The following are pieces of advice that could help you create a simple framework to fund initiatives in your company:
Don’t invest in a project. Invest in a value stream.
Ensure that clients and teams work together to establish initial expectations and that there is transparency regarding current obstacles or limitations.
Ensure that a clear process to refine the budget is established and that this process is known by everyone in the value stream.
Prioritize the work or experiments collaboratively.
Use your budget to create better products.
By following these recommendations, you will ensure that people in the organization develop healthier habits.
Feeding on Constant Experimentation
I’ve explained the importance of running short experiments—short, time-boxed activities that help you receive feedback from the client—but on many occasions those around you will have different ideas about what their objectives should be. Different expectations about the purpose of an experiment can cause a loss of alignment and conflicts of interest.
If you make the experiment’s main purpose explicit, you will help everyone stay aligned and make it much easier to create the appropriate metrics, validate results, negotiate better, and find alternative routes.
A short experiment can have several possible objectives:
Generate a clear economic benefit for the client.
Acquire learning but not generate a clear economic benefit for the client.
Acquire learning and generate a clear economic benefit for the client.
Remove a barrier in the organization without a clear economic benefit for the client.
Remove a barrier in the organization with a clear economic benefit for the client and learning.
It’s best that you help parties clarify goals; otherwise, invisible barriers could be established, hindering shared objectives and making mutual collaboration more difficult.
A financial client hired me to explain to her teams how to take small steps instead of undertaking extensive work. Management told me that under no circumstances should I use the word experiment, because participants might see it as a risky expression (this was a very traditional organization).
To ease everyone’s concerns, we agreed to use the term trial. During a workshop, I focused on explaining practices and the positive reasons for performing small trials. At one point, a participant interrupted me and said, “I have an idea! How about we use the word ‘experiment’ instead of ‘trial’? It seems more appropriate.”
The teams had been using this type of practice for some time, but management didn’t know. In addition, both sides had different thoughts as to the objective of the experiments. The moment turned into a good opportunity to explain the possible results I mentioned earlier and for all to start improving their alignment.
Lean Startup and Constant Validation
Lean Startup techniques help individuals take baby steps, validating assumptions or hypotheses via small experiments. Instead of implementing complex plans based on hundreds of assumptions, Lean Startup helps us employ a rapid cycle focused on create-measure-learn steps. It provides constant feedback on whether the time to make a drastic turn has come or whether we should continue on the current trajectory.
You can learn more about Lean Startup at: theleanstartup.com
An experiment can be strongly influenced by the emotions of the person running it, which could result in information confirming a particular point of view. But an important objective of the experiment should also be to determine the possibility of moving in other directions. In Chapter 4, we learned about confirmation bias. At any time, go back to that section to review the strategies for overcoming this mental pattern.
Using a Transformation Team
All employees should be responsible for facilitating a change, but initially it’s common to have a group of people assigned to support the transformation of the company—the Transformation Team.
Modifications of processes, mindsets, interactions, values, and principles are significant activities and require specific skills to help remove obstacles and take the first steps toward change. A Transformation Team not only removes barriers but also teaches new concepts and practices, helps discover values and principles, and creates situations where people can give their best.
The Transformation Team should set in motion different techniques—bottom-up change, frameworks, and micro-habits—and teach ways to measure impact and make progress visible. One of the Transformation Team’s most important assets is its ability to clearly identify levels of motivation and to suggest the most appropriate strategies and approaches for business readiness.
You want employees to take over ideas, improving them regularly, and you don’t want the Transformation Team to be the only one helping with the initiative.
A Transformation Team isn’t static. It should gradually disappear when its target group has the knowledge to make the change on its own.
At the beginning, you may be the only one who helps the sponsor, leaders, and other members of the company to create a draft of the vision for the change or product. But everyone should start considering who should be part of the Transformation Team, and eventually the Transformation Team should split into smaller and smaller teams until it disappears.
In my experience, a Transformation Team requires the following:
Informal, hierarchy-free interactions between its members and explicit working agreements that establish healthy habits to be used every day.
People with different areas of expertise and with the power within the company to quickly remove large-scale barriers.
Internal use of the practices the team coaches to others and the curiosity to learn from the change teams.
