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Understanding Business Agility - a conversation with Steve Martin
26 Plays1 month ago
Steve Martin is an Enterprise Agile Coach.
In this episode of the Abeceder podcast The Independent Minds, Steve explains Business Agility to host Michael Millward.
Steve explains what business agility is by comparing different types of business. He explores with Michael the role that HR professionals and departments play in preparing a business to start on a business agility journey, guiding the business through, and sustaining the business agility approach.
They discuss what a business agile culture is like and what it feels like to work in an agile business for both employees and managers.
Steve explains what the role of the Scrum Master a new role that the business agility approach requires is and how it impacts the operation of a team and an organisation.
Michael asks Steve to explain what the entry of Gen Z to work will impact how a business agility approach can be implemented.
You can find out about events and webinars that Steve Martin is speaking at.
Find out more about both Michael Millward, and Steve Martin at Abeceder.co.uk
The Independent Minds is made on Zencastr, because as the all-in-one podcasting platform, on which you can create your podcast in one place and then distribute it to the major platforms, Zencastr really does make creating content so easy.
If you would like to try podcasting using Zencastr visit zencastr.com/pricing and use our offer code ABECEDER.
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If you would like to be a guest on The Independent Minds, please contact using the link at Abeceder.co.uk.
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Thank you for listening.
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Transcript
00:00:05
Speaker
Made on Zencastr.
Introduction to 'The Independent Minds' Podcast
00:00:07
Speaker
Hello and welcome to the Independent Minds, a series of conversations between Abysida and people who think outside the box about how work works with the aim of creating better workplace experiences for everyone.
00:00:23
Speaker
I'm your host, Michael Millward, the Managing Director of Abysida.
Introducing Steve Martin and Business Agility
00:00:27
Speaker
Today, i am going to be finding out about business agility from enterprise agile coach Steve Martin.
00:00:36
Speaker
As the jingle at the start of this podcast says, The Independent Minds is made on Zencastr. Zencastr is the all-in-one podcasting platform that really does make every stage of the podcast production process, including publishing and distribution, so easy.
00:00:54
Speaker
If you would like to try podcasting using Zencastr, visit zencastr.com forward slash pricing and use my offer code, Abbasida. All the details are in the description.
00:01:07
Speaker
Now that I have told you how wonderful Zencaster is for making podcasts, we should make one. One that will be well worth listening to, liking, downloading and subscribing to.
00:01:20
Speaker
As with every episode of the Independent Minds, we won't be telling you what to think, but we are hoping to make you think.
Steve Martin's Background and Journey into Agility
00:01:28
Speaker
Today, my guest Independent Mind is Steve Martin.
00:01:32
Speaker
Steve is an Agile Enterprise Coach. an IC Agile instructor and the author of four different books. Steve is based in Brighton in the United Kingdom.
00:01:46
Speaker
I visited once, Brighton that is. If I make it twice, I will make my travel arrangements with the Ultimate Travel Club because that is where I can access trade prices on flights, hotels, trains, holidays and all sorts of other travel-related purchases.
00:02:04
Speaker
You can also access those trade prices by joining the Ultimate Travel Club. There's a link and a discount code in the description. Now that I've paid some bills, it is time to make an episode of the Independent Minds.
00:02:20
Speaker
Hello, Steve. Hi, Michael. How are you doing today? i'm I'm very good. I'm really excited for the podcast and um I'm actually really looking forward to getting to the topic. And also so really appreciative of being invited on today.
00:02:32
Speaker
It's good to have you here. We've known each other for quite a while, haven't we? we We certainly have, just like the quite few years. I think we can measure it in over a decade at least, at least. yeah you know You'd be doing something different then, but now you're very much involved in this business agility and agile stuff. So tell me a little bit about how you came to to be focusing your career on on a business agility.
Startups vs Traditional Companies: Agility in Decision-Making
00:02:58
Speaker
It's an interesting question. I mean, it goes back a number years, probably about 13, 14 years ago, was really keen to just get involved in software development because that was the kind of the area. It was like the buzz at the time. And Agile was like...
