Read this article about IBM, one of our finalists, in the category Best Achievement in Cultural Transformation & Sustainability to deliver a high performing Enterprise Excellence Culture, selected by the independent judging panel, for the 2019 Business Transformation & Operational Excellence Industry Awards program. Click here to read articles on other finalists.

For any company that is more than 100 years old, changing the DNA is hard, but not impossible. With strong support from our leadership team, we embarked on a radical journey to change our culture and improve on the value we provide to IBM clients, business partners, sellers, and employees, by infusing the Agile methodology into our organization and employing the following best practices:

• Forming and scaling Agile teams that have a clear purpose
• Redistributing the work based on prioritized value streams
• Guiding and enabling teams to continuously improve through intensive coaching and visual metrics management
• Selecting the right leaders, with the right Agile mindset and attitude
  

The short-term strategy for the Accelerate program was centered around introducing the concept of Agile for operational work, reorganizing our teams in to smaller teams (squads) focused on the value stream to our clients, and introducing the Agile practices of visual metrics management. This strategy included organizational redesign, training and coaching, and operating under a new, Agile management system.

A cultural shift of this magnitude does not happen quickly. It is our long-term strategy to transform the way we work at IBM by scaling our approach across the enterprise and gaining momentum from the phenomenal results that we have achieved so far. As we do this, we are seizing opportunities to improve our skills and speed with further integration across value streams. In order to change to an agile way of working the structure, workflows, and metrics are just as important as the values, principles, and practices. Just trying to train and coach on values, principles and practices, without aligning the structure and processes will not result in a transformation that sticks.

We have completed two phases of Accelerate program within the Shared Services team. By creating an Agile working environment where innovation flows from the squads up, we have seen an innumerable amount of operational excellence projects that are driven by a spirit of continuous improvement.

Today, the Agile Shared Services Quote-to-Cash organization successfully supports nearly 40,000 sellers, 40% faster and 25% less expensive than in 2016. Coupled with 30% increase in team’s throughput and 5% increase in employee satisfaction, these results speak for themselves.

The Accelerate helped with reducing complexity of the organizational design: we reduced 64% of job roles, which previously caused redundancy and confusion; reassessed our risk framework and eliminated ~60% of our redundant business controls; reassessed and removed 75% of our legacy metrics and removed two organizational layers.  Our success also Ignited change for other IBM business units—touching a population that is 50% larger than our organization.

In the end, what drove our team and our results was our goal to create a culture and a workplace where employees feel more empowered because of Agile: they have a better shared understanding and clarity of outcomes; they are able to delight clients in record time; and, they are able to think more boldly and help the company to continuously improve.