So if you are in IBM you are being bombarded with Agile terms and have likely watched some videos at least of what Agile means as a culture.
But the motion is unfortunately failing and will continue to fail in GTS because at the highest levels IBM is not addressing a fundamental requirement for success:
The foundation of employee trust.
Proof of this can be found in our recent past – the effort of the GDFs to incorporate Lean 6 Sigma.
GTS Executives under direction from McKinsey consultants attempted to remake IBM GTS into a new flexible, customer value focused Lean enterprise.
Lean and Agile are both tools – which happen to be extremely similar. Both use the same value stream methods, pain points, customer value first, quick iterations for outputs, eliminations of waste, same collaboration structure, even design. Perhaps the only difference is Agile’s attempt to pull in customers into the collaboration process as early as possible in the process.
But Lean became a four letter word in IBM (much like “duck”) because the Lean movement was used to slash cost (people) out of the business quickly before work could adequately be addressed. Quality, moral, and participation suffered greatly. Specifically, Lean transformation plans would normally take 24 (ish) weeks. Teams would be moved together physically into the GDFs, staff would redistribute work into batches, workflow would take off and as the teams gain traction, bubble staff would be moved to other areas of work (or removed) after the program was fully operational.
But instead Lean was used to slash people at week 9 for one of their major deployments. Work quality plummeted, work was fragmented and dropped, customer sat diminished greatly. In our NY branch the teams moved their families for the GDF but 6 months after being in steady state the work was “transported” to Brazil and India for “skills for value” efforts (offshored).
If you look at IBM’s sales pipeline you can watch it dry up right at this point and existing customers began to stop renewing contracts with IBM. In fact, IBM’s GTS main competition was in India where customer centers were focused on 1 customer at a time instead of trying to matrix in 100s of customers into a shared pool of resources. The dedicated customer teams continued to outperform the GDF model at every turn. Even U.S. based smaller services customers began to take over IBM’s heritage accounts simply because of this dedicated support attention.
In short the IBM Executive team were marching to a different set of values then the rest of the company. And THAT is the reason why IBM GTS is failing. If the executives are focused on short term stock price over customer value then this is the logical outcome.
Now in the present day we see IBM pushing LEAN 2.0… I mean AGILE! We are no longer supporting GDFs instead we are making IOTs! We are not doing Lean value stream, white boards, collaboration! We are doing Agile value streams, white boards, collaboration! What a time to be an IBMer! Wild Duck you to everyone!
There is simply no reason to trust the IBM Executives as a banded employee.
But have no fear! Here is a solution that will GREATLY help push Agile forward into IBM’s culture! We all know that the real strategy is to reduce the U.S. headcount as much as possible and try not to lose too many customers in the process. India and Brazil will continue to take more and more roles as they are less expensive than U.S. based employees. Stock price will continue to be a major concern but if the executives were to follow this plan this would turn around services, improve customer value, and build the trust of employees so that a true and lasting Agile culture can emerge.
The Amazing Executive plan for Success!
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Step 1. Become transparent in virtually all aspects and decision making.
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Step 2. Openly reduce the pay (total compensation) of the Executive team by 25%
This alone will greatly show that the executives are human beings just like the rest of IBM employees. If someone is in the trenches with us, we will work our hardest to ensure we both survive. This is not unreasonable.
A few years back everyone below band 8 took a 15% pay cut. Now even DPEs are taking pay cuts in the U.S. Having the executives also take pay cuts they will begin to gain employee support just by being part of the team.
Once they start to feel the pain of their decisions the honest culture will be formed.
Remember IBM: Just because you are an executive does NOT mean you are in Leadership! Become leaders, be wild ducks and prove you are worth following!