Developing the capability to adapt requires more than traditional top-down command and control leadership because it relies on people thinking and acting at all levels of the organisation. The challenges include:
The answer is a target operating model that supports the need to control both predictable and emergent value ways of working simultaneously.
It's not an Agile TOM, nor a traditional TOM. It's a combination that balances the unique value-adding activities of the organisation.
Digital age and technology-savvy firms developed out of collaboration and experimentation, which has given them an unfair advantage in fast-changing and highly regulated markets. In terms of the science of management, they recognise that value often emerges spontaneously, rather than assuming that value is always predictable and can be planned for.
Plan-driven control is appropriate for most activities, but fails horribly when applied to emergent tasks such as new product development, understanding requirements, and designing solutions. Design thinking, Agile ways of working, or research methodologies are needed in those situations but - and here's where most TOMs fail - they have to co-operate with plan-driven methods.
That is what the Taoist symbol of yin-yang represents; shifting forces that compete and oppose each other, yet combine to make something greater than either part.
Russ Lewis' book describes a simple model that reveals the parts of organisations that are normally hidden, but actually determine its performance.
It is one of the few books about Agile that was actually written for managers.
We have some mid-tier consultants in at the moment who are "focussing on culture." Since we don't separate culture from delivering value to customers, I asked what that meant in practice. Apparently: "A generic scheme of manoeuvre could involve a diagnostic that looks at things like empowerment, psychological safety, collaboration, purpose, customer centricity… then based […]
Business Agility Leadership Coaching (BALC) emerged as a consequence of asking leaders and managers across HSBC how they wanted to improve their agile leadership. Our proposed solution hit a sweet spot because we were 100% oversubscribed at the start and interest just kept growing during the three months of the structured learning events. The 'secret […]
All rights for this image belong to Google Generations of Users Relate to Rubik Today the creatives at Doodle gave us something that perfectly matches its user generation that's interactive, colourful and engaging. A working Rubik's cube! Just last week I dared to ask why Google were paying their people to decorate the top of […]
