.

Now briefly about organisations. Companies that have almost completely embraced New Work are still scarce. If you are interested, Frederic Laloux tells you about some of them in his book “Reinventing Organizations”. In initial agile projects, trying things out and getting oriented is the crucial goal. It is not always about the way to a fully agile organisation. A good mix of existing culture with freedom for agile culture is the golden path.

How much agile freedom is needed can vary greatly. A company that is highly efficient in producing certain products may need less agile value creation producing new technologies in a highly competitive market.

Finally, let’s look at leadership style. A classic hierarchy in which superiors are always wiser than their subordinates. Who essentially define all the resolutions and are making all the decisions. Such social systems, according to Asby’s law, are disadvantaged. Whether such companies all end bad by this management style, is quite another question. As their competitor, I would use this disadvantage.

Yet as an example of a form of hierarchy that is not pervasive, let’s take patriarchal leaders who run their shop alone. Such people usually have a strong focus, i.e. promising ideas are sponsored with a lot of resources, projects with little outcome are quickly abandoned.

By the way, agile units are often found in these companies. A hierarchical system and agility are not contradictory. Whether you want to work there is a separate question entirely. For one thing is clear: whether your project is a promising idea and develops well is decided by the company boss alone.

In other words, there is no conflict here either. One thing that strikes me, however, is that employees who have understood agile and work in this spirit may also work in a traditional project. The reverse is not true. Agile work needs a lot of experience.

One article comes to mind which statistically proved it is a great advantage to have a classic elbow mentality if you want to get into (German) management. And the author believed that this evidence would sweep away the naïve dreams of New Work supporters.

Most people in the agile community are pretty skilled at assessing and dealing with such industry actors. Also, many can accept hybrid environments very well, because often the motivating force is to have a fulfilling workplace. As long as that’s there, it’s not a conflict.

I would love to see people on social media trying less to argue against each other. There is room for all concepts. Just pick and choose what suits you.

30 minutes with Heiko and me, to lateral entry, burn-out and interesting CVs

Heiko Link is a professional career consultant I met at 0525.1fallsreich in Paderborn. Our first conversation was about lateral entries, which turned into a solid half hour podcast to lateral entries, applicants with ruptures in their CV and mutual transparency in an beer garden. Most linked Resources are German language only.

I hope you like it:
https://www.endlich-montag.net/blog/podcast/30-minuten-mit-werner-roth-von-fujitsu/

Plenty of time is an underestimated power on the Internet

Today I am going to cry a little – oh no, change of mind – I rather offer some comfort. These days I started to play around with a security gadget, familiarized myself with the subject matter and today I had the first questions. I found a forum to discuss this new technology. Nice fit, so I quickly placed a question in the forum. Continue reading “Plenty of time is an underestimated power on the Internet”

Digital Natives, what the heck?

So today I want to get a little edgy about two events. The other day I read in a whitepaper about the new generation and their IT requirements, the term “Digital Immigrant” which the ” Generation X” doesn’t really understand everything about IT. For this group of people, the whitepaper had some warm words at hand.

I spoke to the business partner who proudly presented me with this work and told him: “You realize that you are insulting the current generation of IT managers? Because many of them grew up from Generation X and also with IT.

It was similar but completely different when I was approached by a young lady who said that it must have been very difficult for me to become acquainted with modern means of communication such as e-mail [sic] in my senior years. For her, that’s a piece of cake e-mail, Instagram, Facebook, everything: in the end she’s “Digital Native”.

When she found out that I got my first e-mail address with the enrollment, that at that time there was already chat, internet and the WWW. She was also surprised that we had to submit digital homework exercises in computer science. In the further discussion it turned out that she has very little knowledge about IT besides being able to install and use apps.

I think using apps is a knowledge that even the most backward digital immigrant – if he only wants to – can catch up in a few days, because apps are designed for intuitive operation.

There are certainly “digital late entrants” or even “digital ignorers” in Generation X, but in the vast majority of cases this generation has been using IT for a very long time. Just like there are still “digital dummies” today that have no idea of what they are doing other than consuming.

I think the first Digital Natives are people like Tim Berners-Lee or Grace Hopper. I also think it would be nice if as many people as possible were interested in the backgrounds “What is the WWW?”, “How does a network work?”, “How does an app work?” or “How does the technology behind Facebook work? That helps a lot in the modern world to be able to form a solid opinion. This may also be part of the educational canon for Digital Democrats.

Requirements for IT systems for the Digital Natives generation are always requirements for better usability, consistency or interaction. Mostly exactly what all IT users want. Stop putting labels on people of any generation! We humans don’t fit sorted to labels. Thank you!