Tag: research

Our posts about original research and work that inspires us.

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Embracing Change and Fostering Collaboration

Coaching by FUTURE FOCUS

In her book Becoming Agile, Laura Re Turner delves into the success factors of Agile methods and their transformative impact on organisations.

In Chapter 5, she underscores the transformative power of Agile and the importance of team collaboration to become agile in more than name only. By embracing change, fostering collaboration, and leveraging technology, organisations can unlock their true potential and achieve remarkable results.

Agile is not merely a set of tools or practices. It’s a mindset shift that permeates every aspect of an organisation. Embracing Agile methods requires a willingness to challenge traditional hierarchies and embrace change as a constant companion. This transformation demands a shift from individual silos to cross-functional teams that collaborate seamlessly.

The book explores the meaning of true teams in an Agile context. Agile teams are cross-functional and operate as self-organising units, fostering innovation and adaptability. Empowered by shared ownership and accountability, they are able to break down barriers and streamline decision-making.

Effective communication is the cornerstone of successful collaboration. Laura highlights the importance of establishing clear and concise communication channels, ensuring that all team members are kept informed and engaged. Regular feedback loops and transparent information sharing are essential for fostering trust and building a cohesive team culture.

Agile is not merely a set of tools or practices. It’s a mindset shift that permeates every aspect of an organisation.

— Becoming Agile: Coaching Behavioural Change for Business Results

To further enhance collaboration, she advocates for the adoption of collaborative tools and practices. These tools, ranging from project management platforms to real-time communication channels, facilitate seamless information sharing and task management, enabling teams to work together effectively even when physically dispersed.

As organizations embark on their Agile journeys, Laura reminds them that change is inevitable and resistance is often encountered. Addressing these challenges requires a commitment to understanding the underlying reasons for resistance and addressing them head-on. Engaging stakeholders, providing comprehensive training, and celebrating successes are all critical steps in fostering acceptance and building a culture of Agile adoption.

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Succeeding with Agile: Close the Culture Gap Between Business and IT

Becoming Agile by Laura Re Turner

In Part One of this series of my research project findings, I presented a new way to use the model McKinsey 7S to evaluate the success of agile methods in organisations. I showed that organisations are still mainly concerned with ‘processes and tools’ instead of ‘individuals and interactions’ (from the Manifesto for Agile Software Development). Organisations that failed at delivering frequent releases of high quality had an unbalanced approach to transforming their organisations, ignoring the softer aspects of culture such as leadership style and shared values.

Welcome to Part 2 of the series presenting one of the most important findings of the study: when the team understood its organisation’s business strategy, typically by having an engaged Product Owner, the team learned how to prioritise work better and deliver the right products and services.

In my work with agile teams and leaders of organisations improving their use of agile methods, the pain point that I hear again and agin is that they want more engaged Product Owners. The common complaint is ‘they don’t see the reason for a dedicated resource to be embedded in each team.’ And yet, when the agile delivery team does manage to find someone who knows the business vision for the product or service under development, and has the time and willingness to be present for the rest of the team, the benefits are obvious.

The benefits became apparent in my research study, accepted this year by Henley Business School as part of the MSc in Coaching and Behavioural Change.

One research participant described his organisation’s CIO who communicated clearly the whole organisation’s focus — safety. The team’s representative, interviewed for this study, said:

The top one for [us] is always safety. It’s pumped into everyone, you must be safe. So if we see an idea for an app that we know is not safe, that gets kicked out straight away.

As a result, the development team can move quickly and focuses its efforts on the ideas that align to the organisation’s strategic objectives. The organisation, which must remain anonymous, has won industry awards for its innovative mobile apps. By the way, the same team also reported high instances of learning from trial-and-error.

To an extent, I feel foolish writing this because it sounds like common sense, right?

And yet I hear stories all the time of organisations that have separate organisations-within-the-organisation that behave as if completely separate. An us-versus-them mindset pervades and is evident in the language used and level of empowerment given to development teams.

A team representative in another organisation in my study described how he changed people’s mindset to create a balance between the team’s independence from and accountability to business stakeholders:

What I’ve been trying to do since I got there was to break the bureaucracy and chain of commands. To get the team to be completely independent, and at the same time answerable to the business.

So what’s keeping you from closing the culture gap between business and IT, and what could you gain by mending relationships? Get in touch to find out how to develop teams and leadership behaviours to meet the challenges of the future with confidence.

Expect a higher standard of coaching for your agile product development teams. We value ‘individuals and interactions over processes and tools’ and, unlike many agile coaches, have the professional coaching skills to help you turn that vision into reality. Our services can be customised and blended to get the right mix for your organisation, backed by decades of experience of transforming organisations and supporting leaders through change.

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Organisations succeeded with agile methods when they had a balanced view of change

Becoming Agile by Laura Re Turner

Many of you have heard already that my dissertation has been accepted by Henley Business School for the MSc in Coaching and Behavioural Change. I appreciate the support so many of you gave me while I was interviewing, gathering background literature, and generally talking about this project non-stop. Now that the work has been accepted and I’ve finished the programme, I can report my approach and findings from the project. This is the first in a 3-part series on my research findings for what makes organisations’ adoption of agile methods successful. An executive summary of the report findings is available on request.