00:03:14
Speaker
the thing to be so being the project manager and i managed to land myself as a scrum master role uh which is a sort of similar to project manager and actually from then i landed in this in this role i knew i'd kind of arrived at the right place it was like yeah this is the place to be it's just the way the behaviors and the interactions and the collaboration with different people was actually For me, yeah, something just completely different, you know, from from what i was used to to in the workplace.
00:03:42
Speaker
It is great when you've got a job where you just, it feels right for you rather than you're doing a job. It's like, let's find the right job and you'll never work a day in your life. Exactly. I like that. Yeah.
00:03:54
Speaker
So you're working as project manager in software and then you discover this agile approach. what How do you go from discovering it to becoming like it's the thing that you do? What's the process? I and independently had to go and train up. So I took ah a course as a Scrum Master. So it's the the actual certification inrumaster in Scrum Mastering. Sort of around 2011.
00:04:21
Speaker
That was the starting point of your development, your knowledge building in business agility development. Yeah, so I spent about four years with the software development company and then I went became an independent contractor and and actually really upped my game and went to the next level, became an agile coach and actually managed to start working on big transformation programs with the likes of starting off with HMRC, then with companies like Vodafone and BTEE.
00:04:53
Speaker
e Tesco, William Hill, Home Office, Barclays, lots of different industries, but all really trying to catch up, trying to, you know looking around and say it seeing that agility is really the way forward for business operations, for the way that we work. My my role within that was just helping teams with leaders to really understand and implement agile practice and and transform and transform their their operations, their ways of working uh culture yeah conscious the most kind complex and most challenging part of any organization and and and especially in into in terms of transformation so where i really started to cut my teeth in in in that space yeah i can sense the passion for your interest in business agility from your voice have to ask what is business agility what's the sort of summary of
00:05:44
Speaker
business agility and the agile
Challenges and Strategies for Agile Adoption in Large Organizations
00:05:46
Speaker
approach? the The best way to describe it is is the difference between a ah startup company and a more traditional old-fashioned company that's been around for over 100 years, where you've got Huge complexities, high risk, diversion, lots of different departments, lots of hierarchy, huge long-winded processes in terms of being able to make any any sort of change happen.
00:06:12
Speaker
A startup company, on the other hand, is nimble, is able to make fast decisions. It doesn't have the resources that a big organization has, but it certainly has the mindset of just being able to make a difference and really move at pace and pivot at pace because they don't have this sort of hierarchy, the burden of of complexity that that a big organization would have.
00:06:35
Speaker
So agility is really being able to to make rapid decisions, understand customer needs, and being able to respond to those needs in at pace. and And when we talk about business agility from a more traditional organization and the ah sort of transformation that they would have to go on you're talking about moving a major tanker on the on the oceans actually really really complex and difficult to do because you're not just changing the way that people work you're changing their mindset you're changing their behaviors
00:07:09
Speaker
And agility then is, for a startup, if you're if you're thinking of like a big organization, it's like having lots of different startup organizations within that big corporate or ah conglomerate. I always say if if this big traditional organization has the resources but doesn't have the agility, imagine what they could have if they had that agile mindset that they wouldn't be so at risk to disruption.
00:07:37
Speaker
So like a an Amazon, for example, or a Netflix completely disrupted the marketplace, but they were initially startup companies, but they completely completely transformed the industry based on the fact of having that agile mindset, the behaviors and ways of working, but just being able that nimbleness, being able to pivot and ah make this make rapid decisions. If you've got direct access to your customers and you and you're given the autonomy yeah you know As a team, if you're given the autonomy, the freedom, the flexibility to make decisions based on customer needs, then you're able to really thrive in that space. And that's where big organizations fall down is because they've got that risk aversion.
00:08:23
Speaker
Just to play ah devil's advocate for a moment, you're saying that agile approach is very much akin to what happens within a startup organization. And I've worked in lots of different startups, organizations, but I've also worked in big organizations. You've worked on agile business agility projects for some of the very biggest organizations in the UK.
