Radical Transformation - Edwin Dando & Dan Teo - AgileNZ 2017
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Being truly Digital requires a fundamentally different operating system that encourages a relentless re-examination of how you do business and where the new opportunities lie. When combined with the rise of the millennial worker, many leaders are finding that they need to make significant changes to how they lead their organisations. About Edwin Dando & Dan Teo: For over 15 years, Edwin has helped organisations re-think how they approach work and people. Edwin is by nature a creative disrupter, constantly seeking alternative, better and often creative solutions to modern workplace challenges. In 2006, Edwin founded Clarus, a consulting firm that led the way in Agile adoption in New Zealand. Clarus was one of the first companies in the world to adopt Holacracy. It was subsequently acquired by Assurity Consulting in 2012. Edwin is now a key part of Assurity’s senior leadership team. He is a Professional Scrum Trainer and Evidence Based Management consultant with Scrum.org. He lives largely self-sufficiently on a small organic farm and is a community-focused person who donates a percentage of his time to universities to help teach future leaders Agile thinking. He also teaches programming and Design Thinking to nine-year-olds at the local primary school. Dan is a 'change-the-world' thinker who positively influences to challenge status quo and inspires action. He has a passion for people and has played a broad role across the entire SDLC from Developer, Service Support Manager and Release Manager, Scrum Master to Agile Practice Manager. Before joining Assurity, Dan established and led a large-scale Agile practice at a Fortune 500 organisation supporting over 13 Scrum teams. Dan is a strong advocate of leadership being a multiplier of performance. He currently leads the Auckland branch of Assurity as GM – Auckland. Dan has also been nominated for the Talent Unleashed 2017 award for Most Progressive Leader, an award judged by Richard Branson and Steve Wozniak.
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Radical Transformation - Edwin Dando & Dan Teo - AgileNZ 2017
- 1. Radical Transformation Edwin Dando & Dan Teo Assurity #radicaltransformation
- 2. We talk transformation But transform to same
- 3. Most organizations today are not getting value from transforming
- 4. Why?
- 6. What year was this? 1500 Has it changed?
- 7. What year was this? 1944 Has it changed?
- 8. What year was this? 1950, 2001, 2017?
- 10. Management Portfolio & PMO Projects Organisational Resources Governance Execution Slaves Authority Power Decision Making Ancient Egypt – 2500 b.c. Delegated Authority Management Typical 2017 Company Executive Projects Projects
- 11. A Radical Update
- 12. Who is the customer?
- 14. • Facing Customer • Internal serves external • Distributed Intelligence • Empowered • Distributed decision making • Customer centric value streams The Inside Out
- 15. Structure x = Radical Outcomes
- 18. 1. People First 2. Culture of Candor 3. Value the whole person Leadership Insights
- 19. 1. People First
- 21. 2. Culture of Candor
- 24. 3. Value the whole person
- 25. …The Auckland Branch will be a place… where people realize their potential… to achieve important life goals..
- 26. Dictate De-Centralized Lead Modern Organization Ancient Egypt Borrowed Time Borrowed Time Centralized Radical Transformation Radical Transformation Radical Transformation
- 27. Structure x Leadership = Radical Outcomes
Editor's Notes
- Turn to your neighbour give them a high 5 and say – Oh you’re looking energized today! Over the past few years, Edwin and Dan have been working with different organizations around NZ and we have seen some interesting trends. I’m sure you’ll agree with us that Transformation is somewhat of a buzz word.
- What we’ve noticed, is that although many organizations today have been and are committed to some kind of change or transformation, the reality is that it often feels like we keep changing but make no real progress. On the surface process and ways of working has changed, but outcomes are rarely tangible or sustainable.
- Our hypothesis for this talk, is that most organizations today are not getting value from their transformations. We believe that this is because many organizations today have shy’d away from tackling two core concepts that enable it to radically transform for the better.
- We believe that these two things are Organizational Structure, and Leadership.
- So why structure? Let’s take a look at the different ways human behaviour has evolved through the three illustrations.
- Behind us is the Pocket Watch - Can anyone guess which year this was invented? Has it changed much today? -> Our behaviours have demanded that we can tell the time in our cars, watches, phones – we want to know the time all the time! So yes.
- How about the main-frame? 1944 – And man the mainframe has changed. We have super computers in our pockets, and how many of us remember the last time we saw this -> Next slide.
