Looking to make a resolution? Here at the start of a new year and new decade, I give you 3 Resolutions For Agile Leaders to help you face what lies ahead and become a better Agile Leader.
Wherever you are on your Agile journey, shifting your mindset and your organization’s culture is essential to achieving business agility. This is the work of an Agile leader and, as W. Edward Deming says, this work cannot be delegated.
In this article, I’m going to share lessons I learned as a transforming Agile leader in multiple Agile transformations. These lessons are distilled into three Agile leader resolutions: respecting and supporting Agile roles, evolving how you gather information, and modeling Agile behavior. As you start the new year and decade, think about making these three subtle and tactical resolutions. You will be pleasantly surprised at the cultural change these bring about.
Resolution #1: Respect Agile Roles
As a senior leader in software delivery organizations, I was able to get things done for my organization by understanding my peoples’ strengths and how to optimally utilize and mobilize my team. This skill was one of the skills that got me promoted! However, in an Agile environment, I could no longer go directly to my people, as they were now embedded into Agile teams. I now had to work through a Product Owner and Scrum Master. This was hard for me at first!
Damage Done
Even though I understood the agile principles and why this was necessary, I would fall into this old behavior from time-to-time. Going directly to my people was familiar and it seemed like the shortest route to getting needed work done. However, the longer-term impact of that expediency and comfort was far more detrimental than I could have imagined:
- Appeared to people filling the Product Owner and Scrum Master roles that I did not respect them or their work.
- I put my embedded people in a difficult position with me (how could they say no?) and with their team (their commitment with me prevented them from meeting their team commitments).
- People questioned senior leadership’s commitment to the agile transformation.
- Wasn’t a good look for a senior leader to be using her positional authority in such a seemingly thoughtless way.
Just thinking about it makes me facepalm. In my case, when I went directly to the team, I was acting unconsciously and out of old habits. Occasionally, I succumbed to the pressure of an even more senior leader vehemently expressing that “this needs to get done!” Either way, the damage was done.
Damage Resolution
When I caught myself doing this (or was rightly called out on the behavior by a courageous Product Owner or Scrum Master), I did what an Agile leader should do: accept accountability for my actions, their impact, and sincerely apologize. Apologizing can undo the damage. In fact, it creates more trust between teams and leadership. Being accountable, acknowledging my mistake, and apologizing modeled the expected behavior of a self-organizing team. However, this works only when there is an occasional misstep. Intentional abuse and disingenuous apologies will inflict further damage and quickly erode trust between teams and leadership.
You can also keep people in Scrum team roles out of harm’s way by helping them get stronger. I’m going to guess that in most cases people did not self-assign roles. You selected them for these positions through careful thought and consideration. Ensure they have the necessary training, tools, and coaching to be successful.
In this next decade, resolve to be a respectful and supportive leader by respecting Agile team roles. Don’t let others of yourself circumvent these roles. If you are an executive, be aware of how you ask. A small shift in language can remind your leaders to respect the teams. Rather than the go-to “get it done” instruction, try “take this to the team and let me know what they can do.”
Resolution #2: Evolve How You Get Information
Leaders have a high need for information. Leaders get uncomfortable when they must dig for information. If the information they are getting doesn’t add up, they get very uncomfortable and start to dig deeper and deeper. I know I did when I was in that role.
I used to work in an organization where the need for information was taken to the extreme. This created a culture of micromanagement that didn’t bode well for the agile transformation. My executive leader at the time had a problem-solving method that was…unique. It involved a phone call at a moment’s notice from his executive assistant. She would say, “He wants you to come to the 7th floor,” which meant his office.
She wasn’t allowed to tell us what it was regarding. We immediately took the dreaded elevator ride to the 7th floor, wracking our brains about all the hot deliverables. We’re they on track? What else might he throw at us?
Once in his office, he would reveal the issue pepper us with questions. He expected us to have detailed answers to all of his questions. Anything ranging from what server the application was running on to an individual project’s outstanding defect counts. A response of “I don’t know, I will have to get back to you,” was unacceptable.
Damage Done
Intended or not, my executive’s way of gathering information created an unhealthy environment that did not support an Agile workplace. This drove two types of unproductive behavior:
- People made up answers – Not only was the information unreliable, it prolonged the discussion as information often conflicted and people had to sort through misunderstandings.
- Senior Leaders were deep into details – Rather than these highly intelligent and compensated leaders focusing on the big problems of the organization, we turned into micromanagers with abundant data at the ready for the next 7th floor summoning.
Damage Resolution
Agile practices provide leaders needed information. Most agile events are open and leaders can HEAR first-hand how the team is progressing. Leaders also have the opportunity to SEE first-hand how the team is progressing by attending the Sprint Review and observing working software in use as the best measure of progress.
There is no need for status reports or other non-value adding structures to provide information to the leader. If you are in an environment that uses a team-of-teams approach to delivering value, there are typically weekly synch meetings you can attend to learn about the status of work in progress.
Evolve Your Data-Gathering
As a leader you can do a few things in the new decade to change how you get information and to support your Agile transformation.
- Attend the sync meetings and Sprint Reviews – Your presence will give credence and importance to these meetings and the transformation, and provide opportunities to encourage your people as they demonstrate new agile values and practices through the work they are producing. Attending will also allows you to informally connect with the team, which helps to build trust.
- Ensure that teams do NOT do extra prep work for the Sprint Review – Their measure of progress should be working product increments, not unnecessary status reports.
- Scrap your current reporting methods – The information you need in an agile environment is much different than the information you may have received in the past. If you do not change the way you get information, especially as an executive leader, you will drive your people back into “old” behaviors in order to produce the current reports.
