What if, you have to change to compete?
Systemic conflict is a strong indicator of fragility
Then you need a clear path to effectiveness & agility
Surface systemic conflict to list constraints to your agility and work to resolve them
Virtual
Open Space
Define a theme, Identify constraints & Engage people
Interest-based Negotiation
The challenge is for solutions to meet all core interests
Mutually-beneficial Agreements
Agreements become the foundation for evolution
Janars facilitation platform supports the process of getting clarity on systemic conflict, negotiating interests & building agreements to resolve.
As an Senior Agile Coach, I work with the executives and teams providing tailored Agile coaching, mentoring and training.
My personal goal is to help organizations and delivery teams drive business value through collaboration, sound engineering practices, alignment and dedication to quality. I worked with Air Canada, Temenos +Agility, and many clients.
As a conflict coach, I see conflict "tensions" as normal part of agile-lean and support leaders identify and implement resolutions.
As a leader, I’ve delivered collaboration solutions to a range of industries. I've led many projects as client or provider working with top outsourcing firms. Have strong credentials as an agilist and has worked with PwC, IBM, Microsoft, Rogers, HCL, Capgemini
We get it! and have solved for these problems
Worked within:
Waterfall constraints
High conflicts between departments
Being setup to fail yet required to deliver
Experienced challenges:
Turned around programs (with global teams)
Alignment of teams that worked in silos
Misalignment through performance measures
Been frustrated with:
Team delivery progress
Very slow change
Decisions made that hurt progress.
Your Journey has its own Momentum
Turned threats into Opportunities
Built a strong Resolution Culture
Take quiz & discuss needs
Gain senior sponsorship Structure & fund initiative
Build backlog
Engage your team
Plan initial events
Launch conversations
Start resolving constraints
With success, scale
Curious to know more... Read more below. Let's start a discussion
An 800 word read
It's a good thing. For change to happen it is necessary to surface systemic conflict and to resolve it. Conflict's normal. And mostly our corporate cultures aren't eager to surface and resolve conflict.
The reality today is most organizations' system of controls are in conflict with Agile's collaborative practices. This systemic conflict shows up as core interests not met. Sometimes people experience it as constraints, sometimes it gets personal.
It is normal practice to assign coaches the responsibility of resolving constraints. While they do a great job, resolution is a broader shared responsibility.
Many firms, such as Indian IT service firms, have had phenomenal success over the last 20-30 years. The future looks bright too with huge growth opportunities. Success is seen through growth and new business opportunities. With such success, why worry about resolving agile’s conflict?
At times of the biggest turmoils, continued success often requires change. Change & agility are partners. And a resolution capability is fundamental to both. Today competitors are moving fast. They are responding to new threats including changing cost models, increased staffing mobility and business uncertainty. "Messing" feels like a requirement.
The past Agile threat-opportunity was absorbed, not resolved. This left many practices from the agile and waterfall worlds. It was made to work not because it was effective. It worked because the cost advantage allowed people to be thrown at the problem. People delivered because they worked hard, are smart and motivated.
Now with the new threats compounding prior threats. We have a different world. These challenges are not solvable in the same way. Assume the cost advantage disappears and you can't throw people at it. It becomes imperative to compete on effectiveness. The timing is right for change.
Ask people in organizations to identify where Agile isn't working and you'll hear about unmet needs. Yet stated as: Executives need to be more agile. Delivery teams don't deliver scope predictability.
This may play out as follows. In response to productivity concerns, leaders put in controls to measure what they manage. Yet this unilateral action escalates the conflict and doesn't resolve the productivity issue.
Leadership has a right to manage. They have a core interest. They took action to meet it. Yet because they didn't remove the conflict, their solution was not effective. When teams negotiate & co-create resolutions together, they develop more durable more effective solutions. It is tougher to do, yet it's generally worth the investment.
In uncertain times, competitors stake out their future by making brave moves. For instance, taking a decision on how to mitigate the increased mobility risk. One approach could be to control the problem. Or alternately address the risk's root cause - systemic conflict in the workplace.
Controlling the risk through staffing & recruitment policy may have unintended consequences. It may lower staff quality and productivity. It may lead to increased levels of toxicity, retention and attraction problems... And as a result may lower service quality. The resultant consequences of the approach becomes a cycle difficult to reverse.
Or the approach could be to empower teams building a resolution culture to face the new world as it emerges.
The road to compete on effectiveness starts with choosing resolution. i.e. Making a choice to build a culture of resolution. In such a state, people who are challenged become curious. They pause to spend time bringing clarity to the problem. Are vulnerable. Tell stories about how conflict impacts them. They protect their partner's core interests as well as their own. Hard decisions are fought for, based on strong beliefs and values. And resolutions are optimized and owned.
In such a culture, teams are empowered. Power is balanced in negotiations. And leaders models the way forward.
The benefits of empowerment and resolution are clear. They lead to creation of a new positive culture. The ability to compete on effectiveness. The formation or strengthening of a global winner.
Making this change is hard. Structural relationships are deep within personal and group identities. This drives organizational expectations and behaviours.
The benefits make empowerment and resolution an obvious choice. Yet control is difficult to share. Willingness to share or partially give up on is a choice that Executives, leaders, managers, coaches, teams all need to make. ONLY when they feel assured that they can succeed in this new dynamic will old habits die. And only then can this transition to this new state be accomplished.
Leadership, coaches and guides have vital roles in transitioning to a resolution culture. There is nothing more powerful than top executives modelling the change. Agile coaches and scrum masters are the key facilitator of the change.
The guide's role is to help create resolution "muscle memory" for stakeholders. i.e. trigger and teach the change. And work with others to embed resolution as part of the organizational culture. The guide exits once the work has its own momentum. And then the journey continues.
We have a solid approach that builds a resolution culture. But before planning, we would like to know about your goals, challenges, value streams, projects and teams. Then let's build a plan together.
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