Physical Therapy for Orgs

Many people view organizational transformation as a long and labor-intensive process. This is understandable given most professionals have experienced countless disjointed re-orgs, new process trainings, cultural workshops, and tooling changes. Not only does “change” seem hard, in many cases it seems pointless because overall organizational performance stays constant.

Fortunately, it doesn’t have to be that way. In fact, most organizations are closer to operational excellence than they suspect. Typically, organizations already have people who are focused on doing the “right thing” and teams attempting to optimize their performance. The key to unlocking potential in an organization is to build on these characteristics with targeted and aligned changes.  It is critical, however, that organizational changes follow some simple rules.

• Changes are made with a holistic view of the organization and its environment.

• Changes lead to constructive tension between organizational units.

• Impacted teams understand the goals of the changes.

• Changes are self-reinforcing.

A useful analogy for achieving organizational excellence is the human body. The body is a complex entity with many moving parts, support structures, internal interfaces, and external interfaces. When all parts of the body are working in balance, it functions well and is capable of amazing things! However, when parts of the body are out of balance, things start to degrade quickly. For example, when muscles on either side of a joint are in balance, the joint operates efficiently and without pain. However, when the muscles on different sides of a joint become unbalanced, this will lead to joint pain. The imbalance also leads to other muscles trying to compensate for the weak muscles, which in turn can create further imbalances. This cascading situation leads to more pain in different parts of the body.

Just like a body, an organization is a complex entity with many moving parts, support structures, internal interfaces, and external interfaces. And, just like the body, each part of an organization has a purpose, balance is key, and healthy activities lead to self-reinforcing and virtuous cycles.

Too often, changes are made by one part of an organization to account for weakness in another part of the organization. For example, it’s extremely common for engineering teams to adopt processes and practices that result from poor upstream requirements. QA teams often try to adapt to poor inputs from engineering teams. Continuing our analogy, no matter how hard the liver tries to reduce inflammation caused by a joint, it will never be able to fix the joint. In fact, relieving inflammation in the joint would hide the signal (pain) a person relies on to identify and fix the issues affecting the joint.

The reason for this is quite simple, responsible managers, acting in good faith, recognize the symptoms of a problem and try to alleviate them. Many times, however, the changes made are limited to the scope of their responsibility because that is the easiest place to make a change. This pattern of behavior applies from first line managers all the way to executives. The pain, however, is often a result of a problem outside their purview, and masking the issue with changes in their purview leads to deteriorating performance, often with no clear “pain” signal.

The answer to the problem is both simple to state and complex to orchestrate; targeted and aligned changes that identify root causes and address them from a holistic view of the organization and its environment. Human nature makes this tricky. No manager wants to admit that their team is operating suboptimally or their organization is the cause of issues. Overcoming this requires radical honesty[1] by managers within a company, agreement among managers on the roles and responsibilities of their teams, and a management culture that rewards radical honesty. Unfortunately, in many organizations “hiding the weenie” and “schedule chicken” are the norm and radical honesty is the exception. As a leader, the first act of radical honesty is to understand an organization lacking radical honesty is an organization that does not reward or encourage it.

Another important characteristic of successfully managing change is dynamic constructive tension. For example, the shoulder is an amazing joint, with rotation in multiple planes. The shoulder joint is stabilized by a bunch of different muscles called the rotator cuff. When these muscles are in balance, the shoulder functions without pain. When these muscles are out of balance, pain occurs. Similarly constructive tension in an organization is required for the organization to function well. We’ve covered constructive tension in more detail, but for this discussion, simply think of it as every team having equal clout. For instance, if a product management organization can dictate the way a development organization operates, balance is off, and there is a lack of constructive tension. When organizations have constructive tension, the normal tension that occurs between teams is beneficial and helps keep each team “honest”. A great example is a sales team providing stimulus to development teams to deliver a product. Rush too much and the product will be riddled with issues. Don’t push hard enough, and the development team will fail to deliver a solution in useful time frames. Balancing the perspective of both teams is key. By the way, the development team keeping the sales team honest is just as important.

Also, be careful about how roles and responsibilities for different teams are defined. Let’s consider an example. Historically, a simple failing in many companies is that QA teams are defined as being responsible for finding bugs. This definition both limits what QA team members look for and removes the burden from development to deliver quality software. A better definition for QA teams is for them to be advocates for the end-user. No one knows and uses the product more than the QA team. Their intimate knowledge of the entire product makes them unparalleled advocates for end users. Redefining the role of QA as customer advocates empowers QA to broaden their scope to performance issues, usability issues, and other aspects that might not be related to specific requirements or even conflicts with them. Along the way, the QA team may find bugs, but the primary responsibility for ensuring quality software belongs to the development team. In the end, a developer finding and fixing their own bug is far less expensive than QA or your end-user finding the bug.

Another critical practice to achieve successfully change is for people and teams to understand the goals of change. Remember, people need to execute the change. For them to execute it correctly, they need to understand what the desired outcomes are so that they can identify unanticipated outcomes and provide feedback.

Finally, successful change will be self-reinforcing. When changes improve the overall health of the team, the team will embrace them. That is how you know you’ve gotten it right!

Tips and Techniques

• Look holistically at issues. Solve problems at the root, not where the symptoms manifest.

• Make sure the dynamics between teams are balanced. Don’t assume the person who yells first or loudest is correct.

• Make sure to carefully define roles and responsibilities for organizations.

• Ensure your teams understand the goals for a change.

• Evaluate the change by looking for self-reinforcing behaviors.

[1] Radical honesty in business involves being completely transparent and truthful in all communication, both within a company and with clients, even when it's difficult. This approach can foster trust, improve decision-making, and create a more resilient and adaptable workplace. – Google Search