Innovation, Agility and Culture

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INNOVATION, AGILITY AND CULTURE
By Huib Wursten, Thomas Imfeld, and Martin Karaffa
Keywords: Agility, Cultural dimensions, Mental Images, Management, Innovation, Bridging
Summary: In a globalizing world there is a growing focus on innovation. Businesses and
governments are aware of the importance of investing in knowledge and in finding ways to
keep up to date, or to get an edge on global competition.
In this article we sort out the cultural elements that play a role in understanding how culture
influences innovation. More specifically we analyze how a contemporary concept like
“agility” is related to innovation and culture. We discuss the potential barriers by clusters of
similar cultures, and give advice how to overcome these barriers. While all of Wursten’s 7
Mental Images of Culture are covered, deeper analysis focuses on the Contest, Japan and
Machine cultures.
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Right now, you’re probably reading these words on an electronic device. It won’t be long
before that device grows impatient with you.
Once a month, your iPhone Settings icon glows with a red dot that urges you to update your
operating system. Microsoft regularly niggles you to quit your Office applications and restart
so the latest version can load; in January 2020, Microsoft released four new builds for retail
customers of Office. Updated is the new new.
These reminders form the tip of a very large iceberg which has revolutionized design,
development, and innovation. We know it as the Agile movement. Yet, what do we mean
when we talk about agile? Is agile a culture?

How do we use the terms agile, Agile and agility in this paper? In short, Agile with a capital
A refers to a bundling of concepts, principles, processes and methods which support a state of
mind in a team or organization enabling permanent adaptation to changing environments.
When we use agile with a small a, we are using it in the colloquial sense.
Describing the history of Agile can sound like a movement for political or social change. In
2001, a hard-core of believers met and declared a revolution. They wrote a manifesto, which
states clear values which diverge from the status quo. The manifesto lists practical principles
to guide daily decisions. The believers had a radical vision of what a reinvented world will
look like, and what qualities the citizens of this new world should possess. A passionate
group of adherents followed the revolutionaries, and upset the status quo. More people began
to taste the fruits of Agile thinking, and the status quo yielded. As happens with so many
movements, the revolutionaries are now the Establishment.
Agile methods have their roots in two distinctive places, Japan and the United States. But the
need for business to adopt Agile methods respects neither national borders nor cultural
boundaries. The authors take the view that the culture of Agility is nationally agnostic; its
values and principles don’t map onto any country perfectly. In every cultural environment,
Agile leaders must adjust their methods, and tailor their practices.
We’ll explore the nuts-and-bolts application of Agile processes, using Scrum as an example.
But any discussion of Agile must go further. Clearly, Agile is not just a way to make
software; it’s changed the mechanics of progress in a digital world. Beyond business, Agile
affects how we look at innovation, creativity and education.
Before discussing agility let’s first analyze the concept of innovation.
Innovation
When speaking about innovation it is important to make a distinction between true
innovation and simply the process of improving existing processes and products.
Talking about innovation in this paper refers to the notion of doing something different
rather than doing the same thing marginally better. An improvement amounts to an
innovation when it is a step-change; a difference in degree which becomes a difference in
kind.

Innovation is an important element in the survival of companies in times of creative
destruction. This is a concept first formulated some 70 years ago by economist Joseph
Alois Schumpeter, saying that corporations maintain their leadership positions only if they
creatively and continuously reconstruct themselves.
Innovation is equally important for economic growth of countries. Education plays
an essential role in this in emphasizing needed special skills and competencies for the
future. Economists who have studied the relationship between education and economic
growth confirm however that, once a certain level of knowledge is reached, other factors
become more important. Baker (Baker 2007) says:
“What matters most for the economic, cultural, and technological success is
“ambition, inquisitiveness, independence, and perhaps most important, the absence
of a fixation on testing and test scores.” He adds some strong advice: ” The more we
focus on tests, the more we kill creativity, ingenuity, and the ability to think
differently. Students who think differently get lower scores. The more we focus on
tests, the more we reward conformity and compliance, getting the right answer.”
To avoid conformity and compliance, two competences are important: critical thinking and
creative thinking
Critical thinking is not the same as logical thinking. It is about engaging critically with
knowledge, but also develop powers of critical self-reflection and critical action. ” Critical
thinking is, in short, self-directed, self-disciplined, self-monitored, and self-corrective
thinking”. (Perkins 1990) He explains the relationship between critical thinking and
creative thinking. He argues that:
“Good creative thinking depends on multiple evaluations of options (i.e. a critical
thinking task), whereas good critical thinking relies on the imagination of different
perspectives (i.e., a creative thinking task). Therefore, the two kinds of thinking are
in fact interrelated and interdependent on one another, and it would be difficult (or
even impossible) to make a clear distinction between them.”
They might be different in terms of their goals. The goal of critical thinking is to evaluate
and assess ideas, whereas the goal of creative thinking is to generate original ideas.
The question is how does critical and creative thinking relate to an approach that is “hot”
in discussions about organizational behavior business strategy: Agility?
Agility

