Mapping individual Agile transformation journeys can reveal important insights that point the way to achieving continuous innovation and market dominance
. Over a period of years, every GE senior manager would learn the lean startup methodology, and GE would be the showcase for how modern companies use entrepreneurial management to transform culture and drive long-term growth."GE is an example of a top-down Agile journey, which turned out to be largely ceremonial. It was imposed from the top as a process. Despite huge investment in training and process and top management directives, it achieved practically nothing.
What has often happened then is that this lobbying increasingly irritates the top management. At a certain point, the management closes down the Agile implementation. Of course, they don’t use those words. Instead, they declare victory: “We are already agile. We don’t need agile leaders or coaches and more.” As a result, the Agile journey can stall or die, or at least go underground.Yet the problem in the marketplace that had prompted the firm to pursue Agile in the first place still exists.
In one sense, Amazon was in some ways Agile from the outset: as a public company in 1997, Amazon announced its obsession with adding value to customers as the driving force of its operations. Profits and shareholder value were to be the result, not the goal. Bezos “framed the kind of employees he wanted in simple terms,” as Brad Stone explains. “All new hires had to directly improve the outcome of the company. He wanted doers—engineers, developers, perhaps merchandise buyers, but not managers. ‘We didn’t want to be a monolithic army of program managers, à la Microsoft. We wanted independent teams to be entrepreneurial.’”
United States Latest News, United States Headlines
Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.
The Points Guy: Stop making these 3 mistakes if you want to maximize credit card pointsThe Points Guy: Stop making these 3 mistakes if you want to maximize credit card points via CNBCMakeIt
Read more »
Starbucks CEO sees more stores, faster innovation as key
Read more »
Dell CEO: We're positioned to 'help our customers with the digital transformation'Jim Cramer talks with Dell CEO Michael Dell about move the company is making since making its return to public markets in late December.
Read more »
What The Boeing 737 MAX Teaches Us About Brands And InnovationThe twin tragedies with the Boeing 737 MAX raise weighty issues as they pertain to brands and innovation.
Read more »
In New Zealand, a journey around the world and into darkness'Just a ordinary White man, 28 years old,' was how Brenton Harrison Ta...
Read more »
Journey To Senior StatusThe semesters and school years continued each bringing new struggles and great experiences. Some semesters were rough, causing me to almost lose certain academic scholarships or struggle to pay for housing while others were much stronger academically and less financially taxing.
Read more »
Karamo Brown on how he helped reinvent ‘Queer Eye’ and his journey since MTV’s ‘Real World’We chatted with the culture expert on the Netflix series, which returns Friday, ahead of his book talk at Sixth & I.
Read more »
The United Kingdom's tortuous journey in and out of the EUThe United Kingdom voted in 2016 to leave the European Union but it is still unc...
Read more »
The Internet’s Most Devoted Volunteers: Waze Map EditorsThousands of them spend nights and weekends updating maps for the company; ‘you go through a period where it takes over your life’
Read more »
Supreme Court weighs Virginia racial dispute over electoral mapsU.S. Supreme Court justices on Monday wrestled for the second time over whether ...
Read more »