We live in a roller coaster world. One day you’re up and the next day you’re down ¹

• Countries destinies are determined by social media crowding-sourcing and opinionating of the moment, devoid of plans for ‘now-what’ let alone the future.
• Company stocks are traded by computer super algorithms that disregard a company’s performance and just bet the odds, yet distinctly affect a company’s profits.
• CEO longevity is now an average of three years, hence the ballooning of compensation as hazard-pay reward for being the corporate shooting-gallery duck.

With this constant flux, every company needs an Elasticity strategy. They must be able to expand and contract, be flexible, agile and mobile – on a day-to-day basis. There probably isn’t anything more static and unmoving than the bricks and mortar part of the business – the physical work environment. The workplace facility and its equipment, fixed assets that are the second to third highest consumer of company monetary and other resources, is in dire need of more than a face lift.

Looking for a plug-n-play formula for Elasticity? There isn’t one. Nor are the answers found solely in more or new CRE/Facility investments. Elasticity is a mix and balance of components that span all operational and enterprise entities, intrinsically determined by the uniqueness of each company. And that mix, in and of its self, needs to be changeable on a dime. Hence the need for variable movement – elasticity at all levels and categories of the organization.

Is there a bit of the Ouija Board or witch craft in this? Maybe. More accurately, elastic strategies and plans are proactive maneuvers based on intuition and trending – moving on the aggregation of multiple data points available at the moment. For the workplace, the foundation is no longer made of concrete, rather a quicksand mixture of risk and experimentation, micro-markets desires, niches and a plethora of options. (See Pluralism)

If the ups and downs of the world are constantly volatile and ever-changing, then the solutions aren’t perfectly pre-determinable or static. They breathe, like a workplace diaphragm that expands and contracts and pumps oxygen equal to the extent of the corporate exertion and the varied, proportional and variable needs of its organs and limbs, at any moment in time.

¹ As so now famously expressed by Heidi Klum on the Project Runway TV show.

QOTD: What attributes make a workplace FANTASTIC instead of just “average”?

My thanks to Rachel Permuth-Levine, PhD, MSPH  for posing this question on our LinkedIn Work Experience Group and to
Thanks go Tim Springer for moderating the on-going discussion. This question has been live for over two months with much good input. It also led me to look at the workplace dialogue from a different point of view. And to pursue one of the key ingredients I feel is mandatory for making workplaces as success.

Also a great thanks to Tim and Pauline for showing their support (see below).

Here is my contribution to the discussion.

Catherine Adams Lee • I applaud the thread developed around what message the workplace sends. I call this congruence – when the message and the actions are in sync. Does the workplace delivered follow through on the business’ value message? Does it walk the corporate talk and put its money where its mouth is? Too many don’t.

Unfortunately, examples of negative congruence and mixed messaging abound. Companies that espouse diversity but present a workplace that is bland, banal and same; ones that manufacture technology but either bar employees or internal investment in successful usage; ones that say they value their people but, as mentioned keep a messy, even filthy, facility. Too long the workplace industry has opted out of its responsibility in acknowledging its strategic role and ensuring that what it designs and delivers is truly affecting the appropriate culture and is in alignment with the messages from other parts of the business.

For positive congruence to occur, hard discussions need to be had around what is the real culture and what is actually being delivered. Workplace’s part is to understand, acknowledge and translate what it builds and what that truthfully represents. Additionally it needs to engage in delivering more than just a passive environment or corporate image – to accomplish not just the sizzle but also the steak.

A congruent workplace where all of its business parts, including the key player of the physical environment, work in concert to achieve, support and sustain a culture of diversity, respect, health, trust, choice, accomplishment and profit. Now that would be a FANTASTIC workplace!

Comments:

Tim Springer • Catherine
Brava!

Pauline Mok • well said, catherine! and great to see you here!

Change is hard enough for the average person, CEO or company. But for Oprah and her Harpo Productions it has to be monumental. But she is doing it anyway – changing her life by dropping her talk show, the mainstay of her company and reinventing her company with her OWN television network. Pretty amazing. Just think how many people are invested in having Oprah stay exactly as she was.

• There is the audience who has watched her every weekday for 25 years of their lives. They will experience a loss, missing the comfort of this steady relationship and a repeated life pattern.  