Resolution #3: Model Agile Behavior
If you are in a leadership position, one of the things that you must accept in order to be an effective leader, is that you are always the leader.
Whether you are in the lunchroom, walking down the hall, at a company event, facilitating a team meeting, or in a one-on-one meeting, your people are constantly reading your body language, dissecting your words, tone, and delivery. They are continuously looking for signs of threat or concern to their livelihood, well-being or simply for office gossip.
This can seem daunting and overwhelming. Fear not. Agile leaders are servant leaders, and servant leaders understand that the spotlight creates an opportunity to continuously teach and equip their people. They support their folks by demonstrating how to productively respond to situations, which in turn builds confidence and resilience. As you resolve to support business agility, here are 5 key Agile leadership behaviors to portray on a regular basis. These 5 Agile leadership behaviors are:
- Trust
- Accountability
- Collaboration
- Respect
- Learning
Trust
This is foundational to any healthy, safe, and productive work environment. Make a resolution to improve trust in your work environment this year and decade.
Damage Done
Without trust, people do not experiment, innovate, or problem solve. Leaders need to look for every opportunity to build trust between the collective leadership and teams.
Damage Resolution
To earn trust, you need to both trustworthy and trusting. Put team decisions in the hands of the team. Practice transparency and share as much information with the team as possible. If there is information you cannot share, let them know that too. With transparency, people will speculate less. With less speculation comes less gossip. Less gossip creates more safety and productivity.
Accountability
Without accountability, we get mediocre results, which means leaders are not willing to empower teams, which then fosters less ownership by teams. It’s a vicious cycle and nobody wins.
Damage Done
By accountability, I don’t mean blame. Blame is an attempt to assign ownership in a disempowering way. Accountability is accepting ownership of the good, the bad, and the ugly in an empowering way, because blame is absent.
Damage Resolution
We want teams to hold themselves accountable for the commitments they make. This is why we put those decisions in the hands of the team. You can model accountability by owning your individual results and your mistakes.
I once had a new CTO come on board. He pulled his new senior team together and said, “From now on, any mistake that gets made, is my mistake. It’s on me.” He demonstrated this in the following days as he took responsibility for any and all mistakes. Every time we had a production issue or delay, he would own it and remind us of what he had said. This gave us an amazing amount of relief, safety, and freedom. He understood that as the executive, he was accountable for our collective results and mistakes. He modeled for each of us senior leaders how to do the same. In turn, we modeled that for our people and so on. Under his tenure, we made more progress and had better results than we had ever before. This was because:
- We had the space to experiment, learn without blaming, and grow.
- We tried much harder to not make mistakes for his sake.
Collaboration
With trust and accountability, true collaboration can begin.
Damage Done
As a leader in a non-agile or siloed environment, it is likely that there is tension between you and at least one other leader. In the protectionist culture these types of environments foster, you will have had to push back hard on one or more peers, creating rifts that further reinforce the silos.
Damage Resolution
To boldly model collaboration for your people, go find that leader. Invite him or her to coffee and work out how you can both tackle a problem or challenge in your agile transformation. A powerful signal of a new day is seeing old rivals solving a new challenge together. Let your people see you working together on this, provide updates in all-team meetings, and send joint communications.
Respect
Is respect a precursor to trust? I think so.
Damage Done
If I don’t demonstrate respect for someone, how likely is it that person to trust me or my motives?
Damage Resolution
I may not yet trust a new person in a new role, but I can assume good intent and respect that they were put there because they have the necessary skills and/or support.
As a leader, I can respect the capabilities and intentions of the teams and trust them with information to make team decisions. I can:
- Respect that they understand the priorities I have set, that they have a sense of urgency and desire to do meaningful work.
- Trust that they will do anything they can to deliver reasonable and valuable results.
- Accept an Agile mindset, respect Agile practices and trust that the teams that apply them will deliver improving results.
Demonstrate this respect and you’ll earn the teams’ respect…and trust.
Learning
Continuously learning, adapting, and inspecting is key toimproving results.
Damage Done
Learning cannot create damage, but blame can. Teams need to inspect their results without blame hanging over their heads and learn how they can be improved.
Damage Resolution
As a leader, you have an immense opportunity to model learning behavior.
- Demonstrate your own passion for learning and improvement – Share what you are learning even if it’s unrelated to work. When I was learning to bake at high-altitude, I brought treats into the office that weren’t always awesome. As I got feedback, I would say out loud what I would try. “I think I’ll adjust the amount of flour in the mix, or try a double rise before shaping.” The next round was inevitably tastier.
- When a mistake, error, omission, or problem arises, how you respond is a critical lesson in learning – The language you choose to use in these situations is crucial. “Who did this?” “Who’s fault is this?” “How did this happen?” These kinds of judgmental questions will not get the information needed to solve the problem. They will discourage transparency and erode trust.
Try this go-to phrase for severe mistakes. Calmly say “Okay. This is not good. What do we do now?” In saying this, you are able to acknowledge the severity of the situation and to draw people into problem-solving and learning. Even though you have your own ideas, it is more important that the people closest to the issue solve and learn from it. When relaying the mistake up the chain, take responsibility for it and credit the team with the corrective action and learning.
Summary
By resolving to make and continue these subtle, actionable steps toward these three resolutions, you will positively impact your organization’s culture and support Agile adoption. In Agile transformations, we ask much of our leaders. I suggest choosing one resolution and focus on taking those steps, or your own steps, toward that resolution. Keep at it and in a few months, when it feels more second-nature, observe the changes in your immediate organization. I wish you good luck on your agile journey.
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Originally published Agile Velocity‘s website in January 2020.