Why isn't agile solving your bureaucracy problem?

A question I got recently is “Why does my company do so much micromanagement, even though we do agile? Does Agile encourage micromanagement?” 

My answer (after hearing more details) was that the company was probably addicted to micromanagement. 

The company is like an alcoholic, and bringing agile in is like replacing the whiskey with vodka, thinking that will fix the problem, because you do different cocktails with vodka, so it will be different now! It won’t. The company is an addict and they will drink whatever they can find and they will drink all of it. They’re addicted to micromanagement and they will find ways to micromanage, to create rules, documents, processes in any situation. 

If you give them heaven, they will micromanage heaven. 

It’s a cultural problem, it’s a leadership problem, with managers who are afraid, defensive, slow, and have years and sometimes decades of practice of hiding behind process. 

You’re not going to fix a cultural problem by changing the delivery methodology. It can part of the fix, but it’s not THE fix. You fix a cultural problem by having people at the top start to demonstrate a different culture. You fix a leadership problem by having people at the top demonstrate a new kind of leadership. 

And I know, we’re not all CEO’s, we can’t change the company as a whole, and most CEO’s don’t have that power either by the way, but that’s not the topic for today. 

The principle applies at any scale, in the team, in the department, so if you have a problem in your team, consider if it’s a process problem, or a culture problem. Most of the times you’ll intuitively know if you reflect on it, but if it’s helpful, I’ll come back with a checklist for determining which is which is a future newsletter.