Joshua Galyon
Running the organisation in an agile way is not just simply adapting to change. The organisations should be able to anticipate, adapt and thrive during uncertainty. The role of the strategic change leader turns vital here. They can help the teams anticipate and adapt to the change quickly. Here is how a strategic change leader can scale agility in the organisation.
Encourage cultural shift
To scale agility at the organisational level, the strategic change leader must encourage a cultural shift in the organisation from a traditional approach to agile values. Implementing agile in the organisation should be a top-down approach rather than a bottom-up approach. The management level should fully understand the concept of agility before moving it to the rest of the organisation. The change leaders will shift their mindset from a command and control mode to effective partnerships with the teams to foster collaboration and accountability. The strategic change leaders foster the development of an agile mindset for establishing mutual trust over hierarchy.
Define a clear vision and purpose
The strategic change leader should define the purpose of scaling agility in the organisation to foster effective alignment and engagement of the team. With a clear vision, a strategic change leader can make decisions to achieve long-term business objectives. Defining the purpose of agility in the organisation guides the team in the long-term journey as requirements emerge. The strategic change leader can connect teams to a larger purpose and let them understand how their efforts contribute to the same. The shared understanding of the teams about business goals enhances collaboration, adaptability, and navigating the agile process during scaling.
Empower teams to become self-organised
Team empowerment in scaling agile means changing the way you treat your team. The strategic change leader should foster a culture of shared ownership while scaling agility. The leaders can delegate authorities to the frontline team members and allow them to make independent and informed decisions. They will reduce hierarchy in decision-making to accelerate responsiveness to dynamic changes in project management. They enable the teams to become self-organised by providing all the necessary resources. The leaders will encourage a culture of open communication and feedback to scale agile in the organisation successfully. The teams that are used to traditional ways of working may find it difficult to embrace empowerment. The strategic change leader should act proactively and acknowledge the acts of leaders within the team.
Redesign organisational structure
Scaling agile in the organisation needs to redesign organisational structure, including people and technology. The leaders have to move beyond individual agile teams to build effective collaboration that supports scaling agility across the organisation. They should empower teams with autonomous decision-making to unlock different teams’ potential. The strategic change leader focuses on creating cross-functional teams to accelerate communication flow across the organisation and speed up value delivery to the customer. The leaders should also implement visible impediment boards at every leadership level to enforce transparency in accountability and resolve issues. The change leader can gain necessary skills through SPC certification training and scale agile successfully.
Build a safe environment for the teams
Agility in the organisation thrives when the change leaders can build a safe environment for the employees. The employees should be encouraged to experiment and look at mistakes as a learning opportunity. Recognising the achievements helps the teams to improve and adapt to an agile environment easily. The change leaders can encourage a growth mindset in teams for faster adoption.
Promote a culture of continuous learning
Scaling agile in the organisation is a continuous process, and support from the teams is inevitable for scaling agile across the organisation successfully. The leaders should provide resources, conduct workshops and offer training to the team members at all levels to adopt agile principles. Fostering the culture of continuous learning between the teams equips the teams to address the evolving challenges in a dynamic agile environment. The change leader should ensure alignment of the learning pragmas with the business objectives. The leader understands the training needs of the team by identifying skill gaps. Also, the change leaders will work on understanding the learning styles of the team members and tailor the learning programs to accommodate their needs to ensure inclusivity and effectiveness. The leaders can devise structured learning programs, online training programs or establish an immersive learning environment in the organisation to establish workforce resilience and increase innovation over time.
Measure outcomes
Measuring the metrics is an important step in scaling agile in the organisation. The strategic change leader focuses on measuring customer satisfaction, time to market and employee engagement for agile success in the organisation. By using the right agile metrics to measure business outcomes, the agile leader gets insights into the team’s performance in an agile environment. The change leaders can easily identify bottlenecks in agile adoption and project progress and remove them to foster effective agility across the organisation. The leaders can use these insightful metrics to increase employee engagement and customer satisfaction in the long run.
Conclusion
Scaling agility in the organisation is not about being adaptive to the changes. It needs a change in the organisational structure and cultural shift. The strategic change leaders guide teams to anticipate and adapt to the change. By empowering teams and developing a sense of continuous learning among the teams, the leaders can establish effective collaboration between the teams and scale agile successfully. By scaling agile, the strategic change leader can make the organisation flexible, responsive and adaptive to the change and help it thrive in the competitive environment.
