I’m Sick of the Word “Transformation”

Boot stepping on a butterfly
Boot stepping on a butterfly

I’m sick of the word transformation.

There, I said it.  Organizational transformation, at least in the business world I’m in, implies this massive scrap everything, burn the fields, and start anew approach.  A gigantic change.  A different way forward.  And the term agile transformation?  Oh boy. 

Agile transformation, to me, implies product-delivery-at-all-cost and customers suddenly delighted by an IT department that they’ve despised for decades. It’s slamming everyone in small conference rooms for two week iterations, rewriting all the contracts, and rewiring the entire leadership team. Data lakes and value streams! Experimentation! Value trains! Etc., etc., etc. 

Here’s the thing: transformations don’t happen quickly.

Often, what happens is one team over here says, Hey!  Let’s try this agile thing! So, they give it a go. Then, agile processes start to creep across the organization. There’s no change to compliance methods or the way the program is funded, and leadership is on board only in theory.  Early adopters within an organization are simply finding ways to work around the system; the system has not changed. 

Similarly, (I’ve seen quite a bit of this lately) some of leadership–not all at the same time– decides, Hey! Let’s try this agile thing! So they hire some coaches and a Scrum Master or two and they do some assessments and the coaches give trainings and this department over here sort of starts to try agile and this department over here doesn’t give a crapola about agile and this other person in leadership is open to trying agile but wants all the same rules and regulations abided by.  And then there’s the multiple vendors foaming at the mouth to provide executive briefings and give training by PowerPoint, to scale frameworks and provide strategies on their own flavor of agile that the organization must adopt.

Transfor-what?!

Think about it, how many leadership and agile books have you seen with a butterfly on it?  Don’t get me wrong, I love butterflies as much as the next person.  However, organizations, programs, and individuals don’t get to crawl up into a cocoon, hiding from all outside pressures for 3 weeks, and come out the other end beautiful and fully transformed.

 

Comic about change
Cartoon by audiencestack.com

A Change in Vocabulary

So, let’s not use the word transformation anymore. Instead, let’s use reality based thinking. This is a journey of organizational evolution. Evolution by definition is a process of change in a certain direction.  It’s the process of working out or developing.  It’s chip, chip, chipping away at something.  It’s pivoting even the slightest bit every single day.  In other words, it’s making a difference for the better where we can.  It’s simply making today suck less than yesterday, everyday.

So, go to the willing.  Then again, make something a little better/easier for the unwilling. 

I know you’re thinking, But leadership is essential to an agile transformation! Scaled Agile says so!  I know, I know, I know. I’ve said the same thing numerous times myself.  Just go with me for a second.  Let’s assume this agile initiative is imperfect and messy, which, by the way, it usually- almost-pretty-damn-near-always is.  We’re not after a big bang! quick! transformation, remember?  We’re after evolution, making a real difference that will become part of the organization moving forward. 

I know the other thing you may be thinking, But I’m an Enterprise Agile Coach.  I work on the Ent-er-prise.  My question to you: do you care about the title or doing damn good work?  People make up the Enterprise.  So, help the people make damn good, if not small, changes.        

Just Make a Difference

In moving the needle everyday and evolving every step of the way, you will not see the transformation until it has already happened.  Bumps, bruises, failures, and successes will be along the journey of change.  Every step, every change, every black spot and beautiful shade of orange you will have earned on your way to becoming that butterfly you envisioned– all without a cocoon.

  • Do the roles that nobody else knows how to do until that capability is born.
  • Be the leader you want to see in your organization, and others will catch on.
  • Invite people into any and all conversations. If you believe everyone is needed and everyone has something to contribute, amazing things are possible.
  • A system functions exactly how the people of the system want it to. (Sit with that for a minute.) Until the people change what they want and how they want to achieve it, you’ll never achieve butterfly status.

So, go ahead, get sick of the word transformation, too. Walk the walk. Chin up, sleeves up. And, above all, keep your eye on the next step of evolution.

Darren Hoevel, President, Leadership & Agile Coach

By: Darren Hoevel

Partnerships Build Spacecraft

SpaceX-rocket-ship
SpaceX-rocket-ship

It wasn’t the launch (or lack thereof) of SpaceX’s first American commercial crewed rocketed spacecraft on May 27th that got me giddy about the future of space travel and beyond. Launch Day was an exciting one for my family (people are actually getting launched into SPACE!), but it was an interview with SpaceX founder Elon Musk and NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine that sent me flying over the moon. (Sorry, I couldn’t help myself). I’m going to insert here that I know very little about spacecraft, so go easy on me if I get the shred the terminology.