00:08:46
Speaker
So how do you apply business agility approaches, ideas into one of these oil tankers? It's difficult. It's not easy, but they're trying to catch up. They realize that agile is the way. So they bring in ah expertise, ah like myself and other and other coaches, to really help them transform. and the key to it really is starting small.
00:09:07
Speaker
so not trying to boil the ocean to to use the tanker analogy even further but to actually start with a pilot with a small business area you typically would be like a software development area perhaps where you would actually work with a few teams helping them to make fit to implement it do some training coaching get them getting them up to speed the problem The big organizations have is they have huge state shareholders to appease, right? So they are a commercial organization. They're having to continue operating the same manner while they're trying to change. It's like, but don't know if you've ever tried to change wheel on a moving car, Michael, but it's it's pretty difficult, right?
00:09:48
Speaker
I've seen people do it in the cycle races, changing the wheel on the bike because they've not stopped. ah Yes, of course. What you're saying then is that the business agile approach can be applied to any environment, but it has to be the right way to make it happen in that environment. That's that's what you're saying. Yeah.
00:10:11
Speaker
It's easier for a startup because you're starting from a green field, a blank sheet of paper, and you can do whatever you want because it's a startup and you've got everyone on board in the startup. And the people that work in startups are different to the types of people that are looking for a job in a in a major conglomerate or a big corporation. And that dictates the type of way in which they want to work.
00:10:35
Speaker
Or maybe it's the result of the way in which they want to work. Yeah, absolutely. But you're also talking about culture and training and attitudes and behaviours, which tends to suggest that it's it's not about process, it's about the way in which people behave as much as it is about the way the work that they do. Would that be professor summary Michael, you put the nail on the head. it's That's exactly it. It's having the mindset of being given the autonomy to really challenge it. And and if you challenge that, we don't maybe we don't need this form because, you know, questioning why we why are we doing it? Is it actually serving us? Is it serving our customers?
00:11:13
Speaker
It's all about culture. It's all about building trust within teams throughout the the coalface, who are right at the front so ah and direct access to your customers and giving them the autonomy to make decisions, but to challenge the status quo, to say, and look,
00:11:29
Speaker
why Why are we actually doing this way when it's it's slowing us down or it's causing us friction and delays in terms of how we want to ah serve our customers and solve problems for our customers?
00:11:43
Speaker
and And that culture piece, like I said, is the most challenging because if we are trying to serve our shareholders, if we if we are trying to continue to run a commercial organization, but at the same time we want to be pivoting and and and giving trust to our ah to our teams to make decisions, there is a fear factor.
00:12:06
Speaker
ah There's a risk factor because How do we know that they're going to make the right decisions? Are we enabling them to make the right decisions, to give them the autonomy? ah they a bit Do they feel safe, psychologically safe?
00:12:19
Speaker
They feel comfortable in the in ah space that they're being enabled to make the right decision, to be autonomous, to be able to ah set their own path.
00:12:30
Speaker
And that's the that's of the complexity. Yeah, all of the things that you're talking about seem to be adding to the workload of HR professionals and training professionals.
HR's Role in Leading Agile Transformations
00:12:41
Speaker
People like me. HR should really be the centerpiece of any transformation because it's all about people.
00:12:48
Speaker
You know you mentioned about process there. Process is easy. We wanted to reduce the steps for delivery. That's the easy bit. It's changing the mindsets and the culture is the hard bit. That's where HR really needs to be at the centrepiece for any business.
00:13:04
Speaker
and any sort of change initiative like that. So when you were talking about the big organizations and introducing Business Agile, you were talking about how you you do it first in in one small part of the business, and that might be an IT project. But with my HR professionals hat on and not wanting to increase my workload very much really, cause like most HR professionals, there's, there's always a long list of things that you would would like to do.
00:13:33
Speaker
But I'm thinking that part of the reality of an organization making the decision that it wants to go down the business agility route is that first of all, your ah HR function has to change.
00:13:47
Speaker
Yes, potentially. and and that might be the long term strategy. It almost depends upon what we mean by change. And yeah I'm thinking first part of the process is that, well, you've got to start looking for a different type of person to recruit into the organisation.
