An agile coach is a technical professional, so why should she/he worry about politics at the client’s organization? “Politics” here is meant to include culture, egos, prejudices, hidden agendas, personal priorities and the like. Some of my technical colleagues often focus on the technological aspects of client engagements to the exclusion of other, human-relations aspects. Lack of appreciation of those soft-skills can cause some of the best agile coaches to commit avoidable errors.
Politics alone will not make us successful – ignoring politics, however, is a liability that is bound to hurt us. Here are some tips that I found to be helpful in navigating the political currents at various levels of a client organization:
High-level Champion
Addressing the client’s problems is how we build a value proposition. However, the client is sometimes reluctant for political reasons to cooperate with us to detect their problems. To address that, it helps to have a high-level champion in the organization who is secure enough to help us identify the organizations problems, and hence articulate the value brought by an agile approach to software development. The security of such champion may be, for example, due to seniority or recently joining the organization specifically to address such problems.
Operational Champion
A high-level champion is not likely to be accessible to help overcome daily hurdles. What we need as well is a lower-level, “operational champion” who is savvy and willing to help us navigate the political currents at the client’s organization. She/He can help involve the right resources (i.e. right in competence and attitude) in projects using our solutions, elicit support from those with clout at the client’s organization, and raise successes we achieve at the client’s organization to the highest possible level of visibility.
Proactive Adjustment
In a politically charged environment we often face a dilemma: on the one hand, we need to proactively tell the client what changes they need to implement to achieve the results they desire. On the other hand, political considerations may stipulate that no finger-pointing is allowed, usually not even to improve the results. So we should try to influence the choice of early client projects to have participants with the right attitude. I.e. those who welcome proactive advice. The success of such projects helps to create a momentum within the client’s organization to sway the nay-sayers. If we fail to win over the project participants, we may try as artfully as possible, to escalate the problem to the corporate champion(s) to seek their help for a satisfactory resolution.
We may very well need to effect a cultural shift in the client organization to change traditional project participants into agile go getters. Start effecting that shift with the most sympathetic among the lot of the client, while closely coordinating with the operational champion.
Without those soft skills, navigating the client’s political currents can be more treaturous than it needs to be.
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