- This Is an organization structure of a US company. Can anyone guess what this was from? That’s right – it’s pretty difficult to guess right. This is actually from a company from the 1970’s. In the previous two illustrations, most things around us have changed and transformed to suit the changing needs and demands of human behaviour through the years. Phones, Uber, AirBNB, SnapChat, Whatsapp. However despite some minor variations, one of the rare things that has not changed much at all, has been the way we structure organizations.
- The reality of this is that this leaves many people today feeling trapped. Of course it does right? We are so different than we are a hundred years ago, yet we are still structured to operate in a way in which has not changed to suit the demands of each new generation. This is the reason why no matter how you flex, apply scrum, safe, new ways of working – the reality is that you’re still applying it within a structure that has not changed one bit. We then wonder why retention is at an all time low and large businesses are being disrupted and shut down. The problem is that the desires and wiring of modern humans today are at odds with the structure that they are working within. How many of us know, that we don’t want to be trapped in a box like this to do work!
- Ok now you might think that was a whole bunch of theory. Let us give you a practical example. Let’s cast ourselves back 2000 years – in the time when there Pharoah was the ruler over Egypt. Pharoah was the ultimate power who held decision making and authority – say he wanted to build a pyramid. He would make it known to his nobles, the next level of hierarchy. They would then set the directive and govern the work. A noble would be the sponsor of the initiative, and gather a bunch of slave drivers to round up the slaves and get cracking. That’s pretty much how they were structured, and how pyramids were literally built. Let’s compare this to today’s typical 2017 organization. We start at the top with an executive team, who holds decision making, authority, status and power. They set strategy and vision, then translate that into a management or PMO team as projects. Resources are then assigned to projects to deliver. Looking back over last 2000 years, there some striking similarities, and yes not much has changed in terms of structure. We are still structured in a way where intelligence and authority sits at the top, and execution and delivery are done by slaves or resources. Taking this a step further, we could argue that because little has changed in terms of structure, we humans have still become accustomed to working and being treated with this slavery mentality. The superiors make the decision – and the workers just do what I they’re told. Execution.
- But something’s changed recently. Have you realized a wave of change has been happening? People are demanding change, and rebelling against status quo. All over the world we see examples of this. We think that this is because modern human beings have realized and embraced things like freedom of speech, equality, and empowerment in society, and that change is creeping into our workplace. Modern humans, not just millennials, want and demand better – and it’s time organizational structures are radically updated.
- So what does this look like? To answer this – Let’s figure out who and where the customer is today. When the Egyptian slaves built the pyramid under Pharaoh’s orders, they were building it for their customer. This was an internal customer, and in this case Pharoah was both boss, and customer. When companies today build products and services – most of the time we build for people external to the organization. Most often, end customers like us. Yet as we’ve discussed, most of the time, even though most companies today build for the external, we are still behaving and structured like we’re building for an internal Pharaoh.
- Unfortunately most organisations today are structured like this picture above, looking inwards and upwards for decision making and direction, with the same slaves mindset. It’s structured to believe that the higher in the hierarchy you are, the greater the intelligence and decision making power. If this is true organizations also believe their most unintelligent and incapable people, are the ones closest to serving and delivering value to their customers. This also believes that they should make the least important decisions, or not make decisions at all. How does that make you feel as a customer? We all know that just is illogical.
- So what does a radical update look like? Essentially – it’s an inside out model. In this structure we need to face outwards towards the customer. The structure should reflect that intelligence exists at all levels, empower front-line decision making and autonomy, so that people can be people not slaves, and delight their customers. Because we believe that intelligence exists through-out all of the organization, we distribute decision making. We arm the people closest to the customer, to make decisions in the best interest of the company for the customer. This also means structuring direct streams of value to the customer.
- So this is why we believe structure is such an important missing part of organizations radically improving the value they get from their transformation. But – how many know that structure alone is not enough, it’s only one part of the equation.
- Let us ask you – Which leader would be more effective in a de-centralized structure? A dictator like Cerxies, or a caring, fearless leader like Denaryious. Hands up Cercies? Hands up Danny? That’s right, there is a multiplying effect when there is great leadership in a good structure. Equally, when there is bad leadership, it can negate the value of a good structure.
- So let’s delve into leadership.
