That agility is a change of mindset you already know, but how to take the step of a cultural change within organizations is a conversation that few companies can actually have, much more than a plan, a clear description is needed.
Culture is a combination of knowledge, behaviors, traditions, and values among so many other variables that encompass a society. It is like the soil in which organizational structures take root, if it is toxic the plants may flourish, but have a limited life cycle and suffer from anomalies. If it is rich the organization will progress just like Methuselah's tree.
The soil is not always rich enough to nourish the growth, in the Bonsai example it is necessary from time to time to prepare the plant for a new cycle, maintaining a basic structure for growth, the name of this transplanting process is called Nemawashi. We talk about it in the book Driven By Value.
Preparing the soil involves discovering the roots, cutting out those that are no longer useful, and preparing those that will serve to nourish the future state. Some roots will stay and grow at a natural pace to their new state, others will suffer an abrupt break in their execution, others will emerge from scratch and help this new current state. It's a change, and when we work in Lean, we talk about a few types of change:
Kaizen = 改善 = change + good = improvement, continuous improvement, the roots that already exist will be improved;
Kaikaku = 改革 = change + revolutionary = radical change, transformation; the roots that have been pruned, have had their course altered to a new state;
Kakushin = 革新 = new + revolutionary = innovation, renewal, disruptive, the new roots that do not exist and were created to meet this new change.
In other words, we need to understand based on the future state, what changes we are proposing for each area, and here comes the idea of Nemawashi, we will prepare the planting for what we need to change.
That's why it is common that within a transformation, we start with those areas of the organization that already work with agility: areas of technology, innovation, and operational excellence will undergo a Kaizen evolution, they already have a part that we need, we just need to improve it.
On the other hand, some areas will need a more abrupt evolution, it can be the case of a planning, development, or engineering area, where we need to radically change the way we are working. This means that there will be a relatively large initial loss of productivity, but that we will soon be able to reach a new state of higher capability.
In other cases we will create something totally new, such as the emergence of areas focused on value generation or knowledge dissemination, like the VMOs, COEs, and LACEs that seek to support disruptive innovation within the organization.
The trick is that there is no rule for when to apply each of the changes, Kaizen, Kakushin, and Kaikaku; the design of the future state will give a direction to the changes we are proposing. We can even use all three types to produce the same change.
Preparing the agile mindset means preparing the soil for planting, doing the Nemawashi. Understanding who will be our early adopters: the ambassadors, which will be our points of resistance, which changes should be radical, and which ones we will create from scratch. It is a complete, difficult job that requires a long analysis, but it produces perennial changes that will guide the organizations for the next growth cycles.