Culture, People and Systems Part II
A few weeks ago I posted about the relationship between organizational culture types defined by William Schneider in ‘The Re-Engineering Alternative” and MBTI types and temperaments. My theory is that as a change artist, whether it be an external or internal coach, can you increase the odds of creating a successful change by understanding these factors:
- organizational culture type
- type and temperament of the influential people or ‘change sponsor’
- flow of power throughout the organization
I am still learning about this and refining that theory. Here’s a quick example, suppose you, as a change artist, are brought in to transform an organization to Agile. Suppose this organization is a control culture (likes rules, process, stability, hierarchy and power) and the change sponsor (VP or Director or whoever brought in Agile, let’s call him Rick) has MBTI preferences that lend themselves to align with the attributes of a control culture.
Rick may be more likely to see ‘Agile’ as a set of processes and practices over a set of values and principles. As a change artist, an Agile Adoption approach may make more sense. ’Adoption’ and ‘Transformation’, IMO, are different. Transformation is transforming an organization’s culture to build a learning culture or Agile mindset. Adoption is adopting Agile practices and processes for perceived benefits that are (or at least seem) concrete.
As a change artist providing a less ‘fluffy’ and values/principles approach in favour of a more pragmatic approach of a list of processes and practices with benefits, possible outcomes and an implementation plan increase the odds of a successful change. Read more
Culture and People and Systems…Oh My!
I received my copy of The Re-Engineering Alternative by William Schneider a couple days ago. I’ve always been fascinated with culture and people (particularly MBTI) and how, IMO, they impact how effective you can be with Agile.
Michael Sahota has written some fantastic posts about organization culture and I’m excited to read this book to expand my knowledge about culture.
What I’m more interested is how those cultures develop, after all, it’s the people in your organization that create your culture. Read more
Thoughts on Agile 2011 – Culture Matters
This year was my first visit to Agile 2011 and I came home with a suitcase full of learning to go along with the suitcase full of vendor handouts. I think the conference organizers did a fantastic job. The location and facility was great and accommodated many hallway conversations, especially in Coach’s Corner (thx Mark Levison for setting that up) and the Open Jam area. I also want to thank the volunteers, particularly Charlotte who was the volunteer in my session. She gave me some feedback during my session that I was able to use right away which was awesome.
I managed to go to a few sessions and spent most of the time in the hallways and Coach’s Corner. I love talking to people to see how they’ve implemented Agile, what challenges they’ve had and how they over-come them. I was super-excited to finally meet Lisa Crispin as we have been trading tweets for the last year or so!
My boss asked me yesterday what my one take-away was. After the first day attending Lisa Crispin and Janet Gregory’s session titled ‘Yeehaw, we’re Agile testers, now what?‘ and David Hussman’s and Tim McCoy’s session titled ‘Integrated Product Development‘, my takeaway was clear. Read more
