Big Bang, Inflation theory and Leading an Agile Transformation

Astronomy is one of those areas that always amazes me. I admit shamelessly that when my husband is watching a show at Discovery channel about Universe and theories related to cosmos, I never complain about changing the channel to watch something else.

One of the interesting theories is the Inflation theory. In a nutshell, Inflation theory tries to explain the rapid expansion of the Universe right after the Big Bang and how all of that slowed down to a more gradual expansion and start cooling down. The amazing part is that Inflation covers only the first seconds after Big Bang, because, as per the theory, the Universe doubled itself 100 times in 10³² of a second. To put it in perspective, it's like having a piece 10²⁰ times smaller than a proton, and inflate it to a sphere about 10 cm across in about 15 x 10³³ seconds. Because everything happens so fast, matter "freezes" and has no time to change, it just moves along.  Amazing right?!!
That's where my simple brain stops understanding, so don't ask me more.
All this reminded me a Big Bang Agile Transformation on a relatively big organization. As my friend Anirban would say, "the point is made, no need to go on with the story anymore". But I want to write a bit more.
The first couple of months after the Big Boss comes up with the "need for Transformation", a lot of things happen very fast.  Some people are let go. People kept behind go through a lot of trainings, meetings, contractors that don't know the current system come and start telling how to do things instead of the "old way". All this is so fast that "the matter" like projects, deliverables, people's mindset, technology, "old tools" and management style, have no time to catch up, so they just move along, without changing shape too much (maybe just a little bit). And then, the cooling down starts. Transformation continues but is not so strong and fast. Is more gradual and cool. This is the time when "old world" starts facing the "new world". This is where the changes happen, where mindset starts shifting, where teams start to create, where Gravity kicks in. The phase after this, is very important.
 To go back to Universe, there are different theories where we will go from here. Look at 3 of them:

Any of these could happen on a Transformation process, and maybe more. At the end, we are on a Complex system where we can only progress with hypothesis.
I think that the Leaders of the organization are Accountable and Responsible for the next step. By now, their mindset, leadership style and organization Vision, must have followed all the steps as well. By now, they should be well aware of the Gravity they have created and  what choices will keep the Transformation "Continue Forever" versus other options. This is where their maturity is put to test. This is where they will prove if they are strong leaders or just followers. Tough choices are required to make sure that the Transformation doesn't get timeboxed and put a deadline. Being soft, forgetting about the organization's Vision will only make all the effort a Fairytale, rather than a Successful story.

We are a big coloring book

In the last couple of weeks I have:

- Resigned from my current job after going through some interviews and  accepted one of the offers
- Heard the ninja song a lot of times
- Finally got a chance to take the Management 3.0, a 2 day training presented by Jason Little!
- Crashed Star Canada one evening and had dinner with some interesting people
- Went to Open Space Toronto and decided to lead a session
- Went for lunch/coffee with a lot of people that wanted to wish me farewell 
- Went for dinner with some old friends

All of this, made me meet new people and connect closer with the people I already knew.  Everyone new I met, has something new to bring in my life, something that not just will help me with what I do everyday, but also understand myself better. With everyone, I build relationships.

If we take a step back, all we do in our life is, we build relationships. I'd like to see a relationship as an outlined figure where both parties decide on the contouring and on the colors to use. I am sure that there are some people out there that do not want to have anything to do with me. We have probably outlined a difficult image and used a lot of black and blue inside. Adding some bright colors might be the next thing to do. I am also sure that there are some people out there that would like to spend more time with me, because we have painted our figure with a lot of pastel colors (do NOT add black and blue on these relationships, that's NOT the point!).
Every time we meet new people, we are faced with a new outlined figure and with options on what colors to use. Relationships are built with our family, people we work, people that prepare our coffee every morning at Tim Horton's, people we see everyday on the train, digital people we meet on Twitter or LinkedIn ....
All these relationships we have in our life, make us a big coloring book. It's up to us what figure to outline and what colors to use. Choose wisely, learn from the ones where you used black and blue, add to the ones with bright colors and your coloring book might become a great collection of beautiful figures.