• Agile Leadership

Reporting fanatic fails to see that he is in the middle of reporting

On how to tackle (or not tackle) reporting drift

‘We are not moving forward! We have been working for three years with eight teams, a steering committee and a board to implement a major organizational change. Adrie, can you jump in? I get that question after I gave Agile Leadership training to a dozen directors of a large municipality. Why do they feel they are not making progress? Not enough progress can be seen in the reports, which in turn leads to more and more stringent reporting. At a certain sad point, there are even more team members engaged in reporting than in achieving the goals. I do like to stretch myself as well, so I remember saying to my colleague Gert-Jan, “if it works here, it will work everywhere!” Stretched leg in it, then!

From 8 to 1 team

Surprised: it is promptly honored! My request to reduce the 8 teams to 1 team. A dedicated team without that reporting burden. Even better: my suggestion that the people on the steering committee have something better to do is also positively received. “And by the way the board will be able to see the results on an ongoing basis, without interfering with how we achieve those results.” Fine Adrie. So far, things are going super. They may not be very drastic interventions; after all, it’s easier to take something off than build something on.

This one is a bit more radical. The fact that I wanted to work with the team in a different location, away from the municipal offices, has a little more difficulty. But the stakes are high, so that too eventually happens. The impact is also profound: the single team delivers more results in the first month than the eight teams did in three years. Soon, then, the core team grows into five dedicated and fully self-organizing Agile teams, which deliver to their full satisfaction at ever faster rates. Wow, this is cool! But then…

Success works like honey

The success does not go unnoticed within the municipality. Other directorates are also all too eager to use this way to smooth their stagnant projects and show off impressive results. They are right. And you don’t say “no” easily to people who are eager. So we set to work. But this time, the scope for an Agile approach turns out to be a lot more limited: no dedicated teams, a lot of side steering, and we just stay in the municipal office space. Hmm, is this going to work?

My request to also start an Agile Leadership workshop with the board and management is not enthusiastically received by the director. “Working Agile that was something for the teams, right? With some urging from the MT, the director still agrees to a half-day workshop. Okay, that’s not much, but I’m going for the half-full glass. Perhaps after the half-day session he will be motivated for more. False hope: a few days later, his assistant reduces the half-day period to 2 hours. I immediately feel the same irritation as the complaining managers who are clearly done with this director, but remain positive. Surely in two hours he would see the benefit of diving further into this as a director?

Two hours of truth

Twelve o’clock sharp. It is Wednesday afternoon, lunch is over and in the morning I was able to work very hard with the enthusiastic team. The door of the Obeya swings open and there enters the slightly skeptical director with fresh reluctance. Skipping the polite greeting, he shares this: “Okay, if I find this interesting we’ll finish the two hours. If not, we’ll cut it out after the first hour. Okay Adrie?” Then to add, “And I don’t have the weekly report from the team in yet either, I expect it before the end of the day. Otherwise I won’t be able to make my own reports. Okay, Adrie take it away!”

What you don’t want to see, you don’t see….

Take it away? No, we are staying right here. Very deliberately in this place. Because what the reporting-driven director does not realize is that he is right in the middle of the most current and effective reporting you can imagine. Right here in front of him; the Obeya.

Obeya is Japanese for Great Room. The place where all the information needed to concretely dialogue together and quickly make the right decisions is available. It facilitates Inspect & Adapt as a team. The required information literally hangs on the walls and can easily be adjusted during discussions or with new data. The more visual the better, pictures do a much better job of interpretation by our brains than text. And colors show in a split second what is going well and where we can improve. In a nutshell, everyone can see at a glance where we want to go and where we will go if we work the way we are working now. In other words, the goals and effects of our work, also known as the traction. The key question is: how and what can we adjust so that we achieve the goals faster and/or with better results?

The profit packers of the Obeya

When everyone can see the bigger picture, people start thinking and acting more from the bigger picture. Discussing and deciding together creates more involvement and responsibility, because people no longer see themselves as a small link, but as an integral part of the whole. It saves many meetings, labor-intensive reports and fragmented moments of coordination, while the speed and quality of decision-making increase significantly.

Or just do what the alderman says

Anyway, you understand the value of a well-functioning Obeya. The team experiences the value of a well-functioning Obeya. Management sees the value of a well-functioning Obeya. For our reporting fanatic, things were a little different. Okay, we finished the 2-hour session and he was quite satisfied too. “A nice story Adrie, that of that value creation, self-organization and an Obeya” He even expresses the intention that it was good to follow it up again. That sounds great.

But almost in the same breath it goes back to his reporting and that he’s really just doing what the alderman wants. And that the teams should just do what the alderman wants. And instead of being a good feedback loop for the alderman, make sure there is good reporting that the team has done what the alderman wants. Agile and Scrum he found interesting because he had heard that it allows you to do more with fewer people (what the alderman wants) and also get it done faster (with what the alderman wants). But of course that shouldn’t come at the expense of reporting. Logical.

I left it like that. Didn’t go after it anymore. I never heard from him again. And he didn’t hear from me. I wonder if he still put that in his report for a while.