Ice, water, steam: reflecting on the language of agile teams
By: James Bergin
Tags: Engineering, Agile, Team, Organizational Change, Technology

Ice, water, steam: reflecting on the language of agile teams

How to move to a fluid state, so you can adapt to uncertain times

Photo by Scott Rodgerson on Unsplash

Lately, I’ve been thinking about what we need to do to continue our journey towards world-class engineering, and perform at that level over the long term. I’ve also been thinking about how Xero’s next stage of growth is going to look nothing like our last stage of growth. In fact, I believe it’s less about growth itself and more about transformation. A transformation akin to turning ice or steam into liquid water. Let me explain.

The language of agile organisations

Have you ever noticed that when describing the ideal state of most modern organisations, we use the language of liquid? The properties of water are much like the properties of an organisation that can adapt to changing and uncertain times. It’s ‘fluid’ and ‘dynamic’ and ‘responsive’. It can be channelled and controlled, and has a constant and controlled force built up behind it.

This aspirational language is common in large, traditional, long-standing corporations the world over. These organisations have heard about agile methodologies and operating models like the oft-referenced Spotify model of tribes, squads, chapters and guilds. And recently, they have started listening to the people and consultants who have told them for years that they needed to ‘get agile’.

When we talk about organisations like this, you’ll notice that there is a tendency to (not always kindly) use the language of ice: ‘middle management permafrost’, ‘frozen in time’, ‘moving at a glacial pace’. So when they say they want to become more agile, what they’re really saying is they want to transform their organisation from ice to water. Now, if I recall my high school physics correctly, there are two ways to do this: we can increase pressure, or we can turn up the heat.

You can see this in the way digital transformation projects are run in many large organisations. They try and get everyone to go, go, go! They put pressure on with hard deadlines and high expectations, hoping that the momentum will cause that solid block of ice to move and flow, like water. They’re trying to chip away at that ice and heat things up. Which is all very well if you’re an old-school organisation that wants to be more agile. But what if you’re a newer SaaS or tech company?

Channelling the steam of innovation

When it comes to the tech sector, this liquid language still describes our ideal state. But the current state of many of these companies is probably better described with the language of steam (yes, I’m taking this analogy as far I can!). You often hear about start-ups that are experiencing ‘explosive growth’ and under ‘high pressure’. You hear about things ‘heating up’. And inside those companies, you often hear things like ‘it’s hard to see clearly’ and maybe even ‘it’s a bit foggy!’

Everyone is trying to channel that energy, but they don’t have time to think about it too deeply, because there’s a vent of steam over there to try and control. No wait, there’s another one over there. No, wait! Another one! You hopefully see where I’m going with this. You have organisations with massive growth, fuelled by the ‘steam’ of innovation and the fact their product is taking off in the market. That may be okay for the first few years, but it’s also very opportunistic. There’s little time to focus on turning all of that into something that is sustainable and that will endure in the long-term.

When we do get the opportunity to think about what’s next for companies like this, we also don’t want to slow things down so much that they turn into a slow-moving corporate with no ability to adapt. So how do we get this balance? How do companies like Xero or Facebook or Google become 100-year old companies, without freezing up? (Because the dark side of playing with steam is that you can get burned; it’s not too smart or sustainable in the long term.)

Well, how about we start by reducing the heat and the wrong kind of pressure.

Cooling things down (but not too much)

I had a lot of people approach me when I started at Xero because they were worried about Xero becoming ‘too corporate’. So I asked: what do you mean by that? Because if you don’t want to be bureaucratic and political and slow-moving, then I totally agree! But, if what you’re saying is that you don’t want any kind of consistency, any kind of clear and repeatable way of doing the right things, or a set of best practice standards to work towards, then I’m probably less aligned to agree with that point of view.

We need to take the best bits of long-standing organisations to cool things down (like a bit of ice in our glass) but not enough that we become frozen too. It’s a tricky balance, because if we cool things down too quickly — implementing too much structure and too many processes — we could end up with a cultural disaster. We don’t want to lose that energy, we just want to transform it into something that is more sustainable. So we need to do this gradually.

