By Aiden Wolfe
Agile Transformation, a compassionate change-agent, announced the release of a new service for executive level clients that will influence business cultures. They aim to help organizations create an agile mindset about how work gets done.
The announcement comes from a company that has made massive waves to help organizations change the way they approach projects, deliver value, and think about change.
Agile Transformation developed new technology that uses an aggressive assessment tool, called Agile, to guide corporate client success. A recent 2013 survey conducted by the Bureau of Labor Statistics attributed the number one frustration among executives to organizational change. The inability to transform business cultures at the rate needed to meet customer demands has caused industry leaders to take a good, hard look at their organization’s effectiveness to embrace change.
To resolve this market challenge, Agile Transformation’s president, Sally Elatta, says “The new service allows executives, team leaders, and individuals to learn how Agile Models work and how to influence change in traditional cultures.” Elatta commented that Agile is a Lean tool that adopts a collaborative approach to “complete projects on budget and on schedule.”
Agile is based on working mini-projects that are completed in iterations. In Agile, the development of a project, product, or service becomes a living process. Agile Models encourage organizations to create and develop based on evolving business needs that roll-up into a larger, complete project. Agile allows organizations to develop in smaller manageable chunks. In the end the finished product is more aligned with current strategic goals.
The problem and impact that Agile Models assume to solve is promising. Agile Models allow teams to accomplish deliverables and focus on providing value in the shortest time. Executives and leaders expect to have better defined projects and scopes, improved documentation procedures, and solidified sustainability efforts. This unique project management model leverages process improvement tools. It also provides a holistic approach to Lean and Six Sigma change management initiatives.
During a recent keynote, Elatta shared the top three concerns expressed among executives at the Corporate Council Event, in Tempe, Arizona with over 6,000 executive and mid-level managers in attendance.
Lack of strategic alignment. When a new strategy is not executed on the ground as designed, executives spend weeks working with leaders to re-educate, re-train, share big picture ideas, and close communication gaps. Executives then rely on these leaders to translate the message, share across the organization, and influence the culture to adopt the new strategy. With gallant efforts, many teams fail to fully embrace bottom-down approaches. Teams tend to have questions that focus on understanding the vision, the impact to their roles, or how they fit into the new organizational mission. With other tasks teams need to accomplish, many strategies struggle at inception. This is not an isolated dilemma faced by the few, but by the many. The effort and time invested to educate and help teams understand new priorities is a challenge faced by executives across all business structures.
Lack of focus. A lack of focus is due to a constant change in priorities and a chase for the next shiny object. Elatta says, “Having a lack of focus begins to affect teams because they start and sometimes stop so many new projects.” Teams begin to feel that they are not able to complete any projects. This raises feelings of un-accomplishment. Teams become overwhelmed, morale lessens, people leave organizations, or feelings of career stagnation develop and employees loose creative prowess.
Losing competitive advantage. In traditional business models, Elatta says, “It takes too long to get anything done, especially if a company uses a traditional waterfall method.” The waterfall method involves taking a project from start to finish in a silo. Its completion commences only after extensive time delays, overspent budgets, or extensive testing. By the time the project is complete many companies miss the opportunity to be first to market or the trend shifts elsewhere. Customers who depend on these products and services begin to lose confidence in an organization’s ability to deliver. As a result they decide to seek alternative service providers, even at higher costs.
After discussing these challenges with Elatta, it becomes clearer “why executives, teams, and customers are frustrated with traditional models.” The inability for a business to deliver time-sensitive, streamlined results affects all levels of an organization. Many times the story unfolds in one of two ways, what customers want is not what they get or what they get comes too late and many times is layered with quality and rework issues. In the end the traditional business models prevents new ideas, products, or services from going to market..
Elatta adds that the most important part of a winning recipe for corporate change combines “cultural transformations with agile transformation; this requires leadership transformation.” Without agile transformation, there cannot be a shift to change command leadership into servant leadership and collaboration.
Agile Transformation’s objective is to work with passionate executives who seek to inspire change that impacts bottom line results one organization at a time.
By Carolette Wright
Sources:
Interview with Sally Elatta
Agile
Photo Courtesy of wsilver – License
Leigh Haugh