• There are the ABC network, affiliates and the advertisers that make so much money from her audience’s attention. They will most certainly experience a large loss of revenue as she changes to Cable with a currently smaller outreach. 

• There all the employees who rely on her for employment to feed themselves and their family.
  She has said they will all come with her on the new venture. Hopefully that’s true. 

• There are the friends, especially Gayle, who have so much invested in their relationships staying just the way they were, good or bad. Gayle has a new role. Will it keep her satisfied and supportive? 

• Then there is Oprah herself and all the personal things Oprah has garnered from her success – all the trappings (the home, clothes, and celebrity), the pride of accomplishment, the ego gratification and the power. She has said these are secondary to her good works and influencing of her fans’ lives.

Human beings rely on others for a sense of self. Take away those relationships and we feel great loss. Oprah and everyone connected with her has been spoon fed love, comfort and empowerment in abundance over the years. Will everyone survive the loss, bridge the gap or will they fall into the chasm?

The Oprah Way – Something for Everyone
Oprah’s management of this transition is perhaps the best example of corporate change management to come down the pipe, ever. In this case, Oprah, the CEO, chose the change. Everyone else had the change thrust upon them.  Her strategy to ease the pain – create a very public, year-long process, providing something for everyone.

Audience: First of all she didn’t just announce, then do. During the final year, the bulk of the process was devoted to a celebration of the past and all things wonderful contained within. Episode after episode was a last hurrah enabling her audience to relive, then applaud and laud, all of the good, albeit a carefully selected and scripted, past. .

Advertisers: I am sure, though not certain, that each one will be given the opportunity to accompany her. Whatever their choice, she has made great effort to offer them final opportunities to promote themselves. Through her free giveaways and ever-growing final audiences, she gave them their own last hurrah. It is rumored that the cost of ad spots for her final shows rivaled that of the Super Bowl’s.

Employees: By not quitting, retiring or taking a break and continuing to work in a similar but different aspect of her industry, she keeps opportunity of employment for her employees. They don’t all suddenly lose their jobs. And if some do, she has given them a longer, softer, certainly less painful transition. Complete with a huge thanks for past work, instead of the typical ‘too-bad, that’s life’ boot on the backside as they go out the door.

Friends: Gayle is perhaps the best example. With her own show on the new OWN, she continues with a role, perhaps even a better one, in Oprah’s life. She has been given a new opportunity and her own set of risks and challenges to accomplish or fail.

Corporate Translation
Companies going through transformative change should adopt Oprah’s process. Examples of botched corporate reinventions laden with lead balloons of bad press, failed spin PR, golden parachutes and legions of never fading ill-will abound. Hers is a framework that translates into a positive strategy and plan for any company.

Customers and clients = her audience: If you make any large scale change – tell them, explain, be open and honest and give them a long time to transition. Oprah’s was a full year. Your customers are not your enemy. They are your biggest fans. They fill the stands that are the coffers of your revenues. They, like Oprah’s millions of followers, are number one. It’s not about what you make. It’s about who makes you. They know if you are lying and spinning and will jump ship to the competition, fast.

Vendors, outside service providers = her advertisers: Think up and give them other opportunities to come along on the new wave. They are your biggest cheer leaders.

Employees = her employees: Don’t cut your costs here. Get creative instead. Invent a vehicle, any vehicle, to take them along and keep them. The vehicle that saves them may just become your best, new business product or service.

Share holders, investors = friends: Ensure they come along by giving them a role to play in the next phase.

This isn’t really a change management (CM) plan. It is a business plan involving change, devised at the highest level of the company. Most CM plans are low-level, one-off initiatives designed to spin, keep employees contented and control fall out in order to make the change “easier” on management. Oprah’s plan, whether conscious or instinctive, is not a reactive, add-on, change management plan. It is a proactive business plan with integrated business priorities. This is what really has made Oprah so successful. She knows how to run a business well.

Bottom Line
A change management of this type is not a keep everyone ‘happy’ HR retention plan. Rather as an integrated business plan, every level of the organization is engaged to drive the business reinvention and next success. Oprah dug deep and invented a new business to grow in a new area and in new ways. Reaching beyond the short-term and the easy obvious, the new business retains its most valuable assets – its people – the customers, product and service providers, employees, investors.  An intentional mandate of full retention and inclusion strategy drives of the new business type. Collateral damage is not an option

Just as People made Oprah’s past success, it makes all companies’. People want their company to succeed again. The business’ success is their success. It has a value to them too whether spiritually, monetarily or otherwise. If change is planned and executed with taking everyone along on the journey as the number one, the right next thing will be invented. They will actively and voluntarily make the next success again, no matter what it is.