Agile innovation is, at its core, easily explained by the exponential growth and importance of
software development.
Traditional innovation uses specialist teams to develop atomized elements of a product before
handing the results over to the next set of specialists—this process is known as a waterfall or
monochronic approach. Silos are seen as both productive and efficient. While the result
minimizes flaws, it consumes time and hence financial resources. Many see a kind of
“perfection paralysis” in traditional innovation methods.
The problem becomes acute when creating software. Software is complex, mercurial, and
fickle. Even the simplest software is composed of millions of moving parts which depend on
each other, often in surprising ways. Silos become counterproductive. If one followed
traditional innovation protocol, most of the software we use today would be stuck in Version
1.0. Conventional innovators plan-to-perfection. Agile innovators launch-and-debug. Fast
beats best.
It goes beyond a simple change to management process. When a company adopts Agile
values, it alters how employees judge a good outcome, or a bad outcome. Agile principles
encourage new, perhaps unsettling interactions among individuals; defined roles become more
ambiguous and hierarchies grow less important. You listen to your customer more than your
boss. Agile leaders distribute rewards and incentives on new criteria, and assign individual
responsibility along new lines. Agile methodology defines tasks in new ways, and assumes an
acceptance of uncertainty which some may find uncomfortable. Communication takes on an
urgent and democratizing role.
This goes some way to explaining why so few companies have fully embraced Agile when
scaled up to a global level. In 2018, HBR (https://hbr.org) reported a CA Technologies study
of 1300 global leaders. Only 44% of companies employ agile methods to develop software,
and 41% employ it in IT. In general, 78% of leaders say they employ Agile methods
throughout their company. But only 13%-18% say they employ it in any depth or breadth, or
with consistency. Among the barriers reported in the 2018, State of Scrum
(http://info.scrumalliance.org), 51% cited the inertia of their organizational culture, 41% the
need for definitive metrics, 38% a lack of trust, 35% a need for predictability, and over a
quarter simply declared that their stakeholders didn’t like the transparency that Agile
demands.
Planning, ambiguity, hierarchy, transparency, trust, predictability, comfort with uncertainty,
individual responsibility, personal incentives, metrics, even good and bad. When
interculturalists hear such words, the work of Geert Hofstede leaps to mind.

Hofstede’s dimensions of national culturei demonstrate how cultures are rooted in deeply-held
values, and that these values can be measured. Building on Hofstede’s work, Huib Wursten
has shown that nations with similar values can be bundled together, making the influence of
culture tangible and more understandable. He calls these clusters of culture the Mental
Images, simplifying a world of well over 200 separate value-systems. The 7 combinations
generate a distinctive model, one which helps to define the rules of the game for how human
beings interact. When it comes to understanding human behavior,
This article looks at Agile through that cultural lens. We use the 7 Mental Images to
demonstrate the barriers to Agility in national cultures, and how organizations can leverage
their cultural strengths to become more Agile. Culture is a powerful enabling force for global
business in this bold, new software-driven world.
What is Agility? Drivers, Principles, Benefits
First of all it is an approach to product development that originated in Japan and the USA. It
started as a system for software development. The scope is much broader now.
Our Japanese colleague Chika Miyamori wrote:
“Agile is not a development process, or method. It is a state of team/org to adapt to
ever changing environment. It is not how to run the project, it is about how to
continuously develop teams that can adapt to changes, to collaborate effectively and to
innovate. Agile is not verb, it is not an action. it is adjective and there is no end-
goal.”
What then is at the core of Agility?
It’s about:
Placing value for the customer at the center of all decisions.
Increasing the pace of learning to quickly create highest quality solutions;
Pushing standards higher to foster faster decisions and “corrections”. By using
Agile methods, the promise is that you leave your competition in the dust by moving
faster.
Agile is a process that helps teams provide quick and unpredictable responses to the
feedback they receive on their project. It creates opportunities to assess a project's
direction during the development cycle. Teams assess the project in regular meetings
called sprints or iterations”.
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Does this “self-directed, self-disciplined, self-monitored, and self-corrective process is
something that is equally feasible in all cultures? In other words, does the agile promise
apply across cultures seamlessly? .
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"
!
.
'(


