Doing Agile Right: A book review by Bob Morris
Doing Agile Right: Transformation Without Chaos
Darrell K. Rigby, Sarah Elk, and Steven H. Berez
Harvard Business Review Press (May 2020)
“If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change.” Mohandas Gandhi
Gandhi achieved change of greater scale and significance than did almost anyone else throughout history. His non-violent leadership enabled India to achieve independence within the British empire. Previously, his efforts in South Africa deserve at least some of the credit for the eventual overthrow of apartheid (i.e. institutional racial segregation). No one is better qualified to be called an agile leader as well as a servant leader.
According to Darrell Rigby, Sarah Elk, and Steven Berez, agile teams are the key to success of organizational transformation. They “thrive on doing things quickly. The teams try out new ideas, often before the ideas are fully formed, and test them with prospective customers. They don’t respect red tape, and they don’t follow detailed plans. If such teams are to thrive in an orgaization, they need a lot of freedom and a lot of support,” especially by the CEO and other C-level executives.Agile leaders such as Gandhi make it possible for people to make decisions faster and with less information than do traditional leaders. Agile leaders typically take five actions:
1. “They communicate — even overcommunicate — the strategic ambition to a broader range of people.”
2. “They build decision makers.”
3. “They strengthen lines of communication [between and] among the teams.”
4. “The accelerate learning loops, emphasizing progress over perfection.”
5. “The shift measurement and reward systems to larger teams…enlarging circles of trust and collaboration.”
Agile teams and their leaders are driven to achieve results at the team, scale, and enterprise levels. Their innovations improve results as do large-scale agile teams. Moreover, agile innovation is even better than traditional innovation, and more likely to succeed (42% versus 26%). That said, however, “It is important to note that while agile methods may improve the odds of success, they do not guarantee it.”
These are among the passages of greatest interest and value to me, also listed to suggest the scope of Rigby, Elk, and Berez’s coverage:
o Doing Agile Wrong, and, Agile, Agile, Evertywhere (Pages 3-5 and 5-8)
o How Agile Really Works (23-35)
o Scaling agile (27-28 and 45-72)
o Agile process and innovation (29-30 and 143-162)
o Agile Leadership (51-52 and 93-110)
o The Agile Enterprise (51-54 and 125-142)
o Learning to Measure Agility (83-87)
o Use Agile Methods to Determine How Agile to Be (87-91)
o Agile Budgeting (116-121)
o Figure Out How — and How Fast — to Gert There (132-134)
o Building a Talent Machine (134-141)
o Technology Innovation (154-158)
o Agile at Amazon (166-174)
o The Rues of the Agile Road (174-188)
o Definitions of Operating Model Components (197-200)
Given the unprecedented volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity of the business world today, most organizations simply cannot survive — much less thrive — unless they “do agile right.” The architecture of the transformation required varies — often significantly — from one organization to the next. However, all organizations must balance order and structure with innovation and change. Channeling Marshall Goldsmith, their leaders must leverage “what got them here” in order to have the stability and resources needed to “get them there.”
I commend Darrell Rigby, Sarah Elk, and Steven Berez on their cohesive and comprehensive explanation of HOW to do that. Perhaps their most important insight is that an organization and its teams can become agile only to the extent their leaders are.