The Pilot Team Approach to Transformation
One Team, 6 months
Most transformations fail to achieve what leaders hoped for in the beginning. Many start with a group of outsiders (e.g. consultants, agencies) coming in and trying to transform the whole organization at once. They have solid plans and many success stories. But every organization is different. Some organizations struggle with a lack of clear goals, some struggle with a lot of politics, some struggle with understanding why change is needed in the first place. By the time external consultants leave a "completely transformed organization", it often takes only a few months for the organization to be back where it started. That's because the habits have not changed at their core, and once the consultant is gone, the old habits kick in. Leaders get frustrated and the next transformation begins. We see transformation after transformation, leaving behind demoralized teams.
What you can do instead is apply a more sustainable way of introducing transformation success. Help the organization see and feel the positive change before you ask for more. With a transformation pilot team, you can show how innovation is organized in technology-enabled organizations.
The product leader benefits by developing true product managers who work closely with engineers on innovation instead of having a group of Jira jockeys or Gantt chart pushers.
The engineering leader benefits by transforming engineers from order takers to decision makers. Engineers will be at the table when important decisions are made, giving him/her much greater visibility as their leader.
The whole organization benefits by developing products with real innovation potential instead of another project with failed efforts.
You will need to keep the pilot team for 6 months: from team inception to results so you can decide to scale the approach.
So instead of trying to get buy-in from your leaders for a full transformation, get them to trust you with a different approach for one initiative first, and then decide to scale it. Once you have the proof, it's much easier for the rest of the leadership team to see and feel the benefits of sustainable change.
“A lighthouse in Deutsche Bank’s efforts to become more digital.”
3 Phases of the Transformation Pilot Team
I plan 6 months from team inception to high performance. This depends a lot on the speed of change the organization is able to apply and the contribution of the leaders. For an average organization, this time frame usually works. If you are willing to try to get results faster, I am all for it. A typical timeline looks like this:
Phase 1: Preparation
Week 1: We work on team mindset and team building. Who is who, responsibilities, work process, stakeholder map, setting up work tools (physical whiteboard, jira, zoom, slack channels, etc.). The coach starts each day with 2 hours of mentoring and the team does the rest.
Week 2: Domain knowledge intro: vision, strategy, goal. Prepared with coach and coming from product and engineering leaders.
Week 3: The big picture of the product: mapping the user journey (for data products: data journey). Highlight key assumptions that need to be validated. Coach and product leader spend 1 hour a day with the team to course correct.
First versions of the product: Decide how to slice the product with user story mapping. Coach and product leader spend 1 hour a day with the team to course correct.
Phase 2: Inception
Weeks 1-12 (3 months):
Begin the continuous work of discovery and delivery: prototyping, validating, and delivering the first results. We start with the team's first cycle here, using OKRs as a technique to assess progress. Weekly check-in on Mondays and check-out on Fridays with coach.
Weekly review of key results between team, product and engineering leadership. Weekly sharing of techniques and learnings with the rest of the organization: Coach part of meetings to advise on storytelling, format, keeping it results-oriented, precise, disciplined.
3-month review: coach, product and engineering leaders to report, course correct and decide on next phase
Phase 3: Mastery
Weeks 13-24 (3 months):
Master the continuous work of discovery and delivery: prototyping, validating, and delivering continuous results. Based on the experience and insights from the first three months, this cycle is focused on getting to a level of mastery with the team. Weekly check-in on Mondays and check-out on Fridays with the coach.
Weekly evaluation of key results between team, product and engineering leadership. Weekly sharing of techniques and insights with the rest of the organization: Coach part of sessions to advise on storytelling, format, keep it results-oriented, precise, disciplined.
6-month review: Coach, product and technical leaders to decide with the CEO how to scale the approach. At the decision meeting we will present a plan on how to scale this across the organization. If required, I can support you through the transformation to a point where this is lived.
“Alex helps teams focus on what they are best at: delivering valuable products to their customers.”
Getting Started
If you think this is for you, contact me at mail@alexanderschardt.de. We'll have a session where I can talk you through the details and see if this is the right approach for your situation.