The bottom line business strategy:
Celebrate the past. All in it was relevant, useful and valuable.
Now let’s all move on and make the next succes

————————————————————————————————-

Coda and Kudos

Dear Oprah,

At first I thought this new venture was more of the same and thus easier for you. That after 25 years you were really just afraid to take a break or retire, a common fear for hyper-accomplished people. Upon fuller examination, I now understand it would have been easier to just walk away, or stay exactly the same while watching your audience and success dwindle.

Instead you chose to work really hard at re-invention. No golden parachute, no mass layoffs, no blaming others, no quitting at the ‘top of your game’. You choose to climb the next mountain; to continue to innovate, create and develop something more and larger, not for just yourself, but for all others. This way is the hard way, and yes the nobler way. This way takes real guts. This is real corporate leadership. You continue to break new ground. I am in awe.

Best wishes and may you continue to reap rewards,
Catherine Adams Lee

Copyright © 2011. Catherine Adams Lee Consulting. All rights reserved.

A tug of war is occurring in the workplace between face-to-face interpersonal relationships and those that occur at a distance over technology. As the old saying goes, if I had a dollar for every time someone said to me “Fact-to face is important”, I’d be rich. And I‘d agree. But the proverbial barn doors for work and interactions over technology have been open for over fifty years. To stay firmly planted and safe in the barn when the larger world is changing so rapidly is hard for everyone.

People of all ages and genders find themselves heavily guarding their comfort position, most often driven by the fear they won’t find a place in the new world outside the barn. This new world may not be better, or worse. It just is. And it’s different. Besides, face-to-face (f2f) is not the win-all answer. Face-to-face has always been a multi-edged sword. There is the good, the bad and the ugly of it.

The good – humans need to be around other people. The new, seemingly daily, discoveries in cognitive neuroscience appear to reinforce this as true. Proximity dynamics of the transfer of energy, brain waves, and pheromones enable accomplishment and exchange of ideas that don’t happen over technology – for most people. There is a qualifier. The jury is still out for future generations as to whether nature or nurture will overcome the f2f ‘deficiency’. Or if, like a blind person compensating with increased hearing abilities, people will develop a new normal – other skills to fill the void and accomplish the same thing in different ways. Not better, or worse, just different.

The bad – those who abuse and misuse f2f to influence. Not the charismatic speaker (good, hopefully), but the boss or other authority figure who demands compliance and obedience reinforced by the threatening, intimidating or bullying use of his or her physical presence (the bad). According to Wikipedia, research by The Workplace Bullying Institute suggests the #2 highest tactic used by workplace bullies is “stared, glared, was nonverbally intimidating and was clearly showing hostility (68%).”

This is bad f2f. Included are the team members who dominate to control the outcomes their way versus team agreement, consensus or thought-out business intent. And the people who get included or excluded, rewarded or punished, promoted or passed over, liked or shunned, based on physical attributes – biases of gender, race, size, age, good looks, et al, not capability or value of accomplishment. All stereotype characteristics, the knowledge of which is gleaned mostly through visible, face-to-face interaction.

The ugly – the extreme verbal and physical abusers. People who overtly intimidate, scream, threaten, even physically hit and accost to get you to perform as they want or keep you “in line”. Yes, I have experienced pretty much every one of them. I even had a client who experienced a workplace shooting. So traumatic was the incident they disbanded the company. An extreme example of how f2f can be bad for business. OSHA statistics state that homicide is the second highest cause of death on the job, after motor vehicle accidents.

Distance and distancing can be a tool to ameliorate these bad and ugly situations. That’s not to say that you can’t be screamed at over the phone. But the verbal threat may be diffused with greater ease with a sort of distance-enabled ‘time out’, than a threat accompanied by physical presence. The physical gap allowing for a cooling off or cooling down period and faster reengagement when calmer heads prevail.

