Agile is a framework and way of working that indirectly affects the culture of an organisation in various ways because of the values,principles and mindset it promotes . Let’s explore how Agile affects organisational culture.

1. What is culture?

Let’s first explain what is meant by the culture of an organisation. It can be defined as a set of values, beliefs, attitudes, systems and rules that outline and influence employee behaviour within an organisation. It reflects how employees, customers, vendors and stakeholders experience the organisation and how things are done. It is the social and psychological environment of the organisation.

It is a consistent, authentic behaviour and not just what the organisation says the culture is. It can be seen in how the employees and leadership handle certain situations. For example: how organisations adapt to customer demands;how a manager will correct a mistake of an employee; or even interactions between team members.

2. Why is culture important?

Culture has a direct impact on an organisation’s recruitment efforts as potential employees are most likely to consider the culture of the organisation before joining. It will also determine whether or not the employees stay at the current place of work depending on how the culture is. Employee engagement is also higher in environments with a healthy culture. This includes the employee’s enthusiasm to go to work, their understanding of their role and how it contributes to the greater organisation. According to the Harvard Business Review, not only does higher employee engagement improve productivity it also lowers absenteeism and employee turnover. The quality of work produced also increases.

Every organisation aspires to attract the best people in the market and culture is an important aspect. Have you heard of the phrase “Culture will eat strategy for breakfast”? This essentially means you can have a great strategy but if your culture is not right it’s impossible for that strategy to be implemented successfully long term.

3. What is considered a great organisational culture?

People are at the heart of every great organisational culture, no matter how unique the culture is. It revolves around creating a supportive and a psychologically safe environment.

The following qualities are some characteristics of a great culture:

• Alignment between the organisation’s objectives and the employee motivations.
• Honesty and transparency between employees and trust that each individual is able to do their job.
• Employees are appreciated and frequent recognition is given for contributions to the team.
• Trust is the most important characteristic. Employees need to feel they can express themselves, try new things and not be reprimanded for it.
• Teamwork and a sense of collaboration, communication and support amongst employees done with respect for each other.
• Innovation and autonomy, the ability to apply creative thinking and take calculated risks in all aspects of one’s role.
• Psychological safety is also important in that employees should feel supported to take risks and there’s a level of trust to be able to receive honest feedback. This starts at team level and leadership also needs to lead by example enabling everyone on the team to contribute.

4. What does Agile have to do with organisational culture?

The answer lies in the principles and values that Agile embraces. Agile leads with principles that are, in fact, characteristics of a good culture. In an effort to leverage the delivery benefits of Agile, the culture of the organisation is indirectly positively affected. A large part of the success criteria of Agile coaching is the change in employee’s behaviour. Failure on this end usually results in practices that are just being followed (and enforced) and not an internalised way of working.

Culture forms a huge part of an Agile transformation as Agile is a mindset and not just something that an organisation does but what an organisation is. This is key to the success of transformation efforts. Over the years I have gotten to work in both Agile and non-Agile environments (including clients). I’ve found that there has often been a correlation between the quality of the culture and how employees’s experience the environment based on whether or not these environments were Agile or not. This is not to say that environments that are Agile environments automatically have great cultures and those that do not have bad ones. It’s also important to mention that certain environments are less likely to adopt Agile as a way of working due to the nature of work that is done. In those cases, from my personal experience, these are some of the attributes that clearly indicate if a culture is a healthy one:

• Trust within the team and with management.
• Genuine respect amongst the team members.
• Autonomy which links back to trusting team members to do their work. The opposite of micromanagement.
• Psychological safety. Do employee’s feel safe? Do they feel that the team has their back and they won’t be punished or humiliated for speaking up?

There are more attributes that indicate a healthy culture, but these are the ones that over the years have stood out as essential for a great culture. If you look closely at the above attributes they are dependent on each other - for example, you cannot have trust without psychological safety. Trust, Respect and Autonomy are values that Agile encourages and if continuously practised begin to influence the culture of an organisation. On the flip side: if an organisation is not Agile but lives out those values, they also generally have a great culture. With that being said, it is also possible to have a specific team that is Agile while the rest of the organisation is not (typically as a result of organisational silos).

5. Characteristics of Agile

Agile principles and values are aligned to the characteristics of what is considered a good culture and these are some of the characteristics.

• Innovation is encouraged and employees are given the autonomy to try new ideas. They are allowed to experiment, knowing that the culture supports learning from failure.
• Continuous improvement, continuously reflecting and improving how things are done in the future and learning from mistakes.
• Transparency and open communication amongst team members and stakeholders.
• Collaboration and team empowerment encourages the team to work together. The autonomy to make decisions and solve problems.
• Adaptability and flexibility to embrace change and evolve where necessary.
• Shared accountability and ownership team members are invested in the project’s overall success rather than the individual tasks.
• A sustainable pace of work is promoted, reducing the likelihood of burnout and fostering a healthier work-life balance. This, in turn, contributes to a more positive and supportive organisational culture.

Adapting Agile requires an organisation to evolve the culture so that it supports the Agile values and principles. A shift in mindset and commitment to cultural change is absolutely necessary. This contributes to the positive culture shift that contributes to improved teamwork and productivity within the organisation.

I want to leave you with this: Agile is about continuous improvement. So, as a team you should be consistently reflecting on what is working and what is not in order to get continuous feedback to adjust and change where needed.

Finally, how would adopting Agile as a way of working affect the current culture in your organisation?

Some recommended reading:

• https://www.atlassian.com/agile/advantage/agile-mindset
• https://www.coursera.org/articles/what-is-agile-a-beginners-guide
• https://huler.io/blog/signs-of-a-great-company-culture

Mandisa Masilela