While I agree 100% with the spirit of this article, I want to riff off of it from an agile transformation leadership perspective…
It’s simply not good enough for a CEO of a company that aspires to agile ways of working (transformation, business agility, flow, employee engagement, etc.) and not take a strong ownership stake in it themselves.
To simply hire someone to make things be agile without being in the game themselves. Not as a:
Sponsor
Supporter
Proponent
Advocate
Stakeholder
Funder
Cheerleader
Isn’t good enough. Not for something as powerful, as challenging, as impactful, with as much potential as changing their culture and the way they do work.
I received this question from my friend Christopher Lee—
I have an existential and abstract question for you. How do we stop line managers from adopting micromanaging behaviors as it relates to artificial deadlines? Can deadlines co-exist with Agile? If so, how can line managers trust their people to make good decisions and execute those decisions autonomously? Is there an organization that exists with this ideal culture that I describe? Thanks.
Can deadlines coexist with “agile”?
I certainly think so. I think deadlines, milestones, delivery dates, etc. are a fundamental part of the real world. I think the key focus points for agile contexts include—
Based on a bit of a lark, I attended Gustavo Razzetti’s Culture Design Masterclass on March 19th. I’ve been wanting to get around to talking about it for quite some time, so here are some reactions…
https://www.fearlessculture.design/
First of all, the attendees were outstanding. It was a very diverse and eclectic mix of folks that were fare wider than my typical “agile coaching” colleague universe. I enjoyed and learned much from the diverse perspectives.
Second, I want to highly recommend the Culture Design Canvas as a very general-purpose tool for exploring, exposing, understanding, and potentially changing your culture. As an agile coach, I saw many applications of it in my Enterprise-level agile coaching activity.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about critical aspects of folks going down an agile transformation. For example, I recently delivered a lightning talk at a local group focused on well-being indicators in agile organizations. I was intentional in not saying the word “metrics” or “maturity” in the talk, as they imply some sort of range or specificity that I didn’t want to imply.
Related to that talk is this post. I wanted to think hard about the most critical leadership patterns (habits, tendencies, attributes) that stand between leaders effectively and personally adopting and supporting an agile mindset. Anf four critical areas came to mind as anti-patterns, horsemen if you will, that need to be avoided…
I read a post by Scott Dunn that inspired this talk. I’ve known Scott for a while. He’s the principal coach/founder of Rocket Nine Solutions, an agile coaching & training firm. He recently moved from Orange County, CA to Nashville.
Since he’s now closer to me, and since Vaco’s headquarters is in Nashville, I’m hoping to collaborate more with Scott in the future.
But I digress…
The title of Scott’s post is – Your Culture is What’s on Your Walls. In it he talks about observing cultures by physical evidence and gleaning the culture by observation. I agree with his perspective and I liked the personal nature of the story. He also inspired me to extend the idea.
