"My Teams Are Working Just Fine." - Are They Really?

Too often, corporations make a decision to give some form of Agile a try. When I was in the corporate world and someone threw out a buzz word (e.g. 360 appraisals), I used to say “What conference did this person attend last week?” There was this pattern of jumping on the latest buzzword bandwagon without understanding the full ramifications of the change; or even if it was appropriate for the company.

On the other hand, I have also witnessed the reluctance to embrace well thought-out, meaningful change. I was working with an organisation to get rid of traditional individual performance appraisals, because their company culture was focused on team growth. A new team was formed for new work, so I reached out to them to give them an introduction to the team approach to annual reviews.

“My team is working fine. Why do we need to do this?”

Their response was the equivalent of “My team is working fine. Why do we need to do this?” The team lead went on to explain that he got push-back from everyone on the team about value based team goal setting and performance appraisals. He explained his (and his team’s) stance - they knew what they needed to do and deliver, so why did they need team goals and appraisals?

In this example, the team lead missed the part of the orientation that said the team goals were about the team’s values and how they wanted to grow as a team - not how many items they were going to complete from their backlog. He was unable to articulate the purpose or the value of this programme to his team. The company had not done a great job of ensuring that everyone was aware of the cultural change and its purpose. And any time I hear something that sounds like “My team is working fine”, my radar goes up.

The team lead went on to explain that they were “doing Scrum” and there wasn’t a problem. However, he couldn’t clearly delineate who was even on the team. For example, there were two individuals who were maybe on the team, maybe part of the time.

Communication is key for successful organizational change

After some discussion, we decided that the best course of action, rather than having a game of telephone, was to have the Agile Coach sit down with the whole team and walk them through a discussion of what they as a team want to accomplish, how they want to work together, etc. We wanted to change the interaction from process and tools, to people and interactions.

In the end, the coach was able to meet with the team, discuss the purpose of the changes that were happening, and make a plan for moving forward with value-based team goal setting. This is an ongoing effort that will take some time to get the team to trust the culture changes, since they weren’t looped into the initial communications. 

I can’t stress enough how critical it is for companies to involve everyone in the communication loop about changes right from the beginning; and wherever possible, include all levels of the organisation in the change process.

So the next time you hear “My teams are working just fine” from anyone, including yourself, stop for a moment and try to articulate what that “just fine” really means. It might just be time for some changes.

Learn more about the work that we do and the programs that we offer. Set up a call to start planning how you want to change the culture of your organization.

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About the Author:

INDRA A. BOOKS

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