Intrinsic Agility – a competitive advantage, especially during COVID-19

By Craig | 20 April 2020

COVID-19 has created overnight challenges and requires a high degree of inspection and adaption, with urgency, for continued value delivery to customers and to ensure viability and sustainability of organisational business models. People competencies are a crucial contributor to organisational competencies. Some of which have become more crucial than before in the current crisis. I…

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Resilience During a Time of Crisis

By Craig | 14 April 2020
RESILIENCE DURING A TIME OF CRISIS

Resilience: the ability to bounce back in the face of adversity. The world is currently under immense pressure. So much has happened since President Ramaphosa’s first address to the nation. The world seems to have been brought to a standstill by the rapidly spreading COVID-19 virus, which is wreaking havoc in ways that none of…

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Agility During the COVID-19 Crisis

By Craig | 6 April 2020
AGILITY DURING THE COVID-19 CRISIS

COVID-19 is one of the biggest VUCCA moments in recent times. Intrinsic agility* is being demonstrated across all levels in our country to ensure that risks are managed effectively and to tap into the additional benefits of an agility mindset and behaviours. *Intrinsic – something that is inbuilt and comes of naturally in given circumstances…

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The Transition to Working Remotely

By Craig | 30 March 2020
Mac Minds Insights | Mac Consulting

Teams are currently transitioning to working remotely, which comes with a range of new challenges. MAC has developed a ‘getting started quick guide’ on how to successfully work remotely to assist with these challenges. Transitioning to working remotely unearths certain challenges for teams: Different scenarios call for different digital solutions. Different team members prefer different…

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The African Three-Legged Pot Analogy for Successful Agility Outcomes

By Craig | 9 March 2020
When organisations decide to focus on ‘Being Agile’ or ‘Agility’, they hire agile coaches to guide their teams on this journey. Many decision-makers think that just the presence of the agile coach will guarantee agility outcomes from their delivery teams. This is a fallacy and many organisations risk their ‘Being Agile’ journey due to this assumption, which, if not dealt at the onset, can result in a lot of waste and frustration. An Agile coach’s key focus area is to help teams involved in the delivery to understand what ‘Being Agile’ is (mindset, behaviors, principles, practices, metrics, tools, and so on) and to help them tap its maximum potential in the context of their delivery or work to be done. Using the analogy of the African three-legged pot for delivery teams responsible to deliver successful agility outcomes, the three legs of the pot provide the necessary foundation. The Coach’s Commitment is one leg contributing to the foundation. Let us explore the other two legs in view of commitment from the other crucial roles. The Product Owner Commitment The type and priority of the ‘work to be done’ for desired success contributing to organisation vision is the responsibility of the Product Owner role. This role is expected to be a domain expert and must have an effective understanding of the right customers and the right value to be delivered within the desired timelines for maximum success. Sub-optimal contribution from this role may lead to an incorrect understanding of the ‘work to be done’ and, despite the team’s focus on ‘Being agile’, it will not result in the desired agility outcomes. The Leadership Commitment ‘Being Agile’ requires a shift in mindset, behaviours and a different way of understanding and doing work that contributes effectively to the organisational vision. People leadership plays a key role in ensuring the upskilling for agile ways of working is tied to development goals of each individual, which contributes to team development for ‘Being Agile’ and is aligned to enhanced work delivery outcomes. If not done, it will pose the risk of people doing work with an existing mindset, behaviours and ways of working despite the coach’s effort to upskilling the team on ‘Being Agile’. There are many different reasons for this – if not tied to development goals, the sense of urgency and it seriousness is diluted and people feel that it is optional or can be adopted when and if they feel like it, especially if their intrinsic agility is not high. This situation is worsened in delivery pressures where all the upskilling focus for agile ways of working seems to be an overhead rather than an enabler to handle delivery challenges more effectively to achieve enhanced outcomes despite constraints. Rather, people fall into existing ways of work delivery with undesired consequences of overtime, sub-optimal quality of delivery, delivery debt, people frustration, lost opportunities for success despite high effort, and so on. All work to be done, whether in agile or traditional ways requires a guiding purpose to ensure the right contribution to organisational vision. In absence of this vision, an effective team is anchorless and, despite the ‘Being Agile’ skills, they may be limited in producing desired outcomes. Leadership plays a key role in ensuring the right vision for the team. Therefore, for enabling teams to achieve successful ‘Being Agile’ or ‘Agility’ outcomes, it requires a partnership between Leadership, Product Owners and Agile Coaches to provide the right foundation to the delivery teams. Every role’s commitment is equal and crucial. Sub-optimal contribution from any role results in a sub-optimal foundation for the team – a broken three-legged pot that is unable to deliver the desired outcomes. Connect with the MAC-agile team to ensure the right partnership and synergy between the three key roles for successful agility outcomes.

When organisations decide to focus on ‘Being Agile’ or ‘Agility’, they hire agile coaches to guide their teams on this journey. Many decision-makers think that just the presence of the agile coach will guarantee agility outcomes from their delivery teams. This is a fallacy and many organisations risk their ‘Being Agile’ journey due to this…

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Your Relationship with Agile

By Craig | 4 November 2019

The word ‘agile’ has different connotations to it – some are skeptical about it and may think of it as a passing fad, while others feel it is a ‘cool’ buzzword and find that associating with anything that represents agile adds to their ‘coolness’ quotient. Some may see the promise and potential, while some are…

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It’s a Wrap for Plastic

By lebohang | 28 October 2019

How we live on this earth is becoming an ever-present discussion. Over the past 5 years, but more so over the past 18 months, we have seen a change in the climate debate where, for the first time, the social voice is louder and is having a greater impact on sustainability than the science has…

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Cash is No Longer King

By lebohang | 21 October 2019

The digital disruption that is currently taking place in the banking sector is well publicised. There are strides being made to reduce the cost to serve, improve the customer value proposition, optimise channels and drive efficiency and effectiveness in the front, middle and back office of banking organisations. We have also seen the rise in…

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It’s a Black Mark Against Carbon

By lebohang | 14 October 2019

With an increase in greenhouse emissions and a growing socio-political and environmental consciousness, there is a global move to decarbonisation of both power and mobility. There is a significant move to more sustainable and renewable sources of energy production. There are many industries that can and will be disrupted by this trend and the source…

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The True Essence of Agility

By Craig | 7 October 2019
THE TRUE ESSENCE OF AGILITY

‘Agility’ is a noun that characterises something that is nimble, fast and flexible. Unpacking the ‘agility’ characteristics includes focusing on the most optimised approach and therefore considers all potential options and manages the risks of doing something new, so that the essence of ‘agility’ is not impacted. Think of an image of a football team.…

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