There are some common themes in every workplace, from frontline operational to dizzying heights of strategic roles. We feel like there is increased pressure to deliver more, not just more, but things with more complexity. In parallel to this is the feeling we have that we have less time to deliver this “more”.
At the Lean Six Sigma Business Excellence Institute we have been having a rigorous and rich conversation about these themes, and how they connect to what we know about Business Excellence and Continuous Improvement.
And we are iterating. And then again. And again.
It is important to note this starts with a conversation because a good conversation illustrates 2 essential Business requirements:
- Connectedness and
- Listening
We pursued these ideas to uncover what we believe are the core principles that bring together the Agile way of working. The things that are just true regardless of content or context. What things are true of Agile ways of working regardless of what your industry is, and if it is a project or a BAU endeavour?
We identified the following and will elaborate briefly in future blogs:
- Simplicity
- Transparency
- Rapid Delivery
- Learn Quickly
- Outside – In (Feedback Focus)
- Collaboration
- Continuous improvement
So that is a list. There are many lists. The Internet is drowning in the top 10 things you can do right now to magically transform all your problems.
Except it isn’t just a list. They are principles. Principles that should be easy to access and recognise because they are at play already in our workplaces. What we have identified is that Agile is a way of working and as such cannot be adopted simply by changing stationary, or putting up a really cool Visual Management Board (and they are cool). Agile is an attitude, a mindset, a commitment and yes a set of principles, practices and tools. You need to understand it, follow, believe and live it. Consistent successful application transforms the way a team or teams work together and collaborate delivering value to customers quickly whilst minimising time and waste. At the same time pursuing Agile principles creates a culture and capability of High Performance Teamwork – self managing and organising teams!!
In future BLOGs we are going to explore each principle in more detail, but we want to come back to our first discovery: Conversation. We seek a conversation with you, because to transform thinking requires that level of connectedness and rapid exchange of ideas. Without a conversation we can have all the right concepts, but not the NEEDS WORD HERE Framework/Understanding/Capacity? To live it in an influential way. An Agile is nothing if it is only in the head of the manager, leader, transformation, improvement specialist. Agile is only real when it is distributed, shared and lived in teams.
So please enter the conversation and let us know what you think!
Carl Heise
