Agility – or how to kill B.U.R.T. ™
When it comes to ‘agility’ we usually focus on two elements in your organization: ‘bureaucracy’ and ‘strategic planning’. How to improve your competitive edge by becoming more agile?
Of-course some form of structure and bureaucracy is always needed, certainly when you run a large organization with thousands of people. The question is not whether you should have bureaucracy, but rather what type of bureaucracy. Our suggestion however will always be to reduce bureaucracy to the minimum - keep reducing it forever - and invest in good leadership and ownership on the work floor instead.
First a little story about bureaucracy and dice...
Developing competitive edge means that you have to roll the dice every now and then. It takes courage to do so, but is inevitable in this ever faster changing world. Sometimes it is better to roll the dice and take some risk, than to wait and see. Competition won't wait, and you don't want somebody else to roll the dice for you.
However, when professional companies become professional bureaucracies an ugly corporate guy called 'Burt' will come up with the suggestion that the dice need to be compliant with the new corporate rules. Leaders will still be very busy rolling dice. it is just that the dice look very different now.
So... who the hell is this ugly guy Burt...?
In agile and lean organizations people develop more initiative, and they are more creative in finding pragmatic, simple and cost effective solutions to their problems (yes: their problems, as they also take more ownership), all with a continuous sense of urgency. The one element killing agility most is bureaucracy. The problem with bureaucracy is that it makes organizations sluggish and inflexible, which leads to even more bureaucracy and complexity, eventually killing initiative and accountability on the work floor. This cycle is what we at Advance! call the ‘Big Ugly Rat Trap’, or B.U.R.T.™ Once ugly Burt is in your organization, it is very difficult to get rid of him anymore, and he will start slowing down processes and killing the agility and sense of urgency you need to stay ahead of competition.
Why do people keep working with Burt?
In my roughly fifteen years career as a management consultant I have all too often had intense and heated discussions (and disagreements) with top and senior managers on why they thought they couldn’t be agile and lean, and why they thought they needed Burt. Mostly they say they need Burt and its big fat bureaucracy to handle their big complex companies, and they maintain that agility and leanness is just something for small enterprises. In fact, Burt appears to have become some of those managers' best friend.
Many times I couldn’t win the argument for the simple reason that ‘fat’ also stands for concentration of power with just a few people, lack of commitment to the true purpose of the organization, lack of transparency, lack of open communication, and last but not least: bureaucracy always acts as compensation for poor leadership. Agility can only exist with engaged, empathic and committed leadership, who are ready to create a maximum of transparency and open communication.
Improving agility in fact is a tough road to ride. In agile and lean organizations poorly performing employees (and certainly poorly performing leaders) are easily exposed, while in ‘fat’ organizations it is a lot easier to stay below the radar for a long time. And yes, agility is possible in big organizations as well: see our case studies on Southwest Airlines, Toyota and Nunhems; three organizations excelling in all six principles of our 'Six-Pack for Success'.
Is there a correlation between Leadership and Agility?
The answer is simple: Yes! On those occasions where we were involved in transforming a ‘fat’ organization in an ‘agile’ one we found some interesting correlations. Read more about that on our leadership page...
A few words about Agility and Strategic Planning
Strategic planning has become something of almost religious proportions especially for the more established enterprises of this world, and certainly for those companies responding to the quarterly neurosis of the stock exchange. But, strategic plans have a tendency to kill the agility of your organization. As we all know, strategic plans hardly ever work out the way they were intended, simply because this world changes faster than we can plan. The word ‘planning’ implies structure, which in itself is contradictory to the chaos of our daily reality. Please don’t misunderstand me: I am not saying that strategic planning is obsolete; we are merely adding an extra element to the traditional methods of strategic planning: strategic agility.
How to make your organization agile?
To develop an agile organization you may need to change about seven things:
1. Invest in strong and engaged leadership
Engaged means that the leaders' motivation to act and perform must be genuinly in line with the purpose, the strategic goals and the strategy of your organization, and they must be willing to stay to finish their missions. Leaders must understand that their role is to serve others, and not vice versa. Leaders are to be facilitators; equipping employees with the tools and information they need to do their jobs fast and efficiently.
2. Become transparent
Access to information is essential to agility. Poor and sluggish communication creates complexity; the organization will become slow and lethargic when people need too much time so sort things out. When employees have quick access to good information and everybody is working from the same page, your organization will take decisions more quickly and move faster.
3. Have the guts to kill Burt
Killing Burt will ruthlessly expose the strengths and weaknesses in your organization and people. This is a tough one because a lot of people will protect Burt with their lives, as he has become their best friend. This is where you have to be tough and determined.
4. Trust your people
Give your people the power to decide and support them accordingly, which means: hand them the controls – probably the most difficult part - and coach them from a proper distance. When people feel empowered they will take more initiative and accountability for what they do. They will feel more ownership.
5. Be agile in strategic planning
Stop planning further than five years ahead: who can predict what this crazy world looks like in five years time? Instead: have these strategic ‘what-if’ meetings at least once a year, and adapt your mid and long term strategy to the outcome of these meetings. Give your strategic planning staff something more useful to do, as they are creating their own bureaucratic paper reality, often too far away from the chaos of your people’s daily reality to really understand what’s going on. It is the people who on a daily basis meet your customers who should be your strategic planners. Don’t worry about the fact they have no marketing or finance degrees; sometimes it is better to have people without such degrees help make decisions. There is a great probability that their decisions reflect reality more than those from the educated strategic planners.
6. Listen to your employees
Talk with your employees yourself as often as you can, and invite them to participate in strategic brainstorm sessions with your key people in which you develop the ‘what-if-scenarios’ that will form the basis for your strategic goals and operational objectives and actions.
7. Decide and communicate quicly
Never leave any meeting anymore without taking significant decisions, and defining actions in such a way that people know what to do next. Keep your people busy with shaping the future; it becomes their future, for which they take ownership. Always communicate (which is not the same as inform, which is one-way communication, whereas communication is a two-way dialogue) your decisions and actions to everyone in the organization immediately. Yes, everyone, and yes, immediately. Please don’t think that your people won’t understand your decisions: that as such is a gross underestimation of normal people’s intelligence. And stop being afraid that competitors will know what you are doing. If you are lean and agile you will always take them by surprise. And the more they try to copy your initiatives, the more they will drift away from their own key purpose and goals, and become misaligned.
I guess the ball is in your court now: are you ready to be agile? Will you kill Burt, or will Burt kill you?
(I know we are not making friends with this article; it may be worthwhile however to read our case studies about strategic alignment. The proof is in the pudding I guess).