Turning frustration into collaboration

When looking for agile transformation, as a consultancy, one of the key areas that we look to transform is the synergy between departments.

In this particular client case study, our focus was on a Crypto Exchange, Fan Token Unicorn scaleup, that was going through hyper-growth (from 70 circa 500 people) within a single year on multiple locations in Europe with teams, goals and ways of working changing on the fly.

Michele Buonaiuto, our Agile/Lean specialist, found that the head of product knew exactly what the challenges were and what transformation he wanted to see, yet was struggling to find a sustainable way forward.

Step 1: From frustration to collaboration

When Lithe started working with the company, the product teams were increasingly becoming frustrated and overwhelmed by the demands on their department, and there was constant friction between the departments – there was a genuine divide. Our key role in this particular project? A rather unique ask to remove frustration and make for a more frictionless experience within the organisation.

“We started by encouraging open communication between teams”

The Lithe coaches worked closely with team members at all levels to understand and get to the root cause of the stress the teams were under. 

“At the time, the teams didn’t connect or know each other. With our approach and guidance and in line with Agile methodology and a mix of positive psychology (leadership) practices. We brought structure to the teams and added product owners to each team. We used daily and retrospective meetings to help team members get to know and appreciate each other better and inspect the current ways of working.”
This gave the teams perspective on who they were dealing with, amongst each other and formed the basis for improving collaboration, unified goal setting and team building and developing a unique culture of collaboration.

Lithe made use of the standard rituals of the Scrum and Kanban framework and positive leadership practices and implemented tactics that allowed team members to appreciate each other’s skill-sets, as well learning people how to delegate tasks, remove impediments, and increase transparency of the work which all boosted morale.

 “The biggest result we found from when we entered to when we exited, was positive collaboration and clear communication between all parties involved.” – Michele Buonaiuto

What we achieved through our involvement was a group of people that were talking to each other in a better way than they had been when we were brought in.

We supported the teams by breaking the silos they were operating in and we helped to foster an environment where teams could openly communicate and understand what was being expected of them and how they were going to deliver on them.

“We all possess distinct character strengths that are associated with the six virtues of positive psychology theory”. (Seligman, 2002)

Step 2: Chaos to organisation

The product team was overwhelmed for a reason: 

• There was an intense amount of product backlog;

• Other departments were fielding requests from various directions across all departments; 

• They were handling multiple requests with no clear priority and no predictable date of release.

All of these led to extra hours and an incredible amount of physical and mental effort going into producing a half-decent output.

This led to frustration between teams and wasn’t helping in achieving company bottom-line results.

We worked with the teams to re-organise their production line system. Lithe implemented a more coherent product backlog prioritisation and assigned categories on how each request would be handled. This was done by understanding the velocity with which the product team could produce output within their sprint cycles for a more predictable timeline for product features and by managing expectations across departments, as well as introducing more specialist teams that could handle different categories of requests.

In order for processes to be tested and optimised, Lithe also introduced bespoke process frameworks. This meant that whilst we encouraged agility in the organisation, we introduced rituals and elements that were standardised and across all teams.

The tools that the teams used, such as Jira, became a prescribed way of working; we allowed for adjustments to be made along the way, while the approach from the outset was to establish consistency. Even though the company was undergoing change management, having a fixed structure on how to implement processes, track backlogs and outputs and understand where the anchors were. 

To solidify the approach of workflows and processes, Lithe coached the organisation continuously at all levels and not just at the leadership level. We also ran workshops on the difference between command and control versus adaptive/agile leadership. Implementing this approach supported the leadership team in their release management process.  

Step 3: Alignment in roles

Alongside the Chapter Leads, our team identified the misalignments in roles across teams and leadership. There were talented team members with specialist skill sets that weren’t placed in the right roles, hence affecting their performance and the effectiveness of the delivery. 

We supported the teams to make the best use of their members strengths and skills they had to showcase. Michele’s approach to identify these strengths was to use The Values in Action (VIA) Survey of Character Strengths report to get in-depth insights to where team members could be best placed and how to coach them and analyse the psychological factors that were contributing towards their performance.

“Within positive psychology, personal strengths are defined as our built-in capacities for particular ways of thinking, feeling, and behaving” (Linley, 2008).

We enabled the adoption of positive leadership principles, such as Perspective, Fairness and Curiosity, to enable team team members to fully express their potential.

“One of the key contributions positive psychology has made is supporting individuals to reflect on, consider, and identify their core strengths to utilise them to lead a flourishing life.” (Boniwell, 2006)

Lithe worked to support members in Identifying their Positive Strengths (According to the VIA Strengths standard) and letting them understand where they could better fit in the Organisation to be happier and more productive.

This meant that we were able to advise placing team members in roles where they thrived and took more ownership of their accountable areas.

The results

When Lithe had been asked to support in removing frustrations from within the organisation, the teams were disconnected and the lead time from inception to delivery of products was considerably delayed.

Communication was dysfunctional and product backlogs were full to the brim.

During our support, we supported in creating an environment where the teams had synergy and weren’t just operating at squad level anymore. This meant a more collaborative and communicative workplace where ideas were shared openly and solutions sought practically. 

Lithe coached the team members and the leadership team towards a more adaptive mindset of leadership and the outcomes they wanted to achieve for the company. 

The internal transformation for the organisation meant that all departments were working more collaboratively towards a more aligned vision for the company and improvement in bottomline results. 

Experiencing something similar in your organisation? Let’s talk and see how Lithe can support you.