If you are one of the people in your organization that is helping to increase the Agility of people, teams, or the organization overall, then you are a cultural change agent. According to Merriam-Webster’s, culture is “the set of shared attitudes, values, goals, and practices that characterizes an institution or organization” and “a way of thinking behaving, or working that exists in a place or organization.” Agile brings a new set of attitudes, values, goals, beliefs, and practices; and a new way of thinking, behaving, and working.
In this highly interactive session, we will examine the kinds of cultural and behavioral changes that Agile can bring, the benefits of those changes, and the practices and techniques that can ease the inevitable culture clash. Participants will split up into small cross-functional groups which will go through a series of exercises to discover their current level of “Agile culture”, the many sub-cultures in an organization and their unique challenges, behavioral changes that lead to cultural change, and the opportunities that we all have to personally affect our organization’s culture.
One of the highlights of the workshop is a thought experiment called “the locked room” which gives participants an opportunity to see their organization’s culture in a new light, imagine a more Agile culture, and consider the changes required to move to that more Agile culture.