Finding success in this new world of work is about finding the right combination of f2f and non f2f. To do so, you need to:

• Learn to look at each with eyes wide open.
• Understand the role and the possibilities contained within each as a tool for the future and healthy growth both monetarily and psychologically of the business.
• Recognize and employ their attributes and avoid their faults.
• Open up room for positive opportunities brought by non f2f – like a more level playing field, increased productivity for both on-site and off-site or distributed employees.
• Develop a combination of all forms of relationship interactions that works for each individual, team or group performed at the micro-level.
• Reap the rewards of greater full-immersion diversity and accessibility brought by good ideas and innovations that come bubbling forth in a safer environment.

Work over technology at a distance is not a panacea for all corporate relationship ills. But neither is it the devil it is so often made out to be. I have been on global teams that functioned very well for extended periods of time. We invented new processes like global, round-robin brainstorming and time-zone IMing to deal with the asynchrony. When achieving consensus was needed or we felt alignment was slipping, we then came f2f, usually about once a quarter.

Conversations and work over computers may not be your preferred world, but this is the way of the new world. You just may not be living in it yet. You can choose to accept this as true, reject it or escape it. Just remember, the new world of relationships over technology may not be better, or even worse, but it is different. And it’s here.

Catherine Adams Lee is a workplace business strategist and organizational innovation coach helping businesses build their bridge between old and new work places. Catherine encourages businesses to engage in distance in order to make NewWorkPlaces work and become a 21st century business success story. To find out more about Catherine and NewWorkPlaces go to http://www.newworkplaces.com/.

Copyright © 2011. Catherine Adams Lee Consulting. All rights reserved.

Before you answer that question, let me ask you another one.

Which kind of player do you use to listen to music – MP3 player, CD player, computer, cassette player, 8-track tape player, record player, radio?

If you entered MP3 player, you are up-to-date, new. If you entered record player, you are old school. But the question isn’t about what you use. The question is about having your brain look at the idea of  using old or new things that were built to essentially do the same, one thing – listen to music. Let’s think about it together.

Things that play Records are:

1. Large
2. Cumbersome
3. Attached to the wall
4. Fixed in one place
5. Can only be heard from where the speakers and you sit
6. Need to be plugged into an electric wall plug for power
7. Scratch and ruin the record if moved while playing
8. Only play a prescribed list – the songs on the album

 Compared to say – MP3 players, MP3 players are:

1. Small
2. Light and portable
3. Attached to nothing but you
4. Easily operated anyplace
5. Can be heard anywhere
6. Power moves with it
7. Designed to be mobile
8. Play list is customizable to your wants and needs

There are more comparisons I could make, but you get the idea. So let’s take this process and apply it to the workplace.

Old workplaces are:

1. Big
2. Cumbersome
3. Is and is full of attached things that take a small company fortune to move
4. Takes another small army to keep operating in that one place
5. Seemingly can only be heard/managed if you are located right there
6. Everything needs to be plugged in right there to operate – equipment, technology, people
7. Moving any part takes 3 and 4 above
8. Can only used in a prescribed way, usually as determined by Facilities, HR and IT

You see where I am going with this. Does your old workplaces list match mine? It doesn’t matter if it does. Just like it doesn’t matter which thing you choose at the beginning to play music. Any answer is valid. If you play records, or tapes or digital media, all is okay. But pretty soon you can’t get the right or new music on the old media. When the records become unplayable, scratched, you can’t buy new ones. When the record player breaks you can’t repair it. If it works for you right now, that’s fine. The question is – will it work for you later? And if not, when is later? I think later is today.

So it’s not about right or wrong. It’s about saying out loud, truthfully what the ‘As Is” is so you can accurately and successfully plan what you want the “To Be” to be for you, for your company. I call this congruency – when the thing and the need are in sync. How does it work, here is an example.

Vision:   Play beautiful business music. 
Strategy:   Become a 21^st century business player of new business music.
Plan:   Be a  21^st century business.
Road Map:   Innovate to be a NewWorkPlace.

Coda:

My “New” WorkPlaces list:

1. Small
2. Light and portable/agile
3. Attached to nothing but you, the employee
4. Easily operated anyplace
5. Can be heard connected anywhere
6. Power moves with it
7. Designed to be mobile
8. Play list is customizable to your needs

Yes – this is the same list as the MP3 player. Think about it. It works.

Copyright © 2011. Catherine Adams Lee Consulting. All rights reserved.

