How can corporate culture and leadership lay the ground for agile transformation?
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The way toward an agile communications department - Step 5: Evaluation
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How to redesign your target and performance management?
- Align agile work and structures with a responsive target management.
- Ensure that your performance management reflects on individual and team performance.
- Evaluate your agile transformation in terms of efficiency and effectiveness.
Evaluating success and performance in an agile department
Agility is not a goal in itself. It is imperative to evaluate whether the results have really been worth the pain. After all, agility is supposed to make work more efficient and effective, not just more fun and fulfilling. It is equally important to frequently evaluate the advantages and downsides of the agile transformation and make the necessary adjustments.
- Traditional performance management is based on slow and stable markets and an annual target management. It oftentimes neglects the actual value creation and usually rewards sticking to a fixed plan instead of thinking outside the box.
- In the future, it will be important for employees to receive regular feedback throughout the year on their current tasks. Short-term goals create a framework that motivates and actively involves employees.
- Performance review will care less about the individual performance of managers or staff and more about the team as a whole.
About the research project
- The research project was headed by Prof. Dr. Ansgar Zerfass and Dr. Lisa Dühring at Leipzig University. It was carried out from July 2017 to July 2020 and used a multi-faceted approach.
- Thirty-eight interviews were conducted with chief communication officers and senior communication managers from multinational companies that provided insight into the impact of agility on corporations and their communication departments today.
- Ten case studies have been conducted in selected companies that have different levels of experience with agility. Overall, 92 interviews were conducted, each of which lasted approximately an hour with a diverse range of personnel, including CCO board members, heads of strategy, senior communication executives, junior communication staff, human resource managers, agile coaches, and other employees related to the agile transformation.
- In addition to the interviews, we also gathered insights during informal conversations and by attending several workshops and meetings. We also analyzed the documents made available to us.
- Finally, the compiled knowledge was bundled to describe a five-step change process that visualizes the most important steps of the agile transformation.
Key findings
- Step 1: Create a work and management culture, in which the agile transformation can take place. This can be realized by a change of the workplace to support collaboration, creativity and flexibility. On the other hand, it requires a leadership culture that focuses on trust, empowerment and self-management.
- Step 2: Implement the right working platform in an agile project organization. This does not imply restructuring the department's organizational chart, but rather focusing on the team- and cross-departmental work. This can be encouraged by using agile tools and methods.
- Step 3: Old departmental structures and hierarchies have to be adjusted or even dissolved. It is necessary to review established power and management structures so that the agile transformation can be sustainable.
- Step 4: When hierarchies and management positions are eliminated and employees are confronted with changing tasks, a new compensation and incentive system is needed. As well career paths and competence management must be designed differently.
- Step 5: The performance management must be adapted. Previous approaches are too inflexible to take into account the volatility of today's working reality. In the future, performance evaluation at shorter intervals at team level will play a greater role. At the same time, it is important to critically question constantly which dimensions of agility really make sense for a department. Agility should never become an end in itself.
Contact:
c/o Leipzig University
Nikolaistraße 27-29
04109 Leipzig, Germany
info@akademische-gesellschaft.com
Phone: +49 (0)341 97350-52