A great example is the technology we use. We want teams to think about solving the problem, not necessarily what tool they use to do it. So we encourage diversity in technology. Cooling it down might look like reviewing all those tools and thinking about which ones are truly adding value, so we can condense down our list and make better use of the stuff we already have. Another example is tech debt — spending more time paying off some tech debt definitely reduces the pressure on teams, and thereby reduces some of the heat they can feel from unplanned outages and constraints on releasing quickly and often.

Thoughts on transforming your team

If you’re a people or team leader, I think you have an opportunity to reduce the wrong kind of pressure for your team. You don’t need to wait for a big strategic review either — you can start right now.

Deal with ambiguity

I’m not talking about the real ambiguity in our lives (hello, COVID-19!) that we need to deal with through things like fostering resilience, providing support and being empathetic. No, I’m referring to the ‘manufactured’ ambiguity that often results from not communicating clearly or consistently and where people don’t know what you expect of them or how they should operate. In those situations, it’s your job to deal to that ambiguity.

By being clear about what the team’s focus should be, focusing on the important rather than the urgent, and limiting work-in-progress, you’re reducing the pressure on your team. Ask yourself this: are you clear on what you’re expecting from your teams? How clearly have you made those expectations known? What simple messaging have you used to outline what needs to be achieved? And what support are you putting in place to help them achieve those outcomes?

Use the support model

Speaking of support, I’m a big fan of the idea of reframing traditional reporting lines (as shown on most org charts) into ‘supporting lines’. If you’re not familiar with this concept, it is designed to better illustrate servant leadership in action. Those who are closest to the customer are placed at the top of the chart, who are then supported by the managers beneath them, supported by the executive team, and so on down to the CEO as the ‘ultimate supporter’ at the base of the chart. It’s a good reminder that we’re here to support our teams — the people ‘on the ground’ should feel supported by all these people, not pressured by the weight of a structured reporting model.

Reduce cognitive load

The average person has a certain amount of cognitive load they carry on any given day. Getting out of bed and starting your day, sending the kids to school… all these routine activities still take up a certain amount of your cognitive capacity. When you finally get around to starting to work, you are already not operating at 100% available cognitive capacity. And when a global pandemic happens, you are operating with even less! So as leaders, we need to consider the cognitive load that the work environment brings and think about what we can do to reduce unnecessary pressure.

At Xero, we have #human as a value of ours, so we are encouraged to frequently check in with the people we support and our colleagues and find out how things are going. We also have a number of initiatives in our engineering practice that are geared towards reducing the cognitive load that an engineer faces each day — things like clear standards, education, tooling and support from other engineers with some of the trickier problems they are facing.

Focus on the next thing

There are so many things that you cannot legitimately control about the operating context you and your organisation are in. So why spend all your energy on those things when you can instead focus on what you can control. Think about the things that won’t change: your purpose, your long-term vision, your values. And focus on the next thing you can do to work towards those, no matter how small that next thing is. That’s why at Xero we tend to talk in 10-year language. Things may change in the short-term, but if we are clear about what we’re trying to achieve, who we are trying to help, and what we want to be as an organisation, then that can help orient us to what is important (over what is simply just urgent).

At Xero, we’re in the business of making people’s lives better. That’s not something we can do overnight, and it’s not something we can do if we burn people out. It is our enduring purpose and it requires endurance. So we’re working hard to make sure that we have the right amount of support and clarity to balance out the heat and the pressure so that we continue to innovate in a sustainable way.

Part of that work is encouraging our teams to be agile in the true sense of the word — fluid, dynamic, responsive — and sustainably so. By doing this, instead of leaping on every opportunity or getting bogged down reinventing the wheel, they can focus on the real work of solving customer problems. So next time somebody talks about being agile, maybe think about what state your team is in and whether you just might need a different style of transformation.