Laurent Morisseau - L’Organisation en Flux : Explorer un des 4 Archétypes d’Agile4Enterprise

[00:00:07] And uh well, it's your turn, Laurent. Thank you very much, Laurent.
[00:00:09] Are we good?
[00:00:09] For the anecdote. Laurent was at the initiative of the creation of the association Lin Kanban en France, which organizes the Flacon conference, and is one of the people who made it possible, 13 years ago now, to give birth to this initiative that continues today.
[00:00:26] Yes, absolutely. I'm very, very proud to be back here. Well, I'll take this opportunity to thank the entire organizing team, of course, and the sponsors. Uh, so yeah, I was at the initiative with others on this conference and uh, which was called Linban in France at the time. Oh, excuse me.
[00:00:45] And so, uh, we mainly talked about Kanban, and then it evolved, it became Flowcon, I let it go. And it's been a few years since I had, uh, I hadn't come to do a session here. Uh, well, you have to work, you have to do some R&D, a little bit, to have things to say. And so, uh, this year I'm coming back with
[00:01:07] with, as they say, a little bit of the synthesis of everything I've, uh, I've learned and and, uh, and done these last few years. Well, I hope you like it. Normally, you're well-caffeinated, well-awake, okay?
[00:01:21] It works. Uh, so I'm Laurent Morisseau, uh, so I've been an agile coach since 2008. Uh, I specialized in Kanban, uh, these last few years I've been doing OKRs, I'm still doing OKRs. Uh, but for 10 years, the question that interests me is the agile enterprise, because I have the chance to intervene in uh, in VSEs, SMEs, ETIs, where uh we have a little more hope of transforming the whole enterprise. And, uh, and so that's what drives me.
[00:01:55] And it's a little bit of that that I'm going to talk to you about today.
[00:02:00] Uh And so, I'm going to talk to you about flow organization, but obviously, as I just said, we're going to put it in the perspective of the agile enterprise. And I'm going to propose a definition of the agile enterprise. So, as I don't know it by heart, to transform the organization durably to effectively pilot business change in an uncertain, complex and constantly evolving world. Well, that doesn't surprise you, I imagine, it's the kind of thing we've already read. And, uh, when we read that, well, obviously it talks about change. And so change is done with agile methods. Uh, we know many, there are others coming, Scrum, obviously, fast, shapeup and so on. There's Kanban, and Kanban, which is a, a method as such, but also an approach to continuous improvement.
[00:02:47] based on existing processes to go towards a pulled flow. This is the, this is the technical definition that I gave at the time.
[00:02:55] And so, uh, well, we have a method that is flow-oriented. It's a good track for going towards flow organization. Uh, but obviously that's not enough because the methods are at the team level and value chains. And so to move to the organization level, well, agility has invented scaled agile frameworks. There are many, Scrum at Scale. There are very good ones, uh, there's Agile at Scale, there are others, safe. uh, less, uh, which is very good too, by the way. I have no opinion on these frameworks. In reality, they are all good when we use them in the right way, we could say.
[00:03:36] And then there's Kanban at scale. And Kanban at scale allows you to move towards a flow organization. There. There, I've given everything. So flow organization is uh, it's Kanban. Do you have any questions?
[00:03:55] Oh yeah! I've had years of work, huh. Uh, I hope it will help you as much as it helped me.
[00:04:04] No questions? You want me to continue, good.
[00:04:10] Uh, it's up to you, I would have warned you.
[00:04:13] It's going to be a bit more complicated from now on. Uh, the problem is that team agility is not enterprise agility. Uh, and as the flow organization, we're going to put it in the agile enterprise, well, uh, we're going to ask ourselves a few questions. Do you agree with this sentence?
[00:04:34] Who agrees?
[00:04:37] Well, that's good, it's an audience won over to the cause. I'm still going to try to say a little more.
[00:04:44] Uh, it's been years, so, that I've been thinking about the agile enterprise, and when we talk about the agile enterprise, we say, well, it's an enterprise that is high-performing, reactive, uh, flexible, adaptive, innovative, resilient, learning, uh, I don't know, frugal certainly too, we have to say it. Anyway, we put a lot of terms, and in the end we don't really know what it is anymore. And then agility is a catch-all word, we've put everything and everything we wanted in it, everyone has their own definition of agility, it's very good, it allows us to have a richness, we could say, uh, in what we do, in our exchanges, in our way of seeing the business. Uh, but it's to try to address the agile enterprise, I made the, I made the bet to try to see what made agility specific, from my point of view anyway. And from my point of view, it's about steering change. Uh, we can talk about transformation, but it's steering change that comes from outside or that we trigger internally. And if we want to steer change and the associated risks, of course, to this change. Uh, it means that we can, we can crystallize, we can, we can anchor the change through the decisions that we are going to make in the company. So far, uh, we agree, if I make decisions to change, then there are actions that follow and so on. Which means that if I want to reflect on the agile enterprise, I can approach it through the levels of decision-making in the enterprise.
[00:06:07] There are four, generally.
[00:06:10] Uh, there's the portfolio level, which is at the enterprise level, it's the strategic portfolio. Some are already starting to regret it, it was easier at the beginning. Uh, agility, uh, sorry, the enterprise, uh, there we decide on the corporate strategy to make it simple. Then there's the strategic level with the organization, meaning a business unit, a department, a service.
[00:06:32] There we're going to talk about, uh, we're going to make decisions of the business strategy type. The tactical level, that's the value chains.
[00:06:41] Uh, where we create value, it brings together all the teams that can contribute. Uh, we can talk about, well, it concerns the products, the services, whatever, and then obviously. The operational level with the teams. And the problem with agility in that, is that you have to steer change through all these, uh, through all these, uh, these strata, we'll say, of decisions. And that it's as fluid as possible. as aligned as possible.
[00:07:08] So almost continuously, we'll say, and that's one of the specificities of agility. is that while we're changing, we're creating, we continue to create value. Are you comfortable with that for now?
[00:07:22] Okay, we'll continue.
[00:07:25] Uh, if we see these different strata, uh, the question that we ask ourselves, at least I asked myself as an agile coach,
[00:07:35] well, it's how to finally go beyond the operational and tactical decision levels, that's what we did in agility, we support the teams, we support the value chains, with Kanban, it was the whole, the whole value chain. But, uh, very difficult to go beyond that.
[00:07:50] Uh, it's not with Kanban or other approaches that we're going to discuss with the BU management or the company management. Uh, however, we learned a lot of things and we knew how to do a lot of things, uh, and quite specific things that other approaches obviously don't necessarily know how to do. Uh, these are transformations that are rather bottom-up, rather emergent, emergent, sorry, uh, that are, we could say, based on local adaptation, that's the self-organization of teams or groups of teams. And then, uh, well, it's about bringing innovation and continuous change. Are we agreed? And business agility, which tries to respond precisely to the challenge of the company. It says, well, what we know how to do at the team level, we're going to try to scale it up and propose something coherent for the company. Okay? Except that the company, it sees things differently. What it wants, uh, because as, in fact, I've discovered this since I've been doing OKRs, well, with all the readings I've done too, but with OKRs, it allows me to enter the codir and then discussions in the codir or comex, it's not at all what we had in the teams, obviously. Uh, so what it wants is a global optimization because it wants an overall company performance, that's what we call value. And uh, and that, well, it's not the sum of local optimizations, those who have done systemic, we, we know that well. And what's more, well, to optimize, there must be a minimum of stability, otherwise we don't optimize something that moves all the time. Uh, and so we're going to have more incremental change, less continuous, more incremental. And a slightly more top-down approach, because there is strategy, huh, we are at the level of strategic decisions, strategy, there is a strategic intention, we speak of deliberate strategy. So, uh, there's a framework that then allows to delegate at the team level. Uh, but the two don't work well.
[00:09:45] because we don't understand each other. Uh, so last year I was giving a conference with Romain Couturier called "Glass Ceiling, Green Floor". So there should be a replay of Agile Grenoble if you want to delve into this topic. But basically, it's saying, well, we as agile coaches, when we do a transformation, we have a lot of trouble getting management on board, even if only as a sponsor. Uh, as an actor, I've never seen it, uh, at least from my experience, I've never experienced it like that. And then, that's the glass ceiling, we can't get up, and then the green parquet is the opposite, it's the management that doesn't necessarily see the results.
[00:10:18] the tangible benefits at the company level of what we put in place. However, what we put in place works, in most cases.
[00:10:25] And so, well, as we don't understand each other, uh, we can't break this glass ceiling and address the company in its globality. And so we have to review, we have to rethink, uh, in my opinion, at least, that was my, my objective these last few years, is that we rethink our, our approach and especially the structures, uh, the solutions that we are going to bring to be able to address each level in a coherent way. Uh And so we have to understand a little bit what the company is as an agile coach. The company, there are many models. The one I'm going to present to you quickly is the star model of Galbrath, who knows?
[00:11:07] Yeah!
[00:11:09] Uh, the 7S model?
[00:11:12] Who knows? Yeah, well, it's kind of the same, they're equivalent models, what we call strategic alignment models, whatever the name. What does that mean? It means we start from the strategy. We understood that. For example, if I take a metaphor, uh, if I am a high-level athlete, uh, well, or even a sportsman, we'll say. Well, I'm not anymore, but, uh, the question we can ask ourselves is, am I going to prefer to do sprint or a marathon? So that's a strategy, I choose my playing field.
[00:11:42] And then after that, there are capacities that I have to develop. The capacities are, if I choose the sprint,
[00:11:48] it's going to be explosiveness. To do squats, things, it's boring to death and then it's, it's hard. If I choose the marathon, it will be endurance. So these are capacities to develop, we find the same kind of capacities in the organization.
[00:12:03] We continue the metaphor, the structure we all know, it's the organizational chart, for the athlete it will be the backbone. Uh, the processes, uh, are the muscles, uh, sorry, the, well, the nervous system rather, it's what allows to orchestrate the tasks, I'm going to, I'm going fast on this part. The reward, the recognition for an athlete, what is it?
[00:12:26] Victory. Yeah, I was thinking about dopamine but why not victory, that's true. That would be more the result.
[00:12:36] And then individuals, it's all our cells that form muscles and uh, and what does this model tell us? It tells us that to perform, uh, all of this must be coherent, must be aligned.
[00:12:50] We're not going to set up Scrum and then, uh, behind it, uh, promote an individual performance. Because we want to create a team, we agree, that doesn't work. It's not aligned. It's the same kind of idea. And the model, it's not finished, it tells us, at the end of all that, we have two things, they are emergent behaviors of the company, it's performance, so that will be victory, and then culture, uh, that's, uh, the muscle memory of the athlete, for those who know.
[00:13:21] With agility, we took things from there, from the processes. I know the agile manifesto says blah blah blah, processes, I don't know what, interactions, I knew it by heart at one time.
[00:13:33] However, it fits in this box. Even if we prefer interactions and individuals, everything happens here. And then, as it was working, it was difficult, our transformation was difficult, we said, well, yeah, it's because the culture is not that. So, uh, you have to, you have to change the culture.
[00:13:50] Yeah. Well, except that culture is the, it's the result of all that. So, uh, And then, in parallel, the management says, no, but your thing, there, very good. Okay, it let us do it, but I want performance and then feedback loops on the strategy so that in the end it works. So we find the glass ceiling in this model. We will have to address that.
[00:14:12] And the model tells us something else, and here we make the link with agility because this is not a model specific to agility at all, we agree.
[00:14:20] The link with agility, if agility is about steering change, it means that it starts at the strategy level. That is to say, a company must be capable, must have confidence to change strategy, to adjust it, to reorient it. to reinvent it. There we go a little beyond agility, but it means being, being, well, being able to change direction, of course, as we want, and to have confidence that the rest will follow. And the rest follows, there's animation, there's work in there. Uh, the rest follows, that is to say that all the dimensions of the company, well, they adjust, they align with the new strategy. And then in the end we'll have a result on performance and culture. It means something that is very important, at least in my eyes. is that we have to give a specific answer to specific strategies. Now, I'm not going to go into the strategies, but it means that we, when we arrive with a proposal
[00:15:19] and we try to deploy it everywhere in the company, we are wrong. There is not one answer for the company, even if we contextualize the answer. Contextualize the answer, that must be done no matter what. But on the other hand, there is no single unique answer in a company. So we can't deploy, we have to invent something else, we have to propose something else.
[00:15:40] There, that's what I said.
[00:15:44] And it's there that, uh, as I progressed, I told myself, well, facing specific strategies, we have to, we have to have answers, and answers that are globally coherent. We saw it with the model, the answer must be aligned. And so that's where the notion of archetype came in, it's not new, Minzberg was already talking about it a long time ago about organizational archetypes, but with a classic approach. And so in agility, I identified four.
[00:16:10] So obviously, the flow organization, we're going to zoom in on it a bit.
[00:16:15] Do you see others?
[00:16:20] You know others for sure.
[00:16:25] Unless you only go to Flocon every year and not to the Agile Tour, but The product.
[00:16:33] The product organization, we only talk about that.
[00:16:36] Yeah, no?
[00:16:38] There, there's Rachel who's speaking later this afternoon, uh, there, she knows perfectly how to answer that, that, that point.
[00:16:50] You see others or not? I have four.
[00:16:53] Uh, organization.
[00:16:57] Organizational archetypes. So, uh, well, well, well, so flow, for product. Project, who said that?
[00:17:07] Is that you, over there? Project, agile, of course.
[00:17:13] It's all the more, uh, uh, I would say, uh, not fashionable, but, uh, relevant, that's it. It's all the more relevant that the PMI has bought Agile Alliance, well, and is a partner.
[00:17:24] of the Agile Alliance.
[00:17:28] Uh, so the project mode, uh, is a very good archetype to be agile. And besides, when we read the stuff from Medef, CIGREF, etc., all those somewhat institutional things. They talk about project organization for an agile enterprise. Except there are others. And then the last one is the network organization. We talk a lot about it in agility, but we don't really know what's behind it. Who knows network organization?
[00:17:53] That's what it seemed to me. You must know forms of organization, holacracy, sociocracy, does that speak to you? Certainly some have practiced, no? But there are other forms, this is one form, one possible implementation, but there are others.
[00:18:09] Once we've said that, we obviously have to characterize them, all four.
[00:18:12] Uh, how would you define the difference between flow and product, for example? I'll take the two simplest.
[00:17:34] of the CIGREF, etcetera, all these institutional things. They talk about their project organization for an agile company. Except there are others. And then the last one is the network organization. We talk a lot about it in agility, but we don't really know what's behind it. Who knows the network organization?
[00:17:52] Ah, that's what I thought. You must know forms of organization, holacracy, sociocracy, does that ring a bell? Some have practiced it, no? But there are other forms, this is one form, a possible implementation, but there are others. Once we've said that, well, obviously we have to characterize them, all four of them.
[00:18:13] How would you define the difference between flow and product, for example? I'll take the two simplest ones.
[00:18:20] And well, that was me, I had the same look as you, uh, all these years scratching my head saying, but I can't do it, I don't understand, etcetera. And then there were turf wars between those who were more Kanban, those who were more Scrum. and we didn't know if it was one who was right or the other who was wrong, or, well, that's the same thing, the opposite. Uh, but in the end, everyone is right, except that these are different archetypes that will be used in different contexts, that's what we're going to see.
[00:18:49] So I made a small topology. It's worth what it's worth, it's not very, it's not the most important. Uh, so this topology, uh, we're going to have on one side the optimization a bit more global, we're going to find the product and the project, that is to say, we organize ourselves globally around the success of something, whether it's a product,
[00:19:08] uh, whether it's a project, the project is the objective behind it. Uh, and then we're going to go more towards integration, conversely, we're in differentiation, uh, uh, left side. Uh, we're going to prioritize collaboration in global optimization, Scrum talks about collaboration. Yes, but it's cooperation when we're in networks. Uh, collaboration is more within a team, cooperation is more outside. Uh, to make it very simple. Uh, and then towards the left, we're going to go more towards resilience. That is to say, whatever happens, I remain standing, I falter a bit but I remain standing, even if I have, how to say, black swans, as Taleb says, that happen to me. And on the right, I'm going to go more towards innovation.
[00:19:53] And then, in vertical, it's more the environment that is more or less dynamic. Huh? Below, we're going to have a more tactical, more opportunistic approach. Uh, and then up there, we're going to have more a strategic alignment, an optimization. Okay. Well, we could discuss this topology, it's not really the subject, we can do better, it's a, it's a starting point, but to say that, already, we could identify archetypes in relation to contexts. That's already important as a, as a learning experience. I'm going to zoom in a bit on the flow organization because we're here for that. I'm going to start with the strategy, I talked about specific strategy earlier. In the flow, what we're looking for is a service-oriented strategy. That is, it's the service level, the service levels that I'll be able to offer my clients, my users, that will be differentiating compared to others. Service level, is whether I'm more premium, more low cost, even if low cost is another, another matter. But you see, and even in a strategy, well, even if I have several segments, uh, of users, I'm more likely to have a segment, well, maybe VIP, a normal segment, I don't know. So that, and that, I'm going to commit to that service level, and that's what I'm going to sell. Okay, that's the service-oriented strategy. Obviously, behind that, if I commit to a service level, I have to master all my processes so that, uh, I'll look for predictability, obviously,
[00:21:19] so that it works, so that it's viable as a strategy, so operational excellence. At that level, agility, from my point of view, uh, it's about maintaining agility at scale while looking for stability. Which is paradoxical, since agility, from my point of view again, is change management. But here's what we have to do.
[00:21:44] Uh, I'm rolling out my model, don't worry, I won't do all the boxes like that. Uh, organizational capacity, uh, what would it be for, for agility, capabilities, uh, because explosiveness, endurance, it doesn't work for, for an endurance, for a company. What do we mean by capability linked to agility?
[00:22:10] So there are some who were sleeping earlier because I mentioned them.
[00:22:16] Difficult question, huh? Well, like you, I was like, I don't really know. And so, thinking about it, I said, okay, if it's change, what kind of change do we have?
[00:22:28] And finally, we have two main types of change, either discontinuous change, uh, sudden events. Covid was a discontinuous event. Overnight, we had to change the way we work. Or stop working.
[00:22:43] And then we have continuous change. So, rupture there, it's the same as discontinuous, huh. And we have continuous change. Agility, it focuses, it's where it's best, uh, it's continuous change. To the left, we're more towards resilience, and then to the right, towards innovation. I know that those who are specialists in innovation, there's, there's not just disruptive innovation in life, there are innovations of continuity. Uh, where we make the product grow, the innovation of efficiency, where we try to be better on the process. Uh, this type of continuous innovation, yes, we are in agility, well, agility can contribute to it. There's no problem. On the other hand, as soon as it's rupture, discontinuity, honestly, it's not what we do best. And at the heart of this continuous change, well, we have different capabilities, reactivity for example. That is to say, if I don't do it well, it means I suffer emergencies, I suffer things, I suffer crises, whereas what I would really like to do with agility is to be able to manage these opportunities without suffering them. There's the flexibility part, which is not the same,
[00:23:44] in short, it's the network. Uh, it's being able to seize opportunities, uh, so, uh, I'm going to lose opportunities, sorry, because of a rigid organization. And what I'd like to do with, with agility, is to be able to adjust the organization according to specific demands, for example. There's adaptability. So that's more in the longer term.
[00:24:05] That is to say, well, if the market changes, well, I have to change with it. Huh, I don't want to be overtaken by market evolution. And finally, there's proactivity. That is to say, you'll have the slides. Uh, there's proactivity, uh, which is to say that, precisely, not to anticipate, because agility doesn't anticipate. On the other hand, it can trigger things to provoke change and that we learn quickly. That, we know how to do.
[00:24:37] So those are the capabilities of agility. And more concretely, and then we can break down these capabilities for each archetype. What I'm not going to do because that's going to put you to sleep, but for the flow organization, what could reactivity give? Well, it's just-in-time planning.
[00:24:53] Uh, each cadence, uh, every two weeks, every week, or even continuously. Uh, flexibility. Now, that's the most, in my opinion, the most interesting point in the flow organization, it's this flexibility. When I, when I was working on Kanban and I was trying to, to pass on my knowledge to others, I was talking about a system, that's what struck me, it's a system that allows, the same system that allows to have different speeds, to manage different speeds within the system.
[00:25:22] It's top. These are the service classes.
[00:25:27] And the point is that we can have several and we can change service class, so that requires adjusting the system, precisely. If the demand is different precisely. If, for example, I have a service-oriented strategy and I have a new user segment that expects a certain service level, I can try to organize myself to meet it.
[00:25:49] Uh, adaptability, well, it's more capacity on demand, that's structurally changing, well, the WIP limits, etcetera. Proactivity, well, there are things, and in continuous improvement, it's efficiency innovation.
[00:26:00] We're going to try to innovate so that our, our processes are the best and that our competitive advantage remains viable. Is that okay? So one of the keys is the service classes.
[00:26:13] That's what allows us to reconfigure the organization to serve different markets, different. And that's where agility comes in. uh mainly. Is that okay, does that speak to you or are you lost? Is that okay?
[00:26:26] Okay, there are three following. We continue the round of, uh, the round table, but I'm going to go a little faster.
[00:26:34] Uh, at the structure level, a flow organization is a Kanban network system. Well, that's easy, that's what I was saying earlier. But I'll show you a few small, a few small illustrations of what that means. Uh, alignment is done around service classes. And the teams are specialized in a process or a part of that process, uh, and what's more, it is owned, the team owns its Kanban system. In terms of process, well, it's flow-driven management.
[00:27:08] Uh, when we, we say that, it's concrete things, it's daily, managing blockages, uh, managing what comes out, what comes in, etcetera. So it's very concrete. If I take the other product archetypes, what would be the steering?
[00:27:24] Yeah, value-driven steering.
[00:27:27] That's what we, what we preach with agility, huh? And so that's exactly it. Uh, for the project, for the, for the project, we, we'll start simple.
[00:27:39] Huh? Pilotage.
[00:27:43] So, agile project steering.
[00:27:49] The deadlines, costs, deadlines, all that, scope. No, it's more by objectives. Uh, that we're going to set. Well, yes, costs, deadlines, all that is always true, but it's also true in a product organization, it's also true in flow organizations, it's not what makes them specific. There are always questions of costs, deadlines, well, deadlines, organization in flow, the lead time, it still remains a very strong commitment. Uh, so rather by the objectives we're trying to achieve. And then for the network organization, harder.
[00:28:20] Inclusion management? Steering by inclusion.
[00:28:24] Yeah, me neither, I don't know. I would say steering by mission. If we talk about sociocracy, about holacracy, the circles, uh, they are defined by their mission. And they live, they, they are born, they live, they die according to the fact that we have, uh, executed the mission, achieved the mission, etcetera. And so there's no lifespan, whereas a project has a lifespan, a priori, we can go beyond, but, uh, so you see that just that, we have different steering.
[00:28:51] So we'll have to see concretely what it gives, but it, it implies different things. Uh, what else do we have? Well, Kanban, all that. Uh, in terms of individuals, there are different leadership styles, different developer profiles, integrated profiles, uh, especially for swarming, huh? If I have a blockage somewhere, I must not be hyper-specialized in my field, because I will create bottlenecks, I must have several, uh, potentially several expertise, but above all, a generalist layer that allows me to go help a blockage,
[00:29:23] so that it doesn't become a bottleneck, that kind of thing. Uh, for Kanban specialists, we know that by heart. And mobility is rather low, uh, because we're trying to stabilize the process. Uh, the managerial performance is on efficiency, we suspected that. And the predictability of the flow, uh, as, well. And then individual performance linked to pulled flow work management and in a team, of course.
[00:29:46] Performance is about service commitment.
[00:29:49] And the culture is more specific to flow and service.
[00:29:53] Okay? Obviously, it's a, a sub-part of agility, that.
[00:29:59] That means if I do the same, the same work for all archetypes, in the end, I'm going to achieve different performances and different cultures. We have product culture, huh, in product organization. Are we agreed?
[00:30:13] So we start to think, well, if I have agile archetypes, in the end, I can have a more product culture, a more flow culture, a more something else culture. Uh, wow. While we were taking into account agile culture.
[00:30:27] Boom, and it has to be the same everywhere, right?
[00:30:33] But in fact, it's even more complicated than that.
[00:30:37] Uh, if we look at the company globally, the company has to perform today and then survive tomorrow. I think we all got to that point right now. Uh, and to perform today and, and, and survive tomorrow, we have to work at different time horizons. We need to execute what we do today, what we prepare tomorrow. Uh, some may know the three horizons of investment model. We talk about it in SAFe. We talk about it in Fix, who knows? Well, it's exactly the same, except I've enriched it a bit. There are the zones of management of Geoffrey Moore also who talks about it, very well. Uh, very interesting, so I just stole the idea. And then, uh, and then put it in the form of it's liberating structures that makes the E like that. So I stole everything.
[00:31:26] Uh, what does it say? It means that to innovate tomorrow, you have to explore.
[00:31:31] Uh, we're going to create future growth. On the other hand, there's an enormous amount of uncertainty, uh, we know the number of startups that don't, that don't survive the first few years. Those that survive, they go into the phase, uh, horizon H2 for the three horizons model, what we also call development. Uh, the transformation phase for Moore. I talk about expansion, it makes a 4E model, there are only E's, well, it's easier to remember maybe.
[00:31:57] Uh, there we're going to progress towards the vision.
[00:32:03] Once we've reached, well, typically, these are the scale-ups. There we were on startups, now we're on scale-ups. If the scale-up survives the acceleration and doesn't explode in flight, it goes into the exploitation phase. There we're going to execute our mission.
[00:32:19] The goal is to optimize, uh, is to continue to make our competitive advantage viable for as long as possible. And then at some point it becomes obsolete and we go into exclusion mode, that is to say, we're going to disengage, decommission, sell, stop, simply. And the goal is to do it in agility, it's to do it sooner.
[00:32:38] than in a traditional approach, because to change, you have to get rid of all this inertia of a company, uh, which means it has a lot of trouble evolving. Now we could, this model, uh, again, it's not specific to agility, but we can ask ourselves what impact it has on agility.
[00:32:55] When we are in the exploration phase, so it's creating future growth, we want to innovate to find our next competitive advantage. And there, agility is going to provoke change to learn as quickly as possible, in any case, faster than its competitors. Does that make sense to you?
[00:33:12] Okay, so in expansion, what would be the agility we're looking for? If the goal is to progress towards the vision, uh, and to scale our competitive advantage, what would be the agility we're looking for?
[00:33:27] So same answer, I had the same face as you and the same questioning, and I came to the conclusion that the goal is to remain agile even when scaling the market. That is to say, well, the product will scale the market, having as much market share as possible, and the organization that carries the product development does the same. And so there's a challenge here to remain as agile as possible in that phase.
[00:33:54] The exploitation phase.
[00:33:57] Uh, well, it's maintaining agility at scale while seeking stability.
[00:34:03] As I said earlier, that's a big paradox we have. Uh, that we have with agility, that we have with Lean, uh, Marias Piah, who was here before, knows, it's the same problem, uh, because we are generally both in the same zone. And then the exclusion phase is to reduce organizational debt, to reduce organizational inertia to be able to change as quickly as possible.
[00:34:28] So, as before, we had potentially different cultures, here we have a different agility. We don't expect the same thing from agility depending on these contexts. Okay, so what?
[00:34:43] Well, we're going to be able to put archetypes opposite each phase.
[00:34:49] It's a proposal, it can evolve, uh, we can find better. Today, what I think is that in the exploration phase, the project archetype and the network archetype of mini startup is a, these are very appropriate answers that work pretty well. In the expansion phase, there, the product archetype, it's made for that.
[00:35:10] What works best, huh?
[00:35:13] In the exploitation phase, we're going to find the project archetype, but rather for transformation projects. We're going to find the network archetype, uh, if ever, well, the business units are very autonomous, uh, if our product portfolio is not linked, voilà. If we, if we use the product portfolio for diversification, and then we have the flow archetype that advantageously replaces our dear matrix organization.
[00:35:42] Well, I hope that's a better answer. And then for the exclusion, we find the project archetype.
[00:35:50] Okay. So what? Always the 'so what'. Well, the company, as we said earlier, if it wants to perform today and last tomorrow, in fact, it has to make all this coexist. Since it has to position itself on each strategic zone, and for each strategic zone, we have associated archetypes.
[00:36:14] So that means that, I come back to the idea from earlier, uh, where I was saying that, finally, uh, a framework of agility at scale, uh, it's very good, potentially very good again, on the other hand, deploying it in the same way in all the services, all the BUs of the company, doesn't really make sense, except if the company is specialized in one place, one phase.
[00:36:39] Yes, a startup that starts, there it will have only one model. Uh, a scale-up, same thing, it's hyper-focused on its product. On the other hand, as soon as we start to go into exploitation and we start to diversify, and we start to manage precisely product-service portfolios, uh, there it's no longer, it's no longer possible. So that means that I'm coming back to the idea from earlier, uh, where I was saying that finally, uh, a framework for agile at scale, uh, it's very good, potentially very good, again. However, deploying it in the same way across all services, all BUs of a company, doesn't really make sense, unless the company is specialized in one area or one phase. Yes, a startup that's just starting, it will only have one model. A scale-up, it's the same, it's hyper-focused on its product. However, as soon as we start moving into operations and we start diversifying and we start managing precisely product and service portfolios, uh, that's no longer possible.
[00:36:58] All right, are you comfortable with that? So we have to manage portfolios, uh, of, let's say, business units. Each business unit will have, will implement in its own way, an archetype to derive a certain form of agility from it that will trigger a type of culture. And all that won't be the same. So the company, one of the difficulties of the agile company, is actually to perform globally while managing this heterogeneity. That gives us a huge perspective in terms of work for transformations and supporting companies, if they want to go that far. Uh, if I zoom in on the flow organization, because we want to scale. Uh, now I'm coming back to simpler things. Uh, who here has been a Kanban coach? Or has experienced Kanban? Not many people here. Ah, yes, because you don't dare, in fact. Okay. Uh, well, we might have started with one or two teams, and then we tried to extend the Kanban systems across the entire value chain. This is horizontal extension, to bring in the upstream and go all the way to the downstream. So we can have flow, there you go, end-to-end. We agree, we did that. Sometimes it's difficult, sometimes we didn't succeed, when it works it's great.
[00:38:22] In Kanban, we have other forms of extension, of scaling. We also have vertical extension. There, typically, excuse me, uh, there we will have team Kanbans and then the whole chain, that will typically make a portfolio Kanban, a product Kanban. There, the rather vertical extension is to arrive at the notion of portfolio Kanban. Some people have implemented portfolio Kanbans. Each, yeah, each box zooms in on a chain, and in the chain, each, each ticket zooms in on a team, for example, on a team Kanban. There you go. And then the last, the last implementation is the rather network implementation, where there's no specific chain, there are lots of Kanban systems that are linked to each other by queues, WIPs on the queues, and that's what creates the link between each. And it's true, on value chains, teams, but also all the support functions, HR, infra, market, whatever.
[00:39:24] And if I go back to my definition of organization in flow and I have a service-oriented strategy, so that means that my commitment and what coordinates all that are the service classes. Well, in my life as a Kanban coach, I haven't seen many. There are lots of companies that have lots of KPIs and pretend to be committed to things, and then afterwards we manage the misery because we're not meeting expectations because we sold something we couldn't necessarily deliver. Uh, and then, there aren't that many companies or organizations that go into the part of piloting by metrics and continuous improvement by metrics in Kanban. So that means that if the notions of service class are finally not the most important. And uh, we can go to the right, and that's the vertical extension that will take us further towards the product. And there we will find those who know Donald Reinertsen's books, I don't know if I pronounced it correctly, it's the product development flow. So it's a fluid approach to product development. Uh, I say that with a touch of nostalgia since Donald was our one of our first keynote speakers on Lean Kanban in France, and it was great. Uh, he inspired me a lot. Anyway, there you go, we can go towards Kanban, we can use it in product in certain cases. But also, we can go towards the network, uh, and there we will use, well, WIPs as a coordination mechanism. So that's why sometimes we get a little confused. Uh, we talk about product organizations that encompass everything because we can do Kanban, yeah, because it's a specific use of Kanban, and we're not in the flow archetype, but the flow archetype would be something else. Uh, and coordination by processes.
[00:41:23] There I'll just show you an example. It's that we'll find the three levels I was talking about. At the beginning, I was talking about four levels of decision: corporate, strategic, tactical, operational. Here there are only three because corporate strategy, we can, it's it's another subject. Uh, well, we'll have synchronizations between all these Kanban systems at the strategic level, these are the strategic reviews, they are rather quarterly. At the tactical level, we will find reviews like that, which will be monthly operations reviews, risk reviews, monthly portfolio reviews. And then, I'm not going to list them all, all at the operational level we have reviews. So that's all the mechanisms that allow to coordinate a, an organization in flow, when it is like that. And this model, uh, I don't know if anyone knows it, it's the proposal, well, we could imagine other implementations, it's the proposal of the Kanban University of the company Service Planning, ESP. Who knows?
[00:42:29] Yeah, we're not many, huh. Uh, in fact, it's the equivalent of LeSS, of Safe, but for the flow organization. I'm not saying you have to go that way. It's an interesting answer for the flow organization. We can find other things, but that means it already exists, good news.
[00:42:47] Uh, there you go. So I've gone a bit around the flow organization. I put it in the context of archetypes, and I put all that in the context of the agile enterprise. And if I put it in contexts, uh, it's mostly because finally, what brought me to this, uh, is to have a kind of overall reflection for the agile enterprise. And that's what led me these last few years to create a framework that I call Agile for Enterprise. I went very far to find the name.
[00:43:19] It was free. Luckily. Uh, and which takes up what finally? Well, the four levels of agility: operational, tactical, strategic, portfolio, which are linked together by cadences. Cadence of change, cadence of decision-making, right? That's it, right? For example, but for the network organization, project or product, it will be different this part.
[00:43:44] Uh, there are different tools, the goal is not to show them to you here, uh, because they are not specific to flow, but we will have radars to know where we are, uh, act tools to drive the transformation, uh, tools of a slightly higher level for the portfolio. There is the 4E model that I showed you, which gives very interesting information to precisely know what to take according to the contexts, and then behind the four archetypes.
[00:44:13] And this approach, the idea is to break the glass ceiling. I'm coming back to what I was saying at the beginning of this session.
[00:44:23] Uh, we have to stop working on the strategic decisions on one side and the operational on the other side. We have to work in an aligned way. And so we have to manage to solve the paradox of having approaches that are different, rather top-down, uh, rather deliberate. Uh, and then with agility, rather bottom-up, rather emergent. Because the goal is to do both, optimize globally and adapt locally.
[00:44:52] In any case, that's what I think.
[00:44:55] And the answer, well, one of the possible answers to manage this paradox, is precisely to identify the archetypes that will work well in the different contexts.
[00:45:06] And in the end, to get to put all this end to end. To achieve, in terms of output, at the level of performance from the point of view of agility, it is to allow a sustainable transformation. That means that it's not a transformation project that we have to lead, it's to bring transformation into the DNA, that is, that it's included in the company's internal processes and that it's managed continuously. And then in terms of culture, it's the agile culture, certainly, but I put an S because you see that we can be more specific. And in my opinion, it will be necessary to be more specific if we want to climb the floors.
[00:45:46] And to climb the floors, uh, the cool thing with, uh, with that, which appeared to me afterwards, uh, is that in fact we can create a curriculum. A sector for our profession. Well, I say our profession because I'm an Agile Coach, but who is an Agile Coach?
[00:46:04] There you go. So the cool thing for all those who raise their hand, uh, is that we have a sector, we already had the Scrum Master, Agile Coach sector, yeah, that's good.
[00:46:16] We already had this Scrum Master, Agile Coach level, which was already pretty good. Now, after that, Safe has inundated us with roles. Uh, I don't even know them anymore. SRE, SRT.
[00:46:27] RTE. But there's something with SR something, no?
[00:46:31] There you go, anyway, I won't remember them. Uh, and once again, I have nothing against Safe. Safe, in some contexts, is very interesting.
[00:46:41] Uh, especially, uh, I shouldn't say it, it's being filmed, huh. Especially the implementation of OKRs is rather pertinent. But, uh, not on the epic part, but anyway, that's another topic.
[00:46:54] I'm coming back there. Uh, well, the Agile Master, I call him Agile Master because in fact, at the team level, what changes compared to Scrum Master, Kanban Master, etc. is that in fact we have to master all the methods. Because, uh, I separated the strategic, expansion, exploration zones, all that. In reality, even if there is a dominant logic, at the team level, in a product for example, we will have functionalities that are obsolete functionalities. There are others that are really the cash cows, which are the most used of our product, there are others that are in development and others that are in exploration. And so we find somewhere this notion of uh, we have to adjust our working method to what we are doing. And a product is all of that, just like a company is all of its product portfolio. And compared to exploration, it's not Kanban, we're in Lean Startup, Design Thinking, this kind of approach. In product development, we're in Scrum, it doesn't cause much debate. However, the more we go towards exploitation, the more Kanban will be relevant. We're going to go through a mix of both, and in exploitation, we're going to go back to project mode to manage to release all that. Uh, there's no need for collective intelligence. Anyway, it depends on the cases. Maybe in your case, I don't know. I'm sure you have plenty of anecdotes about that. Uh, and so finally, a team, it must be able to finally find its own working method in relation to this context and not in relation to what it likes to do or where it is most comfortable. Uh, it's what will perform best in relation to the context. We move on to the next level. For me, an Agile Coach, he is at the level of tactical agility.
[00:48:37] He must address value chains, so he's an orchestrator, so that's where we find Safe's stuff there. Value orchestrator. At the level above, Agile Coach of organization, strategy. There, everything I told you about archetypes, it's at this level. That is, typically an organization's Agile coach, he needs to know the archetype. Now, archetype doesn't mean we implement an archetype as is. It's an ideal vision in a world cut off from reality. Obviously, we'll have to think about how to actually do it in our organization. And that's where the organization's Agile coach will be very interesting. And then above, we'll have the company's Agile coach, which is the portfolio vision and the architect of all that. So that means we have a sector, and we're on the second floor. Now, some are already starting to go to the third, but for me, we should be able to go to the fourth. However, we must arm ourselves with solutions, of discourse, of knowledge to be able to discuss at each level and propose relevant things. To finish, the flow organization, if I summarize in a few points, well, it's an agile archetype among others. We understood that, so he must cohabitate with others. Uh, but that, uh, well, we know how to do it. It's rather for service-oriented strategies that are optimized for exploitation and flow more than resources.
[00:50:03] And then, well, after that there are dependencies that need to be managed by the limits and so on, and coordination processes, and then there are lots of other things. Uh, the last points, so we'll have a little time for questions if there are any. Uh, it's that my friend Pablo Pernaud, we had written a Kanban book, uh, which was the second in the series. So this is the second edition that we're going to release in May, I don't know what current in May, there you go. So, uh, I'm talking a little bit about that. And then above all, there's the Agile for Enterprise framework that I developed, and above all, it becomes open source.
[00:50:40] So wait, wait.
[00:50:44] Under GitHub. Yeah, thanks to the one who supports me. So that means that obviously, uh, you'll be able to have access. So I'm launching it today because it's the date, but actually, it's
[00:50:58] I still have 20% to add in GitHub but anyway, it's almost finished, we'll say. Uh, it's almost finished.
[00:51:05] By the way, tomorrow, uh, I'm starting a pilot training with my friend Arnaud, here present. Uh, two days to precisely test a little bit all that but in a much more detailed way. So, uh, well, the open source means you have access and you can contribute, give your feedback. Uh, there's not only the framework but workshops, tools and workshops to go with it.
[00:51:30] So I hope that, uh, you will use, contribute, give feedback, uh, that we appropriate it. Why am I putting it in open source? It's because, well, I worked alone, that's good, but companies are so diversified, points of view are so diversified that it's necessary that, well, precisely, that we enrich all this point of view of your contributions from each other.
[00:51:53] Uh, and so that we have an answer, in my opinion, that allows us to climb the levels and address the company. That's all for me.
[00:52:02] Very good.
[00:52:09] Do you have any questions, any remarks?
[00:52:13] We have 5 minutes left, right?
[00:52:17] A question.
[00:52:28] Thank you. Um, I particularly liked the last slide, which gives a little bit of other perspectives than Agile Coach, which ended up being a bit of an all-rounder role, like a project manager. Um, so that gives perspective. I would have liked, in fact, to hear you on, okay, but what weapons
[00:52:41] finally are we going to equip ourselves with to be, so, an Agile Architect or an Agile Strategist? For me, the difference is still a bit blurry.
[00:52:51] That's marketing vocabulary.
[00:52:55] No, behind, uh, what weapons, that is to say?
[00:52:57] You said we'd have to arm ourselves. Ah yeah. That's because, well, we've been around the Agile towers, we know more or less the weapons up to Agile Coach, but what kind of differentiating weapons for the upper level?
[00:53:08] Uh, well, already, uh, it's to arm oneself, to muscle up, rather than to arm oneself, let's say, it resonates more with the athlete's metaphor, to muscle up on organizational design.
[00:53:22] For example. Uh, what does that mean? What is it? What is the perimeter? Uh, and what solution do we propose? So there, I don't have time to detail that. Uh, uh, so precisely in the, in the framework I detail more, uh, but in reality, uh, we already have solutions because precisely the frameworks are implementations. In fact, the framework allows to understand, to have a reading of the frameworks through this bias that gives us a bit of height. And so we already have answers. But you have to go from, okay, I learned this framework, so I deploy it to, according to your context, it's rather that you want, and we will adapt it intelligently, there you go. Afterwards, so I was talking about organizational design, but to talk to management, you have to talk strategy, strategic agility. What does that mean? Is it an agile strategy, an agile agility, what does that mean? And how can we help you in your role, ladies and gentlemen, directors, uh, so that you are, so that we perform, there you go. So strategic agility, it's the ability to change strategy during the course, to adjust it.
[00:54:29] And, uh, very good, because he, the decision, we can change, but the rest must follow. How does it follow? So there are very concrete things. I know I'm going to annoy you, but OKRs are an example. Every time I annoy some people, OKRs are an example of a very concrete tool that allows to align vertically, horizontally, these decisions, but there are others. So it's on this kind of thing, uh, in fact, you have to learn to speak, uh, the same language, uh, as the level where we're going to play. Anyway, I learned that with OKRs, it's clear, agility, they don't care about it up there.
[00:55:08] Yeah, except that when they change strategy because a competitor makes a move, the Comex, he must have confidence in the fact that if he changes course, the rest will follow, and the rest will follow at the right speed, that is to say faster than its competitors, for example. What level of confidence do they have in the fact that it will follow?
[00:55:34] It's always, it's that kind of thing where you have to muscle up, you have to have answers, you have to know how to speak, etc. And there is knowledge to have. I showed you the Graber model. Typically, that one or others, it doesn't matter, well, you have to know how to fill in the boxes, I talked about capacity, but okay, reactive capacity. Afterwards, you have to transform this somewhat generic capacity into something concrete for the company. Yeah, deliver more frequently. I said nonsense, but there you go, that's all. Does that answer your question?
[00:56:03] It's not enough, okay.
[00:56:07] That works.
[00:56:11] Other.
[00:56:14] We'll talk later.
[00:56:17] We'll talk later. 42, we have 3 minutes left.
[00:56:21] No, it's 4 o'clock now.
[00:56:23] Bastien, you're stealing from me.
[00:56:25] Are you staying with us, Laurent, today for the day? Okay, well, I invite you to go see Laurent at lunch break, etc. if you want to continue the discussion with him. Thank you very much, Laurent, for your presentation.
[00:56:44] Thank you. It was the first time I gave it as it was, so, well, you broke it in, and you resisted the second phase, which was more complicated than the first, it seems to me.
[00:56:55] Alright, goodbye.

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