AGILE CULTURE AND LEADERSHIP
Within an organization, leadership agility is an asset to develop culture, work environment, and implementation of change. Leaders need to embrace essential agile values to create a context in which employees can thrive. |
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An agile culture:
Developing an agile culture is about creating a different workplace that challenges our assumptions about how work gets done. An agile culture aims to reduce rigidity and creates more flexibility in how work gets done. It is an environment where change is accelerated.
In agile cultures, things are simple. There's less bureaucracy, more productivity, and better engagement. Most organizations are adopting agile principles as part of their project management and leadership methodologies. The most agile cultures come from leaders with a strong leadership mindset that embraces agile principles.
Digital innovators like Spotify and Netflix (1, 2 & 3) lead the way in adopting an agile way of working and they inspired others to do the same. Google and Apple (4 & 5) are the most inspiring examples of organizations that are truly agile.
When organizations decide to implement agile, ways of working and managing change, every person is involved. Leaders, managers, peers, and direct reports have to develop an agile mindset and trust each other. People have to take responsibility for their actions and promote a happy, involved workforce.
The key pillars for an agile culture to thrive are focused on transparency, inspection, and adaptation.
In other words, everything a team is working on is visible to all. There are constant planned reviews of the work. A team remains flexible at all times and welcomes changes.
Developing an agile culture is about creating a different workplace that challenges our assumptions about how work gets done. An agile culture aims to reduce rigidity and creates more flexibility in how work gets done. It is an environment where change is accelerated.
In agile cultures, things are simple. There's less bureaucracy, more productivity, and better engagement. Most organizations are adopting agile principles as part of their project management and leadership methodologies. The most agile cultures come from leaders with a strong leadership mindset that embraces agile principles.
Digital innovators like Spotify and Netflix (1, 2 & 3) lead the way in adopting an agile way of working and they inspired others to do the same. Google and Apple (4 & 5) are the most inspiring examples of organizations that are truly agile.
When organizations decide to implement agile, ways of working and managing change, every person is involved. Leaders, managers, peers, and direct reports have to develop an agile mindset and trust each other. People have to take responsibility for their actions and promote a happy, involved workforce.
The key pillars for an agile culture to thrive are focused on transparency, inspection, and adaptation.
In other words, everything a team is working on is visible to all. There are constant planned reviews of the work. A team remains flexible at all times and welcomes changes.
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Implications of an agile culture on leadership style:
Within an organization, leadership agility is an asset to develop culture, work environment, and implementation of change. Leaders need to embrace essential agile values to create a context in which employees can thrive. Amongst these values are commitment, courage, focus, openness, and respect. In any agile organization, teams and individuals collaborate, share innovative ideas, give, receive, and act on feedback. Change is welcome, all ideas are considered, and transparency prevails.
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The competencies needed to be an agile leader:
Agile leaders motivate their employees, trust them, support them, empower them, encourage their innovative ideas, promote teamwork, and make the organizational culture agile. Some of the competencies needed to be an agile leader are; situational awareness, prioritization, systems thinking, maintaining self-awareness, personal integrity.
As an agile leader, one has to be comfortable with the fear of being uncomfortable. One has to adapt to change easily, and take risks. Agile leaders support their team. They are not scared of doing things differently, and they can make tough decisions when the need arises. To be a successful agile leader, a leader needs to deal effectively and efficiently with people, innovation, processes, and change. An agile leader can take constructive criticism as a positive thing and can find opportunities within threats.
According to Alan Zucker (6), a famous project manager and author, the best way to become an agile leader is to quit the traditional ways of thinking and making decisions. These tend to kill creativity and innovation. Leaders should become enthusiasts, servant leaders who focus on human interaction and collaboration.
Agile leaders motivate their employees, trust them, support them, empower them, encourage their innovative ideas, promote teamwork, and make the organizational culture agile. Some of the competencies needed to be an agile leader are; situational awareness, prioritization, systems thinking, maintaining self-awareness, personal integrity.
