I was in a coaching conversation the other morning with another agile coach. They brought up a scenario at work where one of their key stakeholders (executives) had said something like—
I’m fully on board and bought into what you’re focusing on in the agile transformation…
And I stopped them.
As I thought about it, the thought that kept coming up was this—
Being supportive of;
Fully backing;
Having their buy-in;
Being on board with.
Isn’t good enough for leaders when you’re a coach in an organizational transformation. Sure, those words are nice and appreciated, but I was thinking they are just table stakes. That the coach needed MORE from the stakeholders.
I was talking with a colleague of mine the other day about their experience beginning an agile transformation at a financial firm. Their executive team asked to be informed about agility and they gave him a 3-hour limit to their availability.
They considered this THE opportunity to get all of the leadership in’s and outs about agile so that they could lead the effort effectively.
To be honest, I’ve heard this all before. In fact, I’ve heard these sorts of things for ~20 years from senior leaders, stakeholder’s, and executives—
I need you to fill me in on everything there is to know about Lean, Agile, Scrum, etc. and I only have about an hour.
We’re locked and loaded on an Agile Transformation. Can you give me the executive overview? The executive team and I can only give you two hours.
The most we can give you for agile leadership training is 4-hours. And that’s a lot considering our priorities, so let’s just make the best of it.
