Is your company one of the many companies who have been attempting to adopt Agile, DevOps or Digital and have struggled to find external resources to bridge this gap, or had difficulty instilling the required new skills and culture into your current workforce? If you fit into one of these categories, you have probably failed to identify a couple of underlying factors and a simple truth. We will discuss the simple truth first, so we can get it out of the way and discuss the real answer to your issues.
So, what is this simple truth we are talking about? The simple truth is that in the current Agile, DevOps and Digital environment you cannot hire your way to Agile, DevOps and Digital. This is pointed out and thoroughly discussed in the outstanding Wall Street Journal article “Why Companies Are Failing at Reskilling”. In the article Paul Daugherty, chief technology and innovation officer at Accenture PLC points out a couple of key points for management at these companies attempting Agile, DevOps or Digital to understand, first “The buy, not build” talent strategy is getting more difficult—and expensive—to pull off, especially in a market where the supply of skills like cloud computing and cybersecurity can’t satisfy the immense demand for them”. Second, “Executives have this idea that ‘as my people become obsolete, I’ll just hire new people,’ ” he said. “Well, they won’t be there.” The article goes on to delve into the real answer, which companies like Amazon, Walmart, JPMorgan Chase & Co, AT&T Inc., ING and Tenaris SA among others have started to understand. The answer is you need to reskill, upskill and retool your current workforce, but you need to understand a couple underlying factors that may prohibit most companies from succeeding.
Now, lets take a look at the underlying factors that may be preventing your company from effectively reskilling, retooling, upskilling and ingraining the cultural changes desired to adopt Agile, DevOps or Digital. To explain these underlying factors, we will discuss the culture flip image shown below that will walk us through the underlying factors and how to overcome them.
We will start this discussion in the upper left hand side of the image in the box “Current Reward & Evaluation System Focus”. This box represents a very critical question we need to ask, answer and understand. In most companies (especially in the United States) companies have completely failed to ask the question of whether or not their evaluation and reward systems are actually organizationally aligned. The answer in most cases is that the evaluation and reward systems are not aligned with what the company is trying to accomplish with Agile, DevOps or Digital. So, why are the evaluation and reward systems not aligned?
The answer to this is actually fairly straight forward, most company’s evaluation and reward systems are focused solely on employees doing their day to day work. Almost any Agile, DevOps or Digital practitioner has seen this, the difficulty in getting employees to find the time to learn the new skills, tools or methodologies they need. So, what is wrong with employees being so focused on their day to day work, the problem is that they then consciously or subconsciously resist change, fail to find time to reskill, upskill or retool and definitely don’t have time for continuous improvement or organizational learning.
We have to ask ourselves how so many companies got into this position, how their evaluation and reward systems have gotten out of organizational alignment. Luckily for us, Dr. W Edwards Deming can answer this for us. In Dr. Deming’s 14 points he rails against the way in which companies (specifically American companies) have spread Management by Objectives (MBO) malpractice, they have implemented it with short-term numerical goals, not as a strategic management tool as Drucker (Peter Drucker the most famed American management guru proposed the concept of MBO) actually envisioned. The Objectives from MBO are the fundamental strategy of a business, Drucker wrote. Objectives must be derived from what our business is, what it will be, and what it should be. Management by Objectives is seen by Drucker as a prerequisite for functioning communication (Lack of functioning communication is the breakdown when trying to get buy in for reskilling and culture change). Clarity through mutual discussions between managers and direct reports is a key to achieving objectives. Discussions of methods (new skills, methods and tools needed) are inherent in the discussion of objectives. Objectives must never become the basis of control in which there is domination of one person by another. Information about objectives should be a means for self-awareness (what skills and knowledge am I missing), not a tool of control from above.
