When working with some of our larger customers we frequently run into common barriers to change. Change is difficult and, no matter how often we say it, there is no silver bullet for how to get there. However, we can say there are commonalities in approaches, things we’d look for and actions we’d take in response to those findings. When we look at the delivery of technology within organizations we often come across the barriers within how the teams are organised but even more frequently, how the organization is working with technology is the bigger barrier. Developing powerful roadmaps is valuable and greatly helps with generating alignment and a common vision.

In my last post I spoke to blame culture. In this post I’m going to talk through the second of three common organizational problems we encounter, not looking at the entire system, and how attaining visibility will help you overcome barriers to better achieve your business outcomes.

When Chris Chapman, a friend and colleague, referred to an article on LinkedIn to explain his growing disinterest in Open Space conferences, I started writing a quick reply. The quick reply soon outgrew the limitations for a LinkedIn response and therefore ended up as this blog post.

First of all: I love Open Spaces, absolutely love them. Second, it’s a shame there’s not more real ones…

Our ultimate objective is to help our customers be successful. We have strong opinions on what successful companies look like and what is important for an organizational culture to support sustainable success, but that is a topic for another time. For the technology organizations or departments we work with, our objective loosely translates to

Many organizations put their faith in Agile and DevOps practices to achieve this, but fail to get the results they are hoping for.

When working with some of our larger customers we frequently run into common barriers to change. Change is difficult and, no matter how often we say it, there is no silver bullet for how to get there. However, we can say there are commonalities in approaches, things we’d look for and actions we’d take in response to those findings. When we look at the delivery of IT capabilities within organizations, we often come across the barriers caused by how the teams are organized and, even more frequently, how the organization is working with technology. Developing powerful roadmaps is valuable and greatly helps with generating alignment and a common vision.

In this post I am going to talk through the first of three common organizational problems we encounter and ways to overcome them to better achieve your desired business outcomes. The first of these is called blame culture…

Last year I was invited to help the Queen’s Hyperloop Design Team improve their chances in the SpaceX competition. They had just been informed that they did not make it into the last round of the competition, so we focused on setting up the team for success going forward.

The past couple of weeks my children had to prepare and present short speeches at school. I encouraged them to practice and provided them some, what I considered to be, constructive feedback. However well meaning and positively framed, it didn’t go over too well. Watching my children learn to cope with constructive criticism reminded me about how we struggle so much with this in other settings.

It also got me thinking about one of the tools I’ve used quite effectively in both individual and team coaching. Sometimes known as the Disney Method but called by the course I learned it at, Tri-Position planning, the tool presents a useful way to help develop a vision and a plan to get there.