posted 15th October 2023
I've recently heard a lot of noise in the market about firms moving away from Agile Coaches and Scrum Masters as roles within their organisations. Teams have been coached (for quite some time in some cases) in agile ways of working, learning frameworks, and management methods so what's left? Why should organisations keep paying for the headcount? It's a fair question. Especially when times are tough and budgets are tight.
As coaches we are great at working with teams, departments, and organisations to make the work visible. However, how many of us can honestly say we're making our impact visible and known in pounds and pennies as coaches?
I've seen great coaches transform teams by relieving them of overburdening, increasing collaboration, reducing waste in their systems, understanding capacity versus demand, and so much more. That said, how many of us then tie these back to the bottom line?
Now I'm not saying we don't celebrate success. We share details like reducing cycle times, increasing engagement, and improving satisfaction levels. Whilst all this is great and valuable, unless it's translated into economic impact it's easily lost on those making business decisions, especially those far removed from the front line in the cost controls function.
If you can show that economic impact it's easy to understand and to invest further in. Agility is never done, it's like our fitness levels. Usain Bolt was the fastest man on the planet (that we know of) but I pretty sure he never stopped looking for more improvement. Tiger Woods dominated golf, yet he always had a swing coach as he understood the impact of not having one. Business agility is never done but it's a hard sell to keep investing in if you can't see the economic value of constant managed evolution. Agility isn't a destination, you'll never get to the finish line but there is always improvement to be realised. To reach the improvement, you need to keep investing. Yet to keep investing businesses need to see the economic impact.
If you can show that economic impact it's easy to understand and to invest further in. Agility is never done, it's like our fitness levels. Usain Bolt was the fastest man on the planet (that we know of) but I pretty sure he never stopped looking for more improvement. Tiger Woods dominated golf, yet he always had a swing coach as he understood the impact of not having one. Business agility is never done but it's a hard sell to keep investing in if you can't see the economic value of constant managed evolution. Agility isn't a destination, you'll never get to the finish line but there is always improvement to be realised. To reach the improvement, you need to keep investing. Yet to keep investing businesses need to see the economic impact.
I guess this all begs the question, "Why isn't the business seeing these improvements our coaching is enabling?" I suppose this has a number of factors:
1. The benefits are an indirect benefit. Maybe you've reduced waste in the system that wasn't really targeted.
2. We got a benefit that has sped things up but we've only sped a cog up in the machine, not the whole machine.
3. The business area is unaware of the benefit. They're not impacted by it directly. We stopped certain calls coming into the service centre but the overall number hasn't dropped.
4. The business doesn't understand our language or logic. So you've reduced work in progress? Is that good? So my people aren't as busy? That sounds negative to someone who targets 100% utilisation (I know, I know, but they are still out there).
This list could go on and on but rather than write a war and peace length effort on this, I'll summarise. Get the relevant data to make the impact easily understood in pounds and pence to bring it back to reality for everyone.
So why am I going on about this? This is easily understood right? Well, the reason I am is whilst it's easily understood, I don't always see this practice happening. I've worked with some phenomenal Scrum Masters and coaches over the years and whilst we all know it's about the teams we work with and they take the credit as we can only invite them to change (they do the hard yards right?), we need to be on the park with these teams to keep the improvement and evolution going. To do that, we need to make the fruits of our labour visible.
If you've worked to reduce cycle time, what's the cost saving? If you've worked to reduce failure demand, what did that failure demand cost the business prior in dealing with it? Tie it back to the bottom line by monetising it and be sure to shout about it. Make it visible. The team will most likely love it too. Who really cares if the cycle time is down versus we've saved this company £X amount by adopting smarter ways of working? We've realised £X by releasing this upgrade 3 months earlier by implementing faster feedback loops. Now you should start to get the right attention and understanding from all.
Yeah, I know what you're saying Matt but it's different where I am because of blah blah blah. It's not different (well it might be, I don't know your context but stick with me), and here are a few examples to hopefully shift your thinking if you're not already on board.
All we need is the data. If we've coached a team and they've evolved the system via automation that's now removed 100 calls to the call center a day, we need the data to know what's the average cost of handling a call. Now we take that cost, times by 100, times by 5, times 52 and you've got your annual saving. It may be an indirect or direct benefit but unless you share it and make it easily understood by tying it back to a monetary value (and please please please validate your data before you share this) then it's easy to see the value we are enabling. Maybe you've been able to release a product to market 3 months early. That's phenomenal, but by reducing time to market, how much revenue have we realised? Get the relevant data, work it out, validate it, and share the economic impact you've made.
The bottom line is as a coach, make your economic impact known and visible as early as possible by utilising validated relevant data. Otherwise, you may need to be prepared to miss out on making a real impact further down the line. Maybe never get the chance to take the organisation on the evolutionary ride that could launch them on a trajectory they didn't even know was possible.
We don't stop going to the gym because we get fit, we keep going to be fit, get fitter, and look after our health. Business should be no different, they just need to see the gains to keep them interested.
Remember 1 % better a day gets us 37 times better over a year. Whilst 1% a day may be a stretch, the compounding value of continuous improvement adds up pretty fast when you commit to it. To be able to commit to it, make the value from the impact visible and understood as often as possible.