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Reducing the complexity of Brexit


Johannesburg, 05 Aug 2016

Many of us were caught off-guard by the results of the Brexit vote. Perhaps, most of us were so certain the British people would have voted to remain, that we didn't really pay too much attention to the consequences of the UK parting ways with the EU.

Former Canadian High Commissioner to the UK, Jeremy Kinsman, wrote: "The Brexiteers are the dog that caught the bus: they hadn't thought what to do next."

Liam Fox, Minister for International Trade, as well as Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, and Minister for Exiting the European Union, David Davis - together with expert officials - will shape Britain's new future outside of the EU.

A daunting task awaits the Department for Exiting Europe under Oliver Robbins - a career civil servant with experience at the interior and finance ministries - with a current staff of 40 that will soon grow to over 200. This team will be tasked with unpicking 43 years of EU laws and regulations and forging new alliances outside the 28-nation bloc.

They will need to deal with questions below and many more:

* What will be the status of EU citizens in Britain?
* What will be the status of Britons living on the continent?
* Will Britain want continued access to the EU single market?

It is likely that to implement Brexit, once Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty has been triggered, which gives the two sides two years to agree the terms of the split - Britain will need a team of over 10 000 civil servants and representatives from the private sector. There have been comments that this may even take longer than the two years required, due to the terms of Britain's exit to be agreed by 27 national parliaments.

Could the UK government, in planning its exit plan, benefit from an approach that has been successful in both public and private sectors? Agile was initially developed in the software development world to build software using an iterative and incremental approach. The essence of agile lies within the values and principles drafted in 2001 in the Agile Manifesto.

Utilising practices such as Scrum could be challenging on a task as large and complex as Brexit, but the overriding principles definitely make sense in any approach.

The Agile Manifesto values:

* Individuals and interactions over processes and tools;
* Working solution over comprehensive documentation;
* Customer collaboration over contract negotiation; and
* Responding to change over following a plan.

Reading these values, one may think they have little application to negotiating new trade and border agreements.

From an IQ perspective, the company has taken these values and principles, as well as those from Steve Denning's book: "The Leadership Guide to Radical Management", and has come up with its Agile Philosophy, which includes the following:

1. Focusing on delighting the client - building the right product by focusing on the needs of the customer and prioritising work based on customer value.
2. Iterative and Incremental - breaking down projects and product delivery into shorter iterations, with the objective of building a working solution by the completion of the iteration.
3. Small batches - working in smaller time-boxes creates focus on delivering value. Breaking down work into smaller pieces minimises variability.
4. Shortening the feedback loop - receiving feedback from the end-customer on the solution delivered at the end of each iteration, preferably as close to production as possible.
5. Continuous improvement - inspect and adapt on completion of each iteration in order to improve both the product and the process, to ensure that we are optimising the flow of work.
6. Collaboration - collaboration with all stakeholders, including the team and customer, using face-to-face communication (preferably through co-location).
7. Self-organised teams - provide goals and direction to the team(s) and provide the environment, tools and support required for the team(s) to deliver valuable, working solutions.

So, how can you apply the above to Brexit:

1. Focusing on delighting the customer - firstly, the team needs to understand who their "customers" actually are and what their actual needs will be? First and foremost, in this context, it will be the British population. What is a successful outcome for the British people? What are their needs? How do we solve their needs? They will then need to understand who their other 'customers' are. Other trade parties, governments, etc. How do we prioritise and build a plan that is focused on meeting their needs?

2. We can combine, iterative and incremental, small batches and shortening the feedback loop, to apply to the execution of the plan. The old saying of "how do you eat an elephant?" applies here. Understanding all the regulations, agreements, etc, of over 43 years is not a simple task, but in order to simplify the task, it needs to be broken down into its smaller components. It needs to be prioritised based on the highest value to the 'customers' across the segments and broken into small granular batches of work that can be implemented in the shortest possible time-frame. The idea is that we want to get feedback from the stakeholders as quickly as possible to determine if the solution is the right solution. If not, we can adapt the plan and solution accordingly. The reason we recommend this, is that they will be uncovering new information on a daily basis that they could not have foreseen when starting the two-year journey. As this information comes to light, we want to have a flexible and adaptable plan so it can adjust based on any new information, solution or insights that come to light. Also, by breaking this down to very small components, it will be easier to predict the outcome of the potential solutions, rather than larger, more monolithic components of the agreements and regulations.

3. At the end of each execution, we want to make sure we are still on track to achieve the broader outcome and have an opportunity to continuously reflect and improve on the approach in order to foster a culture of continuous improvement. People may argue that this is only two years; however, two years is the minimum and a long time in today's ever changing environment. Notwithstanding, the impact of the current hostile environment with consistent terrorist attacks and other incidents that have far-reaching consequences. We are unable to predict these events, therefore, ensuring we have an iterative and incremental approach, we can not only adapt to these events, but also ensure we are improving in the execution.

4. Lastly, we need to work together in a collaborative and highly transparent manner. Transparency over the process and progress is critical to avoid people feeling excluded and abandoned. The government needs to ensure there is constant communication with their key clients - the British population. They need to allow for high levels of radical transparency to ensure that all issues, impediments and challenges are noted in order for the population to contribute to the solving of the problems. If people are not aware of these impediments, how do you expect to solve for them? They will need to engage all the British public and bring them into the change process while they hold the government accountable.

The most efficient and effective way to execute is breaking this large 'cohort' of 10 000-plus individuals in self-organised teams, providing them with the necessary constraints and boundaries to solve these complex problems. In order for this to be effective, these teams need to have the mandate to make decisions on the ground. We are not saying they can go ahead and cause havoc... they will need some direction to be provided in order to meet the common goals and objectives.

While researching this article, I came across a perfect example of how the British population want to be engaged and included in helping the government in solving these problems. Thoughtworks, in partnership with Code First: Girls, held a Hackathon (HACK BREXIT) on 23 and 24 July, in London, where they took three themes and asked a group of passionate and interested people to come up with some solutions to the Brexit issue.

These three themes included:

1. Truth, fiction and accountability;
2. Tolerance and prejudice; and
3. Effective organising and campaigning.

Details of what was produced over the two days can be found on: https://hackbrexit.github.io/

Out of the number of ideas and solutions, I picked three to provide an indication of what happens if you get people with a common interest in a room; they can come up with great solution:

* What the Fact - Browser plugin that gives you fact-checking information about what you're reading.
* ExitGap - Web app to help people identify impacts of Brexit by mapping out where the EU impacts the UK, in terms of funding, policy and trade.
* Campaign Ninja - Mobilise a mass leaflet or door-to-door campaign quickly and easily.

Brexit is a complex task that needs to focus primarily on the British population, creating and environment of collaboration and transparency. Through self-organised teams, they need to be able work in shorter time-frames and delivering solutions in order to obtain feedback from the stakeholders and adapt their plans accordingly, based on the feedback and the change that will happen in the economic and political landscape over this period.

However, this approach will only work if the Department of Exiting Europe, together with Theresa May (the Chief Product Owner), create a common and shared vision that the population and the team executing will buy in, and - collaboratively - create a roadmap for the next two years and beyond.

Article by Biase de Gregorio, bdegregorio@iqbusiness.net

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Editorial contacts

Anton Engelbrecht
IQ Business
(011) 259 4238
aengelbrecht@iqbusiness.net