Scaling Agile Part II: Frameworks are Not Enough

In part 2 of this series on scaling agile ways of working, Pete describes how agile scaling frameworks that may help start an agile journey are limiting more impactful organizational and business agility. 

Like recipes that help us create more flavorful dishes, agile frameworks like Scrum and Kanban are good starting points for teams to learn to deliver value more effectively.

However, the best chefs in the world don't follow recipes, they make recipes. And the best agile organizations in the world are not following agile frameworks, they are making their own.

It's time leaders get past the frameworks and become more like a chef of their organization.

Transcript

Pete Behrens:
What does it take to scale Agile?

Welcome to another episode of (Re)Learning Leadership, where we explore a specific leadership challenge and break it down to help improve your leadership, your organization, and, just possibly, your personal life.

I’m Pete Behrens, and today is Part Two of a two-part series on scaling Agile. If you missed Part One: The Games We Play, I encourage you to go back and watch or listen to that episode first.

In Part Two, we are going to be exploring why frameworks are not enough.

Now, in the first episode, I shared a couple of scaling stories where we did not have the luxury of a scaling framework, right? We were on our own. This is before they were even developed. And, in fact, a lot of the learning that went into my experience, as well as many others’ in our field, went into developing those frameworks.

But fast forward to today, right? 2023. And we’ve got—we’re inundated with scaling frameworks. You know, we mentioned two of them: The Spotify Model and Scaled Agile Framework, which is likely one of the most popular. But add to that mix Scrum @ Scale, Large Scale Scrum, Disciplined Agile, Enterprise Kanban, Nexus—right?—to name a few of the most popular.

Why is it there are so many scaling frameworks today? Well, I want to take you on a bit of a side story to kind of illustrate this point.

In December, I was diagnosed with high cholesterol. Now, it wasn’t a new diagnosis; I had been trending in the wrong direction for about five years. But my cardiologist thought it was time to sound the alarm. And she got my attention!

She put me in touch with a plant-based advisor, who put me on a program of a very low-fat, whole food, plant-based diet. Essentially a vegan diet, where you’re focused on more whole grains versus processed, refined sugars and fats and things. Oh, and by the way, no oils, no nuts. Nothing that actually makes food taste good—apparently!—according to my old style of eating. Tough. It’s really tough.

Now, as part of this program—I joined a two-week program with 50 other people, led by none other than Dr. Veggie, who ate leafy greens during every Zoom call. Quirky? Yeah. Effective? Sure! You know, this was an actual doctor for the Rochester Lifestyle Medicine Institute, walking us through a very well-structured curriculum.

You know, this included recipes. This included shopping lists. This included preparation guides. Even cooking classes! Right? You know, what they say is—oftentimes what happens is—you switch a diet, and you swap one bad food group with another. In this case, focused more on, you know, the processed grains and sugars.

And, you know what? This worked! I was able to reduce my cholesterol from 238 down to 173 in about three weeks. And I wasn’t even the winner in the low cholesterol game! But, as someone who’s not a trained chef, having those recipes, having those instructions, having that clear step-by-step guide was essential for me to help understand not only how to create healthy foods, but—probably just as importantly—tasteful foods that I’m going to somewhat enjoy along this journey.

So, bring us back to Agile. Over the past 20 years, I have seen Scrum have the same impact for teams that this program had for me. Scrum is a program full of recipes for teams to deliver value more effectively. As a Certified Scrum Trainer and a Coach, I’ve seen thousands of teams improve their value delivery through Scrum. Kanban could be put into that same category.

There is nothing wrong with recipes…as a starting point. And that’s my point.

Recipes are a great way for a chef or a cook—you know, for us to learn how to cook. But go to your favorite five-star restaurant. Talk to those chefs. Are they following recipes? No! They’re making recipes. The top chefs know how to mix ingredients, the flavors, the textures, the colors—right?—to build a beautiful experience for you every single night.

Recipes are a great way to learn, right? But they’re not enough for maturity and growth. And they don’t scale.

Take any recipe that would be a beautiful experience for you and a spouse or your family, and scale it for thousands of people. What do you get? Airplane food! Recipes—and this is true for Scrum and Kanban. You take something that works at a team level, and you start to scale it, and it breaks down.

But that’s exactly what we’re seeing. We’re seeing recipes that have worked for teams for years, for decades now. And teams and leaders are saying, “Hey, I need a recipe to work this across teams.” And so we’re seeing a demand. We’re seeing a need for recipes at scale. But what we’re learning is that the recipes at scale are enough to start, but they’re not enough to drive true business agility and organizational agility to improve performance and health.

The best chefs in the world are not following recipes. And I would argue the best companies in the world are not using scaling Agile recipes.

