Influence of Coach & Leaders’ Bias on Agile transformation outcomes

Influence of Coach & Leaders’ Bias on Agile transformation outcomes

Agile transformations happen in a certain context. with two very critical parameters. One is the orientation of the coach who is guiding the transformation. The second is the leaders’ who are key stakeholders and decision makers in the organization being transformed. Depending on this, different results have been observed in programs. This is an attempt to capture the same in a model. It looks at the combination of those parameters and possible outcomes. In the ideal world we would expect an agile coach to have a balanced approach focusing on both practices as well as mindset change. However in reality often a bias is observed, orienting the coach and the leader towards a particular disposition.

The VUCA world is not linear. These are definitely not just the two parameters that are involved and more importantly people are not black or white. These are complex systems. A systems model based approach looking at their major dispositions allows us a thinking tool. It can be leveraged for better discussions and probing solutions.

The Hypothesis

The diagram in the featured image represents the hypothesis in the proposed model. The X axis represents the coach disposition and Y axis the Leaders’ disposition. It leads to a 3 x 2 grid which is described further in detail

X-axis – Coach Bias or disposition

Coaching disposition predominantly “culture oriented”

These are coaches who are predominantly “culture” oriented”. They focus a lot more on promoting and adopting the cultural aspects of the transformation – ones that involve mindset change. They are often seeing promoting and pushing for aspects like self organizing teams, face to face communication, psychological safety and others. They may not always insist on high discipline and are more likely to promote customization of the practices to the local context. This type of coaching style is also predominantly observed in coaches who do not have any background in the domain/technology that  the teams operate in. Often they may lack a useful “toolkit” of practices or coaching tools because of less experience in transformations.

Coaching disposition predominantly “practices oriented”

These are coaches who are predominantly “practices” oriented. They focus a lot more on adoption of practices and specific frameworks like Scrum, SAFe (and the like). They may understand conceptually that agile is a lot about culture,. However their background and experience orients them more towards seeing the transformation as primarily a “practices implementation”. They also often have a preference for a particular set of practices/frameworks. They tend to push the same methods for a variety of contexts. They often insist on having a high discipline around the practices implementation and “to the book” implementation. This type of coaching style is also often observed in coaches who have background in the domain/technology that  the team is operating in. Or they might have been in similar implementations where they have observed certain practices work.

A “balanced” coaching disposition

These are coaches who take a more balanced and pragmatic approach. They are contextually aware and use a right combination of practices implementation/discipline along with emphasis on mindset change. They typically have a deeper understanding of change management aspects compared to the ones biased towards practices or culture. This type of coaching style often comes with experience. Though knowledge of the domain/technology could be there in some cases, these kind of coaches have developed their own ways of working and a “toolkit”. They rely on that to effect the transformation.

Note: The coach operating styles are many times also influenced by many factos. One of the key factors being the general operating styles in the agile center of excellence in the organization .

Y-Axis – Leader bias or disposition

Bureaucratic mindset

These leaders’ fundamentally believe that the organization is better off being organized as a top-down hierarchy with multiple layers and a strict command and control way of working. Theory X as explained by McGregor in his book “The Human side of Enterprise” drives their thinking. This usually involves a heavy focus on outputs rather than outcomes and micromanaging work to ensure outputs are in line with expectations. Leaders’ with bureaucratic mindset often tend to encourage processes and systems that facilitate this micromanagement and output focused thinking.

Agile Mindset

These leaders’ fundamentally have a better appreciation of the VUCA world and understand the power of network oriented structures and small teams. Theory Y drives their thinking. They understand autonomy, mastery and purpose are better drivers of the workforce than compliance oriented approaches. Outcome oriented thinking and a participatory management style allows them to leverage small self organizing teams to get work done. 

Moving from bureaucratic to agile mindset requires Change Management

The agile coach’s ability and skill to transform the leaders’ mindset from a bureaucratic mindset to an agile mindset is a critical success factor. In addition it is linked to several other enabling factors that may play a big role in this regard – executive buy-in and support, compelling business need to be agile and others.

Transformation outcomes arising from the biases

The transformation outcomes broadly fall into 3 categories – when the coaching disposition is predominantly “culture oriented”, predominantly “practices oriented” and the ones where there is a balanced approach.

Coaching disposition predominantly “culture oriented”

Conflict

When the leadership with their bureaucratic dispositions want solutions that are more short term and the coach focuses on mindset only, the two key stakeholders are on two different planes of thought. This often leads to conflicts that eventually results in not much happening on the ground. They struggle to agree on many aspects – limiting the implementation. Though as odd it may sound, instances of this have been observed.

Frustration

With the leadership leaning more towards the agile mindset, they are looking for contextual solutions to be built with the coach together. However the coach’s apparent lack of interest/knowledge in practices is a limiting factor. This leads to frustration as the team relies on the coach guidance who expects “them to do all the thinking”. A classic example of this would the coach keeps on telling the team to be self organized and keeps referring them to the definition of self organization. The team however needs to be taught how to move to self organization – for example with tools like 7 levels of delegation. In absence of such tools with the coach, the leaders’ and teams are frustrated.

Note: In both the situations described above, the agile implementation would typically be between the zones of Agile Facade to Checklist Agile.

Coaching disposition predominantly “practices oriented”

Agile Facade

With the coach focused on implementation of practices in an environment where the leadership is of bureaucratic mindset, typically morphing of traditional processes into agile nomenclature happens. New roles and terminologies are introduced. However the underlying ways of working are hardly changed. This is merely an “Agile Facade”.

Checklist Agile

When leadership leans more towards the agile mindset, there is some traction beyond the agile facade and key practices do get implemented. Given the heavy focus on practices though, it more often results into  “checklist agile” implementations where everyone follows the “new process”, but not necessarily thinking and adapting to the evolving context which is the measure of agility

A “balanced” coaching disposition

Stagnant Agile

A balanced coaching disposition with the right balance of focus on practices and culture ensures that things do move forward even when the leadership is of bureaucratic mindset. These often turn out to be decent implementations where definitely progress was made with new ways of working and thinking bringing in some benefits. However the leadership disposition often causes such implementations to be stagnant. This happens especially when leadership declares success too early and loses the steam. Coaches with strong change management skills are able to effect the transition to agility by coaching leaders to move from bureaucratic to agile mindset.

Agility

If the leadership is able to make the journey towards agile mindset either on their own or with the coach’s help, that is where we find implementations that are constantly learning and improving their ways of working. This is the ideal behavior which is expected. The quest for agility is a journey, never a destination. The true sign of an agile transformation is that its never over.

Conclusion and next steps

The model described above is a conceptual model. It is primarily based on personal observations and discussions with many coaches who have been involved in large scale agile transformations. Like all models, its a thinking model. It can aid in understanding a context and taking corrective actions it’s still a hypothesis.

I would like to run a survey that will provide empirical data that validates or invalidates the hypothesis. The survey is still work in progress. In true agile spirit, I definitely seek early feedback from fellow coaches and practitioners.

Looking forward to hearing from many of you !

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