Agile Thinking for Continuous Improvement

Agile that begets agile© Patrick Steyaert, 2019 1
Agile that begets agile
january 2019
patrick.steyaert@okaloa.com
Autonomy, Self-organization and Agile leadership

Excerpt from “The Goal: A Process of Ongoing
Improvement”
by Eliyahu M. Goldratt and Jeff Cox
The goal
I don't have
time for riddles.
I need answers.
If I simply told you what to do,
ultimately you would fail. You have
to gain the understanding for
yourself ...
Alex
Jonah

Liquidity
The ability to pursue
emergent opportunities, or
address emergent threats,
quickly without a drastic
shift in the cost for doing so.

Capability
Individual, team or organizational
ability, that is truly distinctive, self-
enabled, and
can produce a stable outcome in
varied and evolving circumstances.
Team
Individual

Autonomy
John Boyd definition:
Survive, on one’s own term, or improve our capacity for
independent action
The ability to make your
own decisions without
being controlled by
anyone else.

Lean and agile methods
Practices that produce outcomes
Outcome
Principles
& practices
produces
Context
Culture
Mindset
E.g. WIP limits E.g. Short lead times
Formations
& drill forms

Shifting the burden*
Implementing
practices
Liquidity
Capability
Autonomy
Faster pace of
change
SYMPTOMATIC
“SOLUTION”
PROBLEM
SYMPTOM
FUNDAMENTAL
“SOLUTION”
DELAY
SIDE
EFFECTS
B
B
-
*Peter Senge, The fifth discipline

Incongruence
© Patrick Steyaert, 2018 Agile that Begets Agile 8
What I
think and
say I do
What I
actually
do

Double bind*
Damned if you do, damned if you don’t
Open loop
thinking
Open space
thinking
Thou shalt be agile
*Gregory Bateson, Steps to an Ecology of Mind

Policy resistance*
• The tendency for interventions to be delayed,
diluted, or defeated by the response of the
system to the intervention itself
*
John Sterman, Business Dynamics

Event oriented thinking
Thinking in straight lines
VUCA
threat
Why?
Why?
Why?
Lack of
innovation
Long delivery
cycles
No agile practices

AGILITY !
LONG LIVE
IS DEAD,
AGILE

To improve performance
Change the system
System
Performance

Event oriented thinking
Abused
agile
It is the agileindustry
It is the largeconsultancyfirms
It is themanagementof largeorganizations
It is the
culture
Why?
Why?
Why?
Why?
It is theengagementmodel
Why?

A revolution
That is not a revolution
If a factory is torn down but the rationality which
produced it is left standing, then that rationality will
simply produce another factory. If a revolution destroys a
government, but the systematic patterns of thought
that produced that government are left intact, then those
patterns will repeat themselves. . . . There’s so much
talk about the system. And so little
understanding.
—Robert Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
“ “

To change the system
Change the thinking
System
Performance
Thinking

Systems Thinking
Thinking about loop structures
“A system is the
product of its
interactions.”
Russel Ackoff
EVENT ORIENTED THINKING
Thinks in straight lines
A
B
C D
SYSTEMS THINKING
Thinks in loop structure
A B
CD
D
E

Generalized Theory of constraints
Thinking about Constraints that enable as well as restrict
produces
Constraint
B
produces
BA
produces
CD
Closure
A
restrict or enable

Social intuition*
Thinking about thinking
A’s
intuition
A’s
judgement
A’s
reasoning
B’s
intuition
B’s
judgement
B’s
reasoning
*Jonathan Haidt, The Righteous Mind
Past
experience
Unfolding
events
Rational reasoning (rider)
Concious verbal logic
Intuition(elephant)
Unconcious leaps

Off the beaten track
A paradigm shift
The Fosbury flop is now the standard method used by all high jumpers,
this method was once considered the greatest piece of innovation in
high jumping.
Dick Fosbury

Thinking is intuitive, not just rational
past
experience
intuition judgement reasoningUnfolding
events
Strong
Weak
Rational reasoning (rider)
Concious verbal logic
Intuition(elephant)
Unconcious leaps

It is the demand
manager
Root cause analysis
Experiencing event-oriented thinking
It is the
customer
It ismanagement
It is the
other
teams
It is theother teammembers

Understanding how work works
systems thinking
Feedback
delay
R
C
Division
of labor
B
Finishing
work
Work-In-
Progress (WIP)
Starting
work
O
Induced
work
Blocked
work
Idle time
R
Expedited
work
Wait time
(length & variability)
R
Capacity
utilization
C
O

The power of constraints
WIP limits as an enabling constraint, not just a practice
Patterns of interaction
(collaboration)
Work produces
WIP limit

Emerging capabilities
Through constraints that enable
Rover
B
B
A
A

Agility emerges
Flow
Collaboration Learning

Scaling
With enterprise flow
Image courtesy of

Mainstream thinking
DEMAND in most
case exceeds
capacity by far. It is
easier to come up
with an idea than to
realize it.
To protect SUPPLY,
we need to select
demand. This
requires that we
compare, select,
prioritize demand.
1
2

Systemsunderstanding
Capacity
Demand
Excess capacity
(starvation)
Lack of capacity
(overburdening)

Order points
Ready to
commit
Upstream Downstream
>= 12
Order point
(incl. 2 items safety stock)
Ready to
execute
Downstream
delivers 5
items per
week
Upstream lead time
is 2 weeks

Liquidity
Constrained
capacity
Team blue
Team red
Team yellow
Upstream (demand) Downstream (supply)
Ready to
commit
Ready to
execute
Variable
demand
How well can we
deal with urgent
or changing
demand?
How fast can we
adapt to changing
capacity?

Market place
Offer capacity
Team blue
Team red
Team yellow
Upstream (demand) Downstream (supply)
Ready to
commit
Ready to
execute
Buy capacity
Ask: 15 FC
Bid: 17 FC
Bid-Ask
spread

Change
in Theory
Performance
Time
Current
performance
Planned
Evolutionary
Theory

Thinking is social, not just individual
Social intuition model*
A’s
intuition
A’s
judgement
A’s
reasoning
B’s
intuition
B’s
judgement
B’s
reasoning
Past
experience
Unfolding
events

Networks and ecosystems
Rather than hierarchies or pyramids
Thinking is heavily influenced
not only by social network
peers, but also by peers of
peers and peers of peers of
peers
Virality and contagiousness
leverages the network to
create change

Disintermediation
Avoiding the middle man

Mass collaboration
Medium Agent
Stimulus to work or change
Actions and science

From contempt to curiosity
… rather than projecting our own experiences and imposing
our own models on one another.
For people, teams and organizations to reorganize their
own experience and develop their own thinking models…
Paraphrasing Caitlin Walker – From Contempt to curiosity

Agile leadership
A business is agile to the extent
that it autonomously develops
and improves it’s own agile
capabilities.
“

Strategic agility Systems
Constraints
Social intuition
Thinking first,
Practices second

Thank you@PatrickSteyaert @OkaloaFlowlab
More info about Okaloa Flowlab at www.okaloa.com/flowlab
Or join our Business Agility training at www.okaloa.com/business-agility-training

CONTACTDETAILS t +32 473 56 50 98
t +32 477 79 12 98
arlette.vercammen@okaloa.com
patrick.steyaert@okaloa.com
@OkaloaFlowlab
@PatrickSteyaert

Agile Thinking for Continuous Improvement

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