A CULTURE OF DEFERMENT

The Challenge

Envision an organization where change after change is attempted. Few changes are realized in their entirety, the organization commonly quits on many others, and anything that seems to stick isn’t necessarily evolving as intended and may have taken several months or even years to establish in its current contesting state. Many of us have either been a part of an organization like this or may currently be in one. It’s a common challenge.

Now imagine taking a step back and into a consultative view. You may first want to wrap your mind around all the changes and why the organization has attempted to implement them. Why did they feel all these changes were necessary? What were the underlying challenges they were trying to overcome? What position were they trying to establish in their industry? What changes have been successful and which ones have not? And why? Many questions will help you better understand the situation and the challenges being faced. You may find, as I have, that many challenges stem from one or two overarching cultural concerns. Many changes or transformations are deemed necessary to try and overcome these challenges.

Enter agility. Often companies don’t truly understand the root cause of their woes and think “adopting agile” will be the solution to all their problems. After all, organizations have been adopting agile over the past two decades and hundreds of small and large organizations have been very successful in doing so.  Many companies have been able to implement this mindset shift into their cultures and have seen amazing benefits in doing so. They have become leaders in their respective industries, changed the landscape for the better, and created significant value for their customers. Many may have changed how we view the world today with their products.

Several others, however, even those corporations in the top 100 or even 50 in the world, struggle repeatedly. Often, the larger the organization the greater the challenges. They more than likely have a deeply engrained culture that is more averse to change, and one that may have become a bit complacent in its acceptance of what needs to change. After all, if it isn’t broken, why fix it? Yet others may “adopt agile” in practice yet are complacent in how quickly changes need to be adopted or improved; this is what you might label “a culture of deferment”.  A culture where transformations are extremely slow and often fail. Everything is deferred. The proverbial can is continuously kicked down the road.

Organizational Deferment 

When we defer those things that make a transformation successful, we are putting off the best practices, tried and true processes, and principles, values, and mindset that are necessary to see a company truly transform. We continuously label our company unique in some way and in need of past antiquated practices and processes. We may even adopt new ways of working, but soon circle back to what we knew before because of how comfortable it made us. We take the easy path and defer the hard. We may understand the value in doing things differently but lack the knowledge, willingness, or courage to see those changes through.

Deferment is a cultural norm, that like complacency, is engrained in the way we do business. Deferment may be acceptable to leadership, as accountability is oftentimes lacking while missed deadlines and commitments come to pass. Without accountability, whether individually or organizationally, improvements throughout the organization rarely get realized. Sure, there are pockets here and there that we’ll see move forward, but wholistically the organization remains impeded.

Culture changes last, and one which has become complacent, lacking a sense of urgency, better hope they have the means to withstand their industries’ speed of change.

Deferment in Agile

In an agile transformation deferment manifests itself in several ways:

· Key coaching roles are missing, showing a lack of full organizational support to the change.

· Agile roles never seem aligned to how the organization does business.

· Transformational training requires layers of approval and/or lacks full support from leadership (teams aren’t given the time/space for training as they are constantly firefighting).

· Refinement activities often become delayed due to “other work” required by the business.

· Commitments are commonly missed as unplanned work is prioritized over planned work.

· Retrospectives are commonly skipped as they are not considered a valuable use of time.

· Improvements are rarely identified, pursued, validated, or measured.

· Risks are more commonly Owned or Accepted rather than Mitigated or Resolved.

· Portfolios remain centered around projects rather than products.

· Reporting is more commonly tied to waterfall measurements rather than agile metrics.

· Etc.

We defer it all. Many things that would improve our transformation success are put on the back burner.

These are some of the more common red flags that could mean your organization has a culture of deferment. Whether your transformation is agile or otherwise, deferment is a real challenge that must be overcome to see progress and success.

Overcoming a Culture of Deferment 

Much like with any other problem, the first step to overcoming cultural deferment is to acknowledge there is an issue. Without doing so, you are doomed to repeat challenges or in many cases exacerbate those that exist already. Look at the list above and help the organization realize they have deferment issues that left unchecked will continue to hold back the benefits of Business Agility.

Once deferment is acknowledged, the challenge will be to overcome the poor practices that may have been overlooked or even engrained in the culture. You may want to focus on one issue at a time. This is not to say you cannot work on several challenges simultaneously, just be prepared that each deferment challenge could take substantial time to overcome. You must validate that best practices are being followed and that each challenge has been overcome in its entirety. You will need to ensure practices are written, enforced, and that excuses levied against following the best practices are valid and exceptional, not an attempt to backtrack. Coach and support best practices, engrain them in the culture, and move onto additional improvements on a repetitive basis and as appropriate.

Be careful not to assume there is no longer an issue just because it’s being hidden from view. Anyone with an avoidance mindset will look for every way they can to manipulate what is being measured. While positive intent should always be assumed, we should also realistically validate and measure what is occurring and important, avoiding vanity metrics. We must trust our people, but verify we’re on the right path.

We know there is little room for authoritarianism in agile, however, we must adopt a culture of accountability. This doesn’t mean we need to do a RACI on every task or practice, but rather we need to hold individuals and teams accountable to the commitments they make. While there will always be issues that prevent even the most predictable teams from accomplishing an objective, we should always look for explanation through review and retrospective. We then address those impediments whether at the team level, within leadership, or organizationally. Building a culture of trust, accountability, and continual improvement in the process.

A cadence of retrospection is a great way to dig into the successes and issues a team has had over a given sprint/iteration. Demos are a means for leaders and key stakeholders to participate, evaluate, and understand the work the teams are completing and the challenges they are facing. If we, as leaders, ignore teams’ inability to become predictable, and don’t do everything we can to help resolve those challenges, we are deferring our servant leadership, organizational goals, and may soon find ourselves at a tipping point that could define the organizations and our own futures.

Stop deferring your organization’s evolution as it could be the difference between becoming a metaphorical butterfly or a dinosaur.