Emerging results

I observed that by reading the book La estrategia emergente, by Alejandro Salazar, I generated significant mental connections between agility, digital transformation and emerging results. Agility and IT have experimentation as a fundamental practice. Through experimentation, we seek new and better results to achieve the business objectives we set as an organization.

After reflecting on this, I was able to see that we can take into account the genuinely powerful concept: emergent outcomes. These are results that appear unexpectedly at any time, especially in the execution of experiments.

Experiments are run with possible outcomes in mind, pursuing desired objectives. However, it is vitally important to understand that emergent results, which we might even call accidental, can become more crucial and more important than projected, expected, or planned results. To understand further, two attitudes are necessary; on the one hand, an attentive and rather sensitive eye, and on the other hand, an openness to let these unexpected results be integrated into a way of working, even if at first these new forms were not being contemplated.

Let’s look at two examples to illustrate these ideas and the possibilities that open up if we learn to use them, properly: 

1. Some time ago I decided to learn to play guitar, because I love music.

• Along the way, I realized that when you play a musical instrument, you enter a flow state that resembles a meditative state. First emergent result: playing an instrument also served as an active meditation for me.
• Another emergent result I discovered in the process of learning to play the instrument is that besides being pleasurable, playing the instrument served as a complementary communicative tool, different from other more rational forms such as written or spoken language. An emerging result in the personal and relational field.

2. Now, let’s look at a real example that applies to our company.

• When we at Castor started to study agility we did so with a focus on SCRUM and XP from the trenches. In the process, we realized that there was an exponential increase in the demand for people with knowledge in agile, to perform advisory and consulting practices in these areas. Therefore, with this emerging result, we began to apply our learning in these fields and the more expertise we acquired, the more we began to offer these consultancies.
• This emerging outcome allowed us to migrate to IT and Agile firmly and completely transform the way we work, thereby halting us from being a mono-product.
• Another emerging result was that we understood that Digital Transformation is the transformation of experiences. That is to say, more important than processes was the user experience: from that understanding emerged a new line of business in the organization: UX/UI.

This is why we invite you to be open to experimentation and to be as alert as possible. Emerging Results, if we know how to take advantage of them, can be essential to change how we conceive the company and life itself and radically improve the generation and capture of value and welfare for all.

The cover image was taken from undraw

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