Power, Bureaucracy, Relationships and Achievement

Esther Derby writes about how corporate culture can influence how successful agile processes could be. She describes 4 types of culture:- power, bureaucratic, achievement and relationship. Agile processes are most successful in achievement and relationship cultures.

I think the culture in an organisation often follows a cycle. Initially people want to achieve something. They may not achieve things as fast as some people perceive they can, so management takes control and introduces a "power" culture. The safe option is seen to be to write processes and procedures, leading to a "bureaucratic" culture. Eventually, people work together to work around these, as they feel that the processes don't help them get anything done. This leads to people feeling energised and wanting to achieve something, as shown below:





To help agile methods succeed, you need to keep the culture on the left of the diagram. To reduce the likelihood of a "power" culture being introduced, everything needs to be visible, so management can see that things are being done as efficiently as they can be.

If you're in a bureaucratic culture, you need to move it back to the "relationship" culture as quickly as possible. For this to happen, people need to feel that procedures can be challenged and that they won’t come to any harm if they do so.