In an article published earlier in 2021, Anna Sandberg, Head of Continuous Improvement & Change at Product Creation, at Volvo Cars, Gothenburg, Sweden, in an interview with Steve Denning of Forbes said that “Many leaders continue to fail because they want to work with the most senior people or the top leaders who happen not to be innovators or early adopters”. In this discussion she was referring to the people in a company who are perhaps long-standing members of a team, having stayed in a corporation for years, and “are very good at doing things in the old way”.
Now, what Sandberg explains is that just because these staff members are hesitant to change, and evolve with the company, does not mean they are necessarily malcontent in any way. No, in fact she stresses the importance of reassuring that a drastic change toward agile practice would in fact prove to be beneficial, answering many, many, many “why” questions during the process.
The most important thing to do, in Sandberg’s eyes was simple: not to accept defeat and lose momentum with the transformation in mind, as that is when the people that Jay Wilkinson described as “a cancer, eating away at the culture of our business”; “high level performers [that] don’t live the values of our company”. These people, are the ones that crawl out of the woodwork, and declare that the first hurdle is evidence that “we tried it and it’s not for us”.
This attitude is very much detrimental to performing in an agile workplace, because, agile is inherently a process of repetition; honing your skills and ascending upward in a spiral for quick, easy and consistent, although potentially arduous at times, product development. In fact, Wilkinson suggests in his talk, to be rid of these people that are resisting these transformations, so that the company culture does not fixate upon them, especially, if they are to be the loudest in the room. Especially since, agility, is very much the epitome of “if at first you don’t succeed try, try again”.
Based in London, U.K., and founded in 2016 by Arvind Mishra The Agile Works (www.TheAgileWorks.com), is an up-and-coming recruitment and Agile consulting company. Arvind is a Certified SAFe SPC and regularly delivers both private and public SAFe certification workshops.
He is a design thinking expert, Sr. enterprise, portfolio Agile Coach with over a decade of experience working as an Agile coach in diverse industries such as banking, pharma, retail, auto, oil, gas, consulting and government.
The Agile Works; a small team of three strive to help shape the leadership's mind-set and values in readiness for their business transformation journey challenges. With Arvind at the helm, we strive to provide you with the agility tools to make your company that can thrive, and not just survive.
To book a consultation, or for any enquiries, you can contact Arvind via the following email address: arvind@theagileworks.com
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