00:14:04
Speaker
Well, people who are agile, have an agile attitude towards their work. but That's the real trade-off. In any transformation, you will have the laggard. What you want is you want to identify within the organization people who are the ones that are likely to queue up outside of the Apple store for the new iPhone.
00:14:24
Speaker
They will exist in your organization. You want those to be the, we call them the early adopters, because those are the ones that are going help to really drive the change.
00:14:36
Speaker
The ones who are, you know, well, we've always done it that way. Those are the ones that are more likely to want to see things happening in reality before they're willing to buy. So they want to see the iPhone working and it's actually really helped them. They want to see it in reality before the before they get on board.
00:14:56
Speaker
they they may never get on board right when you know that's that's okay that happens but it's really got to be a strategic move from the organization that we are going to go this way this is the this is the but direction of travel for our organization we are going to this is how we're going to be operating in the future because this is essentially we know that it's worked this is the way forward you might not have the same workforce that that there might be some changes there and that's that's and again part of the hr role is to is to try and identify those and and and help support a transition but you really want to identify those early adopters you want to get those on board building a small community uh start the pilot around those people so that you can start to prove it
00:15:46
Speaker
and build up the awareness and um and excitement and an energy factor from that group so so that the ones who are a little bit unsure can actually get on board.
00:15:58
Speaker
That would be your typical kind of strategy. It might take a while. Yes, it might take a while. And of course, one of the reasons why someone, an organization might decide to go down the agile route is that they really need to make changes.
00:16:13
Speaker
But the reality is that it takes time to change the direction of an oil tanker. and big ship Yeah, exactly. there's There's a really good book called Turn the Ship Around, which um it uses that analogy, but if that's that's really around leadership, how we how we can actually change the minds of leaders to to think differently, to actually build autonomy and um create an environment where people have the empowerment to make decisions to become much more of an agile operation as an hr function you are there to support the business to achieve its goals and very often those are simply like find me the person deal with the problem person put in place some training to make that person better at the job that they are doing the role of the hr person if my understanding is correct moves
00:17:03
Speaker
not away from making sure that people have the skills and knowledge to do their jobs, but adds on or moves towards making sure that people have the right attitudes, the right mindset to adapt to an organization that is trying to be agile.
00:17:21
Speaker
And that word agile, if you look it up in the dictionary, I should have that before we started probably, but the word agile means that you can adapt, you can change, you can make you You're prepared as opposed to try things out and see if they work. If they don't work, you just, yeah.
00:17:37
Speaker
It's almost the phrase fail quickly comes to mind. Is that part of Agile? Yes, that is. It's used a lot. before we Before we invest millions in this initiative, we want to really understand whether it's actually going to be right for our customers. Is it going to solve the problem?
00:17:52
Speaker
And so and Agile really is about that. Really, like ah we want to test it out first. Let's test it out in a small group. Invest a very small generation budget to prototype something so we really ah understand, is it going to is it going to fix it? And if it does, great, we scale. If it doesn't, brilliant. We've failed, but we've learned something. We've learned that it's but it's right.
00:18:12
Speaker
We'll just get back to to what you were saying about the the role of the HR professionals. HR is really about enablement, right? We're enabling the the development of skills to actually make sure is that the talent is growing within the organisation, that people are happy, that there is a sustained working pace, place that people aren't burning out, losing morale and motivation.
00:18:32
Speaker
So you're you're really there to enable the creating the right environment for people to thrive, essentially, isn't that isn't that right? So, yeah the concept or the way of thinking around agile and being testing out something and being able to so to learn but also to challenge you know giving people autonomy to make decisions to challenge whether it's actually going to be right for us it sounds as if one of the things that happens to happen is that there's a change in latitude in the employment relationship itself in that that traditional organization
00:19:08
Speaker
and it's got lots of employees, will have lots of processes in place in order to what we call manage, but other people might say to control the activities of
Empowering Employees in Agile Environments
00:19:18
Speaker
employees. so sort of, we don't trust you to make the decisions.