A passion for what they do and a desire to use different points of view (reframing).
The ability to work as a team, even in situations where their personal values are challenged.
Clear goals and a level of comfort working in pairs.
In Chapter 8, we will look at two change frameworks: ELSA and DeLTA. The first helps you promote a change when a sponsor actively supports an initiative. The second is useful for accelerating the transformation when you lack explicit support from the leaders of the organization.
The Transformation Team should be set up weeks before the start of a change plan. An executive leader or sponsor should also be part of the group or at least publicly express support for the initiative. This enables an initial removal of blockades and encourages curiosity from other executives and senior positions of the company. There’s no single solution to all situations, but in my experience, the core group should include between three and five individuals for every hundred who need to change, and they should have 100% availability (at least at first). Members who are external to the company, such as an Agile coach hired for the mission, should focus on sharing knowledge with the rest of the team rather than taking charge of the change initiative.
Integrating Observers, Ambassadors, and Casual Members
Companies have different concepts of what a Transformation Team is. In more-traditional companies, these teams are made up of people selected by middle management with the aim of coordinating the work of other teams and completing the steps in an original roadmap.
In my opinion, though, the structure of a Transformation Team is somewhat different. Transformation Team members must be able to self-organize around their change objectives, their learning and skill-development, and the techniques necessary to cause greater impact on the teams who want to change. When the Transformation Team has these abilities, leadership can delegate decisions, management is freed from having to coordinate such tasks, and the organization is able to adapt quicker.
FIGURE 6.2: Transformation Team structure
A Transformation Team has core members but also requi
res a high number of collaborators (extended team).
Core members are individuals with experience in business transformations and who can devote most of their energy to supporting or promoting the initiative. They actively help those in the process of change. The core group often meets several times a day to review and adapt their strategy.
The extended team comprises the following:
Casual members
Ambassadors
Observers
Guests
Casual members (or casual participants) have good intentions and want to help, but they have little time or do not want to commit to the initiative because they need to concentrate on unrelated duties. They are willing to help you informally and want to learn more about how to make a change.
In some cases, casual members will support the initiative by delivering workshops or providing the names of people willing to share specific skills. They will lend a hand in the initial stages, helping to instill order, and will be grateful when their support is publicly acknowledged. Their participation often encourages others to mimic their attitude and collaboration with the initiative.
The ambassadors are the second member type. They are trusted and respected people within the company, and they already belong to teams in need of change. Their objective is to distribute information or replicate the learning sessions in their groups. They help maintain a constant flow of information in periods of high uncertainty and clarify possible misunderstandings. They also make it easier to scale the change initiative should it grow in a matter of weeks.
Ambassadors are usually happy to learn and gladly serve as members of the Transformation Team. They appreciate invitations to seminars and courses on new techniques or ways of working, and they enjoy working in pairs with core Transformation Team members. It’s not rare, either, for them to join the core team at some point.
You could also have observers, individuals who want to learn or support the initiative but who can’t commit to the team because of hierarchy, politics, or workload. Observers often contribute their opinions behind the scenes or provide people who can lend a hand. Sometimes, observers are senior executives who want to learn more about the plan but prefer to remain passive in the eyes of the organization.
Finally, from within the company, you will often receive guests wanting to know more about what is going on. They will come looking for new ideas they can replicate in their corner of the company or simply to gain new ways to work that they can apply in future initiatives.
If one of the objectives of the Transformation Team is for the company to implement the Scrum framework, then offer the article “Measuring and Evaluating Scrum in Complex Environments” at en.innova1st.com/60A
For knowledge to flow quickly and for the transformation to leap forward, the Transformation Team must be free of hierarchies and maintain informal interactions. This informal structure also makes it easier to scale the practices or techniques to the rest of the company.
Using the Advantages of the Principle of Reciprocity
In certain French schools, it’s common practice that one teacher secretly cares for another during the weeks leading up to Christmas. When the unsuspecting teacher enters class, the room is magically ready—a cushion is placed on their chair or there’s a bottle of water for them should they feel thirsty. This is called the guardian angel. This practice stimulates one of the psychological patterns with the greatest positive effect on people: reciprocity.
