Creating A Purpose-Driven Way of Working

Agile, as we practice it today is somewhere in the middle stage, not everyone understands what’s going on. This, according to Gerard Claassen and Jeroen Molenaar, Agile consultants and business owners of Epic Agility. Organizations are only beginning to look outwards and taking into consideration the needs of clients. This middle stage of Agile maintains old principles, but the way teams produce the outcome has changed.

Molenaar says, “You can scale anything you want but if you don’t change your attitude from an inside-out organization to an outside-in organization nothing changes”. A sentiment agreed to by Claassen who likens Scrum teams to pop bands, both playing simultaneously with multiple feedback loops through clients and audience.

This radical way of agility is future-focused where organizations and particularly management, needs to reinvent itself. “People have to let go of all their old habits and way of taking control…In an Agile way it’s done differently. The difficulty lies in letting go”, says Claassen. Companies must become more community-like and move away from task-oriented work. People need a sense of the whole picture and need the autonomy to create their little piece.

Accenture | SolutionsIQ’s Henrik Gruber hosts at the Business Agility Conference in Vienna, Austria.