I can guess at what you’re thinking now: why do we need another report on the success and failure of our initiatives to be ‘agile’? Many of our initiatives are aimed at changing role descriptions, applying a new process, or licensing new tools. If these initiatives were successful, we wouldn’t be spending thousands on change programmes only to find that we didn’t really capture the hearts and minds of people to make them a success. After years of work as a coach and trainer supporting your initiatives, I wanted to know what happened after my clients went back into their organisations with their new mindsets and skills. In other words, what else should I offer as a team coach to support your success?

McKinsey 7S
McKinsey 7S

First defined by McKinsey consultants Robert Waterman and Tom Peters in 1980, the McKinsey 7S framework defines seven aspects of an organisation that should be attended to, when attempting to change culture. The problem, they identified, was that many business leaders believed that a strong strategy, and the processess to implement it, would create the change they wanted. A balanced view of organisational change, they argued, needs to address also the people, systems, and capabilities. Moreover, understanding the organisation’s values is foundational to all of these.

In ‘Making Sense of Change Management’, Esther Cameron and Mike Green describe 7S as an approach for examining an organisation’s culture to prioritise areas for change. They provide definitions for each of the aspects:

  • Strategy – organisational goals and plan, use of resources
  • Staff – important categories of people within the organization; the mix, diversity, retention, development and maximizing of their potential
  • Structure – the organization chart, and how roles, responsibilities and accountabilities are distributed in furtherance of the strategy
  • Skills – distinctive capabilities, knowledge and experience of key people
  • Systems – processes, IT systems, HR systems, knowledge management systems
  • Style – management style and culture
  • Shared Values – guiding principles that make the organization what it is

Having analysed the topics discussed by my research participants, I identified the most commonly discussed themes into categories defined by the McKinsey 7S framework. This gave me a view of their organisation’s culture based on where they focused their discussions with me. The focus of participants overall showed a high focus on Systems and Style.

All Research Participants
Categorisation of Research Participant topics in the McKinsey 7S framework

 

Agile Manifesto
Categorisation of Agile Manifesto topics in the McKinsey 7S framework

When compared to the map of 7S aspects for the Manifesto for Agile Software Development, the recommendation is that teams should increase their focus on Strategy and Shared Values, and reduce their focus on Systems and Style, to be more effective with agile methods.

In Part 2 of this series, I will discuss the specific success factors of teams that had more balanced implementations of agile methods as compared to the average across the study.

 

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Should Business Coaches Care About Psychology?

Full disclosure: I have received a bursary to attend the British Psychological Society’s Special Group in Coaching conference, December 7-8 in Birmingham.

When reflecting on how an awareness of psychology has helped my coaching practice, I thought about the difficult situations I’ve encountered in my coaching work, where basic knowledge of some areas of psychology has helped me manage the situations.

We know that much of coaching originates from psychology and psychotherapy, and draws on decades of research on the human experience. For me, the biggest influences from psychology have been the person-centred approach defined by Carl Rogers, Gestalt, interpersonal psychodynamics and attachment theory.

From Carl Rogers, I learned that a person’s intention for another is one of our most powerful tools. We can be excellent listeners, but if we are indifferent about whether we want our clients to grow and thrive, then any amount of clever listening won’t enable them to succeed. As one of my over-arching personal principles, I keep this in mind when I am coaching individuals and facilitating groups. Do I want to be here and why?

Interestingly this mindset has also helped me notice when a client doesn’t really want to be in the coaching session. This may sound strange, but when my intention to be present isn’t matched by my client, I notice a feeling that ‘not all is as it seems’ in the session. This is a hypothesis that needs to be tested further, and if this is starting to sound like Gestalt….

We had a day of experiencing Gestalt with coach Bridget Farrands during Stage 2 of the MSc in Coaching and Behavioural Change (Henley Business School), The day of practical exercises helped me tune in to my body’s own intelligence, and to notice my client’s state and ask my client to notice too. I learned to be attuned to what’s happening for both myself and the client in the present and to improvise my coaching intervention.

My first experience with Gestalt made coaching multi-dimensional instead of the linear and predictable ‘what is your goal, what have you tried already…’ etc. Being aware of the client in front of my eyes and my own feelings are tools that I use often. I will never forget the day I became aware of an uncomfortable physical reaction to a participant on a workshop who became unhappy in a very sudden and unexpected way about the course material. I later realised the person was mildly autistic.

Awareness of interpersonal psychodynamics and attachment theory gave me the confidence to question if people’s behaviour (say, in a meeting) is a conscious response to what we see taking place in the room with the people present, or an unconscious response to past relationships that shape present-moment behaviour.

I started delivering training courses and behavioural-change workshops in 2014 through my work with QA Training. Most of us have been on a business skills training course, and if we’re unlucky there’s someone who didn’t want to be there, whose manger forced them to attend, and who is going to let the trainer know about it. However the training participant doesn’t tell the trainer this directly of course! He becomes argumentative about the course material, transferring his dissatisfaction with his manager, onto the trainer. Attachment theory has also been useful for appreciating that people’s behaviours in the moment (towards me) are not a reaction to me per se. I have become much more tolerant to people whose behaviour seems to be disproportionate to the situation, for example I’ve experienced people becoming irate as a defence for expecting criticism from me, or bullying as a defence for having been bullied. I know a coach who becomes defensive when I state my preferred way of working, interrupting me when I speak, and I suspect that the behaviour was learned many years ago as a way to cope with a hostile home environment.

What has been the impact of psychology to you on your coaching practice? Stay in touch and write your comments below.

Hope to see you at the BPS Special Group in Coaching Psychology conference in Birmingham, UK, on 7-8 December.