Agile U / Slow Agile. Adding Consciousness to Systems Change
Be courageous, be bold! Otto Scharmer
This is the first of a series of articles covering the birth and evolution of the u.lab 2X project, Agile U /Slow Agile.
The Seed of the Future
Everything began with a bold vision, an invitation, and a rejection. A dear friend of mine invited me to a Master Class in Scrum Management, which I attended for two reasons. The first being that in 2015 she invited me to take part in a brand new systems change course coming from MIT — u.lab: Leading From the Emerging Future, which I attended, and since then, my life has turned around, but that is another story. The second reason was that I was curious about the meaning of the yellow arrow pointing to the sky at the end of the Theory U process, with the inscription “PERFORMING by OPERATING from the WHOLE” on it, and I had been wondering if Agile as a project management framework would fit there, and if it did, how it would do it.
I attended the Master Class in September 2020 and loved the content of the course, so, I decided to register. To my surprise, I was turned down with this explanation, “we are booked full with companies, and we are not accepting individuals this time, please come back in late November”. I was disappointed, but given my interest, I decided to take the raincheck for November. I was rejected again, and this time I had a conversation with the owner of the academy, without any result whatsoever. Then what? When I am confronted with disruption I have learned to act the way Aldous Huxley recommended, “it is not what happens to you what is important, it is what you do with what happens to you”. Someone else would have taken his business elsewhere, but not me. I have the mentality and drive of a 30-year-old man, but I am 70 years old, and the opportunity window that I had reserved for the Agile formation was now closed, so, I discarded it and decided to look for Agile partners thinking that if I had the “U”, all I needed was someone with the “A”.
The first week of December 2020 I had a conversation regarding other matters with my friend from Firenze Riccardo di Biase, founder of Tara Web, he is a Theory U practitioner too. The two of us had been trying to start a project together, but so far we had not found anything viable. I asked him if he had any experience with the Agile framework, and he said, “yes, why?”. He listened attentively to my vision and agreed with me that it was not only feasible but also necessary. I had found the A!
The “u.lab2X. From Prototype to Ecosystem Impact” is an accelerator for systems transformation that the Presencing Institute opens in the first semester of each year for 400 teams from all over the world. The expiration date for applying to the u.lab2X was in two days, and we decided to jump in to develop our Agile U / Slow Agile integration project.
How Theory U and Agile Complement Each Other
We based our application arguing that any startup is Agile per definition, and so are tech companies, it is their nature because their ADN is Agile. On the contrary, existing corporations have to change the organizational culture to carry out a company-wide change initiative. Changing the culture has been one of the historic challenges in any transformation project carried out in organizations, even when they are done under Agile methodologies. According to the Allied Alliance, “company philosophy or culture at odds with core agile values was the leading cause of failed agile projects. In fact, it was interesting to note that two of the top five reasons that caused agile failures revolve around the organization’s culture — company philosophy or culture at odds with core values and a lack of support for cultural transition (#5). That statement reminded me of what Peter Drucker said, “Culture eats Strategy for breakfast any time”.
The lack of awareness and silo mentality of the organization’s leadership and management isolate the agile teams and derail any company-wide innovation process for not integrating culture change as part of the transformation effort. Theory U is an Awareness Based Systems Change methodology that addresses that “Blind Spot of Leadership” head-on. Awareness Based Systems Change can be described by the following three sentences, the first of which is from Kurt Lewin:
“You cannot understand a system unless you change it. You cannot change a system unless you transform consciousness. You cannot transform consciousness unless you can make a system see and sense itself.” Otto Scharmer
Therefore, integrating Agile tools and practices into the Theory U process, and the latter providing Agile with a solid and proven awareness-based organizational transformation methodology, was a natural process of letting the emerging future come. On December 15th, 2020, the Presencing Institute notified us of our acceptance to the program, now we had to look for the rest of the members of our Core Team. In one week we had turned one idea into action, it was a small step, but as time went by, we began to realize the significance of it.
If you are curious about how to bring consciousness into organizational change, please contact me at helio.borges.consulting@gmail.com to have a generative conversation.
Read the second part of this article here: Slow Agile. Aim High, Achieve More
(1) The image containing the Theory U process arrow and the Agile / Scrum logo is only for illustration purposes. It is not intended to be used for commercial or promotional purposes.
