{"id":1174,"date":"2020-12-08T13:42:53","date_gmt":"2020-12-08T13:42:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/?p=1174"},"modified":"2020-12-08T13:43:10","modified_gmt":"2020-12-08T13:43:10","slug":"activating-the-flywheel-of-change","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/index.php\/2020\/12\/08\/activating-the-flywheel-of-change\/","title":{"rendered":"Activating the flywheel of change"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Image by Herbert Aust from Pixabay<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Last week, we organized the sprint 19 reporting workshop of Software Center<\/a>. The opening keynote by Frances Paulisch (Siemens Healthineers) was about the transition from a transactional business model to continuous value delivery to customers. The closing keynote of Aleksander Fabijan (Microsoft) discussed starting and scaling A\/B testing. Though the keynotes focused on very different topics, they shared a common theme.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This theme was concerned with driving change and the challenge of \nsuccessfully implementing the change. Both Frances and Aleksander raised\n the point that most changes in organizations touch many individuals, \nfunctions and departments, as well as numerous processes and ways of \nworking. As I discussed in earlier posts, in most organizations, to \nchange anything, you have to change everything. However, it\u2019s impossible\n to change everything completely at the same time. And this is where I \nsee many organizations get stuck.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The way out of this is to accept that all change will need to be \ngradual and that rather than accomplishing the change in one fell swoop,\n it will have to be a continuous process for an extended time. The \nanalogy is that of a flywheel. Getting a flywheel from a complete stop \nto at least some rotation requires quite a bit of energy. Once there\u2019s \nsome motion, you need to keep exerting power to speed up. However, once \nit achieves more speed, it becomes easier and easier to maintain that \nspeed. The question is how we achieve that in organizations. In my \nexperience, there are three main aspects: showcase the value, increase \nengagement and build infrastructure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

First, showcasing the value requires finding a small scope where \nsuccess is virtually guaranteed but where the value of the change you\u2019re\n looking to accomplish is clearly demonstrated. As you initially have to\n realize all of this with a small team, it\u2019s important to keep what \nyou\u2019re looking to accomplish as much as possible in your scope of \ncontrol to minimize the risk of others torpedoing your efforts. For \nexample, when running your first A\/B experiment, pick a topic where \nopinions are highly diverse in the organization, ensure data quality \nfrom the A\/B experiment and use this to engage with relevant \nstakeholders to show how the data from the experiment benefits the \norganization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Second, once you have a successful case, engage the stakeholders that\n you need to convince to increase the scope of the change and show the \nreal, concrete, tangible benefits you created in the first loop. Use \nthis to increase engagement with the people that you need in the next \niteration of the flywheel to create the next showcase. For example, when\n upping the release frequency of software on your way to DevOps, \ninitially often the ability to rapidly resolve defects in the field can \neasily be used as a means to increase awareness and buy-in with relevant\n stakeholders.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Third, look for ways to automate some of the activities you\u2019ve so far\n conducted through manual effort so that over time the cost of running \nthrough the iterations of the flywheel becomes lower. This is concerned \nwith building the infrastructure for the change you\u2019re looking to \nrealize. For A\/B testing, this may mean automating parts of the data \ncollection pipeline and for adopting DevOps, this typically requires \nautomating the CI\/CD pipeline, as well as the test infrastructure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Once you\u2019ve gone through the first iteration of the flywheel, it\u2019s \nbasically rinse and repeat to take the next step and try to accelerate. \nIt\u2019s easy to get discouraged when trying this, but remember that \nflywheels accelerate very slowly and require a lot of energy to get \nmoving at all. And initially, as everything needs to be done manually, \nthe flywheel has a lot of resistance. With more and more of the \ninfrastructure in place, it rotates easier and easier.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many of the companies I work with struggle with realizing the changes required in their organization. Some oscillate between trying to realize a big-bang change and a complete deadlock where nothing happens. The most effective way to realize change is the persistent, perhaps slow, but continuous accelerating of the flywheel through showcasing value, engaging stakeholders and building infrastructure. Accept that it takes time and, because of that, start yesterday instead of tomorrow. Build your flywheel and get it spinning!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To get more insights earlier, sign up for my newsletter at <\/em>jan@janbosch.com<\/em><\/a> or follow me on<\/em> janbosch.com\/blog<\/em><\/a>, LinkedIn (<\/em>linkedin.com\/in\/janbosch<\/em><\/a>), Medium<\/a> or Twitter (<\/em>@JanBosch<\/em><\/a>).<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last week, we organized the sprint 19 reporting workshop of Software Center. The opening keynote by Frances Paulisch (Siemens Healthineers) was about the transition from a transactional business model to continuous value delivery to customers. The closing keynote of Aleksander Fabijan (Microsoft) discussed starting and scaling A\/B testing. Though the keynotes focused on very different … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"generate_page_header":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8,10],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1174"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1174"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1174\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1176,"href":"https:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1174\/revisions\/1176"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1174"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1174"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1174"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}