An agile company is a happy company
- Richard
- Jan 31, 2020
- 4 min read
Not only all the people in the world, but also all the companies in the world are trying their best to be unique, to stand out. Tons of marketeers are sharing their visions and making their marks in the world, trying to make their brand stand out. Yet, how is it only companies that suggest 32 hour work weeks, or companies where the CEO makes the same as the cleaner are the only ones that actually make the news as unique and refreshing?
Personally, I think it's because 99% of the worlds companies are not unique. They are just companies with the same layout. You have some directors, who earn a lot of money. A little bit of management, who earn a good amount of money. Finally, there's the workers who earn the least amount of money. Oh, and the companies all run at least 40 hours a week. This is why companies who are brave enough to change these aspects stand out. They stand out in employee happiness.
It is a proven concept though, when we started building companies ages ago, this is how we did it. It worked. We can see something similar in nature, when we look at gorillas for example, there's a silverback (a boss) who keeps the others (workers) in check. The silverback decides where you're going and the silverback gets to eat first. No wonder this is the way we chose to organise our companies, it's in nature, our nature. I guess we haven't evolved as far as we thought.
So why do some companies want to change the status quo? My guess is because they have a vision. A vision of how everybody in their company could be happier. Because let's be honest, usually these differences are in favour of the workers, not the bosses. And it makes sense, a happy worker is a good worker. And workers are actively trying to achieve this, or at least to be treated fairly. That's why we've got unions and all that. Because companies care about their products and profits, but not always about their people.
A happy worker is a good worker
So what does this all have to do with agile? In previous blogs I've talked about how agile is about making everybody in the team happy. Both the workers and the customers. So that is how it ties in. And I have an idea on how to run your organisation in an agile way where you can achieve this happiness within your company. Allow me to share my vision with you.
Let me remind you of what I said in my blog about management, managers should be there for the workers, not the other way around. This is a key statement for everything that is about to follow. For the workers are people who are willing to spend most of their time with you and your company, helping you grow your business.
Directors. You are the highest rank in this hierarchical tree we call a company. You think you have the most responsibility, but do you really? You've hired some people you now call managers to take away some of your workload, so you can focus on the mission, vision and strategy of your company. This is something you have to do, I agree. You just have to stop having one director look at the financial future (CFO), one director looking at the product future (CTO) and one director looking at the future of your company (CEO). You should form a scrum team of your own, where you share responsibility and set shared goals. You define a sprint goal, you plan your sprints keeping the bigger picture in mind, you review your sprints and you retrospective how you did. Most of these things you will probably already do. Now let's add a factor. These managers you've hired, they are your products as well. Every individual manager is a product, which needs a product vision, a sprint goal and needs work. You can't expect your company to grow if you're not growing your people. So work on that.
You can't expect your company to grow if you're not growing your people
Managers. The people caught in the middle. Trying to achieve the goals of their directors, while also keeping their own ambitions in mind and juggling the emotions and hardships of your workers to try and keep everything in balance. But do you have different responsibilities from the directors? I don't think so. You still have individuals under you, that you need to see as products and work on. The directors hired you to help shape and grow the company, just like they do. So you're going to have to do the same thing as the directors, form a scrum team and look at your people as products and make them grow. The only catch is that I would suggest scratching departments. Remember my last blog? Everybody's going to be working in flexible scrum teams anyway. So you are not responsible for a set group of people, and your co-manager is not responsible for another group of people. All the managers are responsible for all the people. This means someone doesn't have one manager anymore, but that someone has them all as manager. Whoever is there, whoever is part of the scrum team at that time.
Workers. I can't say this enough, but scratch departments! You're working in scrum teams now, and every project needs a different team. Not much more to say on this without repeating myself even more.
Now I know what you're going to say, a shared responsibility is nobody's responsibility. But if you believe this, you don't believe in scrum teams. Because that is where they share responsibility. And scrum is supposed to give you a safe space where you can freely admit to mistakes or point out other people's mistakes. And because everybody in your scrum team knows what you're doing, you're less likely to be seduced to not taking responsibility. All eyes are on you, and they will tell you when you mess up. It's more about social control instead of some reports each quarter with numbers of how well you did.
So, directors should focus more on their people. Managers should be flexible and switch seats, and workers need to stop thinking in the limiting boxes we call departments. I know there's more questions about this, like how will you handle budgets. But just let this idea, this vision, sink in for a moment and I'm sure you'll find the answer to these kinds of questions yourself.
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