 /
83 
0
)'(&)
9:;(

'(
&)
<"1
* 

%!%!
'!%good enough
#, &)
Summarizing the attributes of Agility in a cultural context:

+(  2 '( )

3



(*

=(
(
4

5










,)
3
=(
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

/

*


*6


*
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



)






=(
(

 
From original principle to paradigm shift
A new book written by Pia-Maria Thoren describes Agile, from its original principle up to its
more recent developments in terms of a paradigm shift. A table summarizing this shift from
traditional to agile is shown below.

Fig.1 – Paradigm Change From Traditional into Agile HR. Source: Pia-Maria Thoren Agile
People, page 41
3. How does national culture enter into this new agile equation?
Thoren puts a lot of emphasis on self-organizing teams. The general dilemma is how to
combine hierarchical management and agility in realms where dynamism and „time-to-
market“ is crucial
In this paper provides some direction taking the elements of national culture into account.
Saying that agile working has to reflect the values of cultures in which it is applied is
complex in a world of over 200 countries. The Mental Images, based on validated empirical
research, allows for the reduction of complexity in analyzing what this means. The analysis
will show what elements in the culture are supportive and which ones are restraining the
potentials of Agile working. Advice will be given about how potential restraints can be
overcome.
=>+(>+
As we can see, no culture fits perfectly.

The passages which follow illustrate a selection of the issues which Agile methods face in
diverse global cultures. In each case, we argue that culture can be viewed as both as a barrier
to, and an enabler of Agile. Knowing the values-based “rules of the game” can unleash Agile
deliver its full productive potential.
Again, we stress that we have looked in detail at Contest, Japan, and Machine cultures from
Wursten’s 7 Mental Images, with added commentary on the remaining four.
-
One would think that in the birthplace of the Agile Manifesto
it would be easy to implement agility. Not necessarily. .
Cultural Positives for Agility
Agile Values and Practice
oLow UAI: “truth is truth when it works”. Revealing saying: “whatever works”
oLow UAI: Just Do It. Do first, action orientation.
oLow UAI: flexibility
oHigh IDV: makes it easier to accept teamwork with “strangers” based on
different skills

Agile Mindset
oLow PDI: Groups feel comfortable asserting control over their workloads,
taking responsibility.
Agile Imagination
CULTURE
DIMENSIONS
PDI IDV MAS UAI
AGILE    
CONTEST    

oPragmatism: what works doesn’t always need to be true. What is true does not
always work.
Cultural Barriers to Agility
Agile Principle and Practice
oHigh IDV: People want ownership of ideas. Uneasiness when it comes to the
collective ownership of results.. Resentment of stragglers or “dead weight”.
Solution: Self-selecting teams, take time for teams to settle.
oHigh IDV: Management by objectives can make people unwilling to change
course. The operationalized targets and the related assessment procedures
make it difficult to steer on outcome. Incremental development is frequently
experienced as “chaotic”. Solution: Assessment procedures should allow for
qualitative elements. They should also should Include training and
management of Product Owners and Scrum Masters in incremental
approaches.
oShort term thinking: Expectation that progress will be made by breakthroughs
which instantly change the game (which undervalues incremental
improvement) and diminishes the Deming Cycle.
Solution: Special training for Scrum Masters
oHigh MAS: Low sensitivity for psychological safety in assertive environments
Solution: Training and management of Product Owners and Scrum Masters
Agile Mindset:
oHigh IDV: dazzling, self-aggrandizing resumes get to the top of the pile, even
when they may not be best for the task.
Solution: self-selection by the team
oHigh IDV: reward structure becomes problematic in a collective team situation.
Does transparency include salaries? Team cohesion efforts and initiatives are
needed.
Solution: De-link to team financial achievement, but link to company overall
profit.
Agile Imagination
Too much focus on target setting and measuring performance can kill thinking outside the
box. Enable group time to review best practices from other MI that are successful (e.g
Spotify)

++(?
Again, one of the birthplaces of Agile can pose its own
challenges.
Cultural Positives for Agility
Agile Values and Practice
oHigh MAS: Kaizen
oHigh LTO: Perseverance

