12. Summary
When I started to write this book, I had the idea that I could layer all the concepts on one summarizing map. Visualization is key to gaining understanding. It stimulates our brain in a different way than just reading or listening. So, I created this map, visualizing the core concepts in one picture. You might need to spend some time looking at it and analyzing it so you can make a connection and think about implications in your environment.
The practices, concepts, and models all have their place and time where they’re a great fit and will help your organization to be successful in the VUCA world. In other cases, they might not be beneficial to the organization in any way. For example, transitioning from being a red to a teal organization in one step might be too much and only create chaos. Going to teal or green—which rely on emergent leadership and intrinsic motivation—when most people are in the My Life Sucks tribe can be too hard and end in failure. Implementing agile at the organizational level when most leaders are experts or achievers might not go well either. Structure, leadership, and mindset need to be aligned and go hand in hand on your agile journey.
Organizational Perspective
Agile moves the focus from individuals to teams and shifts the culture from control and compete quadrants to the collaboration and create quadrants of the competing values framework. You may not see it on the first day you decide to go for agile, but collaboration, people, and creativity are what drive the leadership shift. The competing values framework doesn’t tell you which culture is right or wrong for your organization. At the end of the day, who knows what is right and what is not?
To take the connection a bit further, here is how the color model defined in Reinventing Organizations fits in. The red and amber organizations have their center of gravity deep in the control and competition hemisphere, while green and teal organizations live in the higher levels of the collaborate and create hemisphere. Orange organizations fall somewhere in the middle.
Culture can’t be disconnected from the structure or practices, which stimulate the behaviors and values. Therefore, your agile journey always starts with recognizing where the organization is right now, followed by an articulation of the desired state, supported by a clear and strong vision of where you would like to be and why that is important to you. When the organization has a good evolutionary purpose and this dream is appealing enough at the organization level, people will go for it and initiate the culture shift from the inside out.
It’s not a surprise that most of the practices often used in the agile organization—peer feedback, customer collaboration, rolling budgets, flexible scope, team interviews, flat structure, self-organized cross-functional teams, no positions, emergent leadership, and so on—are on the collaboration and create part of the competing values framework map. On the other hand, most of the traditional practices take place in the control and compete space: individual key performance indicators (KPIs), performance reviews, positional power, fixed time and scope contracts, yearly budgets, defined career paths, detailed position descriptions, and siloed component teams, among others. Remember, there is no right mix of practices—they are all driven by the desired change of the culture.
I will give you a short example of how we changed our practices when we decided to move the culture to be more collaborative and creative (see Example 1 in the Competing Values section of Chapter 8). It all started by building true cross-functional teams. We already had them in one part of the organization, but never as a key principle. Some teams were more like a group of individuals, and some were narrowed by functional silo or component focus, so for a big part of the organization, the idea of the cross-functional team was pretty radical. What was in the way were functional departments, so, as you know from the introduction, we decided to merge software testers, software developers, and hardware designers into one department called Engineering: a multirole department where people could collaborate across their domains. To minimize the impact of the roles, we made positions more general—such as engineer instead of software developer or tester. Having one department allowed us to have a pretty flat structure where, instead of hierarchy, we relied on teams and their self-organization not only at the single team level but also through cross-team collaboration.
The shift was challenging for parts of the former organization that used to have team leads, as team members were initially lacking the motivation and were reluctant to take over the responsibility because they didn’t trust the new way of working. Most of the former team leads felt threatened by the change and showed various symptoms of resistance, so it took a lot of energy to explain the overall vision needs of the organization and coach them to help them find their new role. Ultimately, most of them ended up as experts, running one of our communities (automated testing, tools, architecture, Java, etc.).
Coaching was a critical aspect in our success because we also removed all the traditional KPIs and performance reviews, as those never worked in our dynamic environment anyway. We redesigned the salary structure to have a higher base and no variable parts in most cases, and we built the entire performance review based on radical transparency, peer feedback, and coaching for growth. We encouraged people to work as a team, and in the first few quarters, had a small bonus tied to that; however, the overall vision was that we needed to collaborate across the teams to help the organization to be successful: we don’t fight with each other, we don’t compete, and we collaborate across teams and products because one plus one is always more than two. Recruiting followed the culture shift. Instead of the multi-round formal interview process focused on technical skills, we did a behavior interview and tried to give candidates the opportunity to experience our culture, join the team for lunch, and see if there was a mutual fit.
