There's much the agile community can learn from the OD community and vice-versa. Here we merged 2 basic OD elements by using the Management 3.0 Meddlers game and how structure change is but one small aspect of organizational change
5. #m30meddlers | @jasonlittle | leanintuit.com
What You’ll Be Doing with Them
This short version of the game focuses on 2
basic OD principles:
(1) How people are grouped
(2) How groups are linked
It doesn’t focus on:
(1) Organizational strategy
(2) Organizational networks (affinity vs affect
vs advice networks)
(3) Organizational culture
(4) How all these attributes are connected
But we’ll talk about that stuff after the game!
6. #m30meddlers | @jasonlittle | leanintuit.com
How People Are Grouped
In organizations, people are typically grouped by:
- Function
- Cross-function
- Market
- Business unit
- Product
- Customer
- Geographical region
None are correct, there are only tradeoffs to be made.
7. #m30meddlers | @jasonlittle | leanintuit.com
How Groups Are Linked
None are correct, there are only tradeoffs to be made.
In organizations, groups are typically linked by:
People (PM’s, SM’s, Team Leads, Functional
Managers etc)
Processes (Status meetings, SoS, PI Planning)
Tools (JIRA, MS Prj, Wikis (Chris Chapman
recommends SharePoint))
8. #m30meddlers | @jasonlittle | leanintuit.com
Flow of the Game
You’ll be given a scenario
You’ll implement an organizational design with your game pieces:
You’ll choose how to group people
You’ll choose how to link those groups together
We’ll debrief your organizational designs:
What similarities exist?
Where do groups differ?
You’ll be given a 2nd scenario
You’ll change your organization and we’ll debrief again:
What changed?
What stayed the same?
9. #m30meddlers | @jasonlittle | leanintuit.com
Game Rules
(1) Tiles must be linked together somehow:
This example shows that the Red Tile with 2
LM’s have no direct contact with the customer
while the two blue cross-functional teams are
close to the customer
(2) A resource that overlaps tiles implies that
resource manages the link between tiles
This example shows the SM has direct contact
with the customer, and is the SM for two
teams. IT also shows the UX person is split
between two teams.
10. #m30meddlers | @jasonlittle | leanintuit.com
Scenario 1
Context: You are a cool interweb startup called
“SharePoint-ly” You build kick-ass, high-quality
software.
Your primary shareholder, Chris Chapman, has
signed up your first customer and has given
budget to hire 10 people.
Scenario: Build an organization that has 10
people, and works on 1 project for 1 customer.
11. #m30meddlers | @jasonlittle | leanintuit.com
Scenario 1 Debrief
How did you choose to group people?
How were groups linked?
Any interesting observations from teams or
facilitators?
12. #m30meddlers | @jasonlittle | leanintuit.com
Scenario 2 - Yer Growing!
Context: Chris is pleased! He’s signed on 2
more customers so now it’s time to scale!
Change your organization to accommodate 18
people while you work on 5 projects for 3
customers.
I am VERY
happy!
13. #m30meddlers | @jasonlittle | leanintuit.com
Scenario 2 Debrief
What changed?
What stayed the same?
What new roles, if any, were added?
What roles, if any were, uh, removed?
What types of tradeoffs were made?
Any interesting observations from teams or
facilitators?
14. #m30meddlers | @jasonlittle | leanintuit.com
The Meddlers
https://management30.com/product/meddlers/
Management 3.0 is a set of actionable practices
and games that help organizations improve
how they manage work and people that puts a
priority on the happiness of people.
The full game in the 2-day workshop has 5
rounds, with each one going deeper into
organizational change.
15. #m30meddlers | @jasonlittle | leanintuit.com
Which Lens are You Looking Through?
How do we interpret data?
How do we assign meaning to events, object and people?
16. #m30meddlers | @jasonlittle | leanintuit.com
3 Lenses to Consider
STRATEGIC
“RATIONAL VIEW”
POLITICAL
“SOCIAL VIEW”
CULTURE
“IRRATIONAL VIEW”
17. #m30meddlers | @jasonlittle | leanintuit.com
CULTURE
“IRRATIONAL VIEW”
Attributes of Each Lens
Grouping
Linking
Aligning
Fit?
Power and influence Conflict
Social NetworksNegotiation
Habits
Mental Models
Cultural Assumptions
STRATEGIC
“RATIONAL VIEW”
POLITICAL
“SOCIAL VIEW”
18. @jasonlittle | leanintuit.com
Rational View (Brain)
Logical, structured
Leadership Stance/Role:
Architect
Important Skills:
Sense making, inventing
Simulus for Change:
Not hitting your targets, objectives not being met.
Not doing the right things, or structure is not aligned to the strategy
How to change it:
Get more information, more analysis
Barriers to Change:
missing information
Agile Through a Strategic Lens
• Someone must be accountable (VP of Agile)
• Standard processes must be defined by a
central office
• Strong focus on measurements
How this drives behaviour
• Coaches are processes experts, not coaches
• Further separates people at the top from
people at the bottom (centralized Agile team
controls flow of information)
Models that may help
• Value stream mapping
• Systems thinking
• Complexity models (Stacy Matrix, Cynefin)
• Anything devoid of all feeling
Strategic Lens
19. @jasonlittle | leanintuit.com
Emotional View (Gut)
Social view
Leadership Stance/Role:
Navigator
Important Skills:
Relatable, negotiating, influencing
Simulus for Change:
Dominant coalition shifts (new ppl, new groups)
How to change it:
What do stakeholders, customers, people want? Who decides
what?