In other words, Drucker intended for the relationship between the manager and direct report to be a collaborative one in which manager and direct report discuss opportunities and challenges in relation to the strategy of the organization. Instead, and even to this day, MBO is typically used to give managers and in turn their direct reports quotas to meet. A further abuse of MBO is that how they meet those quotas does not really matter. Just meet them has become the contract between manager and worker (The cause of the day to day work focus). As a result of just meet them, some of the most devastating unintended consequences occur. You must meet your numbers by any means necessary. Unfortunately, the practice of MBO has regularly become a hammer to force departments and individuals to achieve short-term goals. In MBO as typically practiced it is very difficult to achieve a long-term improvement (Agile, DevOps or Digital). Taking time, effort, and resources to improve the process is more likely to be punished than appreciated.
The underlying answer here is this, if companies practiced MBO correctly, their evaluation and reward systems would become organizationally aligned, then when they attempted Agile, DevOps or Digital the only way employees could accomplish their objectives would be to reskill, upskill, retool and adopt the cultural changes necessary to accomplish them. In other words, employees would now be evaluated and rewarded on accomplishing the company’s strategic intents, which in turn would require new skills and the necessary cultural changes needed to accomplish these strategic intents. You would break that focus on day to day work and make them aware through functioning communication that in order to meet their objectives and thus be rewarded, they will need to learn new skills, tools or methodologies.
You are probably asking then, if we just change how we practice MBO and set objectives to accomplishing our long term strategic intents then employees will miraculously gain the new skills and the culture changes needed will all occur right? The answer is no. There is much more to do, most company’s who have attempted Agile, DevOps or Digital have failed to do some very basic change management/organizational learning steps such as a skills gap analysis, organizational learning map creation or know the skills needed to create new job descriptions for Agile, DevOps or Digital. Don’t believe me, take a look at this real Enterprise Agile Coaching job description below. This clearly shows that most companies have no idea what skills are needed for many of these new job descriptions, instead they throw as many buzzwords as possible and hope they can hire someone who will come in and miraculously save them.
Job description :
As an Agile Practitioner you will be responsible for ensuring
Agile Frameworks are understood and enacted. Agile Practitioners do this by
ensuring that the team and organization adhere to the values of the Agile
Manifesto and the twelve principles therein. You are a servant leader. You help
employees and stakeholders understand and enact empirical product development.
You are a facilitator, trainer, coach, and mentor for the team, organization,
and enterprise. You are not defined or bounded by your title, but instead focus
on delivering value. You may at times fill various roles based on
organizational needs and your own abilities, including: Scrum Master, Team
Coach, and Enterprise Coach. You seek to continuously improve your own skills,
the effectiveness of your team, and the organization’s understanding of Agile.
You measure progress using learning milestones. You support the five elements
of a learning organization: personal mastery, mental models, shared vision,
team learning, and systems thinking. You adhere to the five Scrum values: focus,
courage, openness, commitment, and respect.
Requirements:
2+ years of experience as a Scrum Master, Agile Coach or other Agile Role (e.g.
Product Owner)
1+ years of experience working on large scale, multiple team projects
Growth Mindset
Bachelor’s Degree
Preferred Qualifications:
4+ years of experience as a Scrum Master, or Agile Coach
2+ years of experience working on large scale, multiple team projects
Agile Certification(s)
Healthcare Experience
Graduate Degree
Competencies:
As an Agile Practitioner, you already have many of the skills listed below, and
will continue to develop and expand your repertoire:
Agile Frameworks:
∙ Crystal Clear
∙ Extreme Programming
∙ Kanban
∙ Dynamic Systems Development
∙ Feature-Driven Development
∙ Lean
∙ Lean Software Development
∙ Scrum
Agile Frameworks for Scaling:
∙ Crystal
∙ Disciplined Agile
∙ Large-Scale Scrum
∙ Nexus
∙ Scaled Agile Framework
∙ Scrum@Scale
Organizational Change Leadership:
∙ ADKAR
∙ Contingency Theory
∙ Communication Strategies
∙ Lewin 3-Step Model
∙ Kotter 8-Step Change Process
∙ McKinsey 7S Model
∙ Non-Violent Communication
∙ Open Space Design
∙ Organizational Design
∙ Queueing Theory
