In the previous post, we saw there are quite a few similarities between the Patrol method and self-directed Agile teams. It stands to reason that the resistance, doubt and objections faced by each from sponsors, leaders and members alike will be very similar. If that's the case, one can learn from the other.
These excerpts from the 1950s edition of the Scoutmaster's Handbook will sound familiar if you've ever tried to implement a self-directed Agile team:
"Some don't grasp the possibilities of the patrol method, and subsequently don't see the importance of it." If you can't appreciate the adaptability and agility of an organization characterized by strong capability and strong leadership throughout the ranks - one where people are continuously completing, learning, and adjusting to an extent that they perform best with team-level autonomy rather than top-down hierarchy - you won't see the value in a method designed to bring that about.
"Some lack faith in boys' ability to carry out responsibilities." You have to be willing to trust in people's capacity to both learn and make good decisions. Of course, trust is earned and not given, and while it takes time to develop it takes only seconds to erode. But an organization is a lot more efficient when it gets by on trust, because trust requires far less supervision and administration. Again, you have to be committed to what the right organization can deliver, and not make the organization and it's people hostage to the deliverables themselves.
"Some give up if it doesn't function perfectly right off the bat." Self-directed teams are a departure from traditional command-and-control hierarchy. The initial experience - and the initial results - can be very poor if self-direction is adopted swiftly and suddenly: self-direction requires very different behaviors and these can take a long time to develop. Until they do, teams will experience mission confusion as they come to grips with new expectations, interruption caused by external dependencies and boundaries they now have the responsibility to negotiate and manage, and seizure as people struggle to come to terms with responsibility for an entire solution rather than discreet, small tasks. How the team struggles with Tuckman's stages of group development will be mirrored in its results: at best a roller coaster where results are up one iteration then down the next, at worst a flatline where they struggle to get anything across the line. If we're not cognizant of (or better still, actually measuring) the development of new organizational "muscle memory", then the appearance of chaos within the team twined with few deliverables to show will cause the faint of heart to bail before the team gets through forming, norming and storming, to actually performing.
"Others don't like to part with authority. They found a chance to play and show off their specialties and don't realize they're stifling leadership development." Some people responsible for delivery of large programs or simple projects may be more comfortable concentrating authority rather than distributing it. This is an indication that they're more worried about the success of what they're responsible for than they are building up the people who can successfully deliver. While they may be good executors - a safe pair of hands you can trust to get something across the finish line - they're not good organization builders who can sustain what they create. Curiously enough, while self-directed teams are often accused of "not scaling", it is the characteristics common to command-and-control hierarchies - asymmetric knowledge distribution and concentrated decision-making - that don't scale.
"Still others have the old idea of training by mass instruction too ingrained in their systems to change." The best way of learning is to do something and not just study it. But on-the-job training can be very expensive, especially if somebody does, and re-does, and re-re-does, and still doesn't get a basic grasp of what it is they're doing. There is a certain allure to separating skill acquisition from skill application, if for no other reason than we can measure the effort spent on skill acquisition in the form of number of hours spent in classroom training and number of people who earn certifications. Things like training and certifications are proxies for competency: if we earn the certifications we will know what we're doing which will jump-start our execution. This makes people feel good about progress toward plan. But giving training to an individual and that individual demonstrating competency are entirely different things. The prior is useless without the latter.
"Also, some by temperament aren't suited to this way of training and are happier in a system other than the Patrol method." Quite a few people can't function without a strong hierarchy. Asking them to perform in a system defined by collaborative teams of peers who are self-directing themselves toward reaching a goal is an unreasonable expectation, and potentially damaging, to somebody who simply can't function that way.
From this, we can glean the characteristics a leader committing to the formation of self-directed teams needs to have if they are to succeed.
Humility - Self-directed teams are about its members, not its leaders.
Patience - A self-directed team will suffer setbacks and disappointments, particularly in the early going. The point isn't to obsess about failure, but to make sure every member of the team learns from it and doesn't make the same mistakes again.
Faith in people - If you believe people need to be told what to do, rather than can figure out what it is they need to do, you'll not get far with self-directed teams.
Belief in the wisdom of crowds - You have to believe that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts, and that a hive-mind will come up with a better solution through execution and continuous feedback than one dictated to them by a small cabal of people.
These prior two points suggest that you have to espouse a professional rather than an industrial mindset. If you can do that, you have the mindset for self-directed teams.
Commitment to the method - Above all else, you have to believe that if faithfully applied, the method will create the conditions - generalized skills, strong leaders, and independently-functioning units - under which a program is far more likely to succeed than if it is delivered in a command-and-control style. If you lack confidence in the values behind the method, you'll be quick to abandon practicing the method.
"The troop that is run as a club, with the Scoutmaster as boss, dies when the boss leaves." Hierarchies with central decision-making can be effective, but they are brittle because of their dependence on a handful of key people. If your goal is to build a resilient, evolutionary, adaptive organization, the price of admission is decentralization. Decentralization requires empowerment; empowerment requires atomic leadership and capability. The history of organizational development teaches us that the process of building an organization that can function this way is a very difficult one indeed.
