Patterns for Agile Change: Blog 4, Murmuration

Opening Story: 

A Murmuration of starlings is an amazing sight, hundreds of birds flying together to create mesmerising patterns called murmurations. It’s thought that it could be a form of protection from predators or a way of signposting a roost.

When you see hundreds of individual birds working rapidly as a single entity, changing direction quickly to achieve their goal, you start to wonder what it would be like if hundreds of humans could work together as a single entity rapidly changing direction as required to achieve their goal.

Summary:

To create a shared vision, environment, behaviour and culture within which individuals work rapidly together to achieve a single outcome. 

Context:
The company employs some great people, but for some reason, collectively, the overall performance isn't what it could be. There are some areas of the business that act in a silo, and there are schisms or politics at board level that are reflected in how the different departments collaborate.
There's a lot of 'covering your back', and emails with lots of cc's, as well as a lack of information sharing both horizontally and vertically across the company. 
'Knowledge hoarders' exist - people that for a variety of reasons do not share their knowledge, additionally whenever there's a problem within the company, there's a witch-hunt to find out who is responsible. 
Collectively we're not sure how we got to this point because the company employs some great people, but we need to change it. 

  

Problem:

There is a clear need from a company performance point of view to shift away from the current culture, to one of good communication, collaboration and purpose.

Forces:

Executive behaviour influences how those around them behave and sets the example for all employees. This similarly applies to the leadership levels of the business.
Historical behaviour. The collective memory understands how things have been done in the past, the reactions to events and decisions made. Much of the current cultural behaviour has evolved based on the previous behaviour and the current state results from that behaviour.
Organisational structure influences the interactions between people and different departments.
Office locations either strengthen or weaken communication links both informal and formal across the company.
Governance: the varying levels of autonomy, auditing, and bureaucracy influence the behaviour of decision-makers and the execution of their role.

Essence of the Solution:

Establish a target state of culture and behaviour through collectively defining the desired values and behaviour of all staff: Executive, Leadership, Employees. And use visibility, transparency and communication to shift toward the new culture.  

More about the Solution:
Lead by Example
Not everyone is a born leader, however the most simple way to lead is to Lead by example... And that means everyone. From the CEO down, the way we behave and react to both success and failure influences the behaviour of those around us.
Values
Start by collectively defining the values that we all admire, desire, believe and want to live by at work on a daily basis. This is most effective in a workshop/event environment involving all employees sharing their key values. Values defined by an external agency or board and handed down to the company are not collective values, and are unlikely to become a part of the culture.
The time and energy has to be expended to understand what everyone values, these values represent how people want to work and help define the target culture.
Behaviour
From the collectively defined values we can start to identify examples across the company of where people have demonstrated those values in their behaviour. These behaviours can be recognised, championed and over time more formally integrated into the company. See the pattern 'People Tools'. 
Brand
From the values and behaviours defined by everyone, the company's branding can be refreshed to align with those values most treasured by the employees. This provides an external and internal alignment of how we work. Customers can expect observe a cohesiveness between Brand identity and the behaviour of staff within the company.
Communication
Build face to face communication into the very fabric of the company through the use of townhalls, marketplaces, and brown bags - be physically present and accountable. The more people see their leaders demonstrating the values and communicating openly and transparently, the more trust can be built that the new behaviours are acceptable / desired. This open communication must continue through both down-turns and up-turns in events and results. Behaviour that goes against the target environment needs to be addressed quickly.
100 Day Plan
Win early and often! Often the 'Dot on the Wall' is a long-term strategic objective. It is essential therefore to have a path toward that success with early and continuous successes along the way. 100-day plans help to maintain a focus on the long-term goals.      

Resulting Context (positive & negative consequences):

From the point of implementing the above, and everyone being engaged in the process, it usually takes about 12-18 months for the individual, team, department behaviour and ultimately company culture to change to the desired working environment. This pattern must be implemented with 'People Tools'.

Negative consequences generally result from the pattern not being adopted fully, whether that is a lack of integrity from the executives or leadership, or not following through on each of the elements of the pattern.

Known Uses:

Software Development Department of 30 People
Financial Services Software Company c220 FTE
Shifting from silo'd, traditional culture, to an Agile mindset