00:19:23
Speaker
We're going to micromanage all of your activities and that forms the relationship that we have with our employees. If you're working in a traditional type of organization, and thankfully I think the number of those types of organizations is on the decline,
00:19:39
Speaker
But you've still got to make some leaps in, and I mean leaps, in terms of changing attitudes of managers as well as employees to the, how the organization will structure its relationship with its employees. And,
00:19:54
Speaker
The word that keeps on coming into my mind is you've got to magnify ah trust that managers have in their employees tenfold, twentyfold in order to make this work. Because it's it's the simple little things like...
00:20:10
Speaker
ah we will we will trust you to just to not take more days off on as holiday than you're entitled to and just tell us when you're going type of thing that's a big trust issue but if you're then going to give people the autonomy and the authority to make their own decisions which would be the agile approach because people need to make decisions quickly you can't go up the hierarchy to get approval from people there's a whole range of different way learning of different ways to manage people within the agile environment as well isn't there so you can't tell employees to behave in one way and then have them being managed in a traditional way it's the whole whole gamut yeah and exactly and and again this is where the hr role comes in not to add to your workload again i'm conscious that you've you've noted that you
00:21:04
Speaker
I'm just concerned that part of the reality of taking on this approach as an ah HR professional is that it's not so much, I suppose, additional work. It's not additional work for anyone probably, but it is a different way of working. And the process of moving from one way of working to another way of working is not going to be smooth for anyone, I suspect. That's right. It's the leadership role changes.
00:21:27
Speaker
because you're you're giving autonomy, decision-making, empowerment to teams to actually decide how they work and giving them the flexibility to to change if they need it to become more responsive to their customers.
00:21:40
Speaker
If you're a manager who is used to being a bit more hands-on, maybe even being within the team themselves, like you've got a ah delivery team and the but the the manager of the team is placed within that as part of the work,
00:21:56
Speaker
We're now telling that person to step step aside, right? We're not making them redundant. We're just asking them to step away from that team so that they can actually become more much more agile and think for themselves, be more creative.
00:22:09
Speaker
that manager then sits there and goes, I don't really know where my place is and what my role and responsibilities are. And that's where the real change, the shift happens. It's that you need to be able to support that.
00:22:24
Speaker
And um well first of all, understand that that is the case, that there is a there's going to be a shift in roles responsibilities, but also you might you might have some fear creeping in.
00:22:35
Speaker
And where where you've got fear... um building up without being addressed, that manager is going to start to become wonderful servant leader who's been to who's going to actually really empower the team.
00:22:48
Speaker
You'll get the opposite effect. you will You will get that person who will start to climb into the the the space that's been left and and be quite disruptive without really knowing it, not consciously, because he's trying to justify his position, and his role.
00:23:05
Speaker
What needs to happen in that scenario or prior to that scenario is a real awareness that that can happen. And so providing support and guidance on what is the role now of the agile leader, the manager within that space, where how do we protect and guide and and and really you know support development within there's a number of different agile leadership roles within an organization. but but also what we try what we want to avoid is that we're just layering agile on top of an existing way of working.
00:23:37
Speaker
You've just got the the same sort of behaviors as you always had, but we're just calling it different. It's not going to work, is it? This is not something that you can have on a Tuesday morning and everything else stays the same. This is, to make it really work, it's going to be a major exercise for a larger organization.
00:23:58
Speaker
And it's going to involve a lot of change. Yeah, it is. A lot of rethinking of the ways in which do things happen. We've talked about the role of HR, that HR plays in that, the custodian of the culture, the custodian of the values. All of that could potentially change as a result of a different approach to leading
The Role of a Scrum Master in Agile Teams
00:24:17
Speaker
the organization. I almost said a different approach to managing the organization, but really I think this is more about leadership than it is about leadership.
00:24:24
Speaker
managing processes it's about 100 right so the role of hr is important but level of understanding of the process itself and what that means means that it also raises the the importance of the people who are the scrum masters and it might be that the role of manager becomes the role of a scrum master but tell me more about what a scrum master actually does Thank you. The Scrum Master is actually embedded into the team. So the manager of the team might you traditionally be embedded in that team.
