State of Agility 2020: Obstacles to Agile adoption & Aspiration for 2020s (textual)

Instead of "doing" more Agile transformations and expecting to see different outcomes, get out of the hamster wheel and allow yourself for a deeper reflection. This reflection of mine on the Obstacles of Agile adoption and Aspiration for 2020s is an invitation to Inspect & Adapt the dacade of 2010s, build on it and move forward in 2020s.

This is to share with you my observations and reflection on the condition of the workplace at the dawn of 2020s and inspire you to reflect too. First, I share the sources of obstacles that I identified and their nature. Then I draw the aspirational, much more appealing, perspective on what is possible in 2020s, if only we remove the obstacles.

For quite some time now I have been having second thoughts on what stops Agile from being fully adopted in a long term sustainable manner. I saw too many transformations just scratching the surface, or being implemented mechanically following a template. And then after some time it was becoming obvious that Agile did not stick. And clients were saying that they could not realize the value added by the transformation. This is why I decided to spent some time to investigate the topic deeper, so that I was able verbalize this gut feeling. What are these invisible forces causing the issues with adoption? And what is possible if we eliminate those? 

This is to inspire you, encourage you to reflect too, and join the wider discussion within the #agile2020s hashtag.

Sources of obstacles to Agile adoptions vary from implementation faults to the very purpose of the business and economy today.

My current understanding is that there are two factors influencing transformations: implementation faults and residual issues. Implementation faults are all the issues related to how we do transformations. Eliminating them is a matter of optimization: it is possible and it actually has been happening based on the experience we gathered in recent years. On the other hand the residual obstacles are rooted deeper in the context of transformations.

I categorize the residual obstacles into two groups: the first group that I call “Orange goals” and the second group that I call “Purpose of business”.  

The first group reflects my realization that many agile transformations try to achieve Orange goals, like increased profitability. This results from the fact that many companies are still rooted in the orange mindset. Such transformations may apply a number of elements of Agility to achieve their goals, however it does not mean that the organization will become more mature on the scale of the evolution. The organization will remain Orange. One cannot transform into more mature state in the evolution by setting goals on the level below the expected end-level of a transformation.

Secondly I realized that we cannot get further into the evolution of Workplace until we reformulate the purpose of the business. It is the current purpose of the business and economy that itself is the residual obstacle to agile transformations. In fact the current purpose of business is also a root cause of what I call the technical debt of human civilization: unsustainability of environment and unsustainability of human integrity.

To eliminate the Residual obstacles a deeper change is necessary. They cannot be removed without changing the nature of the goals and the currently dominating purpose of business.

Workplace 2020s - the current state and the aspiration for 2020s

And here is the comparison of the current reality of the workplace and the aspirational reality for 2020s.

As you can see the current reality reflects what I already talked about: the degradation of the role of Agile transformations, residual obstacles and so on.

The aspirational reality shows what is possible if we manage to improve on the Implementation faults and in parallel we manage to deal with the residual obstacles. Can you even imagine the power of reframing the purpose of the business? Can you imagine Corporates as good citizens of the world? I cannot wait to see how societies will benefit from this change! I cannot wait to see how our planet will benefit from it! And I cannot wait to see how we as individuals will benefit from it!

With this perspective, I am leaving you in the good frame for reflecting on your experience. This is just a high level pitch on the topic. A more in-depth material follows on the Evolution of Workplace and there you will find more granular view of the landscape. Stay tuned by following resonate as well as the hashtag #agile2020s on social media.