Agile guiding the three tribes of business.

I am grateful to be blogging again.  I took a week off to address some health issues.  Recovery from illness is nature’s way of forcing a person to review priorities.  It makes you take stock of what is essential.  I have spent the last ten years of my life involved with the Agile reformation.  It is clear to me that one of the biggest challenges faced by agile practitioners is helping others change their mindset from a command and control perspective to an agile view. It is going to require coaching and patience.  Today, I want to discuss the challenges coaches and scrum masters face.

Since Frederich Winslow Taylor published “Principles of Scientific Management,” over one hundred years ago corporations separated their workforce into three distinct tribes.    The workers who did the manufacturing, service, or sales work.  The next group was the owners or executives Karl Marx called the bourgeois.  The final collection were managers.  The tribes formed a lopsided pyramid where power resided at the top, and those at the bottom were expected to carry out orders without question.  When we discuss “top-down” management, executives give orders to professionals.  The professionals then ensure the orders were performed by those doing the work.

The modern manager has only existed since the founding of the Harvard Business School in 1908.  Management training often began in the office and shop floor.  After founding the M.B.A. program at Harvard, growing corporations could hire college-educated people who understood finance and the legal aspects of running a large business.  Managers had formal training equal to doctors and attorneys.  The professional managerial class created a disconnect between those who did the work and those who employed the labor. 

Labor unions and economic growth helped to conceal the disconnect between workers and managers.  The events of the 1980s helped change the dynamic.  The government slashed regulations and curtailed labor unions; business leaders wanted to do more with less.  Businesses outsourced non-essential parts of the company and contractors replaced full-time workers.  Finally, manufacturing was off-shored to countries with lower labor costs.  At each step along this path, it was professional management making it work.

For creative activities like software development, entertainment, and advertising, the more with less approach was not working.  With no knowledge of the work, executives would give orders.  Managers could manage work but have no idea how long it would take to complete the job.  Finally, workers did not care what they were doing or why they were doing it so long as they got paid.  Work would linger, and projects would run over-budget.  Meanwhile, customers were receiving low-quality products which were not meeting their demands.  It was ugly, and everyone in the business world through it was healthy.

Because they felt there was a better way to do work than “top-down” management, some of the biggest names in project management created the agile manifesto.  Organizations would now benefit from workers interacting directly with customers.  Small teams would lead change instead of bourgeois executives coercing people to do things against their will.  The pyramid of workers, executives, and professionals would be tipped over, all three tribes working toward a common goal of helping the customers.  It was utopian and viewed the world through the lens of engineering.

Since that moment, has eaten the world.  Successful companies in the global economy embrace agile concepts and those who do not flounder.  The reality is much more complicated.  Dark Scrum is a constant challenge in the business world.  Bad Agile is everywhere, and plenty of bad actors are attempting to capitalize on the spread of agile.

Scrum masters and coaches are innovating and attempting to improve business.  To effect change, we need to stick to the basics and the Agile manifesto and Agile principles.  We need to embrace scaling for more substantial organizations, but we should not be bound to one particular scaling framework.  Finally, we need to embrace our technical excellence and increase soft skills.  I am a big fan of Kim Scott’s “Radical Candor,” and I am beginning to embrace “Co-Active Coaching.”  Together, by understanding how the different business tribes interact, practicing technical excellence, and finally, by perfecting soft skills, we can make the lopsided pyramid of the contemporary business world a better place.

Until next time.