I’ve been thinking of balance lately when it comes to agile transformations. And, the sad truth is, I don’t see that much of it.
I either see organizations who are too focused on leadership and leaders driving the transformation, so skewed towards them. Or organizations that are coddling the teams and letting the inmates run the asylum, so skewed towards the team.
What does “Balance” need to look like?
I’ll give you a quick example. There’s the notion of servant-orientation and servant leadership in agile contexts. This is normally focused on leaders serving their teams. For example, a Scrum Master is a servant leader in their mindset and they need to serve their team.
But for every reaction, there should be an equal and opposite reaction to achieve better balance. So, yes, leaders need to serve their teams.
But the reciprocal is that teams need to serve their leaders as well. They need to give be respectful of their roles, inclusive of their ideas. They need to provide the transparency of forecasts, work, and progress to support the leader’s operational needs.
Josh Anderson and I explored this notion in more detail in one of our recent Meta-casts. We called the episode The Reciprocal Conundrum. I’m hoping you give it a (balanced) listen to see if it changes (or rebalances) your thinking.
Stay agile my friends,
Bob.