Agile Mindset
oIDV: Good balance of individual responsibility and teamwork
oIDV: Harmony.
oIDV: Creating an in-group among small teams accelerates Agile
Agile Imagination
oConstant drive to improve and constant testing to avoid failures
Cultural Barriers to Agility
Agile Principle and Practice
oHigh UAI: Confounds the “Definition of Done”
oHigh MAS: Stigma of making a mistake in defining “done”.
Mindset:
oFear of failure can be a barrier. Ho Ren So makes quick progress difficult
CULTURE
DIMENSIONS
PDI IDV MAS UAI
AGILE    
JAPAN    

Agile Imagination
oDisruptive ideas are problematic in a collectivist environment emphasizing
harmony and equilibrium
Solutions: Managing uncertainties
Clear and inspirational goals
Double loop learning: The modification of goals or decision-making rules in the light of
experience.
Strong emphasis on creating psychological safety and security
++(,
Cultural positives for Agility
Structural, systematic thinking
High IDV + high UAI The focus on systematic structural thinking and emphasis on
avoiding failure forms the foundation of Machine culture Agility. If you pose a
problem, a Machine culture responds with a forward-looking plan, not an ad hoc
response. The shared belief in future-focused planning boosts the ability of an Agile
innovation team to self-manage, and move forward. Progress is a mantra.
Egalitarianism
Low PDI has created a culture of Mitbestimmung, where worker participation in
management is the norm.
Education for Everyone
High UAI focuses on acquired knowledge, and puts a great deal of emphasis on
education, especially in the sciences and trades.
Low PDI distributes the benefits of such education broadly. This leads to a respect for
Tiefe des Fachwissens, a richness of subject knowledge and expertise which enables
every team member to spot opportunities for improvement quickly—especially the
repeated, minute, detailed technical improvements.
CULTURE
DIMENSIONS
PDI IDV MAS UAI
AGILE    
MACHINE    

Cultural Barriers to Agility.
High UAI: An emphasis on expert knowledge can lead to unshakable silos. Machine
culture undervalues generalists
With high IDV and high UAI, Machine cultures feel ill at ease with the non-linear time
management which Agile requires
Deductive reasoning. Part of what makes Agility work is that the team learns by doing,
as much as by thinking. This is a challenge for high IDV cultures
Solutions:
Remove matrix management to allow for self-organizing teams
Rewire the company to give functional experts more power than operational teams.
Make the role of the servant-leader crucial in Agile innovation. A scrum master, for
example, must be alert to assertive behavior (high MAS) in the team—for example, an
individual declaring a decision unilaterally based on expertise, rather than sharing his
expertise to obtain group buy-in.
Put personal qualities before qualifications. 7
 !

Strict policing of the Definition of Done. The role of the Scrum Master 
$8+
New legal and commercial frameworks for client engagement. To transform a client
into a collaborator, the Product Owner plays an indispensable role. They need to manage
expectations of the end-purchaser while clients need to be aware of their role in the Agile
process, and be held accountable for collaboration.
Involve non-experts in specialist tasks
Create time and resources to experiment. Transform the organization into a learning
culture allowing for freedom to fail.

++(@
Cultural positives for Agility
CULTURE
DIMENSIONS
PDI IDV MAS UAI
AGILE    
NETWORK    

Higher IDV: The system is driven by the need for people to be recognized as an autonomous
stakeholder being responsible to make one’s own “shop” successful.
Lower UAI: The conviction is that “truth lies in the middle” and nobody “owns the truth” As a
result people are willing to listen to and deal with the opinions and interests of other
independent stakeholders and try to operate based on shared interest
Lower UAI: openness for “emerging insight”
Low PDI: Autonomous actors have a constant reality check in Network cultures. If they
discover that the approach is not successful than it is seen as completely acceptable that they
approach the others in the corridors and propose to do it in a different way. This leads to a
constant adaptation to external challenges.
Possible barriers
Lower MAS: Sometimes changes can take a long time before consensus is reached among the
autonomous stakeholders
Solutions:
Lower MAS Network cultures sometimes need a “burning platform” to rovoke action, a sense
of urgency to act now. Promise the possibility to fully discuss and review actions at a later
moment, and keep that promise. It will
++(&&
Positive attributes for agility:
Enlist high PDI. Many cite that the greatest impediment to
Agile processes is insufficient buy-in from all levels of the
chain of command. Solar System cultures work top-down. The moment the top has
committed, then Agile can be implemented quickly by providing new mandates downward.
The paradox of High PDI & High IDV. Individuals respect hierarchy but also wish to
distinguish and promote themselves. When a large enough mandate is given from above, great
creativity is unleashed when the one is promoted and placed in a trusted environment
Possible barriers
High UAI creates deductive rather than inductive thinking. “Just do it” is not acceptable; the
first step is the understanding of the “philosophy” behind a proposal. This requires time
because of the [intellectual] debate about the merits that is required. “Truth emerges from the
clash of opinions.”
CULTURE
DIME
NSIO
NS
PDI IDV MAS UAI
AGILE    
SOLAR SYSTEM    