- We all know leadership is important, we’re not here to lecture you on leadership. Rather we want to share three key insights that we have seen common across great leaders we have worked with.
- The first insight is putting people first.
- Richard Branson put it elegantly – Put your staff first, customers second and share holders third. Often we put shareholders first at the expense of everything else. This is not a new concept, it was in the early 2000’s Steven Denning introduced the concept of radical management. It’s very similar. How many of you have had great service from a disgruntled, unhappy employee? Leaders should focus on delighting their staff, who will delight their customers, and in return, bring in great financial results. Dan’s Story: There have been countless times where as a leadership team we’ve made decisions that compromise financial performance, in order to give our staff opportunities to grow their career. This could mean forfeiting billable work on an engagement, so that the staff member can transfer to a different service area and shadow in an unbillable manner to start to learn their craft. Fraser is a good example of someone in our team who we had done this for, and within the last year and a half, he has come from being a senior test analyst at a client, to working with SLT of one of the largest companies in NZ to redesign their organization’s delivery framework with an agile mindset. A year and a half ago, I wouldn’t have predicted that Fraser would be doing this – was it worth the investment? Knowing what we all know now – of course, but I know not all leaders would have made the same decision we did without knowing how it would have turned out. Has this always worked for me? No, but I would do it over and over again, because I truly believe people are the most important asset of an organization.
- The second is candor.
- Candor is extremely important in a de-centralized structure. The reason being in a rigid structure, often there is simplicity and clarity. It actually requires much less skilled leadership to lead and manage people in traditional structures. However, as we start moving into cross-skilled team that regularly take on different roles in order to match the what’s needed to deliver value, they need to be able to rely on receiving timely and clear feedback on their performance from leaders and peers.
- Edwin and Dan have found this model radical candor to be an extremely effective tool in our toolkit for this. When we give feedback, we should think about both challenging directly, and caring personally. Often we sacrifice one or the other. As kiwi’s we often sacrifice challenging directly, we just don’t like doing it! This means we often either care, and drop into ruinous empathy where we are too afraid to tell someone the truth, and sugar coat to say everything’s fine – or we lose both, and become passive aggressive or worse talk behind their backs. Both of these don’t help leaders lead in a de-centralized structure. Just as bad is when we just challenge and don’t care – it’s simply aggression. What this model recommends is to be radically candid – care personally and challenge directly. This way, you cultivate a culture of continuous feedback and improvement, which itself supports de-centralized structures. Tell story here?
- Lastly – Value the whole person.
- In my role in leading the Auckland branch, I wanted to ensure we don’t become a typical resource bodyshopped consulting branch. To me, this has got to be the best damn professional services company to work in. That’s why we share this collective vision, where we will be a place that people realize their potential to the fullest extent, and where people achieve their life goals. To do this, myself and my leadership team need to understand our people as whole people. Not just the professional worker. If we expect people to bring their whole selves to work, we need to get the know them as a whole person. Secondly, we need to actually put this into action. To be honest, It’s a priviledge for me to stand next to Ed to deliver this talk. I joined Assurity three years ago as a senior consultant – Ed encouraged and help create the environment for me to succeed. Ed tell story about how you gave me constraints, but set up environment for me to flourish.
- So as a consulting firm, we can’t let you go without showing our talk to you on a four quadrant model. On the horizontal axis, we have leadership – dictating style on the left, and on the right, leading in the ways we described. On the vertical, we have the structures we described, the bottom most being centralized, and the top being de-centralized. If you’re in the bottom left, you’re still operating like ancient Egypt. People are slaves and there is a pharaoh. It’s not a great place to be and I’d be pretty worried for the company! On either two sides, unfortunately it’s not that great either. You’re on borrowed time. We say this because if you’re structure is poor but leadership is good, we usually find the good leaders end up getting frustrated and leaving because they can’t lead in an environment which they are not empowered, or aren’t customer focused. Then the organization goes back to being ancient Egypt. If you are strong on structure but have poor leadership, you best staff will leave because they are being led poorly. You can see, it’s all about people here. In the top right, is where we see healthy modern organizations. Radical transformation is being brave enough to admit that you need help, and to move towards the top right.
- So the final piece of the puzzle is leadership, and it is a multiplying effect. With great structure and leadership, we can radically improve the outcomes business today receive from their transformation.