∙ Systems Thinking & Modeling
∙ The Five Dysfunctions of a Team
∙ The Satir Model
∙ The Theory of Constraints
Product Development:
∙ A/B Testing
∙ Backlog Prioritization
∙ Business & Lean UX Canvas
∙ Innovation Games
∙ Minimal Marketable Product
∙ Minimal Viable Product
∙ Minimalist Design
∙ Story Mapping
∙ Supply Chain Management
∙ The 9S Approach
∙ User Journey
∙ User, Buyer and Extreme Personas
∙ Value Stream Mapping
Product Marketing:
∙ Distribution Channels
∙ Exciters & Delighters
∙ Market Requirements
∙ Market Segments
∙ Points of Parity, Points of Difference
∙ Product & Service Catalogs
∙ Product Taxonomy
Finance:
∙ Beyond Budgeting
∙ Cost of Delay
∙ Relative Sizing
∙ Total Cost of Ownership
∙ Weighted-Shortest Job First
Architecture:
∙ Building Blocks
∙ Decoupled Architectures
∙ Emergent Design
∙ Microservices
∙ Modular Development
∙ Service Oriented Architecture
DevOps:
∙ Acceptance TDD
∙ Automated Tests
∙ Behavior Driven Development
∙ Configuration as Code
∙ Continuous Delivery
∙ Continuous Deployment
∙ Continuous Integration
∙ Database Change Automation
∙ Domain Specific Language
∙ Feature Toggles
∙ Orchestration Between Items
∙ Real-Time Metrics, Reporting
∙ Scripted Environments
∙ Specification by Example
∙ Test Driven Development
So then, what is the answer? The answer involves a number of factors, but we can start with fixing Management by Objectives and putting into place an evaluation and reward system that is organizationally aligned and is based on true measurements. Next, we can start moving towards an organizational learning culture and determining the skills and culture change that will be needed going forward. Lastly, we can borrow from some of the examples others have used to help them make this transformation, such as Dojo’s, Centers of Excellence, cohort groups and the steps someone like ING took.
To wrap up, we will walk through our suggestion, which borrows from what ING executed in their organization. ING had been on their transformation journey for several years and as part of it they put all of their employees at their headquarters through what they called “mobility,” effectively meaning they were without a job and needed to apply for the new jobs (based on the new skills required) they had created. ING requested that all employees at their headquarters reapply for a position in the new organization. The new selection process was intense and had a higher weighting for culture and mind-sets than knowledge or experience. ING chose each of the 2,500 employees in their organization as it is today—and nearly 40 percent are in a different position to the job they were in previously. Of course, they lost a lot of people who had good knowledge but lacked the right mind-set; but they realized that knowledge can be easily regained if people have the intrinsic capability.
While we are not necessarily suggesting you need to go to the extreme that ING did, there are some takeaways that can be used by most companies. We need to look at the current state in most companies and realize that most of them are operating with an evaluation and reward system that is not aligned with their strategic intents and isn’t based on any real metrics. Along with this, the company is missing an organizational learning environment and artifacts. This has led to old job descriptions that did not evolve over time because there was not a learning culture in place at the company that identified and grew new skills. At this point a company needs to undertake some change/learning steps like skills gap analysis and learning map creation in order to create the new job description and career paths needed to support our Agile, DevOps and Digital needs. In addition, they need to bring their evaluation and reward system into alignment and put into place concrete metrics. Lastly, by starting the move towards a learning organization we can then connect our new job descriptions and career paths to our learning culture so that the new skills needed in the future are continuously incorporated into job descriptions and career paths.
Once a company has made all of the changes above, its time to signal the change to the company through what we are describing as a “Cutoff”. The Cutoff is a way of signaling that the company is moving from a current state towards their desired state. We are suggesting that the company signal that at a certain future date the company will make the switch from their current state with their old job descriptions and move toward the desired state with new job descriptions with clearly defined skills needed and a plan for acquiring these new skills. There are a couple of critical points for companies to understand about using a Cutoff, first, this should never be used a threat against employees, you are simply signaling that the company is moving in a different direction. Secondly, the company in order to pull off a Cutoff must build trust within the company or the Cutoff could have unintended consequences.