I am now a Certified Scrum Master -
as certified by the Scrum Alliance,
“a not-for-profit professional membership
organization created to share the Scrum
framework and transform the world of work …
Scrum is an agile approach to managing complex projects.”

The Scrum and Agile movements today are moving beyond the software development venue. Those involved, I included, see the need and application in many parts of the company and for any business type that wishes to be creative, innovative or just ensure that true collaboration is occurring.

For me, this has been a circular journey, having operated in a similar manner with my own design business. Much of its success was built on such things as fast track (scrum translation = sprints) and having my designers meet directly with the client (scrum = product owner and team interaction, backstory creation), just to name a few corollaries.

I was introduced to the word Scrum about 4 years ago by a client whose new style of workplace I was creating.  As a VP of Software Development, he wanted rooms for virtual daily scrums. Daily scrums are quick, fifteen minute meetings meant to set up the framework and context for the day’s work. The virtual part was to enable these meetings between team members in California and India.

As the project progressed, I found that this VP and I similar work philosophies. The project was fast, tasks given were completed in a timely manner, input supplied was relevant, prompt and appropriate and key stakeholders participated in the design process and solutions. Though there was heavy pressure from outside, we both worked hard to follow Agile principles and not become a tops-down, hierarchical, isolated process. Ideas abounded and positive creative tension resulted in innovation and a design strategy that supported the work of the business line, not singly the demands of finance or real estate.

I ran across the term Scrum later while attending an Organizational Development conference. Their emerging interest was as a new change management process. Seeing Scrum start to move beyond software development motivated me to dig further, which eventually led to my training and certification.

Upon critical reflection, I have come to realize that the success of that original project resulted from all parties, the business VP (scrum=product owner), me (scrum=master/facilitator) and the team (scrum=broad, cross-represtational, horizontal, non-siloed), being truly invested in:

• the real concept of team and team responsibility, both as a group and as individuals
• invention and out-of-the-box problem solving, even if it has not been done before
• people and the work produced first, process and tools second
• the courage to truthfully define the problem and a willingness to find real, workable solutions

All results supported and facilitated by Agile and Scrum and, as evidenced by the exploding growth of Agile in the  software development industry, hugely successful when allowed to work freely, unencumbered and supported.

I look forward to continuing my facilitation under this framework and to helping people, teams and company’s to capitalize on their internal creativity and innovate to make workplaces work.

I was on a Mass Care conference call given by the American Red Cross Disaster Services from their headquarters in Washington D.C.

Right before the start of the call there was a fire alarm evacuation of the building. Instead of canceling the call, the participants conducted it outside on the sidewalk via their cell phones. They did a great job.

Good cell phones and noise cancelling head phones worked well so that the street noise was not a major interrupter or distraction. The transition between the presenters went smoothly as each had called separately into the Web Ex conference phone number instead of convening together around one speaker phone. While one person was talking another was able to multi-task and check on return status, which changed more than once. I believe we even remained connected while they were on the elevator back to their desks.

Most importantly was the calm and professionalism demonstrated by these Red Cross people in a crisis. Hey, they don’t let a little thing like a fire alarm stop the emergency business at hand. This incident is a good indicator of what is needed by good Red Cross staff and volunteers – the ability to be flexible, mobile, punt, adapt, think on their feet, include technology as a resource to facilitate – to respond and work well in a crisis or under pressure. Kudos colleagues!

 More companies need to understand the mindset and skills that result in this behavioral ability. In an area such as the Silicon Valley, reputed to be fast paced and progressive, I have unfortunately seen more than one person/group/division/company freak out at the slightest change in – routine, outlook, space, facility, place, technology, time, work, work arrangements, ad infinitum.

Here we have somehow groomed a workforce of drones unable to adapt or incorporate change without great pain and panic. Unable to work in any other place than their cube; unable to manage anyone not within line of sight; unable to lead any company without the symbolic full parking lot indicator that all are in attendance on site; unable to work anyplace, in any workplace.

Yes, there are the infamous “innovators” and even “early adaptors”, terms from Everett Rogers’ theory on the Diffusion of Innovations. But more often than not (as in mostly always) if the innovation is social it slides back down into the chasm between these two first stages. Momentum never to be recovered and forces lost that would push the innovation, the change, over the top into critical mass adoption by the majority.

