Cultural Impact on Agile Transformation with Rich Visotcky

Agile Coaches' Corner

This week, Dan Neumann and Justin Thatil are joined by an external guest called Rich Visotcky, President and Founder of Joint Insights, who is passionate about creating shared understanding. Rich is a Professional Scrum Trainer with Scrum.org.

In this episode, they explore the topic of cultural impact on transformation. We work in and for organizations that include several different cultures; this imposes challenges, resistances, successes, and opportunities to be seized, as well as other strategies to be used for better performance and communication while on the path of transformation.

Key Takeaways

• It is essential to know what is foundational for each company and how it has contributed to its success.

• Leadership can be the drive to success, but it is the culture that guides the Team to achieve its goals.

• The first step for transformation is to find what the organization truly values.

• Making changes doesn’t mean losing who we are.

• Sometimes, it is necessary to take risks.

• The fear of doing something wrong can keep a Team from trying new paths.

• Self-management cannot be prioritized at the expense of accountability.

• Self-management does not mean anyone can do whatever they want.

• A Team needs boundaries (but not too many).

• A Team’s success can be found in the balance between self-management, accountability, and well-executed boundaries.

• Changes need to be aligned.

• Leaders must communicate why the changes are important and back them up; they must often highlight what they are working towards. The company’s values must be used and reminded throughout the entire change path.

• There can be two or three simultaneous initiatives to avoid confusing people with many variables.

• Conflict is inherent to the process.

• Attributes for a company to be truly Agile:

• Cooperation.

• Speed of decision making.

• Engaging in Trials.

• Empowerment.

• Technology adoption.

• Simplicity.

• Knowledge sharing.

• Innovation focus.

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