Recently my family and I were watching a worldwide bio-diversity seminar online and during one of the segments on Lichen’s (yes it was fascinating) the presenter talked about how Lichens grow and they formed what she called Zones of Antagonism as they looked for more food which allowed them to grow bigger.
The Zone of Antagonism formed a barrier around their space and would ward off any encroachment from another competing Lichen organism for their food source.
This concept immediately got me thinking about how organizations often operate with zones of antagonism as well. We see and deal with them all of the time though we often refer to it as the politics of an organization.
People, due to the siloed design of their organizations' processes, often form what might look like zones of antagonism around their functional area. These manifest themselves in many ways but are often revealed when an organization goes through any type of change management, such as an Agile Transformation.
Change forms a threat to the status quo, to the power bases built up with the current structure of the organization. Power influences outcomes and outcomes drive behaviors. Tell me how someone is incented and we can tell you how you are likely to behave.
We reward success, but which also means that there is a loser. Much like the Lichen looking to compete for food, people often look to influence or consolidate power as much as they can when working within an organization. We have been taught that to move up in an organization implies high levels of authority, influence, and compensation, so these are the drivers for what we see when we pull on the levers of change.
What we as change agents might refer to as resistance might also be called zones of antagonism instead. It’s not that people are resisting as much as they are protecting against either something they know to be a real threat to their current state or something they fear due to a high level of unknowns.
As an Agile coach, we need to put ourselves in the place of the individuals we are coaching and ask if the organization has made clear the vision of why Agile is the way to go and what the organization and the people within it will get out of supporting the move to it?
If leadership for an organization has not made clear the game plan for engaging in change, Agile or otherwise, then people, much like Lichen will respond by establishing their zones of antagonism as a way to delay, thwart or even kill the transformation overall.
We know resistance to change is real, however before condemning the resistance seek to understand it first. It’s this step that starts the real work to remove the zones of antagonism in an organization that will cause the value you seek.
Too often as coaches, we are transactionally hired to come in and teach Scrum, SAFe, or any of the other myriad of frameworks used to ‘implement’ Agile.
The problem is that the frameworks won’t make you Agile, only the mindset of change combined with the vehicle (frameworks) can move you from simply going through the motions and ‘Doing Agile’ to the place we want to be of ‘Being Agile’, where operate in a new normal.