(2018-08-20) Denning Why Mindset Is Driving The Age Of Agile

Steve Denning: Why Mindset Is Driving The Age Of Agile. As noted in my last article here, Agile management, after living in the shadows from general management for 15 years, is now “eating the world” and even heralding a new age.

the age of adhocracy and agile.

What does it mean to enter a new era, a new age? Some insights flow from earlier epochal shifts and the pivotal role played by mindset in each of them.

1. The Protestant Reformation

Luther’s central theme was that that salvation came, not from the blessing of the Pope, but by individual faith alone—a notion akin to the modern term, “mindset.”

The recently-introduced printing press helped spread Luther’s ideas rapidly across Europe. A vast reform movement began, eventually leading to reform within the Church itself.

2. The Copernican Revolution In Astronomy

Copernicus’s thesis undermined the plausibility of established religion and the divine right of kings. Thus began a process of inquiry into the entire organization of society, including the rights and privileges of monarchies.

3. The Revolution In Science

it was Sir Francis Bacon who in the early 17th Century laid the foundations of modern science by articulating the idea that science is based on a mindset of doubt.

Lessons From These Epochal Shifts

Big, deep, epochal changes can be driven by mindset. (Scenes, Collaborations, Inventions, And Progress)

Change is initially resisted.

Deep changes can take a long time.

It is also instructive to look at recent efforts at deep change that was less successful: Business Process Reengineering (BPR) movement of the 1990s.

It was the management fashion of the day. However, it soon became apparent that most companies were not using BPR as its founders had intended. Instead they were implementing BPR within the prevailing mindset of efficiency and using BPR as a pretext to reduce head count.

A key aspect of BPR is that it offered no explicit change in mindset. It merely suggested a different set of processes. It was therefore easily subsumed and subverted by the prevailing cost-cutting mindset.

Will Agile be different from BPR?

Agile organizations, as Professor Julian Birkinshaw suggested in 2016, are leaving behind both “the industrial age” with its emphasis on efficiency, based on finding the right answer through planning and rational analysis. A new kind of management is emerging, in which “adhocracies” emphasize searching out opportunities, finding solutions through rapid experimentation, and achieving agility through decisiveness.

By drawing on the full talents of those doing the work, firms generate continuous new value for customers, thus creating a virtuous circle of value creation, always driven by the Agile mindset.