I believe a mindset change is required, or rather a mind shift – a change of perspective, priorities and precedent in order to achieve work in anyplace. To do so, emphasis shifts from rote and repeatable to different and flexible/agile/mobile. Plug and play is replaced by try and progress. One size fits all instantly is replaced by the understanding of the various relational stages of transition such as knowledge, persuasion, decision, implementation, and confirmation, to name a few. And that people are in different stages at different times.

Change, transition, movement is a process – a dirty word in some companies with short, quarter-driven spans of sight. Like thorough-bred race horses, their blinders keep them running fast around the track, but unable to see the speeding train coming at them from the side and thus, unable to jump to another track to survive.

The more I learn and am involved in the Red Cross the more I respect and admire the organization. They are a learning organization, from others and their choices, the bad and the good ones. They see the need to adapt and adopt new process, procedures and tools to meet their goals and mission, which ever remains solid and constant.- helping people in times of crisis and disaster. They are unafraid to say “no” when the world at any given time is not in accord or puts up road blocks and leap forward when and where the paths suddenly appear. Corporate American can learn a lot from this organization. I am proud say I am a volunteer.

I attended the Northern California 2010 Agile Open Conference in San Francisco last month.

For those of you who have not experienced an Open Space gathering, I highly recommend it. I have participated in many, each with a completely different type of group, and found self-organization and participation amongst intelligent people to be highly gratifying. I recently met Harrison Owen who founded the open space concept – a real treat. I’ll save that for another blog.

Basic to an Open Space, self-organizing conference is that the participants develop the agenda. They create and host sessions based on topics they want to discuss or learn about that relate to the general conference topic. I hosted a couple of sessions. Below is one I titled “Why Agile?” I wanted to know, to better understand why people were drawn to this way of working.

 Below are my notes on the discussion and “insights” from the session. Thanks Jim, Mark, Mike, Oluf, et al for your great participation!

 Why Agile?

Agile:

• Has a personality orientation. Parallels actual work of coder
• Is trying to address change, attrition, problem solving; managing business better
• Is expandable and scalable
• Has more communication, especially if you do the daily stand-ups, it can shorten the time blocks
• Has the ability to change more quickly to get excellence, less bugs.
• Employs common ownership that leads to visibility (like Open Source) and potentially better cross-collaboration.
• Ownership issues need to be overcome and can be stumbling blocs.
• Is a socialized form of programming, if all teams buy in.
• Raises the team to a higher level.
• Communication – having to verbalize ideas to others has value and brings the ability to evaluate.
• Egos break down, letting go occurs and supportive roles occur
• Brings more career opportunities vs. trapped, pigeon-holed employees/programmers in one spot or role
• More exposure to experiences and experienced people with other skills and knowledge
• Increases retention vs. risk management
• Goes in waves of creativity/productivity. Only so much people can take of constant group communication. People need down time between sprints/scrums.

Lots of interesting insights into the dynamics, people, pros and cons of working on an Agile team.

Thanks all for sharing!

I have recently undertaken Scrum Master training in southern California.

 “Scrum”, as per the Scrum Alliance, “is an Agile framework for completing complex problems … an innovative approach to getting work done.” Most often Scrum is applied, and has evolved from, the software development community. Its practices of fast iteration, sprints, daily communication (Scrum standups), transparency and team work are some of the parts leading to its blossoming success.

 Why Scrum for me?

1.  I was first introduced to Scrum about three years ago. The framework I experienced in support of the creative process was so similar to what I had experienced in my own company and its creative processes years ago that I was overcome with wafts of déjà vu. Scrum mirrors in many ways the original collegial gatherings of old design and architecture charrettes, which most A&D firms have lost or abandoned over the years. The camaraderie, appreciative critique and inquiry and team participative creativity of those days I find can be present and emergent in the current practice of agile.  Finally a vehicle for creativity in the corporate world!
2. Having spent years creating workplaces for software and hardware engineers I have come to the conclusion that there is a huge mismatch, a chasm of incongruence, between the workplace delivered and the real workplace needed by the knowledge workers within them. Watching the systemic business process changes emerging from Scrum further cements my belief in its application and success. However, Scrum’s success is only as possible as it is fed, supported and under the umbrella of the larger concepts of Agile.
   Agile has four overarching principles, paraphrased from the Agile Manifesto:   

• Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
• Completed functionality over comprehensive documentation
• Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
• Responding to change over following a planThat is, while there is value in the items on the right, the items on the left matter more.    

