Do you ever feel your efforts to improve your teams and organization are just window dressing on the traditional system? Welcome to Agile Theatre. Today, let’s tackle how to manage when your team is attempting to be Agile, but is ‘forced’ to report with Waterfall-style expectations.
During a recent Lean Coffee session, an Agile Manager posed a common problem: “How can I help my team excel in an environment that demands individual hour tracking and strict comparison of estimates to actuals during Sprints?”
This isn’t an education problem, nor is it a team problem. Despite understanding Agile principles and focusing on outcomes over output, management’s refrain remains, “Yes, yes, yes, but we need individual accountability.”
The Zone of Rejection vs. The Zone of Acceptance
Forcing someone to accept a radically different idea can push them into what Jonah Berger calls the Zone of Rejection.
Imagine a football pitch (proper football), representing the breadth of views on a subject. On one goal line, you have the die-hard traditionalists obsessed with individual performance metrics. On the opposite goal line, you stand with your Agile team-focused mindset. Trying to drag someone 100 meters across the pitch to accept the Agile mindset is too far and easier for them to reject.
Bridging the Gap
So, how do you move someone from their entrenched position toward a more Agile mindset? Here are three strategies:
- Build a Constituency for the Idea: Find people who don’t already agree with you but aren’t too far away. Use this coalition to influence the people who are further away.
- Find Common Ground: Common ground makes it easier to consider others’ ideas. It is often easier to find common ground in areas outside the office, where the stakes are lower.
- Ask for Less: It is easier to get started with a small improvement. Along the way, the person becomes someone who says yes to this type of request. For example, try focusing on Cycle Time as a new metric.
Your Turn
When you’ve realized the gap between yourself and others is large, what have you tried that worked?
(Inspired by real orgs. The details are obscured to protect the innocent.)
#Influence #Ship30For30