There has been a drumbeat for many years that we need more diversity in the ranks of corporate leadership—particularly women. It’s been increasing in tempo, loudness, and duration, but we still struggle. In this 2021 McKinsey report, women make up only 24% of C-suite roles, and women of color, only 4%--while we’re making progress, indeed, there is much work!
10 Bitter Pills to Swallow About Agile for Leaders
1. Customers don't care if you're agile, waterfall or otherwise.
They care about their experience & that your product helps them. Focus on the quality and frequency of your interactions with customers.
2. It won't solve all of your problems.
Agile isn't a panacea. It'll just expose your problems quicker. The core of Agility is that it builds in feedback loops. It's up to you to learn from them and adjust from there.
3. Telling people, they have psychological safety isn't enough.
You need to demonstrate that people are ok to fail through action, not just words. Celebrate failure, be intentional about creating a safe environment.
I saw this point on LinkedIn from Leise Passer Jensen and it resonated with me… powerfully.—
No-one could have warned me about this prior to my first leadership job:
𝙄𝙛 𝙮𝙤𝙪 𝙝𝙖𝙫𝙚 𝙥𝙤𝙬𝙚𝙧 𝙤𝙫𝙚𝙧 𝙤𝙩𝙝𝙚𝙧𝙨 𝙮𝙤𝙪 𝙢𝙖𝙮 𝙡𝙤𝙨𝙚 𝙞𝙩 𝙤𝙫𝙚𝙧 𝙮𝙤𝙪𝙧𝙨𝙚𝙡𝙛.
This is scary:
Contemporary research now shows that…
… everyone is predisposed to abusing power. So that includes you and me.
The most dangerous threat for leaders is …power.
Power corrupts and may change your brain.
Its consequential behavior can harm ourselves and others.
Few people were told this before they accept an appointed leadership role. That can be dangerous for us as leaders as well as for those who are subjected to our leadership.
Power changes the brain!
Anthony Mersino is a good friend and colleague of mine, and he asked the following question:
What are the disadvantages of using agile and Scrum?
And it made me think a bit. Not only about the question but what would be the best way to answer it.
At the risk of offending some, I kept thinking of a car. Putting the pollution aspect to the side for a second, cars are inherently good. They’ve provided transportation to humans for well over a century. They’ve also evolved, becoming safer, more efficient, and more intelligent. They’re even beginning to self-drive, which is an exciting development.
But then I think the primary disadvantages (or problems) are not in the cars themselves, but in the users—us. It’s how we use them that’s the more significant challenge. For example, driving recklessly or under the influence. Not maintaining them safely. Or allowing unlicensed/inexperienced individuals to drive them too soon.
We discussed the latest round of agile role layoffs at Capital One the other day in the Moose Herd. The news was that Capital One had laid off 1100 people, all with agile in the titles/job families. The public reason shared was that they’d sufficiently evolved their agile capabilities to a point where it made no sense to have independent roles. That (everyone) was now agile.
Of course, there was quite a passionate discussion about—
What are the fundamental driving forces behind the move?
Was this a perceived success / evolutionary step or a failure?
Since Capital One was such a bellwether, was this the beginning of a trend in the agile community?
What might happen to all of those people?
I was pretty struck by the turbulence that this one event created in our community, as the Herd reflected.
One of the things we got heated about was the intentions of the organizational leaders, particularly exploring whether they valued agile or not. And whether they valued people or not.
The 2022 Agile Coaching Report sat in my inbox for almost two months until I finally reviewed it in detail a few days ago. Several areas were worthy of a deeper dive, but one particularly struck me. The report's preface reads: "Notably, coaches believe the biggest impact they are making is in shifting an organization towards an agile mindset and culture. Interestingly, they also find this to be the most challenging shift to make and one of the biggest impediments to agility if not achieved." This sentiment isn't surprising to most who have worked in an organization transforming toward more agility. It's an issue Agile Coaches, Scrum Masters, leaders, managers, and team members run into often.
It's not surprising this shift is difficult because a transformation of an individual's mindset requires an internal change in their value system, which is not only what they say they value but what they believe they value. Unfortunately, leaders, managers, and stakeholders often say they value the agile transformation or value delivering useful products or services to their customers but underpinning those statements is a desire for more money, more accolades, more acceptance, and more power. There's nothing inherently wrong with some of these underpinning values, but it's essential to understand the true driver of the desire to change. It's important because our job as coaches is to nudge them toward more agile ways of thinking. And to do that, we must understand where the individual's values are rooted.
I saw this post on LinkedIn the other day from Julie Springer
“So… this all sounds great, but are you going to provide this same training to our leaders?”
I’ve heard this question multiple times, and the underlying message is clear.
Teams are being asked to work in new ways, without any confidence that their leaders are going to make changes in the way they lead or approach their work.
It’s unfair to train teams on how they are empowered to self-organize to deliver value if nothing around them is changing.
Start with a vision for the change at the leadership level and get clear on what structures, approaches and behaviors need to be in place to support agile teams, before providing training and inviting them to work differently.
There’s a nice dialogue of comments and reactions to the post that I recommend you read. That being said, I didn’t see a quick point I’d like to make…
This is a conversation/reaction topic between Toby Sinclair and Terry Brown recently on LinkedIn. You can find it here. The net of the discussion was—can a manager coach the people that report to them? And, to be clear, the coaching in this sense was professional coaching.
Here’s Toby’s post—
Managers can’t be coaches
But they can coach. Let me explain.
Line managers face barriers to being a coach. These include:
Power dynamic between manager and direct report
Knowledge is held by the manager but not the team member. e.g. Upcoming reorganization
Confidentiality conflict between manager and other team members.
Unwritten constraints in what can/can’t be discussed in the corporate culture.
Commonly to the direct report, the manager will always be a manager. Not a coach.
