This document discusses how agile practices can help drive organizational transformation. It argues that top-down change programs often fail and instead advocates for a bottom-up approach of empowering agile practitioners and change agents across the organization to lead transformation. This involves harnessing existing change agents, developing networks of guides to support change, taking a more experiential and distributed approach to leadership development, and managing change through sense-and-respond rather than predict-and-control.

1. Leading By Example
How Agile Practitioners Can Kick-Start Org-wide Transformation
June, 2017
POST*SHIFT@CerysHearsey

2. POST*SHIFT

3. From Agile Projects ->
Agile Organisation

4. A New C-Suite Priority
2017 Key Priorities
CIOs
Enabling enterprise agility
Infrastructure & Operations
Managing change
CMOs
Leading culture change and
transformation
Customer experience
Transforming to a customer-
centric culture
CDOs
Nurturing a digital culture

5. Sounds simple…until you dig in…
We want organisations
that are…
adaptive & emergent
flexible
agile & iterative
customer-centric
open
Innovative
servant lead
collaborative
connected
… the list goes on…

6. There are some great examples out there of true organisational agility
Lets start with FAVI
Favi’s guiding principles put trust in the
associates and empower those closest to
the customer. Three key principles are:
People are systematically considered to
be good (reliable, self-motivated,
trustworthy, intelligent)
There is no performance without
happiness (to be happy, we need to be
motivated. To be motivated, we need to
be responsible. To be responsible, we
must understand why and for whom we
work, to be free to decide how)
Value is created on the shop floor (shop
floor operators craft the products; the
CEO and staff at the best serve to
support them, at worst are costly
distractions)

7. And many others to choose from

8. For for my purposes, I will borrow the definition one of clients uses…
We define “Agile Company” as an
organisa!on that is able to recognise the
need to change and is able to implement
that change faster than the compe!!on.

9. From @msjaneaustin this morning….not just for products, but for orgs too!

10. Barriers & Pain Points

11. Primary Research Conducted Last Year…

12. Plus experience from the front-line
In large scale agility experiments,
we consistently see the same pain
points coming back:
interface between agile & lean
culture
learning curve for ways of
working
employees working agile,
whilst leadership is waterfall
staffing agile teams
moving back & forth between
agile teams and the line org or
resource pool

13. And of course, there are always those…

14. Why we see these change programmes
fail more than they succeed

15. Change programmes are like crash diets

16. Seriously, is this another change programme?

17. 17
What if, instead, we looked to the quantified self movement for inspiration

18. We need to change change

19. There is no perfect ‘target operating model’ end-point

20. We must manage by ‘sense & respond’ not ‘predict & control’

21. Agile Practitioners: the hidden
superheroes
of your organisation

22. Digital guides create change with you... not force change on you

23. What makes a good change agent?
‣ curious
‣ self-motivated
‣ good communicators
‣ proactive

24. Your secret weapon…

25. What makes a good guide network?
‣ voluntary
‣ advocates
‣ representative
‣ supported

26. Harness change agents to drive changes & guides to provide support

27. A new approach to
leadership development?

28. Business today is a weak link game

29. Leadership development must be more experiential in approach…
‣ Run with operations, not
just training departments
‣ Informal: Gaming &
Simulation
‣ Social: Working together
as a unit

30. …And more distributed in access
‣ Nurturing leadership skills
from the bottom-up
‣ Training the many versus
the few
‣ Supporting diversity &
inclusivity in the process

31. Are we going to create better
organisations by taking a
20th century approach to
transformation?
Or do we get better returns,
both for business and society,
by involving our people
in the change?

32. Thank you for listening
POST*SHIFT
Please continue the
conversation with me:
• @CerysHearsey/
@postshift
• cerys@postshift.com
• www.postshift.com

33. Image credits
Slide 1: https://unsplash.com/search/stars?photo=oMpAz-DN-9I
Slide 5: https://www.blaze.cc/laserlight/
Slide 6: https://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/21/business/satya-nadella-chief-of-microsoft-on-his-new-role.html?_r=0
Slide 9: https://www.flickr.com/photos/jayneandd/4450623309
Slide 12: https://unsplash.com/collections/468543/superheroes?photo=dV9ZfzLxaQ4
Slide 13: https://www.flickr.com/photos/toolstop/3925424367/
Slide 14: https://flic.kr/p/9bQmHH
Slide 15: http://adage.com/article/digital/nestle-s-global-program-produces-digital-disciples/295359/
Slide 16: https://twitter.com/digitallife_dai?lang=en
Slide 18: https://unsplash.com/@mpho_mojapelo
Slide 19: https://www.flickr.com/photos/ganatlguard/
Slide 20: https://unsplash.com/@maximebhm
Slide 22: https://www.flickr.com/photos/tinkerszone/