Professional Reference: Leadership, Organisational Agility & Change
This section explores organisational agility, detailing McKinsey's trademarks and agile practices like Scrum and Kanban. It covers key change management models (Lewin, Kotter, ADKAR) and strategies for collaborative enterprises, including psychological safety. The McKinsey 7S Framework for alignment is presented, concluding with practical learnings from engineering leadership challenges and solutions.
Leadership, Organisational Agility & Change
This section explores agile and adaptive organizations, leadership styles, and structured approaches to managing change.
3.1 Principles of Organisational Agility 🤸
Organizational agility is the capacity to rapidly and efficiently reconfigure in response to opportunities. It combines dynamism with stability.
McKinsey & Company identifies five core trademarks of agile organizations:
- North Star Embodied Across the Organization: A clear, shared purpose and vision.
- Network of Empowered Teams: Flexible, scalable networks replace traditional hierarchies.
- Rapid Decision and Learning Cycles: Work is done in rapid cycles, integrating methodologies like design thinking and lean operations.
- Dynamic People Model that Ignites Passion: A people-centered culture that empowers everyone.
- Next-Generation Enabling Technology: Technology is seamlessly integrated and core to every aspect of the organization.
3.2 Agile Management in Practice 🔄
Agile management focuses on iterative development, collaboration, and continuous improvement. Core values prioritize individuals and interactions, working solutions, customer collaboration, and responding to change.
Common frameworks include:
- Scrum: Structures work into fixed-length "sprints" with defined roles (Product Owner, Scrum Master, Development Team) and ceremonies (Sprint Planning, Daily Scrum, Sprint Review, Sprint Retrospective).
- Kanban: Emphasizes continuous flow and visual management of work, often on a Kanban board.
Agile Retrospectives are essential for fostering continuous improvement and team learning.
3.3 Leading & Implementing Organisational Change Transform
Successfully leading change requires a structured approach combined with an understanding of human dynamics.
Established Change Management Models include:
- Lewin's Change Management Model: A three-phase process of Unfreeze, Change, and Refreeze.
- Kotter's 8-Step Change Model: A detailed, top-down approach that includes creating a sense of urgency, building a guiding coalition, and generating short-term wins.
- Prosci ADKAR® Model: Focuses on the individual journey through change with five building blocks: Awareness, Desire, Knowledge, Ability, and Reinforcement.
3.4 Building Collaborative & High-Performing Enterprises 🌟
Creating a collaborative and high-performing enterprise requires attention to shared purpose, process design, cultural elements, and leadership.
A key mechanism is Leveraging Collective Intelligence, a two-stage process:
- Diverge (Create Choices): Involving the team in brainstorming and exploring a wide range of options.
- Converge (Make Choices): Utilizing the group's intelligence to analyze options, make decisions, and foster commitment.
Psychological safety, where team members feel secure to speak up and share ideas without fear of blame, is a prerequisite for true collaboration.
3.5 The McKinsey 7S Framework for Organisational Alignment 🧩
The McKinsey 7S Framework describes seven interrelated factors that must be aligned for an organization to be effective.
The seven elements are categorized into "Hard S" and "Soft S":
- Hard Elements:
- Strategy: The plan for building a competitive advantage.
- Structure: How the organization is structured, including reporting lines.
- Systems: The daily activities, procedures, and processes used to get work done.
- Soft Elements: 4. Shared Values: The core values and beliefs central to the organization's culture. 5. Style: The leadership style of top management. 6. Staff: The organization's employees and their general capabilities. 7. Skills: The distinctive competencies and capabilities of the organization.
3.6 Learnings in Organisational & Design Leadership 🧑🏫
Experiences within an engineering context highlight common challenges and effective solutions.
- Challenges Identified: Siloed teams, large team sizes, fragmented knowledge, misaligned management, and reactionary design work.
- Proposed Solutions: Integrate siloed teams, optimize team size, align management with development, establish clear design principles, and create dedicated roles like a Release Manager.
- Highlighted Successes: "Build Standard" for hardware/software definitions and "MasterSheet" as a single source of live program information.