Dan Mezick wrote about the Agile Industrial Complex in this article. It’s inspired me to respond with this one.
Personal Aside
I really like Dan’s work. It’s truly inspirational to me. There are folks who are leading some different thinking in the agile community, swimming upstream if you will, and Dan is certainly one of them.
Dan is expert in Open Space. He’s also introduced the notion of Open Space Agility as a means of introducing agile to organizations. One of the hallmarks of OSA is the aspect of invitation. In OSA, folks are not told to be agile, they are invited to be part of crafting the organization transformation to agility.
In other words, they’re a part of it. It’s inclusive.
Now moving on from my bromance with Dan…
There is the notion of – The ONE Metric that Matters. I want to translate that metric into the agile transformation space.
You could also replace agile transformation with:
Lean Change Initiative
Agile Adoption
Digital Transformation
DevOps Strategy
Organizational Agility
I know, you’re heavy with anticipation. What IS the ONE Metric?
It’s engagement vs. disengagement. That is, how are your leaders affecting the engagement of your teams as they shift the organization towards more of an agile approach?
Another way of looking at it is this,
If the leaders are engaging and pulling their team members into the process of the transformation. Asking them instead of telling them, then they are engaging;
However, if the leaders are more telling them what to do, deciding which specific agile frameworks and tools will be used, and then telling them from “on high”, then they are disengaging.
Of course, it’s not quite as simply as this, but you certainly get the idea.
