Peter Stevens, in this blog article entitled The Elephant in the Agile living room, shared the following—
The agile movement has no positive message to offer company leadership. Because Agile transformation is often not about things executives care about, these transformations are very low on the executive priority list. Until we fix this, agility will not be a high priority. The Personal Agility System brings genuine benefit to executives: Executive Agility. Let’s look at why and how this works to show the potential benefits of embracing agility to the executives themselves.
I recently attended a meetup presentation given by a senior transformation leader of well-known organization that is transforming themselves. They highlighted the challenges executives face: An agile transformation is about giving up responsibility. They have to find a new role, without any clarity about what that new role is. Implicit is a loss of status, power and influence, with a corresponding risk of executive pay cuts.
At another event, another transformation leader of a large, well-known company: “why is your company doing an agile transformation?” “To improve employee satisfaction and customer satisfaction,” they answered. How important are these topics to your executives? Since these are typically not a significant factor in the executive’s bonus, their commitment is somewhere between giving lip-service and none at all.
What does agility offer to leadership personally? Until now, very little. Scrum, Kanban, SAFe, and most if not all other agile frameworks all about teams producing stuff. But most managers and executives are not part of a team that produces stuff. They are accountable for teams and their results, but they not part of the teams.
Senior executives are especially vulnerable: they are like likely to be in competition with each other and serve at the whim of their boards. What does an agile transformation offer them? Loss of power, loss of influence, turning them into coaches, and probably a loss of income. Why exactly do they want to go there?
Peter goes on to make a case for leaders to leverage their Personal Agility System (PAS) to better connect to the benefits of agility.
I want to take a different approach by reacting to some of the leadership quotes or positions from the interview feedback in the quotes.
Why Leaders Need to Care about Transformation
I was sort of dumbstruck by the above leadership quotes and position. The last time I checked, leaders needed to, well…lead.
They need to care about their teams.
They need to care about their customers.
They need to care about their organizations.
And last, they need to care about themselves.
They need to serve the above constituencies without whining about me-me-me. Leadership, or modern servant leadership, isn’t about the leader. It’s about the organizational system, creating a better way of working and delivering value to your clients.
Along the way, of course, the leaders also need to lead/serve themselves,
Reacting to the last paragraph –
What’s wrong with a loss (sharing, co-sharing) of power?
What’s wrong with a loss (sharing, co-sharing) of influence?
What’s wrong with focusing on coaching (mentoring, growing, empowering) team members?
What’s wrong with a loss of income (co-sharing, equity distribution)?
If you are creating a high-performance, kickass organization?
Wrapping Up
They call it leadership for a reason. You lead. You provide a role model. You walk your talk. You serve others first.
In the 1960s, Robert Greenleaf was a leader at AT&T corporation from the 1920s to 1964, and he famously shared his Servant Leadership philosophy with the world in 1970 and via his subsequent writings. In a nutshell, Greenleaf describes Servant Leadership as—
“The servant-leader is servant first… It begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve, to serve first. Then conscious choice brings one to aspire to lead. That person is sharply different from one who is a leader first, perhaps because of the need to assuage an unusual power drive or to acquire material possessions…The leader-first and the servant-first are two extreme types. Between them, there are shadings and blends that are part of the infinite variety of human nature.
“The difference manifests itself in the care taken by the servant first to make sure that other people’s highest priority needs are being served. The best test, and difficult to administer, is: Do those served grow as persons? Do they, while being served, become healthier, wiser, freer, more autonomous, and more likely to become servants? And, what is the effect on the least privileged in society? Will, they benefit or at least not be further deprived?“
I guess I’m saying that the REAL elephant in the room is that we need more leaders to be servant-focused instead of self/leader-focused. It’s perfectly fine if you fall in the latter direction, but then you should reconsider your alignment with your role as a leader.
Oh, and finally, do I appreciate the PAS? Absolutely! Here’s a link to the book that he and Maria Matarelli recently published on the topic.
But that’s not what I’m pushing in this reaction to Peter’s share. I’m pushing agile leadership and leader-as-servant as the prime directive.
Stay agile my friends,
Bob.
BTW: here’s a link to more details on Greenleaf’s work - https://www.greenleaf.org/