We talked last time about Salesforce. Salesforce created a recipe that they scaled from hundreds to thousands to now tens of thousands of people worldwide. Over 50 acquisitions Salesforce has been through. And I would argue they continue to refine their scaling recipe as they’ve grown.

We talked last time about Spotify and the Spotify culture and the Spotify model. Henrik Kniberg was adamant to say Spotify Culture, in those videos, was not a recipe. “Do not copy this approach!” And yet, what do we see? We see thousands of companies. Dozens of consulting firms using squads and tribes and guilds to help form and shape a Spotify culture recipe in their organizations. Much to the dismay of Henrik Kniberg.

Microsoft doesn’t follow an Agile scaling recipe. Satya Nadella has been arguably one of the top transformational leaders of our time, certainly in the tech space. And I would argue Microsoft has transitioned from what you might call a zero-sum competitive, maybe in-fighting, culture, to one that is now collaborative, co-creative, with its partner ecosystem. In a way that’s propelled Microsoft into a growth stratosphere beyond most every other company in the world. And you wouldn’t see any Agile scaling recipe in Microsoft.

Google doesn’t follow an Agile scaling recipe. Google built their own recipe with some ingredients like team autonomy, a shared code review model, and OKRs. Now, OKRs, interestingly, have become their own recipe in our universe. Not necessarily Agile, but a recipe nonetheless.

So, let’s just poke in on the OKR universe for just a second. I ask leaders sometimes, “Do you know the expectation of meeting an OKR?” And that means Objective, Key Result. “What is the expectation of a team, over the course of the quarter, of meeting their OKRs?”

Most leaders: “I don’t know!”

“What would you say if I told you that it was 70%?”

“Wow. That seems kind of low!” I hear back from a lot of leaders.

“Yeah, it does!”

The next question usually comes up: “How do they get predictable with the 70% OKR rate of completion?”

And I say, “Gotcha!” That’s not the goal of Google! When we see companies use a recipe of OKRs, it’s like new chefs blindly following a recipe. OKR wasn’t even created by Google. The recipes of OKRs come back from the 1950s. Andy Grove at Intel created the concept of Objective, Key Result. Google used that recipe but then blended that with their own spices to make it their own. Yet, what we see over and over again is companies taking the core recipe, blindly putting it into place, and expecting OKRs to work. It’s a tool! It’s a framework! It does certain things. But when you start to overlay it with a mindset—and now that’s where we’re getting to the point.

When we overlay it with a leadership mindset of, “An OKR is about predictability. It’s about accountability. It’s about getting to done.” Well, that’s one way to approach it. And what do you get? You get a bit of a safe environment. You get a bit of a secure environment. Maybe a predictable environment. But it’s often a little slow. That’s not Google’s goal. Google encourages teams and individuals to stretch themselves. They expect a certain amount of their OKRs not to be achieved. Because they want their people to—they call them Googlers—they want their Googlers to stretch themselves.

Now, Google also recognizes that in that quarter, things are going to change. You’re going to learn something. And so, it is okay to start with an OKR that you will not end with because, during the course of implementing the OKR, things change! We’re agile.

So, when you start to think about the framework, the tool, the recipe: okay, there it is. But when you start to think about, “When I build my own recipe, what does that mean?” That means I’m bringing my mindset, my culture, to use this recipe in a way that drives our business.

If your Agile scaling transformation is starting to taste like airplane food, possibly it’s time for reevaluating your approach.

I get asked a lot, “What frameworks should we use?” It doesn’t matter. The framework doesn’t matter.

All these frameworks are built on great Agile team recipes that are scaled to the organization. They all work, to a certain degree. They might even provide you a great starting point on your Agile journey. However, that’s where their value ends.

It’s when we mix that with mindset and culture that it really starts to change their impact into the organization. That includes things like the policies and the measures of success we put into that organization that determine whether or not we can actually achieve true business agility or organization performance or health. True business agility doesn’t occur using the framework. It occurs through leaders investing, like, a chef, on their culture and mindset.

So, leaders, I offer you one job. Become a chef in your organization. Yeah, start with some recipes, but find your unique blends and spices to create a culture that allows your teams to rise to meet any goal you set. Thank you for listening today, and enjoy the journey.

(Re)Learning Leadership is the official podcast of the Agile Leadership Journey. Together, we build better leaders. It’s hosted by me, Pete Behrens, with contributions from our global Guide community. It’s produced by Ryan Dugan. With music by Joy Zimmerman. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, leave us a review, or share a comment. And visit our website, agileleadershipjourney.com/podcast, for guest profiles, episode references, transcripts, and to explore more about your own leadership journey.