The answer to this question is a definitive yes but is unfortunately almost never explored by practitioners or companies before undertaking Agile, DevOps or Digital. The reason why Organizational Alignment should be determined before undertaking Agile, DevOps or Digital is actually quite simple, a company has very little chance of truly succeeding or seeing the possible benefits of one or all of these transformations if they are misaligned. Most companies and practitioners are unaware that misalignment is very real and more rampant in organizations than leaders or practitioners realize.
Discovering if a company may be misaligned is not as hard as some may think, research shows us there are nine clear signs that indicate that a company may not be aligned and should cause a practitioner or company to investigate further before moving forward with Agile, DevOps or Digital. So, what are these nine signs of misalignment in a company?
- Decision making takes too long
- There are too many meetings.
- There’s an overload of email
- Silos exist
- There’s a lack of clarity of responsibility
- There’s a lack of empowerment at lower levels
- Communication is selective, protecting individual interests
- There’s a lack of motivation in the organization
- Confusion and rumors proliferate
If you look at these nine signs and see some, many or all of them in your company then you really need to determine if your misaligned and correct that before attempting Agile, DevOps or Digital. How do you go about not only determining if your misaligned, but also being able to conclusively show management that the company is not aligned? The ADAPT Model uses a well established technique that has been able to effectively show when a company is not in alignment, that technique is Force Field analysis. Force Field analysis was developed by Kurt Lewin over 70 years ago and is a well established Change Management technique. The way that ADAPT uses it is to get several teams of 8 to 10 individuals from a cross section of the company together (front line employees to executive management, no direct reports in any session) and have them go through a Force Field analysis session. In Force Field analysis we have the teams identify restraining forces for change and driving forces of change in the company. What we discover is that some common comments that come out of the sessions are that employees don’t know how they directly contribute to the company, they don’t know how the company makes money or what exactly it does. These comments and others are then taken and categorized into traditional research categories and when run through root cause analysis show a very clear picture when the company is misaligned.
Yes, when you present the data and conclusion to the executive management team you will often get push back that this can’t be true because we have a mission, vision, strategy, goals and objectives. You must be able to explain to the executive management team that there are many possible causes of misalignment, the strategic intents, goals etc may not have been cascaded down to all employees, the strategic intents may not be well written and don’t inspire employees, the strategic intent may have never been announced to the employees or there is confusion between strategy and strategic intents (we will discuss Strategic Intents in a future blog). The reality is that there could be a number of reasons for misalignment, but the good news is that it is also something that can be cured. Once you have the tools and tactics you need to unify your team, clarify accountability, and encourage cross-functional collaboration, the result will be a streamlined organization that is able to provide outstanding value to customers and employees. Once you have accomplished this, then Agile, DevOps or Digital have a much greater chance of success.
Lastly, we need to clear up a couple of misconceptions some in the Agile, DevOps and Digital communities may have. Implementing Agile, DevOps or Digital is not the cure for misalignment in a company, instead it will in most cases magnify the problem. For the Agile, DevOps or Digital practitioners who may be thinking I don’t need to think about this, there is a very good reason you need a company to be aligned before taking on Agile, DevOps or Digital. In order to do Agile, DevOps or Digital we know a few things must happen in a company, the culture in most cases needs to change, employees need to learn new skills, tools or methodologies. Organizational Alignment is the driving force behind getting employees to buy in, change and learn.