Interspersed in the live stream of the launch preparations on NASA Live– fueling the spacecraft, readying the astronauts, the voices of mission control– was an interview with Musk and Bridenstine. Bridenstine’s passion about the public-private partnership of NASA and SpaceX was palpable:   

Here's what he said:

“NASA used to give the contractors the designs and the contractors would go and build it. [Now] we are not purchasing, owning, and operating the hardware.  We did not tell industry what to build; we gave them top-level requirements. We said, Here is the requirement for payload.  Here is the requirement for safety, and then we let the innovators–commercial industry, American commercial industry– innovate.  And they came up with solutions that had never been dreamed of before, and that’s the success of this program. We’re revolutionizing how we do space flight, and I think when we look into the future we’re going to see these models of doing business with public-private partnerships supply not just to low earth orbit–which is what we’re seeing today–but we’re taking this model to the moon and even on to mars.”

Did you catch that? “We did not tell the industry what to build; we gave them top-level requirements.”  The future of the public-private business model is creating partnerships. Why did this get me so excited? My answer is three-fold.

Hard Requirements Kill Innovation

Innovation in the government space can be an exceedingly tricky thing. The client wants to know what it’s going to get for its money before it buys it. Fair enough. They almost always want every little detail of the plan outlined ahead of time and want it delivered on schedule. Outlining hard requirements ahead of time can greatly hinder creativity and innovation. . If Henry Ford had asked his customers what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse. It’s been quoted a million times, and I’ve said it a million times myself, if Henry Ford had asked his customers what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse.

Think instead of what NASA did. They gave SpaceX a $400,000,000 initial investment (apparently in spacecraft sums, 400 mil is an infinitesimal drop in the bucket) and high-level requirements. In return they got the first version of the Dragon spacecraft (the reusable Falcon 9 rocket AND the Dragon cargo capsule, which paved the way for the Crew Dragon capsule). Nobody was sure it could be done. Not even Musk himself. But they did it. The highly motivated and supremely talented folks at NASA and SpaceX partnered and innovated. Which brings me to my next two points: 

Partnerships Send Spacecraft into Space

The future is in public-private partnerships, like Bridenstine said. I’d like to emphatically state that partnership is tremendously important whether it’s a public-private, private-private, public-public, or simply human to human relationship. Partnerships exist between organizations and its external and internal customers. Partnerships also exist between teams and programs. It’s no longer acceptable to purchase a product (even within your own organization) and sit back and wait a few years for it to be delivered.

Now, the buyer should state the desired outcome to the program or the team or the private-sector company and be an active participant in the product delivery process. They should work with the teams doing the work–testing products, giving feedback, failing, pivoting, and embracing changing requirements– to innovate and create unimagined business value, and with any hope, under budget.

Here’s Bridenstine on the benefit of partnering with SpaceX:

“SpaceX brings a very unique capability to the mix that NASA has been lacking, quite frankly. SpaceX is really good at flying, and testing, even being willing to fail, then fix. Fly, test, fail, fix. They can reiterate that over and over and over again very fast… The willingness to fail is something NASA has lacked for a very long time, but it’s what enables SpaceX to move so fast, to rapidly iterate and improve. NASA has this history of qualifying every component and then every sub-component…and everything has to be perfect and go perfect on every launch, and that slows us down… SpaceX has been a great partner. Make no mistake, they have pushed NASA, but I hope NASA has also come along and pushed them in a way that is unique as well [to which Musk agreed]. This partnership has been fantastic.”

By the way, the innovative product being built doesn’t have to be a manned rocketed spacecraft. It could be a case tracking system or a financial budgeting system or as simple as a COTS document management system (I wrote this blog in Google Drive). Maybe the innovation is in the simplicity of quality, reusable code or in the way governance is built into a product or it’s a beautiful customer-centric user experience.

Fly, Test, Fly , Fix, Repeat

Bridenstine outlined exactly why the partnership with SpaceX is so important to NASA: SpaceX’s ability to fly, test, fail, fix, and rapidly iterate because they’re not bogged down by the need for perfection. They operate with an experimentation and continuous learning (beginner’s mindset)  mindset. It is the very essence of the company. You cannot have innovation without experimentation and failure.  But private-sector companies shouldn’t be the only ones that fly, test, fail, and fix. With a little–in some cases, a lot– of tweaking, the government can do that, too. Experiment. Build your vision, refine your need (the what), and give your delivery partners the space (I did it again) to be creative and innovate for the how.

If NASA and SpaceX can figure out how to launch human beings into space, a matter of life and death, by establishing relationships, setting high-level requirements that leave room for innovation, and creating a culture of failing fast and often, then your federal organization and its partners can figure it out how to deliver any kind of non-life-threatening amazing product. It’s mission critical (sorry, I’ll try to stop) that you are NOT AFRAID to fly, test, fail, and fix. You will eventually fly farther, faster, and with more grace.

So, be brave. Set your trajectory, and shoot for the moon. (That’s the last one. I swear.)

I’ll leave you with these words by Elon Musk:​

“This is a dream come true….something that I thought would ever actually happen.  If someone told me in 2002….that we’d be standing here with a rocketed spacecraft on Pad 39A, I would have thought, No way this could come true. I didn’t even dream this would come true. It’s a culmination of an incredible amount of work by SpaceX, NASA, and other partners…working incredibly hard to make this day happen.”

Darren Hoevel, President, Leadership & Agile Coach

By: Darren Hoevel