It is clear that without these principles Scrum would fail and that, conversely, the very adherence to the framework of Scrum is  inherently enacts the  principles. They are symbiotic concepts, one dependent on the other for success.

3.

I have come across emerging interest in Agile and Scrum in both of the traditional worlds of Organizational Development (OD) and Project Management (PM). OD comes at it from interest in the new organizational behaviors they represent that are seemingly compatible with trending in change and change management. PM’s interest is from the new project  process perspective. Unfortunately I see each interest looking at it mostly within their current siloed points of view. Scrum is not interested in change per se and adamantly eschews the labels of process and methodology, favoring the term “framework” instead.

But Scrum is not perfect. My research and discussions inform my current thinking. Scrum and Agile are only successful when there is a marriage of:

• A change to partnering and collaborative behavioral skills
• Adherence to the Scrum structural framework, including having the roles Scrum Master – team facilitator and  Product Owner/Manager embodied in two people, not in the same person.
• Respect and utilization of the Agile principles

There is a movement afoot within the agile community to take Scrum and Agile outside software development and into other parts and types of organizations, including non-profits. Stay tuned for my journey there.

Lately I’ve felt that I pushed myself so far out to the edge of the workplace transformation envelope that I am floating in the exosphere of space, barely able to be pulled back by gravity. It’s a lonely place out here. But finally I think I have company.

 The January/February 2010 issue CoreNet Global’s industry magazine The Leader published an article entitled “Moving beyond Alternative Workplace Strategy: After 20 Years Can AWS Finally Scale-Up?”, authored by Gagandeep Singh and Nadia Orawski, two Deloitte consultants. At last I have found some people who seem to “get it”.

Their definition of Alternative Workplace Strategies (AWS) is the current incarnation, “a combination of practices involving space design and usage, technology provision, and HR policies that allow work to be done from a variety of settings beyond the traditional office environment.”

 The gist of Singh and Orawski’s premise is that this is all well and good, and even though technology is well-advanced in support, a very small percentage of companies have successful implementations for an even smaller number of their population, mostly in pilots. Their rationale for this failure of large scale deployment, and I am in agreement though not stated as strongly by them, is the lack of commitment to large scale-up.

 What you do for a small, let’s stick our toe in the water and test the temperature pilot and what you do for full-blown, company-wide enactment is entirely different. The actions in the areas of intent, commitment and support, both in polices and attitude, change.

 Here are key points extracted from the article that illustrate both of our points of view. It’s almost as if I had written it myself. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve expressed that telework, et al, is not a one-off program but a new business process, a way of working, at a distance, over technology, that has now become business-as-usual. Hmmm – maybe they have read my site/blogs. Wouldn’t that be nice!

 Key points, the bold is my added emphasis, are:

 “Integration and alignment across enabling functions – Corporate Real Estate (CRE), Human Resources (HR), Information Technology (IT) and Finance. AWS often impacts and requires significant changes across HR, IT, CRE and Finance. In our experience … large scale deployment requires systemic and sustained enterprise wide cooperation across these “silos.”

Outside of transactional job categories, productivity is rarely measured in corporations, so improvements to productivity cannot be proven. This is a “red herring” issue and should be stated as such.

 … AWS is not a space program but rather a shift in how people are “expected” to work (even if in reality they are already working differently than expected).

 … the “enterprise mandate” approach relies on a compelling business case with high-level executive sponsorship for large-scale time-bound change.

 A sustainable “business-as-usual end state … AWS programs falter due to their inability to evolve from a project focused approach to an on-going “business as usual” state that would transform AWS from being the “alternative” to being the “norm”.

 … AWS needs to become a part of day to day operations and not be a special project that requires large teams of specialists and the associated costs.”

 To this I would add one more key ingredient necessary for success of Alternative Workplace Strategies – Congruous Branding and Culture

You have to walk the talk. Most companies publically espouse their “want-to-be” culture but fail to match reality with the cultural vision. Lofty goals replete with corporate altruism are wonderful, and necessary. However, a company that refuses to be real about the gap between what they ‘want to be’ and ‘what they are’ can never bridge that chasm. A strategy or plan based upon a false gap analysis leads to invalidation of purpose, a waste of valuable time, energy and money and, no matter how well branded, funded and supported, ultimately experiences failure through incongruity.