Effective agile adoption: Handling change with sensitivity
In my article “Anti-Agile: The Agile Industrial Complex” I’ve sited some examples from my own experience, of companies imposing agile adoption onto teams without involving those teams in shaping the right approach to agile.
Forcing teams into ‘processes’ and dictating frameworks doesn’t work.
Why would teams buy-in to something that they haven’t helped shape? Especially, when the benefits have not been made clear or worse, there are no clear benefits to them.
The ADKAR model created by Prosci, a global change management company, looks at organisational change. Their key philosophy for this model is that:
“Organisational changes often fail because employees don’t understand the importance of getting on board with the change or how to successfully make the change. They simply understand that a change is happening. And leaders are often not equipped to engage individuals effectively during the change and to manage any potential resistance.”
ADKAR breaks down as:
A — Awareness of the need for change
D — Desire to participate and support the change
K — Knowledge on how to change
A — Ability to implement desired skills and behaviours
R — Reinforcement to sustain the change
ADKAR can be a useful tool. However, when organisations don’t involve their people in shaping the change initiatives, this will lead to failure to implement change effectively, regarding of what change management model is followed.
I think ADKAR can be a useful tool for Leaders in:
Diagnosing employee resistance to change
Helping employees transition through the change
Creating a successful action plan for personal and professional advancement during a change initiative
Developing a change management plan for your people
Evolving the change management plan for your people
For teams and individuals ADKAR can to useful in understanding:
What the change means to them
What the benefits are to them
What challenges they see to implementing the change
Whether they all the information they need to implement the change
What they need to ensure the change is sustainable
If teams can assess the above and have the means to communicate their feedback to change leaders, this can help shape an organisations approach to change implementation. The model below emphasises these steps in more detail. For those on mobile the text detailed at the end of this article.
Assessing the culture shift
In the context of agile adoption at a team level, or agile transformation at a department or company level, a culture shift is involved. This can be hard to define. Before any change is implemented there should be discovery and assessment activities with teams and individuals, which help define the current or ‘from’ state. Then mapping the future or ’to’ state can be done. For example:
Article ‘Doing vs. Being: Practical lessons on building an agile culture’ by Nikola Jurisic et al of McKinsey
I hope you’ve found my article helpful, check out my other articles for related topics.
Below are is a mobile-friendly breakdown of the ADKAR model:
Steps in the ADKAR model
Awareness (Pre-contemplation) -
Awareness represents a person’s understanding of the nature of change, why the change is being made and the risk of not changing.
Awareness includes information about the internal and external drivers that created the need for change, as well as ‘what’s in it for me?’.
This first goal is defined as ‘awareness of the need for change,’ not simply ‘awareness that a change is happening’ - this is an important distinction.
Desire (Contemplation) -
Desire represents the willingness to support and engage in a change.
Desire is ultimately about a personal choice that is influenced by the nature of the change, and personal circumstances.
Knowledge (Preparation) -
Knowledge represents the information, training and education necessary to know how to change.
The knowledge that each impacted individual needs to implement a change which includes -
Behaviours and skills.
Processes, tools and systems.
Roles and responsibilities.
Ability (Action) -
Ability is turning knowledge into action.
Ability means tangibly applying and demonstrating intellectual understanding in a real-world environment.
Change leaders impact organisational success by intentionally providing time, resources and coaching to help impacted employees develop new skills and behaviours.
Reinforcement (Maintenance) -
Reinforcement is the final and most critical milestone.
While making a change is hard, sustaining a change over the long term is even more difficult.
It is human nature to revert to what we know.
Emerging brain function research suggests we are physiologically wired to return to their most comfortable and familiar state.