Opinion: Large business organisations are tentatively opening up to the benefits of employing an agile approach to management.
Ancient Greek philosophers were among the first to pontificate that the only constant in life is change, but even in their wisdom they could hardly have imagined the speed of change societies now face as a result of the ever-increasing role digital technology plays in our lives.
In the world of work we have seen a transition from the ‘job for life’ to ‘portfolio careers’ and now talk about the ‘gig economy’.
What about the enterprises that employ us? How are big businesses configured to adapt to change – from embracing disruptive technologies and new consumer trends, to the constantly evolving global landscape in the Trump-China era?
Stanford, Columbia University and UC Berkeley professor, Steve Blank, defines a company as “a permanent organisation designed to execute a repeatable and scalable business model”.
One would have to say they have been pretty good at doing that over the years, too, from Henry Ford’s use of the assembly line a century ago to the increasing role of automation today.
Big businesses thrive on predictability.
They standardise processes, systemise and operationalise behaviours.
And of course they rely on budgets – the bane of every member of the finance team (and most other teams for that matter).
It doesn’t sound like a very flexible and change-friendly environment, does it?
Moving fast
Winston Churchill is reported to have said that: “Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm”.
That might be ok for a starry-eyed startup founder hustling their way to launch a new business from their local co-working space, but not many of us are going to get away with it in ‘Big Business Pty Ltd’ when we have monthly targets to hit and reporting structures hold us to account.
However, we are seeing more and more companies adopt lean and agile project management.
Inspired by software development techniques, ‘agile’ breaks large projects down into smaller sections, or ‘iterations’.
Work is completed in ‘sprints’, with teams not just moving faster but also more responsively, reviewing their work regularly, addressing issues in real-time and re-prioritising resources to help deliver successful projects on time (and hopefully also on budget).
This is all easier said than done, but my observation from having worked with and in a number of large organisations is that the agile mindset is generally well adopted.
It might brush up against established processes and departments every now and again, but agile team members seem engaged and committed to ensuring their work makes an impact. (More stand-ups and scrums, fewer meetings for the sake of meetings.)
When they know the product or project they need to deliver, even slow-moving companies can embrace agile project management.
But what about when companies need to adapt and search for new business models altogether?
Facebook grew with a mantra to move fast and break things, which has since evolved (for obvious reasons), while Australian startup success story Atlassian encourages its developers to ‘be’ their software and their company with values like ‘Be the change you seek’.
A startup incubator that I worked with many moons ago, Pollenizer, invented a whole new verb – to flearn – to de-stigmatise failure and celebrate the valuable learning that so often comes form our mistakes. Churchill would be proud.
In the six years since then, I have seen the concept of flearning picked up by companies large and small, old and new.
This is not to celebrate failure for the sake of failure, but to nurture a mindset that it’s ok not to know something, what matters is the journey of discovery to find it out.
Life moves fast. In its ‘New Work Order’ report, the Foundation for Young Australians found that the skills most in demand by modern enterprises are digital literacy (up 212 per cent over three years), critical thinking (up 158 per cent) and creativity (up 65 per cent).
Innovation, growth mindsets and the flexibility to adapt to change are more important than ever.
Upton Sinclair famously wrote: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it”.
In these digitally disrupted times, however, the employees you really want to be investing in are those who have the guts to say that, while they don’t know the answer to your question, they understand the problem.
Give them a little bit of time and the chance to make a few mistakes, and they are going to find the solution for you.
