The organization in a digital age

Digitalization is challenging companies in many ways - new products, new development and manufacturing processes and new market forms are emerging with a dynamism never seen before. The market for products and services is becoming more global, narrower and, above all, more dynamic.

In this digital world, companies need to redesign themselves. The most creative minds are demanding a more human, authentic leadership that empowers them to fully engage.

Agile & Lean provide principles, organizational forms and mechanisms that bring this approach to life at all levels.

An organization can make itself fit for these new challenges by applying the Agile & Lean patterns. The organization:

• is focused on its customers and this is reflected in its satisfied and loyal customers.
• delivers new products and services regularly and at short intervals, making it more competitive.
• is innovative and responsive. It is able to react quickly to changes and deal better with complex problems - it is "dynamically robust".

What distinguishes such Lean & Agile ("Organization 2.0") companies? "Culture follows structure" says Craig Larman. The organizational and operational structures are designed according to the principles of Agile & Lean. The structures and patterns used here support an organization in its continuous development. The organization evolves:

• away from horizontal silos and knowledge islands, towards networked people and processes that are geared towards appreciation and value creation.
• away from individual, heroic experts or specialists and towards collaborative, interdisciplinary teams.
• Away from the "how", rigid rules, fixed working hours and locations, towards common goals, flexible structures, working models and self-organization.

What does that mean? Agile & Lean comes with a culture that is strongly characterized by collaboration, cultivation and competence and less by top-down control. This means living on a large scale what works on a small scale, i.e. scaling Agile & Lean patterns and taking rules into account. The scaling:

1. is based on the values of Agile & Lean.
2. ensures the coordination of several teams towards a common goal: both with regard to strategic, tactical and operational goals (and thus vertically) and with regard to functional cross-cutting topics such as architecture via a community of practice (and thus horizontally).
3. uses the same elements and principles in the organization, in the unit as well as in the team, to reduce complexity and create similarity.
4. includes post-heroic leadership based on Theory Y and lean management.
5. is based on a solution approach chosen by the organization, which defines clear rules and develops them emergently.

What do I need to consider here? Behaviours (and therefore attitudes and beliefs) spread in an organization like organisms in a petri dish.

Agile & lean scaling is therefore ultimately a transformation. The task of the organization during the transformation is to create the optimal framework conditions for the spread of the new behaviours. This increases the likelihood that the new culture will spread. As with a petri dish, the following applies to Agile & Lean: in the end, one culture or the other wins.

We see such a transformation as an opportunity for maximum (self-)empowerment - at every level.

How do you see it?

David and Sascha