High PDI creates hierarchies with a high sense of responsibility traced back to title. This may
block or slow down momentum by too much control, making it difficult to empower and
evoke trust.
High PDI often requires too much reporting to management.
Solution:
Highly qualified project team reporting directly to the upper management, with instructions to
develop scenarios for adapting to a changing environment. In short, consider making the
product owner a direct report to the top manager, or even the top manager themselves.
“Just do it” can be become acceptable if strong vision for the project is repeated often and
supported by management.
Encouraging creativity within a mandate (no danger) and reassessing the mandate on a
regular basis.
++(.
a. Positive attributes for agility:
High PDI: The system works top down. The moment the top is committed, things can be
implemented quickly by providing new mandates downward.
Low IDV: The top is mostly highly connected with decision makers from other companies and
policy makers. This means clients can be managed more intensively, and encouraged to
embrace new Agile methods more wholeheartedly..
b. Possible barriers
High PDI. Difficult issues on the practical level are not reported upwards because of the fear
of losing face or other negative consequences. These are built-in incentives for inaction.
Solutions:
-Enlist high PDI. A small team of trusted people with direct access to the top manager performs
management and inspection.
-Encouraging creativity within a mandate (no danger) and reassessing the mandate on a regular
basis
-Create an atmosphere of trust in PDI-sensitive ways
CULTURE
DIMENSIONS
PDI IDV MAS UAI
AGILE    
PYRAMID    

++(A
a. Positive attributes for agility:
High PDI: The system works top down. The moment the top is committed things can be
implemented quickly by providing new mandates downward.
High PDI: The top is mostly highly connected with decision makers from other companies and
policy makers
Low UAI: No emotional need for structure and procedures. Change is acceptable.
&2/Circular versus Linear time: “Time in a collectivist culture like China is seen as
nonlinear, which considers multitasking, disruptions, and frequent change of plans normal.
This also means that responding to change, Agile Value IV i.e. Fast Decisions, is engraved in
Chinese culture.”
b. Possible barriers
High PDI: Difficult issues on the practical level are not reported upwards because of the fear
of losing face.
Low IDV: Loyalty to in-group members can lead to hesitation for “creative destruction”
Measurements that might hurt the interests of the “clan members”
Solutions:
-Enlist high PDI. A small team of trusted people with direct access to the top manager performs
management and inspection.
-High PDI: The top manager must visibly show supportive to the Agile team at all
times
-Create an atmosphere of trust in PDI-sensitive ways
Conclusion:
CULTURE
DIMENSIONS
PDI IDV MAS UAI
AGILE    
FAMILY    

With respect to international cooperation and collaboration, it is useful to go beyond talking
about culture simply as a barrier. Particularly for Agile innovation
It is our conviction that in all circumstances it is possible to build “bridges” that help people,
through using the value-driven rules of the game. Barriers can be overcome, and can unleash
success. This paper proposes solutions for overcoming barriers in implementing agility.
We believe that it is possible to reap the promise of agility without forcing cultures into a
straightjacket and asking them to approach new management ideas by dropping the deeply-
ingrained rules of interaction that are preprogrammed by the culture they from which team
members come.
The prosperity of every culture depends on it.
Literature:
Keith Baker, “Are International Tests Worth Anything?,” published by Phi Delta Kappan in
October 2007.
On Creativity and Thinking Skills: A Conversation with David Perkins. Brandt, Ronald S.
Educational Leadership, v43 n8 p12-18 May 1986
https://hbr.org/sponsored/2018/03/survey-data-shows-that-many-companies-are-still-not-
truly-agile
http://info.scrumalliance.org/rs/510-STH-507/images/2017-SoSR-Final%20Version_sm.pdf
p.22

Pia-Maria Thoren Agile People Paradigm Change From Traditional into Agile HR.:,
Hofstede, Geert; Hofstede Gert Jan; Minkov, Michael. Cultures and Organisations: Software
of the Mind. Intercultural Co-operation and its Importance for Survival. McGraw Hill, 2010.
Wursten, Huib. The 7 Mental Images of National Culture: Leading and Managing in a
Globalised World. Hofstede Insights 201

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