Believe in people.....

The greatest asset any organization has is it's people.  Without fantastic employees, no company can survive.  This is always intriguing to me when organizations make decisions thinking that there is a "silver bullet" that can solve organizational or leadership issues.  One of the most popular shifts right now is Agile.  When I first heard of Agile, I was skeptical.  I thought it would go by the wayside like ISO or Six Sigma.  When it started to gain steam, I devoted my full resources to understanding it.  Especially as I saw some of my favorite clients become derailed during the implementation of Agile.  Just like any methodology, software, or project, you have to trust your people.  The magic formula in business is people, then process, then technology.

Agile is fantastic as a methodology.  However, it is the people that can deliver results.  It actually requires more trust in teams and people than some of the other methodologies on the market.  So if an executive is having organizational issues, why do they think adopting a new methodology will solve it?  A successful Agile transformation requires a strong foundation of leadership and the ability to trust the team to make decisions.  I am seeing so many Agile transformations in progress right now that baffle me.  I was just talking with my good friend John Stenbeck as we were taping the next episode of the Web series AgilityCast about this.  In many of the Agile transformations, it is being suggested to take the entire organization through a transformation instead of incremental gain.  Alf Abuhajleh said it best that people are implementing Agile in a Waterfall way!  John suggests an incremental implementation of transformation so that experimentation and results can be understood and tweaked while expansion of what works can be rolled out to the rest of the organization.  I concur.  

What I have noticed in the most successful Agile implementations is the secure leadership and the profound trust that they instill in the structure and teams.  Agile is actually more disciplined than many of the methodologies if implemented properly.  If an executive already does not trust the team or staff, then Agile will not be the fix.  It will only create more confusion and miscommunications.  So many organizations are diving in to the Agile world thinking that it will just make everything faster.  It can, but with the right trust and leadership.

No Day But Today,

Rick