Real Agile

Mit Begeisterung Zeitfresser eliminieren
4. Mai 2018
Keine Angst vor Innovation
28. Mai 2018
Mit Begeisterung Zeitfresser eliminieren
4. Mai 2018
Keine Angst vor Innovation
28. Mai 2018

This is my sto­ry and my ans­wer to the ques­ti­on what the core ingre­di­ents of a real agi­le orga­niza­ti­on are.

About 15 years ago I work­ed as a team lea­der in a huge cor­po­ra­ti­on. In tho­se days I won­de­red why most of my work was not cover­ed by the ERP sys­tem the com­pa­ny used to pro­du­ce its machi­nes. And from time to time I was humi­lia­ted by bos­ses tel­ling me to do things of which I thought they were stupid.

Back in tho­se days I star­ted my ana­ly­ti­cal work on orga­niza­tio­nal solu­ti­ons in a phy­si­cal envi­ron­ment when my task was to orga­ni­ze the com­ple­te logi­stics sys­tem of a pro­duc­tion site. I (suc­cessful­ly) fought our mul­ti­ple back­logs and read The Fifth Disci­pli­ne of Peter M. Sen­ge which intro­du­ced sys­tem thin­king to my life.

Later I chan­ged as the CFO to a machi­ne buil­ding com­pa­ny with a build to-order busi­ness model and found things even more chao­tic when­ever a sur­pri­se or back­log occu­red. Some 9 years ago I came across Niels #Pflae­gings 12 Geset­ze which encou­ra­ged me to think bey­ond the well-known tay­lo­ristic approach. Later I met Woh­l­and, read Dru­cker and Gold­ratt and we imple­men­ted Cri­ti­cal Chain Pro­ject Manage­ment to end up with signi­fi­cant­ly lower cos­ts and lead-times.

Very com­for­ta­b­ly being the CFO allo­wed me to expe­ri­ment with all what I had read and heard. In tho­se days Niels‘ peach org­niza­ti­on model as well as self orga­niza­ti­on did not work for us for two reasons:

Ever­yo­ne in the orga­niza­ti­on as well as its share­hol­ders had been socia­li­sed in tay­lo­ristic cul­tures and the­r­e­fo­re con­tin­ued to behave accor­din­gly (I still con­sider this the major obs­ta­cle to chan­ge an orga­niza­ti­on to an agi­le beta-style one). And the team mem­bers were afraid to take decis­i­ons them­sel­ves as some of the tasks had the poten­ti­al to cau­se a dama­ge of 5 to 10 m€ to the com­pa­ny, which cau­sed tre­men­dous stress to most of them involved.

Today I know you need a real­ly agi­le orga­ni­sa­ti­on when­ever you do some­thing for the first time or crea­te pro­ducts which are at least part­ly new. Key for being suc­cessful­ly agi­le then, is not self-organization its­elf, but:

1. The absence of a boss who knows ever­y­thing bet­ter and deci­des ever­y­thing just becau­se he is the boss. Which doesn’t mean not to have a boss at all or to lea­ve peo­p­le alo­ne with a coach and a bunch of expe­ri­ments. But having a boss who focus­ses on pro­vi­ding ori­en­ta­ti­on for all as well as help in case it is nee­ded. I call this a „fle­xi­ble regime“.

2. Repla­cing „push“- by „pull“-task-assignment which enters the poten­ti­al for indi­vi­du­al growth and moti­va­ti­on to the team. To make it work, social den­si­ty should be high and the­r­e­fo­re the team size small or its acti­vi­ties and pro­gress trans­pa­rent for all.

3. As the task volu­me is vola­ti­le when­ever you do things for the first time, fle­xi­ble capa­ci­ties are requi­red. It’s the key to keep-up the work flow in such an envi­ron­ment. Fle­xi­bi­li­ty does encou­ra­ge peo­p­le to col­la­bo­ra­te and not to exclude tasks from their per­so­nal land­scape. And the­r­e­fo­re it pre­vents stocks of unsol­ved tasks to build up. It is fixed or limi­t­ed res­sour­ces which make peo­p­le behave autis­tic, mul­ti­task in case of per­so­nal over­load and bos­ses inter­ve­ne to deci­de about #prio­ri­ties. Which will bring you straight back to the „push“-world.

The result of the three will be a #realagi­le orga­niza­ti­on. Adi­tio­nal­ly you may take some or all of Niels‘ 700 flips but at the end the three will increase your pro­duc­ti­vi­ty by around 90 per­cent. Having achie­ved this you will meet very rela­xed CEOs who are hap­py their peo­p­le are get­ting along wit­hout them. Guaranteed.

Gar­da, 21st May 2018

    *Pflichtfelder