In prime shape for the future

The last 24 months have been chal­leng­ing for glob­al busi­ness­es due to the pan­dem­ic, the threat of cli­mate change, sup­ply chain bot­tle­necks, and now the upheaval in Ukraine. Amidst this uncer­tain­ty, there is clear recog­ni­tion that the world has moved towards a new era of dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy and soft­ware.

Anne Stein­er, CEO at con­sult­ing firm Cprime, explains, “those com­pa­nies that tru­ly embrace and mas­ter large-scale tech­no­log­i­cal and soft­ware deliv­ery will define the eco­nom­ic land­scape of the 21st cen­tu­ry.”

For instance, “BMW no longer con­sid­ers itself a car man­u­fac­tur­ing com­pa­ny but as soft­ware on wheels,” Stein­er says. “Soon, over 50% of BMW’s employ­ees will be soft­ware engi­neers. Tal­ent acqui­si­tion and reten­tion will be crit­i­cal if we’re going to sur­vive this new age.” Sim­i­lar­ly, in 2021, VW announced plans to boost its share of in-house car soft­ware devel­op­ment from 10% to 60% by 2025.

Lean-agile thinking

Busi­ness­es must devel­op organ­i­sa­tion­al agili­ty to com­pete. Data cen­tric­i­ty will allow them to piv­ot and make deci­sions faster and short­en the time to mar­ket, which will lead to greater prof­it. Agili­ty needs to be embed­ded into the cul­ture of an organ­i­sa­tion. The way employ­ees work, organ­ise, and behave all need to change.

If organ­i­sa­tions fail to change, they will lose mar­ket share and poten­tial­ly dis­ap­pear entire­ly. Cprime helps steer com­pa­nies towards this new future. “Change is com­ing more rapid­ly and it’s attack­ing big­ger busi­ness­es because, by the nature of their size, it’s hard­er for them to change,” Stein­er says.

Dar­ren Wilmshurst, direc­tor, Agili­ty Cen­ter of Excel­lence at Cprime, says, “although big busi­ness­es are aware of the need for change, they have large­ly been stuck in the past, rely­ing on tra­di­tion­al man­age­r­i­al tech­niques and frame­works. “Look at Pri­mark as an exam­ple. They were forced to close all 375 stores 12 days after ini­tial Covid lock­downs in March 2020. That’s because Pri­mark does not sell online. It lost £800m in rev­enue.”
But Wilmshurst believes that the pan­dem­ic has act­ed as a “boot camp” for more tra­di­tion­al firms, help­ing them grasp the net­tle and realise that it is now or nev­er to go lean and agile.

It’s all about the product

So, what are the fun­da­men­tals need­ed to take advan­tage of this change? Wilmshurst says it is about putting much more focus on the prod­uct.

“Cus­tomers don’t want to wait months or years to see new prod­ucts. You need to get to mar­ket faster and part of that is mov­ing from a project men­tal­i­ty to a prod­uct men­tal­i­ty,” he says. “You don’t want to do the tra­di­tion­al thing – cre­at­ing tem­po­rary teams around a project and then crash­ing them when it is com­plete. You want to cre­ate long-lived, sta­ble, per­sis­tent, and high per­form­ing teams aligned around a prod­uct, solu­tion, or ser­vice. We call this the val­ue stream, and if you want true agili­ty, you need busi­ness-lev­el com­mit­ment to it. It has nev­er been just a ‘tech­nol­o­gy’ thing, it needs to include finance, HR, mar­ket­ing, legal, and com­mer­cial because true val­ue needs to flow across all these func­tions.”

Gus Bjokeroth, man­ag­ing direc­tor of Cprime Europe, says busi­ness­es need to cre­ate small­er, more agile teams to cope with rapid­ly emerg­ing prob­lems. “It’s hard to move an 18-wheel­er uphill. But if you break your organ­i­sa­tion up into small pieces, with small teams mak­ing small incre­men­tal changes, you can move the dial more effec­tive­ly,” he says. “It’s about run­ning pilots and tests and using these indi­vid­ual pieces and teams to come togeth­er to enable prod­ucts to go to mar­ket more quick­ly.”

Data-centric

More effec­tive use of data is also need­ed, Bjokeroth argues. “Busi­ness­es are mak­ing more deci­sions now than they have ever made before. They have to become more data-cen­tric to help them make the right ones. Emo­tion­al deci­sions were fine when you had time to assess and look and smell which way the wind was blow­ing, but nowa­days you have to piv­ot quick­ly. You need data to show whether a prod­uct is tak­ing longer than you hoped for, or when the capac­i­ty of your staff is get­ting short­er.”

He says tools such as agile soft­ware Jira can help give busi­ness­es this extra vis­i­bil­i­ty. “You can cap­ture whether your teams are set up around val­ue and if you are pri­ori­tis­ing things so that you can piv­ot. It’s all about the abil­i­ty to piv­ot,” he adds.

Leadership drive

To be suc­cess­ful, sup­port for these tools and process­es has to come from the top of the organ­i­sa­tion. Lead­ers need to buy into and dri­ve change. In short, they need to move from a fixed to a growth mind­set. “Some tra­di­tion­al lead­ers might say ‘I am a very suc­cess­ful per­son, and I wouldn’t be where I am today if I didn’t know a lot of stuff,’ Wilmshurst states. “But some of what they know, which was right even two years ago, is now the wrong stuff.” Those lead­ers need to under­stand we are in a new age and that they need to accept that they may be dig­i­tal­ly naive, while 25% of their employ­ees are dig­i­tal­ly native and know more about tech­nol­o­gy than their employ­ers. Lead­er­ship in 2022 requires a cul­tur­al shift, where lead­ers must do as much, or more, learn­ing than any­body else. They need to lead the changes to sys­tems and ways of work­ing. Only by mak­ing those struc­tur­al changes will they change the habits and behav­iours in a way that means their peo­ple will feel more inclined to stay with the organ­i­sa­tion – a pos­i­tive cul­tur­al shift.”

Lead­ers also need to tack­le the ‘frozen mid­dle’ of their com­pa­ny. For exam­ple, a project man­ag­er with 25 years of expe­ri­ence who can’t see any val­ue in the new way of agile work­ing and believes the move from projects to prod­uct puts their future and their abil­i­ty to pay their mort­gage at risk.

“There is the fear fac­tor because they sit in the mid­dle of an organ­i­sa­tion, so when an attempt is made to change some­thing, they can often try and block it. They will do every­thing in their pow­er to say no,” Wilmshurst says. “It frus­trates the teams that want to change and the lead­ers who can’t see the change hap­pen­ing. But, as a leader, you can’t ignore them because they still have valu­able skills and job options. They need to come with you on the jour­ney. A huge amount of what Cprime does is work with lead­ers, employ­ees, and HR to shape the new ways of work­ing and coach the teams to embed the change and future­proof people’s jobs.”

Stein­er says every employ­ee in a busi­ness needs to ask them­selves whether they are ready for agile change. “Think about your organ­i­sa­tion for a minute. How fast can your organ­i­sa­tion turn? Are you a jet ski that can turn on a dime? Or are you one of those huge barges?” she says. “The pace of change is accel­er­at­ing, and you need to get on board in the lean­est, fastest vehi­cle you can find.”

For more infor­ma­tion, vis­it cprime.com/agile

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