Change Starts at The Center

“Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;” — William Butler Yeats, The Second Coming

For years I worked with software delivery teams; the folks who do the real product-building work. I loved it the way I loved the carpentry, stone masonry, and furniture making I did in my 20s. This kind of work makes it easy to see progress and improve how you do it.

But only up to a point.

Last week I caught up with a former client at a large enterprise. Years ago we’d worked together to bring agile processes to a large product team. Unfortunately, he told me that “agile” had never lived up to its promise.

“They’re just doing the same stuff in smaller batches,” he said.

Working in small batches can make things move faster and eliminate bugs, but it won’t change what you make. You may just be building the wrong thing faster.

If you want to truly change how your company is operating, you need to work on how the teams operate. But you also need to change what the teams are building and how they organize around the work. In other words, you need to work on strategic focus and organization structure in addition to speed/efficiency.

If you cut down a tree, you might notice that the innermost rings are the youngest. This is where the growth happens. At the center.

Organizations are no different. It’s the center where the real change happens.

The center of your tree is the leadership team — the team with the most power and influence. If you just change delivery teams at the edges of the org, you can make some gains for a time, but you’ll inevitably be constrained by what’s going on in the center.

In her influential article, Leverage Points: Places to Intervene in a System, systems theorist Donella Meadows points out that the three most impactful points to make a system change are:

1. The mindset out of which the system arises.

2. The goals of the system.

3. The distribution of power over the rules of the system.

Each of these is the domain of the leadership team. So, here’s my (perennial) advice:

1. If you want to change, start with the leadership team.

2. Create a strong sense of alignment & resolve disagreements.

3. Now begin to cascade the change to the rest of the company.

One more piece of advice: Go slow and be deliberate and thorough as you work with the leadership team. It may feel like you’re not changing fast enough, but even small misalignments at the center will become huge problems at the edges. And remember what the U. S. Navy SEALs say: “Slow is smooth and smooth is fast.”

— Bob Gower

P.S. If you’re ready to improve the performance of your team, hit reply and let’s talk.

P.P.S. I’m researching my next book on “Effective Teams.” If you lead a team or know an inspiring leader you want to introduce me to, please hit reply and we can find a time to talk. I appreciate your help in making the world a little bit better.