On the slopes of Mont Brion1 we talked a lot with Laurent Morisseau about the agile enterprise and agile at scale. Both are often close, but nonetheless different. Agile at scale implies scaling your value creation system. That is to say that the way teams produce, manufacture, create, is spread to all teams, or that the number of teams increases and their ways of producing, manufacturing, creating adapt to it, hence the scaling. The agile enterprise implies that the entire organization embraces this agile culture and that each of its components operates according to these principles.

It’s not the same thing: on one side with agile at scale we could have a large number of agile teams, but the finance or HR departments operating according to a different paradigm than agile in the same company. On the other side with the agile enterprise we could have a small organization with one or two production teams, but where all departments (finance, HR, etc.) apply the principles of an agile approach.

The agile enterprise can therefore do without agile at scale. An organization that has an agile at scale problem should avoid doing without the agile enterprise. The agile approach is a complex, systemic approach. In these approaches, sub-optimizations (working on just a sub-part of the organization) don’t work. It is recommended to have a global, holistic approach, because the interweaving of factors makes cause and effect hard to read, and thus often renders sub-optimizations obsolete. We understand therefore that it is desirable to address (at the right pace) the entire enterprise (or department, or autonomous whole on which we are working).

I didn’t mention finance and HR above by chance. These are often two key perimeters of a global approach, of an agile enterprise.

Finance2 because to give this autonomy we need a true reconciliation. To reconcile, to restore harmony. And what ultimately gives a sense of control, an act of empowerment, removes the last silos in companies, if not the budget? For an agile enterprise it is necessary to integrate finance into the reorganization.

Read our information (with Dragos) that concatenates these ideas: No Estimate and Beyond Budgeting and Agile CFO

Human Resources (HR) because their role is indeed to carry the company’s culture. To make it known, to share it, to bring it to life, to communicate it. A whole that encompasses employer brand and personal brand. For an agile enterprise, HR is an essential fabric, they must carry this culture, this mindset. Just like that famous TED by Simon Sinek about WHY, and WHAT and HOW. HR would like to move away from the “how” to propagate the “why” and use the “what”.

Recently we held a Wake Up RH / School of po meetup with Pauline where this was exactly the theme (link to information about this meetup:

“HR as product owner in the enterprise”. Product owner, but what product? The product of the enterprise, of the organization, is culture. It’s this invisible binding agent that nevertheless assembles everything together.

Find our proposals: Wake UP RH and HR Fluency.

Finance and HR are the two major actors to integrate and therefore to understand and raise awareness of to advance on these paths of the agile enterprise.

A short series on scaling (and self-organization).

And otherwise the event we’re organizing around agile at scale with Dragos Dreptate:

  1. During the raid agile of June 2018, see the image above. ↩︎

  2. In finance I include procurement. ↩︎