Barrier to Change:
Deep rooted self-interest
Political Lens
Agile Through a Political Lens
• At its best, co-creation
• At its worst, coercion
• Flow with the power of the organization
• Power struggle between central agile team
and delivery teams
How this drives behaviour
• Can promote individualism
• Knowledge hoarding (knowledge is power)
Models that may help
• Network mapping (Keyhubs - http://
www.keyhubs.com/)
• The book “Influencer” or “Start with Why”
• Perspective Mapping (leanchange.org/
perspectivemapping)
20. @jasonlittle | leanintuit.com
Habitual View (Heart)
Irrational, emotional
Leadership Stance/Role:
Visionary
Important Skills:
Storytelling, inspiration
Stimulus for Change:
Evidence that the assumptions are not working
How to change it:
Establish new rituals, create a more compelling purpose
Barriers to change:
Deep, long lasting assumptions “this is the way we
do things”
Agile Through a Cultural Lens
• “That’ll never work here because this is the
way it is”
• Extra processes (agile teams do new agile
stuff, still need to adhere to PMO or other
centralized processes that create extra, low-
value work)
• Agile stick beatings
How this drives behaviour
• Can promote individualism
• Knowledge hoarding (knowledge is power)
Models that may help
• OCAI (Competing Values Framework)
• Schneider Culture Model
• Edward Hall’s Iceberg model
• Theory U - Otto Sharmer
Cultural Lens
21. #m30meddlers | @jasonlittle | leanintuit.com
Consider All 3 Lenses
STRATEGIC
“RATIONAL VIEW”
POLITICAL
“SOCIAL VIEW”
CULTURE
“IRRATIONAL VIEW”
Sweet Spot
Models that may help
• Jay Galbraith’s Star Model
• McKinsey 7S
• MIT Leadership Model
22. @jasonlittle | leanintuit.com
Jay Galbraith’s Star
Created in the 1960’s after Jay Galbraith
discovered 5 interconnected dimensions that
need to be in some sort of alignment for change
to happen successfully.
http://www.jaygalbraith.com/services/star-model
23. @jasonlittle | leanintuit.com
McKinsey 7S
Created by Tom Peters and Robert Waterman in
the 1980 after 3+ years of research into
“organizational effectiveness”.
Tom popularized “Management by walking
around” at HP in the 1970’s, and later created 8
themes in “In Search of Excellence” based on
his years of research and analysis/interviews of
63 organizations.
“The picture of the thing, isn’t the thing. That is,
an organizational structure isn’t the
organization.”
25. @jasonlittle | leanintuit.com
8 Themes of Organizational Effectiveness
A bias for action
Be close to the customer
Autonomy and entrepreneurship
Productivity through people
Hands-on, value-driven management philosophy
Stick to the knitting
Simple form, lean staff
Simultaneous loose-tight properties
Only 2 of the 62 organizations that inspired this list in 1980 have died.
26. @jasonlittle | leanintuit.com
How to Make it Real - 1 of 3
Play “Meddlers”, but start by
designing your existing structure
Move people to the new structure1 2
3
We changed our Strategy (Go Agile), and we changed our Structure (Agile
Teams):
Discuss what needs to change in each of the other dimensions.
To be continued…
27. @jasonlittle | leanintuit.com
How to Make it Real - 2 of 3
Center conversations around:
Strategic Lens:
Did we group and link groups correctly? How would we know? What evidence would we see?
How long should we experiment with this change? Is it a temporary structure? Permanent one?
Political Lens:
What’s in it for our customers? People in the new structures? People outside the new structures that need to interface with the
new teams?
Who else is affected and how?
Who are key influencers?
Cultural Lens
What existing behaviour is rewarded? Punished?
What are the unwritten rules?
What industry are we in? (Risk adverse? Risk taking?)
What organizational debt exists?
31. Spotify Installation Process
Please wait while the system copies the DNA of all Spotify employees, and
invents a way to replicate how people think and interact from a company
that is completely different from the utterly fucked company that is yours.
Renaming Communities of Practices to Guilds…
Purchasing enterprise JIRA because stickies don’t work here…
Implementing punishment scheme for squads that underperform…
Installing mandatory innovation time at 1pm every tuesday…
Renaming functional departments to Chapters…
done
Critical Error: Tried Doing Agile instead of
Being Agile. Installation will now revert.
done
done
done
32. Firing Agile Coaches…
Preparing bad performance reviews for managers and staff…
Preparing year end bonuses for executive team…
Unable to un-install Agile. Teams have gone
rogue. Run for your life.
Spotify Un-Installation Process
Please wait while the system exercises the demons…
33. Agile
An error has occurred. To continue:
Press Enter to download SAFe, or
Press CTRL-ALT-DEL to restart your organization. The
people who get agile will quit, and all the
naysayers will say ‘I TOLD YOU SO’
Press any key to continue _
34. @jasonlittle | leanintuit.com
Other Interesting Stories
Xerox - arguably made the laptop economically viable, but made
$0 from it.
http://www.johnseelybrown.com/
Ford’s “One Ford” turnaround led by Alan Mulally by essentially
implementing a weekly standup.
http://leadership.mit.edu/rare-find-alan-mulally-complete-leader/
Paul O’Neil, Alcoa CEO who created a ‘zero accident’ culture
http://www.businessinsider.com/how-changing-one-habit-
quintupled-alcoas-income-2014-4
35. @jasonlittle | leanintuit.com
Thanks!
Upcoming Leanintuit Sessions:
Coaching Beyond the Teams on September 12th, 2017 (sold out)
Facilitation Skills for the Agile Workplace on September 18th, 2017
Lean Change Agent Toronto on September 27th, 2017
Coaching Skills for the Agile Workplace on November 3th, 2017
Management 3.0 on November 27th, 2017
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