We always talk a good game about the concept of Servant Leadership in agile contexts. But I have a hypothetical thought experiment for you. What if…

  • There was a relatively small or mature start-up company;

  • Where the founders were developers or individual contributors;

  • They hired a leadership team to “run” the company, but maintained primary ownership;

  • The founders are still actively on the board and guiding overall strategy;

  • But they simply enjoyed the product innovation and creation process associated with being a team member.

Now, as time goes on, these folks simply blend into the woodwork of the “teams”.

The premise

  • The founders own the company.

  • The teams are not only empowered but have empowerment THRU the founders.

  • The leadership team truly serves the teams being more accountable downwards.

  • Nearly all problems are “solved” with the leaders fully considering the thoughts, ideas, and opinions of the teams.

  • All organizational strategies are rationalized with and approved by the teams.

The BIG questions

Given the above context…

  1. Would this influence the organizational culture (safety, trust, empowerment, accountability, transparency, etc.) that the senior leadership team models? How?

  2. If the leadership team wanted to introduce SAFe or any other organizational-wide initiative, would they approach that strategy differently?  

  3. What about estimates, planning, client commitments, goals, etc. How would the approach to these activities (and similar) change? 

  4. Would the need for “governance” change? And if at all, how? 

  5. Do you think the teams would evaluate the performance of the leadership team? If so, what would that look like?

Wrapping Up

In this hypothetical, the teams really are in charge. They are empowered and their feedback, support, and ideas truly matter. In many ways, the senior leadership team reports to the teams. And their performance is measured by how they (1) not only lead the strategy of the company and create results, but (2) how they do that by empowering, engaging, and working with their teams.

This Morningstar video is an example of such a company structure. While not entirely aligned with my hypothetical, it does provide a real-world example. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqUBdX1d3ok

And a final question for this thought experiment…

Why don’t all leaders in all companies look at their Prime Directive as serving (working for) their teams? What could possibly prevent them from taking that approach?

Stay agile my friends,

Bob.

#leadersservetheteam

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