Agile Transformation are collective efforts; an Organizations is like a living organism, and it cannot be transformed under the guidance of a single piece of brain; it requires empathy, inclusion, a powerful guiding coalition, and tons of humility. It is easy to get lost in auto-referential loops of empty glory and meaningless pride. Always act as a Servant Leader, wherever you are. Either as a Manager, as a Consultant, as a Trainer or as a Coach: this is not YOUR Transformation, the best you can do is Help others to transform. Be brave but never fall into the Responsibility Trap!
Thank you very much. As you can probably tell from my pronunciation, I come from Italy—specifically from Rome—and I’m pleased to be here with you to share my story and experience in managing transformation.
It's a story full of learnings, mistakes, and lessons learned. Before we dive in, let me introduce myself briefly. This is me with my favorite friend—the coolest—and a couple of other hobbies that are extremely important in my life: electronic music and physics. In many ways, agility is the right compromise between all these interests.
Organizations: Complex, Living Organisms
Organizations come in all sizes, but in my experience, they have always been large—more than ten thousand employees. Whether lucky or not, I have come to realize that large organizations behave like living organisms. You cannot fully plan them, much like complex natural systems. And when you cannot plan, you also cannot fully monitor or control. In the end, the best theory to help us navigate this complexity is chaos theory.
Given this complexity, why do managers still believe they can manage transformation in a top-down manner? How can we actually change such a system? What forces are at play?
Forces of Change in a Complex System
Looking at complex systems, like a crowd in a stadium, we can see two distinct forces:
- Intentional Force: Decisions made at the management level and applied in a top-down manner.
- Emergent Force: Decisions made by individuals at the component level, allowing the system to evolve naturally.
From experience, we know that both forces are needed. A successful transformation requires both intentional decisions and the emergence of change from within the system. However, the big question remains: how do we synchronize these two forces?
The Challenge of Synchronization
From my experience, the answer is simple—you can’t. I have seen organizations fail repeatedly when trying to let teams make decisions while simultaneously enforcing top-down directives.
Organizations function like a body, where leadership acts as the brain, trying to push decisions downward. But in complex organizations, this approach simply doesn’t work. This is why I found the previous presentation on self-selection so interesting—it highlights the importance of decision-making at the component level.
A Story of Transformation: Melissa’s Journey
Let me share a story that illustrates just how disastrous things can get when transformation is mishandled.
Meet Melissa. She was an ordinary employee at a large telecommunications company with over ten thousand employees. When a new CEO arrived, his top priority was to transform the entire IT development department into full-scale agility. However, management was reluctant, as is often the case in traditional organizations.
The CEO saw something special in Melissa—her enthusiasm and willingness to embrace change. In a surprising move, he promoted her to lead the transformation. Everyone was shocked. There was no connection with the management; she was simply a passionate employee. The CEO’s message was clear: "If you believe, you can be the man on the moon"—a line from the famous R.E.M. song. She was the woman on the moon, and those early days were exciting.
As her consultant, I watched her embrace this role with an open mind, eager to learn and experiment. She quickly realized the magic of agility—faster decision loops, the ability to experiment, and permission to make mistakes. Employees were curious to see how a single person could transform the entire organization.
The Responsibility Trap
But then, everything started to collapse. Melissa fell into what I now call the responsibility trap. Her ego grew, and she began making all the decisions herself. This is an inevitable pitfall of a transformation led by a single person.
I was falling into the same trap myself. I felt like I had the power to change the world, which is an illusion. If you can’t even control your own family, how can you change an entire organization with thousands of employees?
Before long, the transformation became known as "Melissa’s Transformation". It was no longer an organizational shift but an individual crusade. She took on the burden of selecting Scrum Masters, assembling teams, and making critical decisions—exactly the opposite of self-selection.
The Breaking Point
After 18 months, things hit rock bottom. The transformation was failing. Employees felt disempowered, and Melissa was overwhelmed. At this point, the CEO asked me to step in and coach her—to help her understand her mistakes and completely reverse the approach. She needed to delegate as much as possible and allow teams to take ownership of decisions.
Now, you might expect a happy ending, but the truth is, we are still learning. We do not yet know how this story will end, but we have learned one critical lesson: You cannot manage transformation alone. It is not your personal project.
Where We Are Today
Today, Melissa has become a lifelong learner. She reads good books, sleeps well, and no longer suffers from stress-induced heart attacks. She has stepped back from the driving seat and is now focused on empowering teams—including the leadership team. Having a single person in charge of transformation was not only harmful to teams but also to leadership.
We are still halfway through the journey. However, I now see signs of improvement. Teams feel more empowered, take ownership of decisions, and even contribute to setting up new processes in a bottom-up fashion.
Key Learnings
- Organizations are living organisms. You cannot manage them as if they were programmable robots.
- You need a strong guiding coalition. This coalition must be large enough and include representatives from all layers of the organization—employees, middle managers, and senior leadership.
- Inclusion, empathy, and humility are essential. Falling into a "superhero" mindset can be dangerous. True transformation requires humility.
- Always act as a servant leader. Whether you are a Scrum Master, Product Owner, or enterprise-level coach, do not fall into the responsibility trap.
Reflection and Questions
Let me ask you a few questions:
- Who here is working in an enablement team for transformation?
- How many people are in your enablement team? Less than ten?
- Are your decisions easily accepted by the organization?
- For those in leadership teams, are you delegating decisions to the enablement team, or do you make them all yourself?
- For those at the team level, do you receive top-down decisions, or are you empowered to make your own?
Based on my experience, I have led three major transformations in three different telecom companies, and I have always seen similar patterns: enablement teams that lack real power and teams that struggle with independence.
This may be due to cultural differences—coming from Italy, I recognize that hierarchical behaviors are deeply embedded. However, if I had to do it again, I would never compromise on team empowerment, and I would never fall into the illusion that transformation can be managed from the top down.
Final Thought
That is my major learning: transformation is not about control; it is about enabling others.
Thank you very much for your time. Have a great day!