Collaboration is Not an Adjective

If you have been paying a modicum of attention to the world around you as of late, with its increasing chaos, AND you have drilled your attention down to your employment role as a caring, passionate kind of individual—you have seen a real saturation and overuse of the word “agile” in business. You can throw the word “transformation” in the mix, too. The promise of agility is transparency, courage, and speed, but at the core is what’s at the very top of the agile manifesto: “We are uncovering better ways of developing software by doing it and helping others do it.”

Let’s focus on the verbs: ”…uncovering better ways…and helping others do it.”  These are the action words of people getting things done because they are being agile. It’s that work that led them to agree on similar values. What I am seeing in the business world, is people trying to slice up agile and turn it into siloes and hierarchies, where what is really needed is for people to be agile and help each other. In my opinion, many people are missing the point.

I have heard leaders complain that the agile camp is mainly talk and doesn’t deliver. But if anyone went to a restaurant, would they want someone to quickly plop food on the table in front of them? Of course, being a foodie, I am going to choose this analogy.  Would it be ok that the food was tasteless or undercooked, as long as it came out fast? Would it matter if the waitstaff delivering that food was rude or intrusive?

At the same time, sometimes the agilist might be likened to the waitstaff person who keeps asking you if the food is good when you’ve barely had time to chew it, or the floor manager who engages with the customers a lot, but leaves them wandering when their entrée will be arriving.

Accountable agilists must reinforce their own bias for action and have ways to share the promise of agility with transparency and outcomes. Data collection is more than just numbers, and measuring can be as simple as a “yes” or “no,” to start. As of late, there are a lot of agile titles that have a whiff of waterfall, a hierarchy of coach, team coach, enterprise coach, transformation director, and many layers in-between. Some individuals want the salary and hierarchy titles with no interest in helping others or possessing the experience with bringing out the creativity and rigor necessary for a more than “average” delivery. If the agile titles are meant as descriptions of a role they make sense, but all agility growth is derived values, principles, and experiences resulting in delivering impact. Back to food—the reason why people pay over a hundred dollars a plate in a restaurant, is because they liked the ambience, quality, and taste of the food, and while they might be able to do it themselves—not as seamlessly. In these restaurants the staff have specialties, but they work together seamlessly as a collaborative team. Customers will gladly pay someone for a great customer experience, whether your product or service is a restaurant or a software platform

Leaders who have a breadth of experience and deep expertise in growing future leaders and contributing innovators may need a bird’s eye view of whether the talent within their organizations work in siloes. HR may have expertise in people, but they need to collaborate with IT and “blur the lines” rather than staking out boundaries and refusing to listen to each other. It’s often how people communicate. Agile is meant to be like the icing between all the layers of a cake(see what I did there? Food for thought.). If you’re hearing from the strategy group that the agile coaches need to stick to training teams  only, and just about frameworks, and quit talking about change management because that’s ours—siloes exists. If you’re hearing the Instructional Design folks say training can’t be delivered unless it is done with a certain methodology and process—that’s a bottleneck. If IT gets training but not the product teams—that is another silo.

Agilists usually have a preferred, yet not a singular source for continuous learning. My first go-to is ICAgile, because I know they have taken some of the prep work out for me.(Oh and that they are an excellent organization helps.) I don’t have to know the basic tenets of instructional design to learn, because they have done that. The coursework embodies it without talking at me. Education is not one voice in the room with expertise, but several thought leaders. Courseware is created by market demand and by multiple people with expertise. I am suggesting the same approach of being responsive over teaching on how to do so within your organization. If  you are a leader who wants more than what’s expected, and more on the unexpected—it’s time to set one expectation: collaboration.

Within agile teams, there are people who have expertise in specific areas. In theory if not in actuality, everyone understands what the other members of the team are doing. If the team has implemented continuous learning as part of their delivery iterations, then organizations won’t lose as much time and money onboarding and training new people. Employees may gain some confidence and satisfaction adding to their repertoire. How does your organization reward? Is it for expertise individually and delivery as a team? Incentivizing in a way that enables collaboration has long-term benefits.

Soooo back to FOOD. The floor manager needs to know what the cook is making. The waitstaff needs to bring it out while it is fresh, or hot, and the quality of the food is at its best. And while this is an over-simplification of the restaurant industry, the collaboration allows for a customer experience that brings people in for return business. Collaboration isn’t a concept or to be treated as an adjective, when implemented and incentivized, your roadmap is paved for future leaders and true innovation on the horizon. (Don’t forget to pack delicious snacks on the journey.)

Let’s start evolving the promise of agile rather than focusing on the titles, let’s break down the siloes, and let’s collaborate more with each other and deliver amazing impact while helping others do it - with transparency, courage, and speed.