BEING AN AGILE COMPANY

To be able to succeed in today’s business word of VUCA period, Agile Approach is the key solution for the companies. The Agile approach means that the company has multi-disciplinary teams and the projects are divided into iterative and fast sprints. 

 

When companies such as Facebook, Spotify and Amazon which rejected old-school management approaches, had huge impacts and success in the markets, agile has drawn more attention. Agile is now spreading to all departments from HR to Marketing even to Finance.

 

Agile is a management approach, not a methodology, it requires the ability for fast adaptation. However, if you think only applying the management framework is enough, think again! For a company to become really Agile, first it is necessary to understand and accept that it is all about the company’s culture. It is not rational to expect the company to become Agile by only learning the Agile principles. Briefly, it is crucial to understand the Strategy-Structure-Culture of the company and their relations with each other. Without understanding these three axes, every Agile transformation has a risk to fail. 

 

What about Turkey?

Turkey’s market is also developing in terms of Agile, as many companies try to embrace this trend. We can observe two types of company profile:

 

The first one is the global companies which have already started the Agile transformation. Now, their headquarters want their companies in other countries to turno ut Agile. So, they let their teams have trainings and they even send them to boot camps abroad. They outsource coaches who support the transformation.

 

The second type is the companies which are 100% local who are following global trends and trying to apply them in accordance with the Turkish culture.

 

As an example to the second type is İnci Holding, one of the most reputable family business of Turkey. They already had knowledge about Agile and their goal was clear: to manage their projects in an Agile way. So, we created a roadmap for them. But, first we needed to analyze th relation between their company’s Strategy-Structure-Culture.

 

  • Hence, we started with one-to-one meetings with the management, we examined their strategic goals. We also had focus groups with the employees to undersand the strategy alignment.

 

  • Then, we managed our online Agilibilty Index research to understand the barriers, motivation factors, drivers and enablers in the company.

 

  • Within this research we drew the informal network social relationship matrix (ratio of activist and supporters within the company and the name of influencers or “secret leaders”). With this, we have detected the ‘leader’ people who will leverage the company for Agile transformation.
  • Afterwards, we scaled and prioritized their projects according to our three-faceted metrics.

 

  • Finally, we evaluated all our findings from the perspective of the relations between Strategy-Structure-Culture. We formed our Project teams according to the analyzed competencies and especially to our informal social relationship matrix.

 

The customized trainings are created afterwards for both the employees and the management. an important reality: A company can not suddenly become something else, before understanding its root problems, its drivers and  motivators, without finding its leverage project and without managing it in accordance with its own Strategy-Structure-Culture.

We wish you enjoy while reading our Managing Partner İnanç Cıvaz article “Being an Agile Company” which is pubslihed in Bloomberg Business Turkey.

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