In Titanic’s Ballroom

Sever­al so called agile trans­for­ma­tions ulti­mate­ly end with peo­ple danc­ing rock ’n’ roll instead of a slow waltz in Titan­ic’s ball­room and some beau­ti­ful­ly dec­o­rat­ed deckchairs. And even if it’s some­times at least the engine room where rock ’n’ roll is danced, it nei­ther changes the course nor it increas­es respon­sive­ness and adaptability.

After all, there is said to be the agile trans­for­ma­tion that is start­ed for good and just rea­sons, that does­n’t suf­fer from the birth defect of a promise of more effi­cien­cy and that actu­al­ly is seen as a way to more adapt­abil­i­ty in an ever faster and more com­plex envi­ron­ment and where agili­ty is not only mis­in­ter­pret­ed as a kind of con­cen­trat­ed feed so that employ­ees row faster because the boss wants to go water ski­ing. In these already rare cas­es, there is legit­i­mate hope at least at the begin­ning. To what extent this hope will be ful­filled or whether it will end up in scat­tered agile enclaves in an encrust­ed struc­ture is a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent question. 

Orga­ni­za­tions are implic­it­ly opti­mized to avoid chang­ing the sta­tus quo mid­dle- and first-lev­el man­ag­er and “spe­cial­ist” posi­tions & pow­er structures.

Craig Lar­man. Haupt­satz Larman’s Law

Organ­i­sa­tions are slug­gish and espe­cial­ly the pow­er struc­tures with­in them show a strong­ly devel­oped instinct for self-preser­va­tion. Cul­ture fol­lows struc­ture and cul­ture eats strat­e­gy for break­fast, as it is often attrib­uted to Peter F. Druck­er. Inso­far the trans­for­ma­tion stands or falls with the readi­ness to scru­ti­nize struc­tures, to break them up and to restruc­ture the orga­ni­za­tion accord­ing­ly, i.e., less func­tion­al­ly divid­ed, more cus­tomer-ori­ent­ed, more aligned with the val­ue stream, and ulti­mate­ly more orga­nized as a net­work rather than a pyra­mid. In oth­er words, as long as the Titan­ic does­n’t become a fleet of speed­boats, it will unfor­tu­nate­ly remain just a lit­tle rock ’n’ roll in the ball­room and beau­ti­ful­ly dec­o­rat­ed deckchairs. The ice­berg isn’t impressed by either.