Questions Answered: Following Up on The Adaptive Organization Webinar Part 2

Last week, on the Strategy & Projects blog, we answered a few of the leftover questions that came in during our webinar on The Adaptive Organization research (watch the free recorded webinar here, if you missed it). Today, I'm going to share my thoughts about two more questions, which specifically targeted training issues for adaptive projects.

Q: Can the speakers provide some additional information on their definition of "training" that made the top-performing companies successful? For example, was this sending resources on formal course/certification training? Or hiring agile coaches to help with on-the-job training?

The answer is yes to both. 

Most organizations (90%) engaged in some sort of adaptive project management training. But those with highly capable leaders and teams trained more than average.

The research also showed a significant difference between the high-performing vs. low performing organizations. The figure to the right shows the differences between High, Low and average performers' rate of offering training in  Fundamentals of Adaptive Mindset and Principles, Overview of Adaptive Methodologies, Adaptive Project Management Skills, and Agile Project Management

The research also found that half the organizations in the survey also addressed the skill shortage by using contracted resources to deliver adaptive projects or training.  In fact, the more capable the organization, the more likely to use this strategy.  By the very nature of Agile, those “contracted resources” were more than likely “coaches” in helping the staff change their mindset and start seeing the value of an Agile approach, although the survey did not collect any more specific information to validate this. We also did not ask about onsite vs. offsite training, or whether they supported employees to acheive certifications in Agile. But thanks for asking ... because this is the kind of question we can add to future iterations of the survey.

Q: Okay, a High-Performing adaptive organization trains their people ... so, is it the culture of the organization that makes them adaptive AND they train?  Or, is it the training that shifts the culture?

That's a great question, and one that we frequently ask ourselves as we analyze the data from these surveys. It's hard to know without drilling down into specific organizations ... which is why we often do some followup qualitative research interviews with survey participants. (This has not happened yet for this study, but stay tuned!)

Here's what we do know: Our research shows that two of the four challenges faced by more than half of all organizations, regarding the implementation of projects that use adaptive approaches, are:

1.  Organizational culture at odds with adaptive approaches (56%), and
2. Organizational resistance to change (51%)

When we look at how these particular challenges are reported by high performers vs. low performers, the difference is striking. While high performers experience the same level of organizational culture mismatch with adaptive, a much higher percentage of low performers reported that this was a challenge. But they also reported much higher levels of difficulty with a wide variety of issues. Take a look:

We can see that, on a variety of cultural markers, High and Low Performers differ dramatically. For the LPs, management isn't supportive, culture isn't collaborative, goals and responsibilities are unclear, and teams are siloed, among other issues.

Looking just at the differences in skills and training, we'd like to conclude that, yes, training shifts the culture. Another finding that supports this is that, when we asked participants how they prepare their team members to employ adaptive or hybrid approaches, most organizations (90%) engage in some sort of adaptive project management training, and (my italics) Fundamentals of adaptive mindset and principles are the courses taught most often.  So this, too, implies that “changing your mindset” was an important first step in creating a high-performing adaptive culture.

But, to be honest, the jury is out on whether training alone is enough to shift organizational culture: read more on this here and here. Cuture is made of of so many variables that, even within our research study population, it's hard to pinpoint what most impacts these low performers. Maybe their company is poorly managed, with low morale. Maybe their access to tools and technology is frustrating/limited. My advice would be to first look at the basics: in this table alone, we find that low performers struggle with unclear requirements, inaccurate estimates, and unclear goals. Fix your foundation before attempting to build that new agile structure!

More adaptive organization questions? Ask me in the comment fields below.