How L’Occitane Uses Agile for Non-Software Teams
Industry: Beauty and Fragrance Products
Teams: Ecommerce Team, Social Selling Team
Team Size: 3-10 people each
L’Occitane is an international beauty brand known for its natural, sustainable skincare and fragrance products. The two specific teams involved in this effort were the Ecommerce team, focused on developing a cohesive, engaging website, and the Social Selling team, which was a new sales channel responsible for creating a consultant network within the L’Occitane brand.
The challenge: define the product and team structure for two disorganized teams
The company as a whole had been undergoing an agile transformation for some time. The Covid pandemic had shifted focus from customer-facing retail stores to their online presence. The two teams were both fairly new and consisted of team members already involved in other channels and projects. Because the team members were part of several teams and not fully dedicated, the roles and responsibilities were unclear and not well understood by both the teams and company leadership.
In addition, the scope of both teams hadn’t been fully defined. There was overlap with other teams (marketing, IT), but no clear channels of communication, no cross-team planning, and no agreement on priorities, or even the scope of responsibilities.
This was an interesting choice for agile coaching because the teams were not software or IT teams. They were sales channels.
The solution: embrace agile ways of working to empower the teams
The Senior Director of Human Resources and Employer Brand, Rabail Chowdry, reached out to a well-known freelancer network and, after interviewing, hired Lauren Glynn Consulting to help get these two teams on track.
After observing both teams for two weeks, the agile coach, Lauren, created a customized roadmap for the two teams with the intended outcome of defining and understanding their products and priorities, and creating a shared understanding of team roles and responsibilities.
Lauren then coached the teams through several activities and workshops to achieve the intended outcomes. These included exercises to define the product visions, differentiating between stakeholders, sponsors, and customers, and creating the teams’ first Objectives and Key Results (OKR’s). She also worked with them to define roles and responsibilities for each team member on both teams, including achieving leadership buy-in and cooperation.
In addition to working directly with the teams, Lauren coached leadership directly on what it means to support self-organizing teams, and what level of involvement is necessary, without micromanaging or leaving the teams to fend for themselves.
The result: a shared understanding, effective priorization by value, and self-organizing teams
At the end of the coaching engagement, both teams were much more clearly defined, both in terms of product and in team structure. They had clear backlogs of prioritized work, systems and processes for prioritizing future work, and a shared understanding of what each team was responsible for - and what each team was not responsible for. They were also in agreement with leadership about who the stakeholders, sponsors, and customers were for each team.
“Working with Lauren was very impactful for our teams to help them set the foundations of a self-organizing team. She has helped with product vision definition, defining team roles and responsibilities as well as starting their Product Roadmap.”
Both teams are now able to take on work without being overwhelmed, prioritize the most important work first, and communicate effectively and clearly to everyone involved, both on the teams and outside them.
Leadership also has a clear understanding of what work each team is doing and a better understanding of how to support them being self-organized without abandoning them. They now understand how to provide clear direction and goals, and how to allow the team to decide how to achieve those goals.
The conclusion: Agile works well even for non-software or IT teams
Now both the Ecommerce team and the Social Selling team at L’Occitane are poised to continue their evolution as self-organizing, agile teams. They have a foundation set for understanding the work they’re doing and prioritizing the most valuable work first. Team members understand how their work impacts the overall goals of the organization and they have the tools to adjust and accommodate as goals evolve and business needs change.
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Lauren Glynn Consulting is where successful women and nonbinary business owners come when they're ready to stop being the bottleneck and start leading their business. Through customized operational leadership coaching and done-with-you systems implementation, I help you build the leadership capacity AND the operational infrastructure to step out of the day-to-day and run a business that doesn't need you holding everything together.
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