I have taken many courses in my life.
I have been very fortunate to not have paid for them all myself.
Among those courses were Lean, Scrum and Agile.
At first, I was taken by them.
I soon came to realize that they don’t necessarily or easily fit or work in all environments.
There are concepts in all of them that make sense and that have had real impact in many organizations.
This cannot be denied.
That said, as the old adage goes, context matters.
If you are in a tech startup or a manufacturing environment, these might make sense.
The concept of continuous improvement on its own also very logical.
We need to be innovative and iterate as fast as possible, or maybe not.
Rapid iteration is not always possible.
I can tell you from a very personal level of experience, in highly regulated or rigid work environments, change can take a substantial amount of time.
No matter how brilliant your PowerPoint presentation is, you can’t necessarily drastically impact the pace of change in your workplace.
Compliance in addition to regulation can require a substantial amount of data and documentation.
Organizational or cultural tradition might also need to be respected and even strongly adhered to.
If the organization culture is not ready for these frameworks, the programs might fall flat.
You can’t ever really force people to do things a certain way unless you want to punish for non-compliance at the same time.
These methodologies require extending trust, open communication, and autonomous teams.
This is not something that can be achieved overnight especially if you literally have the opposite command and control workplace culture.
Not every environment creates something new each week or even each year.
Many environments don’t even have clear roles and responsibilities and expectations.
Deliverables and milestones don’t even factor in the day-to-day.
Not to mention the focus on efficiency might stifle creativity and miss the humanistic element.
And, I don’t believe I have ever heard talk about circadian rhythms in these frameworks, not to mention compassion fatigue in human centered professions.
At the end of the day, organizations may need to customize what works best for their environment and maybe even more importantly, that what is best for the people.
Build it, don’t just borrow it.