Agile fable: Agile transformation

You might have come across the fable in which ant work hard but due to the burden of organizational hierarchy and desire for reports destroyed the organization.

Every day, a small Ant arrived at work early and starting work immediately, she produced a lot and she was happy. The boss, a lion, was surprised to see that the ant was working without supervision. He thought if the ant can produce so much without supervision, wouldn’t she produce more if she had a supervisor!

So the lion recruited a cockroach who had extensive experience as a supervisor and who was famous for writing excellent reports. The cockroach’s first decision was to set up a clocking in attendance system. He also needed a secretary to help him write and type his reports. He recruited a spider who managed the archives and monitored all phone calls.

The Lion was delighted with the cockroach’s report and asked him to produce graphs to describe production rates and analyze trends so that he could use them for presentations at board meetings. So the cockroach had to buy a new computer and a laser printer and recruit a fly to manage the IT department. The Ant, who had been once so productive and relaxed, hated this new plethora of paperwork and meetings which used up most of her time.

The lion came to the conclusion that it was high time to nominate a person in charge of the department where the ant worked. The position was given to the Cicada whose first decision was to buy a carpet and an ergonomic chair for his office. The new person in charge, the cicada, also needed a computer and a personal assistant, whom he had brought from his previous department to help him prepare a work and budget control strategic optimization plan.

The department where the ant works is now a sad place, where nobody laughs anymore and everybody has become upset. It was at that time the cicada convinced the boss, the Lion, to start a climatic study of the office environment. Having reviewed the charges of running the ant’s department, the lion found out that the production was much less than before so he recruited the Owl, a prestigious and renowned consultant to carry out an audit and suggest solutions. The Owl spent 3 months in the department and came out with an enormous report, in several volumes, that concluded that ” The Department is overstaffed..”

Guess who the lion fired first?

The Ant of course “Because she showed the lack of motivation and had a negative attitude.

Now let’s flip the organization and its growth in the Agile way of working where the role of managers, HR and any other person/entity who are not value contributor is constantly challenged.

Every day, small Worker Ants arrived at work early, start work immediately, Ants produced a lot, and they were happy. The boss, a Lion, was surprised to see that the Ants were working without supervision. He thought if the Ants can produce so much without supervision, wouldn’t they produce more if they had a supervisor! He also heard there is something called the Agile organization. He thought of trying it and hired an Agile coach to grow the organization is the Agile way. Lion hired Agile coach Rabbit. On the first day of the assignment, Rabbit decided to talk to Ants to understand the nature of work and to understand ground reality. Lion was surprised, as he expected that Rabbit will talk to him first, after all, he is the boss but he kept his silence and decided to observe and learn. After talking to Ants, Rabbit was in Lion’s office and started his interview process. Rabbit’s talk was mainly centered on - what does Lion want from the organization, what is his vision, and what is the purpose of the organization. 

After talking to many people in the organization, Rabbit came with a high-level plan. Strangely, the opening statement of plan stating that it will change as new Information is discovered. This plan has put a lot of onus on Ants to manage themselves while Lion’s, other bosses and supporting departments’ role was limited to providing the environment and resources so Ants can manage themselves.

HR and Finance departments were furious after studying the plan – no concrete dates, metrics, very little control. Rabbit was summoned to explain the plan to bosses of the organization. In his presentation, Rabbit patiently answered the questions raised by bosses who were feeling that they would lose control if Rabbit’s plan is implemented. To sell his plan, Rabbit employed very simple strategy; he leaked the details of his presentation to almost every participant and incorporated their feedback without compromising the Agile way of working. No surprises during the presentation.

Few of the bosses agreed to do small experiments in their fiefdom to try Agile way of working as Rabbit’s proposal was promising better outcome in medium to long term.

In the meantime, Rabbit also spoke with Ants and took them in confidence. The Ants were happy as their views were also taken into consideration.

Rabbit created a representative team of Ants to demonstrate the power of the Agile way of working. To conduct this experiment, he asked all of the executives and other Ants who were not part of the experiment to observe (just like kids in zoo watches the animals – just watch do not interfere). Rabbit volunteered to provide help to anyone if someone wants to set up a similar experiment. Initially, people were skeptical but as benefits of self-organizing, manager-less team started to become clear as continuous improvement in effectiveness and outcome started to flow out, other teams and executives started to reach Rabbit for help set up the Agile teams.

To support new teams in the Agile way of working, Rabbit asked Ants and existing managers if someone is interested in training and coaching and also started to hire new talent from outside with active involvement of HR.

Lion is a person of numbers. After the initial dip, numbers were trending in the positive zone. Lion was convinced that he betted on the right side. He was gung ho and wanted to roll out the Agile transformation across the organization like the big bang. Rabbit jumped in and argued to slow and steady approach like directed evolution.