Is Kaizen enough?

This image started going around on Tweeter a couple of weeks ago and a lot of Agile jokes were fuelled. While I do like jokes and sometimes I am the one that questions the value of the small incremental improvements (versus the effort), I found this to trigger me to write about it.
The Continuous Improvement is very often associated with words like "Incremental Improvement", "Small improvements" or if you want to look like you are paid a lot per hour, you use the Japanese word "Kaizen". Kaizen is about  EVOLUTIONARY improvements, things we do to evolve within a relatively narrow focus. Very often tho', Kaizen can take you up to a point and after that you feel stuck. Examples of that can be using a certain technology and then get stuck on scaling possibilities. Or using a framework/methodology/process  and get stuck when business rules change.
So what do we do when Kaizen is not bringing anymore the improvement we need?
We need a REVOLUTION!
This concept is known as "Radical Improvement" or Kaikaku. Kaikaku is a breakthrough, is a big change and it is done in addition to Kaizen, not to replace Kaizen. This is what we do when we see that small improvements do not take us further, do not allow us to scale, do not let our business grow capabilities. Kaikaku example are changing a framework/methodology/process to another one that brings more advantages to business and clients. Kaikaku is changing completely the technical platform you run your applications so that you can have more functionality in place.
Once a Kaikaku happens, then Kaizen continues with incremental improvements on making this change efficient, valuable and useful so that we reap the most out of this new thing we brought in place.

I find this topic very close to my heart because, as an Agile coach, I am usually brought into an organization after a Kaikaku has happened. The organization has started a Revolution to implement Agile mindset, practices and techniques. After that, as a coach, my only tool in hand is Kaizen: small improvements to make Agile mindset the normal thing. Just like with any Revolution, a lot of things are broken around, a lot of people are divided and feel unsecure.  It takes time to mend all of these, it takes time to get to a place where people have things in hands and feel in control of what they are doing. It takes a lot of Kaizen to get to a better place. A Kaikaku is not usually something to bring, because a revolution can't be followed with another revolution. It will only destroy the organization.
So while Agile does talk more about Kaizen, I like to bring Kaikaku in the picture here and there, just so we do not forget the options we have in hand.  We can always chose what we want, a Kaizen or a Kaikaku. But we always need to be aware of the consequences they bring.

About the Pride

Agile or not, every organization has some elements that are strongly related and dependent to each-other. I have been thinking about this and the more I condense my ideas the more I drew to  this picture.
For an organization to  be a leader in the market they operate, you need all these three to have a healthy relationship, where each of them challenges others for growth. We can no longer bring Change management projects and initiatives with only one in mind, because we will be ignoring the system and context where they operate.

People: This is where growth is aiming to hire or evolve people's skills/mastery, motivation and autonomy. This is where we look to build strong teams. This is where managers need to evolve and support people to aim for higher standards.
Product: This is where Sales, Marketing and Leaders bring new ideas from customers and market. Growth here challenges the brand, the opportunities to have advantage in the market, the goal to make clients and keep them. This is where business strategy makes an organization work smart, rather than hard
Technology: The backbone of the products that our people create. Growth here challenges the usage of modern tools, modern deployment environments, modern technologies withing the office and for our customers. This is where you can benefit to get changes in the hands of customers with low cost and high speed.

Yes, you can say that People are the core of the Product and Technology. But if Product or Technology do not change and push to better and modern thinking/tools, People will not grow their skills and you are stuck with people that are looking forward to retirement. The others, will probably leave your organization and go somewhere else where they can have better opportunities.
Product can't go far without Technology and motivated People. When People are motivated, they bring ideas and make them happen. When Technology is strong and flexible, Product can afford to make small and frequent deployments for a low cost.
And technology will evolve to the point where manual solutions and patches/work around(s) are not acceptable by Product anymore and when People had enough of working outside of working hours to minimize customer interruptions.

So what is that thing in the middle that is connecting these three elements of an organization?
I have come to the conclusion that it is PRIDE.