In a Transformation Team, the guardian angel is a powerful tool that establishes healthy habits from the beginning. Here, a core member will explicitly take care of an ambassador, observer, or casual participant, ensuring they have a better experience. Imagine that an ambassador needs to deliver a small workshop. Weeks before the seminar, the guardian angel could leave a book with information about the seminar topic on the ambassador’s desk or even reserve a chair in a session with information of interest to the ambassador.
Reciprocity is a psychological pattern that creates an experience of giving back, and thus it brings about a positive mental feeling between two or more people. It helps establish good human relationships when there is little time to establish quality links, and it brings favorable exponential changes in the company.
I have seen how this habit spreads across companies. It’s amazing to witness the increase in collaboration, trust, and empowerment that occurs in a matter of weeks, without the need for a great plan. This example confirms the nonlinear relationship between the size of a plan and its impact. Reciprocity is therefore an essential component in the expansion of any practice or framework.
Creating a Mutual Understanding
You have already handed over the draft vision of change and you have obtained commitment from core Transformation Team members. They’ve helped you identify possible members of the extended team, and now it’s time to organize the initial ideas and set the first steps of the initiative in motion.
The first work sessions focus on creating a shared understanding of the situation and problem to be solved. When these sessions conclude, everyone should be aligned and know how to collaborate.
To achieve this, invite the core members, the extended team, the initiative’s sponsor (if there is one), and people from the teams that need to change. As you will see in the Farm Market activity in Chapter 7, the same teams should select their representatives in these work sessions. Your goal during these meetings is to clarify underlying assumptions, validate beliefs, and clarify the scope of the change or product. In addition, you’ll have to teach everyone to collaborate efficiently. Have you ever used an impact map for this purpose?
Impact Mapping, created by Gojko Adzic, is a quick and visual way for participants to understand what is happening, allowing them to structure their ideas and align with what is to come. Presenting visually has the additional advantage of revealing the shortest path toward achieving a common goal.
An impact map asks four powerful questions: Why? Who? How? What? These questions help to organize the information and enable everyone to open their minds to collaboration and building a shared understanding. Asking Why? as the first question is important, as its answer yields the purpose of the initiative.
Employ Impact Mapping when a group of people needs to know the purpose of an initiative, create a shared understanding, and align around objectives and tasks.
You can start by creating groups of two, ensuring that even the most timid members feel comfortable. Set up an open space where everyone can interact freely. One option is to remove excess furniture and place chairs in a circle. Keep the meeting environment as informal and relaxed as possible.
Use the first few minutes to present the agenda for the day and the purpose of the meeting. Then you, an executive, or the sponsor of the initiative should take a few minutes to explain the situation and the initial context. This can include a presentation of the initial draft for the vision of the change or product.
If there are questions from participants, remind them that these should focus on the purpose of the initiative and not offer solutions—at least not yet. It’s common for people to want to offer a solution before arriving at a shared understanding of the problem.
Place a sticky note in the middle of a blackboard or wall with one of the following Why questions: Why are we doing this? or Why is it important that we head in this direction? Knowing the reason for the initiative makes it possible to understand its main objectives and react correctly if the information changes or unexpected events happen. It also lays the foundation for making better decisions about cost, scope, and timelines.
Without understanding the purpose, people will do the work without taking over the problem or self-organizing to find new solutions. Instruct participants to write down the answer and place answers in the center of the impact map. Don’t forget to allow time for reflection on the conversations.
Help participants grasp the bene
fits of fixed-time work cycles during an activity by timing the parts of the session and getting feedback on the time used.
The second step focuses on answering Who will be affected to achieve the goal? to understand who—people or teams—will have to change or will be affected by the change. Keep in mind that areas or departments may arise that were not initially included or considered, and this is a good thing. In general, you can expect to recognize three types of individuals or groups:
Those who could significantly influence the success of the initiative.
Those who provide a service or are connected with the service to be created by the initiative.
Those who have an interest in the sessions but would not benefit directly from them. These could be people in similar positions or company teams that want to learn how they too might have to change. They could also be people who want to know more about what is happening so they can transfer new habits to the rest of the company.
You can create a visual map of these three types of people to make them easier to identify. Feel free to change, personalize, and improve any of the techniques you see here.
Leading Exponential Change Page 18