Structure for an Agile Organization

Part 1 - Values

When we look at an organization that is successfully agile, we see one that has been able to shift tactics as their business needs change and continually move their hyperbola of focus to where ever is first strategically aligned and second producing the most value. To do this well, they must have a set of values that they have internalized to their core – that both their corporate execs and their rank and file all believe and follow. Often, actually stating these values is hard work as they are not easy to define succinctly and the effort to develop them from the organizational leaders is seen as too new-agey to be seen as a serious endeavor by modern captains of industry.

Unfortunately, most of the time when I urge organizations to develop value statements, they either leap immediately to their mission statements and hold them up as values or co-opt someone else’s values as their own. Both paths lead the organization to peril because the mission is usually more of a vapid marketing statement than actual values that anyone truly holds and other people’s values are just that – other people’s.

Since most organizations I work with are focusing on agile methods, they tend to co-opt the values from the Agile Manifesto which, though still someone else’s, are not a bad place to start. When they do that, what I try to do with them is deconstruct the value statements and tailoring them to the organization at hand. For instance, the first value – Individuals and interactions over processes and tools – is a commonly co-opted one; however, not one that is usually internalized. The way I transliterate this value is that the company must genuinely feel that their people are individuals and not resources and that the most valuable tool is not some computer program but personal interaction. This too borders on touchy-feely and is usually met with stares and eventually the statement that it can not scale. I try to counter with the addition that with proper processes, it does not need to scale, but by then, I know I have lost them. I do not know why modern business feels they can not be modern and efficient without dehumanizing their internals.