As an agile leader, one has to be comfortable with the fear of being uncomfortable. One has to adapt to change easily, and take risks. Agile leaders support their team. They are not scared of doing things differently, and they can make tough decisions when the need arises. To be a successful agile leader, a leader needs to deal effectively and efficiently with people, innovation, processes, and change. An agile leader can take constructive criticism as a positive thing and can find opportunities within threats.
According to Alan Zucker (6), a famous project manager and author, the best way to become an agile leader is to quit the traditional ways of thinking and making decisions. These tend to kill creativity and innovation. Leaders should become enthusiasts, servant leaders who focus on human interaction and collaboration.
Good agile practices to implement in organizations and teams:
Agility is becoming the norm for organizations to work smart. Agile tools and frameworks can be applied in any work environment and should be used as enablers for transformation. The drivers for creating an agile culture should remain focused on people working together and collaborating to lead change.
Ideally, an organization should empower its people to deliver improvements. Large projects can be divided into smaller parts so that speed and quality of work are improved. Cross-functional teamwork is encouraged to use a variety of skills, expertise, and viewpoints. Leaders become facilitators. They support, guide, and help teams by removing obstacles and impediments. They keep the teams focused on goals and objectives.
Agile practices and tools that teams can apply include daily stand-up meetings, Kanban boards, and retrospectives.
In a ten-minute daily stand-up meeting, team members answer three questions:
A Kanban board is a real-time visual representation of everything the team is working on. The board can be drawn on a whiteboard, can be made of sticky notes on a wall, or can be created using a free software like Trello. This physical or digital board usually contains four columns, which are: to do, doing, quality assurance, done. It’s an easy-to-use visual representation of a team’s performance. It ensures everyone is on the same page and makes the workload clear and visible to all.
Retrospectives are planned team sessions. They allow for continuous improvement. The team is given space and time to reflect on outputs, deliverables, and achievements. To establish the lessons learned, the team focuses on answering three questions:
These are only some examples to promote a culture of change and transformation at work, to assist teams and leaders on their agile journey.
Changing a culture takes time, and the gap between employee culture and management culture is real. Using agile methodologies and tools can only help in bridging that gap and bringing people on board with change.
Agility is becoming the norm for organizations to work smart. Agile tools and frameworks can be applied in any work environment and should be used as enablers for transformation. The drivers for creating an agile culture should remain focused on people working together and collaborating to lead change.
Ideally, an organization should empower its people to deliver improvements. Large projects can be divided into smaller parts so that speed and quality of work are improved. Cross-functional teamwork is encouraged to use a variety of skills, expertise, and viewpoints. Leaders become facilitators. They support, guide, and help teams by removing obstacles and impediments. They keep the teams focused on goals and objectives.
Agile practices and tools that teams can apply include daily stand-up meetings, Kanban boards, and retrospectives.
In a ten-minute daily stand-up meeting, team members answer three questions:
- What did you do yesterday?
- What are you working on today?
- What obstacles are you facing that need resolving?
A Kanban board is a real-time visual representation of everything the team is working on. The board can be drawn on a whiteboard, can be made of sticky notes on a wall, or can be created using a free software like Trello. This physical or digital board usually contains four columns, which are: to do, doing, quality assurance, done. It’s an easy-to-use visual representation of a team’s performance. It ensures everyone is on the same page and makes the workload clear and visible to all.
Retrospectives are planned team sessions. They allow for continuous improvement. The team is given space and time to reflect on outputs, deliverables, and achievements. To establish the lessons learned, the team focuses on answering three questions:
- What went well?
- What did not go well?
- What could we do differently next time?
These are only some examples to promote a culture of change and transformation at work, to assist teams and leaders on their agile journey.
Changing a culture takes time, and the gap between employee culture and management culture is real. Using agile methodologies and tools can only help in bridging that gap and bringing people on board with change.
References:
- https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/financial-services/our-insights/ings-agile-transformation
- https://www.atlassian.com/agile/agile-at-scale/spotify
- https://smartbear.com/blog/5-lessons-agile-teams-can-learn-from-netflix/
- https://www.forbes.com/2008/08/09/cio-agile-computing-tech-cio-cx_dw_0811agile.html
- https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2012/02/03/is-apple-truly-agile/
- https://pmessentials.us/author/pmessentials/