I recently started aggregating my notes, links, and references related to agile leadership to understand better what it — in the context of an agile transition — may look like. In the end, becoming agile is not the goal of a transition; surviving as an organization is. Hence I appreciate whatever appeals to business leaders and their motivation to delve into agile ideas, frameworks, or practices.
Let’s examine some favorite ideas and concepts around agile leadership. (Please bear with me that the following text is rather bullet-point heavy to concentrate its information.)
In my experience, there are at least five criteria for successful agile transformations. Lasting organizational change happens:
The following paragraphs focus on the main concepts related to agile leadership: from servant leadership to the agile mindset to creating a learning organization. The lists are not supposed to be comprehensive but provide the interested reader with a starting point for further research.
“A Servant Leader shares power puts the needs of the employees first and helps people develop and perform as highly as possible. Instead of the people working to serve the leader, the leader exists to serve the people.”
Source: Wikipedia on Servant Leadership.
Servant leadership is a suitable approach to dealing with complexity. Complexity — the unknown unknowns — determines decision-making processes and is characterized by:
For a much more elaborate approach to complexity, see the Cynefin framework by Dave Snowden.
Servant leadership is not a new concept:
“A leader is best when people barely know he exists when his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say: we did it ourselves.” (Lao Tzu, 4th century BC.)
Servant leadership is characterized by:
Servant leadership thus seems suited to overcome the industrial paradigm. Source: Wikipedia.
The principles of intent-based leadership according to David Marquet are as follows:
Source: 10 Insights on Intent-Based Leadership — David Marquet.
Reading tip: Turn the Ship Around.
The ‘agile mindset’ discussion seems to be centered around five areas: complexity and planning, delivering value, self-organization, fostering collaboration, and cross-functionality of teams:
Further reading: How to build the perfect team. [NYTimes.]
Peter Senge is a Senior Lecturer in Leadership and Sustainability at the MIT Sloan School of Management and coined the term ‘lerning organization’ in his book ‘The Fifth Discipline:’
These are the characteristics of a learning organization according to Peter Senge:
Harvard Business School professor David A. Garvin defines a learning organization as follows:
We can aggregate and condense the before mentioned concepts and principles into a comparison of the traditional management style and agile leadership:
Traditional Management | Agile Leadership |
---|---|
Predictive, long-term planning | Provision of vision, strategy, and direction |
Control of work, task assignment | Fostering self-organization |
Maximize utilization and capacity | Supporting teams by removing what is impeding them |
The go-to problem fixer for subordinates | Let those closest to the problem figure out a solution |
Motivating others by extrinsic incentives (bonuses, titles, etc.) | Motivating others by enabling autonomy, mastery, and purpose |
Information flows up the hierarchy (reports, meetings). | Management moves to where the information is, for example, by participation in Sprint Reviews. |
I hope you managed to get the most out of this provisional list of quotes, video, articles, concepts, notions, and ideas on agile leadership. If you like to deepen your understanding, Scrum.org offers an engaging training class on agile leadership, helping leaders understand their role in enabling agile transformation.
If you like to suggest links to add, please post them in the comments’ section.
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