Example of practices we avoided (red) and implemented (green) to enhance the desired culture shift
Long story short, it was a journey. Such things take time. It was frustrating and exhausting. Not everything went well. Nonetheless, if I were in the same situation again, I would do the same—not because the organization became more successful in doing business but because of the energy the overall culture shift created in people. The enthusiasm, the pride in who we are, the motivation. We truly lived the We Are Great mindset and were on our way to Life Is Great. We formed something between a green and a teal organization. We didn’t follow any frameworks or models. We were fully value- and culture-driven, and the change was worth all the trouble.
Agile Leader Perspective
Agile leaders are guides for the organization on its agile journey. From the meta-skills perspective, you need patience, as such change takes time. Even if your current state is far away from your dreams and desires for the organization, you need to be only one step ahead with the practices and not push too hard for the change.
Don’t push the change—let it grow.
The let-it-grow approach is easier said than done: you need to be a good servant leader, have a Catalyst mindset, and apply the leader-leader approach to grow the “we” culture. Every day, you will get better at the agile leader competencies: practice coaching and facilitation, collaborate, and train your brain to become better at using different meta-skills, such as patience, curiosity, openness, courage, and trust in the system.
It took me a while, and I’m still on the journey of becoming a better agile leader. Am I more patient than I used to be? Yes. Can I more easily let my ideas go and help others to come up with their ideas? For sure. The ability to see organizations from the system perspectives was an eye-opener for me. Be able to trust the system and let it go. You need to live according to the agile leadership model (see Chapter 5). It’s not as simple as it seems. I myself need to overcome my old habits and gain new skills. But it’s a journey, and every step makes me a better leader, closer to being a Catalyst, closer to being a better coach, creating cultures and environments where people can collaborate rather than compete and be creative and do their best.
Organizations need to invest in system coaching, large group facilitation skills, and agile leadership development. Business agility is not just about applying some framework; it’s a total shift of organizational values and culture, and such change always needs to happen from the inside out. You can never be successful by delegating it or telling others to change. Leaders need to change first, and the organization will follow.
Agile leaders are the key success factor to organizational agility success in the VUCA world.
Finally, having a critical mass of agile leaders is the key factor to organizational success in the VUCA world. Supporting agile leadership and growing agile leaders is one of the most important tasks on your agile journey. The effort will pay back faster than you would ever have expected. Agile is a journey: it can never be completed and it will never be perfect, but it’s always going to be exciting.
How would you assess the level of the following aspects in your environment on a scale of 1 to 10, where 1 is low and 10 is full?
Becoming an agile leader is not hard—you just need to start. Choose a few things you can do to improve your environment.
What’s Next
Being an agile leader is a never-ending journey of continuous education, development, and learning. It will never be done, and it will never be perfect. The variety of the concepts, models, and practices is unlimited, so you will not lack for inspiration. I hope you have enjoyed this tasting menu of agile leadership. Now you can start building your own set of tools and skills that work for you. There is no one-size-fits-all approach. Your leadership style must suit your unique personality, circumstances, and constraints. I hope this book has helped you find the ideas that will support you in your own personal journey.
For those who might ask, “I know you shared all those tips along the way, and recommended books at the end of each chapter, but is there anything else you can recommend?” I guess there is always more. Here are a few tips on possible next steps in your leadership development:
• Certified Agile Leadership CAL:1 A unique leadership development program in an agile space. I’m one of the Scrum Alliance2 CAL educators, and while this book crystalizes experiences from my Certified Agile Leadership program, the program also deepens the concepts described in this book through practical experience. The program starts with a class, followed by the seven-month virtual CAL II program.
• Organizational Relationship System Coaching ORSC:3 For system coaching at the team and organizational levels.
• Leadership Circle Profile:4 For a better understanding of your reactive and creative site.
• The Leadership Gift:5 For growing faster as a leader.
• Table Group:6 For investing in your team’s health.
• Business Agility Institute:7 For stories and case-studies from organizations that have embraced agility at the entire organizational level.
You can get help from world-class experts on agile transformation. Any certified agile coaches and trainers—Certified Scrum Trainer (CST), Certified Enterprise Coach (CEC), Certified Team Coach (CTC)—from the Scrum Alliance is going to be a great guide on your agile journey.
In a Nutshell
Being an agile leader is not about positional power but about your ability to leverage the power of influence.
Agile leaders are guides for the organization on its agile journey.
Invest in system coaching, large group facilitation skills, and agile leadership development.
Agile is a mindset of continuous improvement in order to unleash the creativity of the system.
Each practice, concept, and model has a place and time where it is a great fit and will help your organization to be successful.
More collaborative and creative cultures are more adaptive and flexible and therefore more suitable to deal with the VUCA world challenges.
Leaders need to change first, and the organization will follow.
1 https://sochova.cz/cal-certified-agile-leadership-course.htm
2 https://www.scrumalliance.org
4 https://leadershipcircle.com