How business agility improves culture and aids retention

Welcome to Definitely Maybe Agile, the podcast where Peter Madison and David Shurik discuss the complexities of adopting new ways of working at scale. Hello and welcome to another episode of Definitely May Be Agile. Today we continue our series on how business agility impacts your bottom line. What's on the cards today, Dave?

This is really an interesting one. I think the last time we talked, we talked about internal and external perspectives when we were talking about profitability. And I wanted to revisit the conversation that we had about reducing costs because there's the reducing costs, which is just operational expense of getting stuff done. But there's something else that we're seeing in a lot of organizations that really understand business agility, is around a topic which is very important to a lot of organizations now, is around HR and retention or attrition of the team getting the job done. And this isn't really hate your operational expense necessarily, but it's something that really can be a distraction and a churn generator within an organization if you're really fielding um that recruitment problem or attrition/slash retention problem.

I'd agree, and because it's very expensive to hire. And uh when you're looking at building a culture, there's two sides to this, right? There's the one which is you want a client, a culture where people uh want to be, where they want to work together, where they want to collaborate, where they want to create awesome products and they want to uh uh be with people they enjoy working with and they want to be continually learning. And so we want to build those those cultures, those organizations uh where people want to stay. And that also is the culture that people want to come to. People are attracted by that. And that makes it easier to hire and bring people in and easier to find great people as well. So I think I see it as kind of those two two sides of it.

It's uh I was actually having a conversation a couple of weeks ago now with a CEO for an organization where they came clean and said 90% of their time is recruitment. Like recruitment, that that not just the attraction, but retention becomes, I mean, it's it's a little bit like you know, it's always easier to work with like retaining a customer is always cheaper than attracting a new customer. Well, if I replace the word customer there, retaining our employees, our best employees is always better than trying to go out and find somebody and the whole cost that that entails. And we're in the we're in a big sort of period of of change in that space right now. And I think it it's therefore doubly important that we recognize that the environment that we're building is has a huge impact on that aspect of of uh recruitment.

I I agree, because we're I every every organization I'm talking to and working with at the moment uh has open positions and uh and a lot of open positions too. Everybody's looking for for great people to fill them and for for lots of reasons. Uh some of it is because of uh of attrition and people moving on, other parts of it are simply because of growth, uh, and there's uh trying to find the right people uh takes time and it takes effort. And so one of the ways in which uh uh business agility can help your bottom line, help you in this space is by helping you attract the right people and help you uh help the you and I skeep, I kind of feel is a little strong word, but uh gives people a good reason to want to stay with you and work with you and uh build and uh help the organization grow.

Well, I always loved what I think it was Reed Hastings who was writing about LinkedIn many years ago, about this idea of sort of a three-year period with an employee. Their goal at LinkedIn, I believe, and I'm paraphrasing an article I read many years ago, but uh they their goal was to sort of map out a three-year journey and hope that you know they would have an employee-employer relationship and they'd expect it to last around three years and hopefully be able to negotiate and set out the next three years and the next three years, but they recognize it as an opportunity for both sides to learn from one another, gain something that moves both sides forward. And I think that's a great sort of articulation of what we look for in a business, in an agility in an organization, which is really elevating that whole conversation around employees to how to more of a partnership where there's really something that's both sides are benefiting from, and we want to have that conversation. Maybe three years is too short, and we want to be able to have a longer um relationship, but that's something that is continually reviewed and revised in organizations that are embracing agility because because the environments that they're working in are continually changing, and the objectives they're working for and the you know the opportunities which are there shift continually.

Which is uh, and of course, not everybody likes constant change, so that you're gonna have people who are gonna find that strange, but you're gonna have parts of your organization which are gonna stick together. You're gonna have the right people for the culture that you need at that moment in time, and you can have a stronger understanding of what that means and the kinds of people that you're looking for to fill those roles, which in turn makes it easier to uh uh keep the organization uh together and heading in the direction you want it to head. Uh so with that, how would you sum this up in uh in sort of three points?

Well, so I think the first one is recognizing, especially in the today's climate, understanding that retention and uh the corollary of attrition of the people that you have working in your organization is a significant impact on the bottom line, on wasted time and effort and investment. So that's number one, just recognizing that. And and I think many organizations recognize it. Perhaps what they don't always follow up with is the understanding of agility and and what impact that can have in terms of attraction um and and retention. The the second one is is a lot of it is bringing people up into that conversation. And I use that example from uh LinkedIn, but there are many more than that, and there's of just understanding that there's it's more than in an employee-employer related kind of contractual relationship or transaction. And then the third one might be I I think you put it really, really well of the right fit at the right place. So I was describing it in terms of change and opportunity because that's something that I really relate to. Um, and I think you brought it down really, really nicely to say, well, there's the right fit. You've got the right people and the right fit, and that's something that um agility enables, or at least is in the heart of what they're trying to uh what we're trying to do when we're talking about that.

Yeah, it's that uh that people focus of uh business agility that gives you an understanding of what the roles are, what do they align to, a better understanding of what do you actually need to be able to uh deliver as an organization. So so with that, we'll uh wrap this up for today. If uh as always you can reach out to us at uh feedback at definitely maybeagile.com. And thank you, Dave. Thanks again, Peter. You've been listening to Definitely Maybe Agile, the podcast where your hosts Peter Madison and David Sharrick focus on the art and science of digital, agile, and DevOps at scale.