The importance of Meeting them Where they Are

As I work with teams, leaders, or executives when applying Agile, often times what they ask for is not the first thing they need.  This is why bringing a “meet them where they are” mindset is important.  When you meet them where they are, you can bring the kind of coaching, education, and feedback that better fits their role and experience.

In most cases “meeting them where they are” means to understand where mentally (both intellectually and emotionally) they are in relation to the topic, in this case Agile.  This may mean attempting to understand their level of Agile knowledge, experience with Agile, and motivation or willingness for Agile. Sometimes meeting them where they are is physical meaning you join them in their workplace, their daily stand-up, or any space you may observe their interactions to better understand where they are.

This approach can help you understand the common ground. This helps the Agile coach know where they are and where they can go from there. It helps a coach determine how to engage in a way that is sensible and motivating to those they are coaching.  Example of meeting them where they are include:

- If a team has only just begun to form, it may be better to educate them on what it means to be a team, the Tuckman model, and on what it means to form before you expect them to perform well. 

- If a new team wants to give and receive honest feedback to each other, it may be better to first initiate icebreakers and connecting activities so that team members can get to know one another and build psychological safety and trust first.

- If a team or company wants to embark on an Agile journey, before you educate the team on how to do Scrum it may be better to first start with a discovery activity to gauge the current knowledge of Agile, Agile experience, and willingness to apply Agile.  This can help you better adapt the level of Scrum education they need.

- If you learn that the team is fairly Agile savvy and have applied Scrum already, but are having challenges with decomposing work, then you can meet them where they are but experimenting with story mapping.

Meeting them where they are has multiple advantages but the primary one is that you can determine what they need first.  When you meet them where they are, you can bring the kind of coaching, education, and feedback that better fits their knowledge, experience, and willingness.

Building the Agile Culture you want

When some organizations think of going Agile, they tend to gravitate toward applying a set of Agile practices.  While this provides insight into the mechanical elements of agile, these types of implementations tend to overlook the cultural elements.  A move to Agile implies that you make the cultural transformation to embrace the Agile values and principles and put them into action. 

Adapting an organization's culture is effectively an effort in change management.  And changing a culture is hard. People underestimate the difficulties of a culture change within their organization because it involves the cooperation of everyone. This is why some organizations avoid this.  But the business benefits can be tremendous. 

I have seen Agile efforts get started with poorly stated objectives and motivations, a lack of employee ownership or engagement, and a lack of thinking through the effort. Also, Agile journeys significantly benefit from education in both change management and agile techniques to achieve a meaningful cultural change. I have seen companies assign a member of senior management as the change agent, yet they have neither education nor experience in change management. A better approach may be to hire an Agile Coach with change management and Agile experience.

Creating or adapting a culture is not done by accident. It must be considered a change initiative and thought through. As part of readiness of deploying Agile, start the process of adapting to an Agile mindset and the culture you are looking for. What are some activities that will help you move to an agile culture?  Some include:

• Recognizing that moving to Agile is a cultural change (it’s a journey)
• Sharing and embracing the Agile values and principles (seriously folks!)
• Moving to an end-to-end view of delivering value (don’t stop at just the build portion)
• Adapting your governance to focus on value (enough with the cost, schedule, and scope!)
• Evaluating employee willingness (employees are your brainpower!)
• Gaining continuous feedback from customers (adapt toward customer value)
• Adapting the reward system to align with the new culture (toward team and value)
• Assessing executive support (build engagement along the way)

What other activities would benefit you in getting to an Agile culture?  Ultimately you want to start living the values and principles that help you develop the culture you are looking for.  As you have approached Agile in the past, how much of it was focused on the mechanics and how much was focused on adapting to an Agile culture? 

PS - to read more about really making the shift toward an Agile culture, consider reading the Agile book entitled Being Agile.  

Are you Ready for your Agile Journey?

The common pattern in approaching an Agile implementation is to begin by conducting Agile practices training typically on Scrum or another Agile method.  While this will allow the team to begin mechanically applying Agile practices, it doesn’t address the culture shift that must occur, a culture shift that helps to inform the mind and shape behaviors, a shift toward "being Agile".  I term this approach of focusing on the cultural aspects of Agile as “readiness”. 

Readiness is the beginning of the process of acclimatizing the mind toward Agile values and principles and what they really mean.  It includes making decisions on the elements for your implementation. It emphasizes collaboration, customer centricity, adapting to the market, and more. Although it is important to lead with readiness, this framework may be used iteratively depending on whether you plan for a more holistic implementation or iterative deployment of certain elements.

This first starts with the premise that Agile is a culture change.  The implication is that Agile is more than a change in mechanics or learning a new skill.  A culture change is a transformation in belief and behavior that we learn our way toward value.  It requires a change by more than one person, and instead by a number of people within your organization.  As you can guess, this takes time.

Over the years, I’ve established what I term the Ready, Implement, Coach, and Hone (RICH) implementation framework specifically focusing on readiness activities that help you prepare not only to adopt the mechanical aspects of agile practices but more importantly, begin a meaningful transformation of behavior toward an Agile mindset. 

Readiness starts the moment someone asks the question, "Is Agile right for me?” The goal is to work through this question, understand the context, and figure out how Agile might be deployed. Essentially you are being asked if you are ready to be an adaptive organization who recognizes that customer needs and market conditions change regularly. Readiness can start weeks and even months before you really get serious about moving down the agile path. However, it can also begin when you are ready to commit.

What are some of the “readiness” activities?  These activities can help you shape the implementation according to the context and need of an organization. Readiness provides us with an opportunity to:

• Assess the current environment and current state of agility
• Lay the educational groundwork of agile values and principles
• Understand and adapt to self-organizing teams and away from command and control
• Shift the focus to delivering customer value and away from an iron triangle mentality
• Discuss the business benefits that agile brings
• Gauge the team and management willingness

Readying the mind should not be taken lightly. It is important to understand the ‘what’ and ‘why’ prior to discussing the how and when.  It is important that teams understand and really embrace the Agile values and principles.  Does senior management believe in the principles?  Do the teams feel they can operate in an Agile manner that aligns with the values and principles?  In fact, I dare say that if the team acts in the manner that expresses the Agile values and principles and forgoes the mechanical application of agile practices, then there is a greater chance that Agile will survive and thrive within a company and your company will more easily derive the business benefits that agile can bring.  

Since there is already an overwhelming amount of material that focuses on “how to implement Agile” from a "doing" perspective, may I suggest a different approach.  Provide the time to prepare the mind toward the Agile mindset and then incorporate this mindset into the culture, education, and decision-making process for your proposed implementation. With that goal in mind, let the readiness games begin!  How ready are you?

To read more about the importance of readiness and additional readiness activities in detail, consider reading the book Being Agile.