[OSList] Open Agile Adoption experience report

Daniel Mezick dan at newtechusa.net
Mon Aug 4 13:49:48 PDT 2014


As some of you may know, ASCAP (The American Society of Composers 
Authors and Publishers) recently won the coveted CIO100 award from CIO 
MAGAZINE.


You can learn more about that here:

http://www.ascap.com/press/2014/0610-ascap-to-receive-cio-100-award.aspx

ASCAP is an organization that uses Open Agile Adoption with Open Space. 
They are one of the 1^st to stick their necks out, and avoid mandates, 
and try the self-organized approach to figuring out what Agile adoption 
might actually mean to their organization.

When we did the 2^nd Open Space ("OST2") at ASCAP, the event was not as 
well attended, and had a smaller closing circle than the 1^st OAA Open 
Space or "OST1".


At the time, I felt like we failed. However, a couple of interesting 
patterns emerged:

·The people who participated all the way to the closing circle were full 
of passion and responsibility

·Those same people were the people who took the whole Agile adoption 
forward from there !

Imagine my astonishment as ASCAP completed their mission-critical task 
of delivering a new business operating system- the system that pays 
royalties to hundreds of thousands of members. AND they got this done at 
a time when the business was under tremendous pressure to perform. 
Furthermore they got this done using agile ideas inside a 
100-year-old-culture that was highly resistant to change.

What looked like a total failure in the closing Open Space was actually 
the beginning of very significant culture change inside the company.


The next client to use OAA was a progressive, FORTUNE Top-20 employer, a 
software company. You would think they would NOT have a 2^nd Open Space 
that was less attended than the 1^st , but they did. I recognized the 
pattern again---the really passionate and responsible people were there, 
in the closing circle. Furthermore, while the numbers of people were 
down, the level of intensity was way UP---one participant remarking in 
the closing circle said "I don't understand why the whole company isn't 
here right now. We are making tremendous improvements!"

Moral of Story: If you use Open Agile Adoption, expect the 2^nd Open 
Space (about 3 to 4 months later) to have lower attendance. This is a 
normal pattern. The people who are present in the closing circle are 
your new leaders- the people who are going to carry the culture change 
forward.

I welcome your questions as you ponder the futility of mandates (and the 
power of invitation) in your own work with organizations that are 
working hard to improve their culture-- and their results.


-- 

Daniel Mezick, President

New Technology Solutions Inc.

(203) 915 7248 (cell)

Bio <http://newtechusa.net/dan-mezick/>. Blog 
<http://newtechusa.net/blog/>. Twitter <http://twitter.com/#%21/danmezick/>.

Examine my new book:The Culture Game 
<http://newtechusa.net/about/the-culture-game-book/>: Tools for the 
Agile Manager.

Explore Agile Team Training 
<http://newtechusa.net/services/agile-scrum-training/> and Coaching. 
<http://newtechusa.net/services/agile-scrum-coaching/>

Explore the Agile Boston <http://newtechusa.net//user-groups/ma/>Community.

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