Agile Politics?

I admit it. I have become a political junkie over the past month. It was bound to happen I guess, living in Iowa home of the country's first caucus, and seeing first hand the excitement being generated by this election cycle's slate of candidates.

As a result of becoming a politics addict, I have taken to listening to the POTUS 08 channel on XM Radio during most of the day. It's a great channel because not only do you get to keep up on what all of the candidates are doing, but you get to hear the speeches that they and their surrogates are giving, and perhaps more relevant for application to projects and business in general, you get to hear about how the process of elections work, and from this you can glean some information that is very helpful in other pursuits.

This morning while driving into work, there was a segment focused on the strategy of elections, and the commentators were talking to a member of the Hillary Clinton campaign. Low and behold, the word "agile" came up in reference to the approach that campaign has been taking to last several weeks. You see with the way the early race has been structured, with Iowa on January 3, New Hampshire a few days after that, then South Carolina, and then Nevada (Michigan and Florida happened in there also, but didn't provide any delegates - yet). The person from the Clinton Campaign (I unfortunately can't remember her name) commented that they have actually been running a series of mini campaigns, dare I say iterations, between each election. Each state has different demographics and "electoral math" so require different emphasis and different strategies as far as where to focus and what to focus on. I have no doubt the core beliefs being addressed in these campaigns was the same, but the points of emphasis and the manner in which they were expressed were different to appeal to the relevant audience.

I like to describe agile leadership in terms of seven characteristics: Collaborate, Iterate, Serve The Team, Consider Context, Practice Excellence, Reflect and Adapt, and Deliver Value. The example I described above beautifully illustrates the use and interdependence of two of those characteristics: Iterate and Reflect and Adapt. The Clinton campaign made the choice to focus on the next primary or caucus (the sports metaphor of one game at a time) and determine their approach, their points of emphasis, and the places they were going to speak, based on the current status of the race, and things that have happened in the future. You also have seen how they have adjusted the context in which they shared their message between the different contests. After a third place showing in Iowa, they went on the attack in order to try and regain some momentum, which happened in New Hampshire, which they did. Seeing that work, they ratcheted up some more going into South Carolina, which drew some criticism, and so now you see the adjustment again going into Super Tuesday. Your thoughts about the message and the messenger aside, this is a very clear example of how looking at an endeavor as a series of smaller interim endeavors with the ability to reflect on what has come before and the current state of things in order to change your approach going forward can be very effective when you work in a dynamic and changing environment.

Reflection and adaptation make using an iterative approach that much more effective, because it provides information to help you adjust your approach. Without reflection and adaption, following an iterative approach just means you are technically insane - doing the same thing over and over again and hoping for different results. On the flip side, reflecting and trying to adopt when following a non iterative approach can be somewhat helpful, but it becomes difficult to decide when to pause and reflect, and often times even if you do identify things you could do differently, you may not have the opportunity to try those things out in order to aid the current effort.

I guess the key thing to take from all of this is that agility isn't so much a methodology as it is a way of thinking and approaching the work of teams. It may have been given a name by those in the software development community, but that doesn't mean it isn't applicable in a lot of other settings.