Ask everyone on the organization, from the most senior to the most junior: 
Are you proud of what we do? Would you put your name on our Product?
I have the feeling that the number of people that answer YES is lower than we would like it to be.
So I have decided to change my focus when working with individuals, teams or organizations. My goal would be to get a high number of people that answer Yes, that are proud of what they do. My goal would be for a Product to be proud to be advertised to any client in the market. My goal would be for the Technology to be proud of the potential it offers to people and to products.

When these three areas are continuously creating a healthy challenge, when everyone takes pride on what they do, you have an organization that learns from past and improves the future. A Learning organization.

Shareholder gain prevents organizations improvements

If you have read things I write, you might have a sense of what I value on Leadership and People development. As a change agent, I work on creating environments where people are empowered, supported and collaborate for a long term benefit of the organization. There are two schools out there that look on how to measure the success of an organization.

• One school, the one of Jensen and Meckling, says that the goal of an organization is to maximize the return to shareholders.
• The other school, the one from Peter Drucker, says that the goal of an organization is to create a customer.

You can read here more about both of these, and also why Jack Welch called the first school " The dumbest idea in the World"
It is one of the walls that change agents hit very often in big organizations. Change is demanded in team levels and portfolio level, but going above that is a big challenge. Most of the challenge comes from the fact that people on those layers are measured by how they maximize shareholder value. They are not capable to break walls and make tough decisions that would support the teams. Decisions sometimes are seemingly easy and sometimes what we call "political". But still, leaders on these high levels do not make the decisions that would benefit the organizations in long terms and would make their people happier. The article above explains a lot the walls CEOs and other C level leaders have. It also gives some ideas on what to do.
Today I accidentally ran into this video. Yes, it is Hillary Clinton speaking but please, for the length of this video, forget that she is in the middle of an election. Listen to her from the Lawyer and Economist point of view.

https://www.facebook.com/businessinsider/videos/10153521312779071/

The recap of this video: they did a survey with the big American corporations and asked the leaders: If you could make an investment today that could be anything, R&D, machines, training for people... and you know that in 5-10 years from now you will get good revenue, BUT it will lower your stock by 1 penny, would you still do this investment? The answer is unanimously: NO This is because they do not want to deal with the pressure that shareholders and market will put on them for that. The way the current capitalist system operates does not leave room for these leaders to make the right choice on investments.

It is not a supportive message for anyone that is trying to bring a change on their organizations. It just tells to people like me that no matter how much you try, no matter how much you can use Drucker's theory on team level, you can go no further. Because after that, the Jensen&Meckling theory rains strong and decisions will be made to maximize shareholder value, not to protect and reinforce the organization values. Organization values will always be put on the second place if we can increase the stock by 1 penny.

And yet ...

Drucker is one of the people where I go when my brain is hungry. So is Russell Ackoff. Another great mind that has inspired me a lot is Edwards Deming. Louise wrote a blog about him and how he brought Lean to Toyota. More than that, I do value his ideas on leadership and management. One of his quotes is mentioned very often on Agile circles.
The fact is that the system that people work in and the interaction with people may account for 90 or 95 percent of performance
It is easy to try to solve a problem by pointing to someone. It is easy to complain about a manager that behaves in a way that we don't expect managers to behave. We believe that only by removing that person from the picture, things will get better. And yet, we forget about the system, we forget what Deming says.
For everyone that feels frustrated by the behavior of their manager, their CEO, their CIO or any CxO, stop for a second and remember this video above. What we are asking from these people is to make something heroic, to take a big stance and face a whole market, a whole room full of shareholders and be strong enough to accept that it might even lose that CxO role in order to protect the organization's values.
Are we doing things like this on our roles? Are we able and capable to consider losing our job for a cause? Are we being the leaders we want our leaders to be?
From what I have seen, not a lot of people are up for that. Scale that and math will tell us that not many CxOs are ready to do that either.  Until we measure the success of our leaders by the shareholder value, they will make decisions to increase that number. Only if we change that metric, our leaders will be able to make better decisions continuously. Those leaders that believe in Drucker's school and make tough decisions on a system where they are measured by shareholder maximization, are the leaders that I believe in and the reason I will continue to talk about change and about better ways to make decisions on high levels of organizations. Let's all try to be the leaders we want our leaders to be. Let's be client focused, invest on people and system improvements, let our values lead our decision making... and shareholder value will eventually increase.. as Jack Welch said.