00:25:01
Speaker
We're asking them to step away from it. What we have is a Scrum Master who doesn't have a management responsibility. There's a leadership responsibility. He focuses on... Or she.
00:25:12
Speaker
Yeah, i'm I'm conscious I've done that. So yes, absolutely. That person, ah the Scrum Master, will... be focusing on the team, not the delivery.
00:25:23
Speaker
The delivery is part of the the role, of course. we We want to make sure that we're actually delivering value. That's that's great that's fine. But fundamentally, it's the team. How are the team getting on? How can I support them?
00:25:35
Speaker
What do they need in order to thrive? Fundamentally, the role of the Scrum Master is to help that team move towards a position of high performance and consistently perform in in that state. The role itself is has been fudged and misused, misunderstood over many years.
00:25:54
Speaker
Part of my mission is really to to change that. The Scrum Masters, they are the keys that can unlock teams to really thrive and and and and become high-performing. But we have to give them everything to in order to get to that place, to will be typically working with management outside of the team, they will be working with the team, they will be building connections to help the team move to that position of high performance. It's a vital role. A lot of organisations I've worked with have kind of used it as a nice to have. That's the sort of mindset shift that I'm i'm trying to... We talked about these long standing organisations that are finding difficult without a change of attitude to implement the business agility approach.
00:26:41
Speaker
But I'm then thinking, well, actually the employees that are working there now are getting older themselves. They'll be retiring at some point and the next generation of workers, the Gen Zs, the Generation Alphas will be entering the workforce.
Future Generations and Agility Transition
00:26:54
Speaker
From what you've seen of the new generations, will it be easier for large organizations to become more agile as their workforce moves towards younger generations? It's interesting that there might be some not resistance built up, but but conflict essentially building up because of expectations. I think the way that the Gen Z generation come into the workforce, but their expectations are going to be completely different to when you and I joined.
00:27:23
Speaker
The look and feel of the office has completely changed. how we How we work, these kind of things contribute to a ah different sort of culture, a different outlook on how operationally would be an organisation ah I think the same challenges will will exist for an organisation to become agile. I just think that the the different people coming into the workforce now, the expectations are going to be different. If if an organisation is not operating with that autonomy, with trust culture being given freedom to to challenge,
00:27:56
Speaker
There's such a short-termism. People will be looking at it going, can quite easily go and work at a startup. and I know that it's going to be much much more conducive to my sort of values and the way I want to, the sort of place I want to work. So it might be a lot harder for big organizations to recruit.
00:28:14
Speaker
They might not have the pull that they might have once had a few years ago. It's actually a lot cooler now to work for a startup than a big, more traditional organization because of those terms. Yes, it is. It is. Steve, really, that was very interesting.
00:28:30
Speaker
ah Thank you very much. It's been a very interesting episode of The Independent Minds. An absolute pleasure, Michael. Thank you very much. Thank you. I am Michael Millward, Managing Director of Abusida, and I have been having a conversation with The Independent Mind, Steve Martin from Agile Master Academy. me You can find out more information about both of us at abeceda.co.uk.
00:28:53
Speaker
During our conversation, Steve mentioned the first adopters of technology like mobile phones. And of course, one of our sponsors is 3, the Telephone Network. So 3 is the UK's fastest 5G network, regardless of which device you're working on. so And those 5G network comes with unlimited data.
00:29:12
Speaker
So listening on 3 means you can wave goodbye to buffering. There is a link in the description that will take you to more information about business and personal telecom solutions from 3 and the special offers available when you quote my referral code.
00:29:26
Speaker
The description is well worth reading. I'm sure that you will have enjoyed this episode of The Independent Minds. As much as Steve and I have enjoyed making it, please give it a like and download it so that you can listen anytime, anywhere.
00:29:39
Speaker
To make sure you don't miss out on future episodes, please subscribe. Remember, the aim of all the podcasts produced by Abbasida is not to tell you what to think, but we do hope to have made you think.
00:29:51
Speaker
Until the next episode of The Independent Minds, thank you for listening and goodbye.