Imagine you are a manager in an organisation of non-trivial size. Now, you and your manager friends have decided the organisation needs to improve. Let’s say, for argument’s sake, you want to cut lead times by 50 %.
You’re thinking, this is obviously a goal for the teams and individual contributors in the organisation, right? They are the ones that need to tighten their processes. Cut handovers and remove waiting time. Your part as a manager is basically to get it going by presenting the logical reasons for the change and allocate the resources. The rest is just monitoring progress and intervening if there are problems, right? Right?
It’s easy to fall into that trap. But it’s just not an effective way to improve, at least if we’re talking organisational development. To make change work, managers cannot be exempt from it. Managers are part of the organisation too. If the organisation changes, they need to change.
Managers need to sponsor and support the change, of course. But if managers are serious about change, they need to take a more active role in it and – the horror – change themselves.
The rewards of managers immersing themselves in change are plentiful. Not only will this change have a fighting chance, but in the process, managers will gain a deeper understanding of the nature of the work. They will develop a natural credibility in the organisation. They will now be listened to, not because “they are the boss”, but because they actually know what they’re talking about.
If not a large majority of the managers in the organisation are onboard with the change and work towards it, no change stands a chance.
I should have known better. The startup meeting at the bus travel company was pleasant enough. My friend, the head of the design team, who had recommended me for the job, was there and the development manager seemed nice. She laid out the challenge for us.
Their agile journey had started with a group of co-workers and consultants going rogue and starting an agile initiative. “Grass roots movement – check!” I thought. It did not have that much of an effect, since they were so few, but a seed had been planted. After a few years they were ready for the big transformation. They started with a whole-company conference day dedicated to agile ways of working with an agile coach as inspiration. This got the attention of the organisation but not much more. Some things changed but then the change fizzled out again.
Now, a year later, the development manager wanted me and my friend to get them going again. We would have full freedom and she would get out of our way. If we needed anything, we could come to her. Sounds sweet! So why did I have a feeling in my gut that something was not right?
Before we hear the end of the story, let’s look at things a manager can do in change. The way I see it, managers have at least five major responsibilities in a change:
- If needed, create or revitalize the systems for continuous improvement,
- Contribute to the overall direction of change,
- Go first – lead,
- Guide and support teams through the change, and
- Remove or reshape organisational systems that prevent change.
Any sustainable change is made by responsible people who own the change. This means, the organisation needs to have a system in place for how to improve continuously. To be effective it also needs to be systematic, inclusive, and experimental. To create and enable such a system is a big undertaking but when it’s in place it will turn your organisation into a learning organisation, which creates the conditions for making your organisation successful for decades. Toyota is the prime example of this. This is a leadership issue, if there ever was one.
In change, people need to be drawn towards something, an ideal. A North Star (or similar). A North Star is not a goal. It just sets the direction. Many people can and should contribute to the definition of a North Star, of course, but as a manager or executive you’re accountable for the quality and clarity of the direction. And iteratively adapting and improving it, of course.
Managers should go first, lead the change themselves. Be the change they want to see, as the saying goes. The opposite would be very incongruent; telling people to do something but not do it yourself. It’s true the work of managers if often different from the value creating work, but often the underlying principles can be carried over.
Teams will need coaching and support through the change. Managers need to be more present. By being present with the teams, managers gain a better understanding of what is going on. Suddenly, they can make observations and ask questions to the teams without them rolling their eyes when you’re not looking. Managers can reinforce behaviours that they’d like to see. For example, if you’d like to see more experimentation, you can ask questions about the ongoing experiment; what the team is going for, what they are trying, and what the obstacle is. This attention alone tells the team that improvement by experimentation is important.
Finally, managers are the stewards of the organisation systems; processes and structures. Sure, individual contributors may influence change but to improve, simplify or even remove an organisational system takes management decisions. As managers coach their teams, they will gradually become more aware of where the real obstacles lie. They can help the teams create value by removing or streamlining things that are in the way.
One observation I would like to offer is that the way most managers seem to think about change today (plan-driven) and their role in it (sponsor, advocate), makes success with change look like a question of effort. A failure can only have two causes, either the plan was flawed or the execution was flawed. When we fail, clearly, the people in the organisation are to blame. Who else? This is a convenient position, of course, but their lack of leadership is staggering. Do you think leadership is showing slides and giving speeches? If you are guilty of this, you aren’t a leader at all. You are an actor.
So, what happened? After a few months I started to see where my initial gut feeling came from. The development manager certainly gave us freedom. A lot of freedom. In fact, the manager was hardly to be seen. Apparently, she did not see any role for herself in the change work, fully delegating it to us. Predictably, when people opposed the change, she took a neutral position, not backing the change 100 %. It’s quite natural for people to feel confused or frustrated in change, but when the leaders hesitate, people get doubtful. It makes it very hard to achieve any change at all.
I slowly understood why the agile transformation had subsided the last time and why it would do the same this time. The managers and the executives were not behind it. The really hard, necessary decisions, like changing an important process, the managers would not make. Could not make. They had little knowledge of what was going on and they weren’t particularly engaged in the matter. They couldn’t help us. The distance between managers and operations was too big.
Cross-functional development teams, a team coach for each team, a product organisation and a pull model of upcoming work, but that’s as far as we got. The managers refused to get involved. When the wave of change lost its energy, it was our fault.
Previous posts in the series on principles of organisational development: