Large organisations generally have a lot of inertia. There is bureaucracy, process, governance and policy that have developed over a long time and undoing it to make it agile doesn’t happen overnight. This can be very frustrating to anyone trying to innovate because they keep bumping up against inflexible processes and convoluted governance.

There are different options to solve these problems. One involves escalation. This can get a problem resolved quickly. However, this is generally not a good option for either parties. It ends up with both feeling at minimum dissatisfied with each other and at worst, completely antagonistic. It’ the ‘us vs them’ route and this is exactly what agile tries to avoid. It also means that the party being escalated will be even less inclined to help out in future.

The other option is collaboration. This isn’t easy, as conflict needs to be resolved and most of us aren’t well trained in conflict resolution. This route can take longer to resolve issues, but is ultimately the best long-term solution. It forces people to work out their issues and be responsible for the joint solution. One of the most beneficial aspects of this method is that if both parties are open and willing to find a resolution and if they are truly listening, they learn a lot about each other and develop empathy for others. This is is when true growth happens.