Agile Leadership
Common pitfalls and best tips
What is Agile Leadership?
“We need agile leaders!” is the slogan of many companies that want to spread agile ways of working throughout their organization. An understandable call. After all, with Agile – as with many change processes – it is essential that leaders lead the way. But when it comes to the question of what actually constitutes agile leadership, there is disagreement in many places. In this article, we share our perspective on agile leadership and take a look at the three critical components of mindset, processes and roles. We also clear up common misconceptions and provide tips on how you and your team can successfully work agile.
Agile Mindset
Without an agile mindset, the executive will at most act agile (“doing agile”), never be agile (“being agile”).Agile is not a binary state. A person or team cannot be completely “agile” or “not agile.” Nor does agile show up only in action – for example, a Kanban board on the wall does not make an agile team. Rather, agility begins with the much-cited agile mindset, that is, a certain basic attitude with which I look at things like collaboration, plannability and processes. The agile manifesto includes a set of values and principles that form the cornerstones of an agile mindset. Internalizing and living this mindset, such as focusing on simplicity, is what distinguishes an agile leader.
Agile processes
Every agile leader needs processes in the organization that support them in agile leadership.As ways of working change, so too do the processes in organizations and the ways in which leaders are involved in them. For example, certain meetings may take place without the department heads, or the executive may address the workforce directly in town halls. This can give the impression that managers are less important. In our view, this is not the case – rather, management tasks are shifting and new focal points are being added. New or modified processes are therefore often necessary to help managers and their teams with this change. Freedom in task assignment and self-organized teams instead of rigid regulations are an important lever for processes that promote agility.
Agile roles
The role of the agile leader, as well as that of the other team members, must be transparent and clarified for everyone so that agile leadership can succeed.Agile working is well described especially at the team level. The fact that in certain frameworks like Scrum additional roles like the product owner are introduced can be confusing. As a department head or division manager, it is not easy to directly recognize what one’s own role can contribute to the success of agile work at team level or what needs to be taken into account. This makes clear communication and role descriptions all the more important (for more information, see tip no. 1). Only if it is clear what team members and managers can expect from each other will team members have the security they need for self-organized agile work.
Agile Mindset
Without an agile mindset, the executive will at most act agile (“doing agile”), never be agile (“being agile”).Agile is not a binary state. A person or team cannot be completely “agile” or “not agile.” Nor does agile show up only in action – for example, a Kanban board on the wall does not make an agile team. Rather, agility begins with the much-cited agile mindset, that is, a certain basic attitude with which I look at things like collaboration, plannability and processes. The agile manifesto includes a set of values and principles that form the cornerstones of an agile mindset. Internalizing and living this mindset, such as focusing on simplicity, is what distinguishes an agile leader.
Agile processes
Every agile leader needs processes in the organization that support them in agile leadership.As ways of working change, so too do the processes in organizations and the ways in which leaders are involved in them. For example, certain meetings may take place without the department heads, or the executive may address the workforce directly in town halls. This can give the impression that managers are less important. In our view, this is not the case – rather, management tasks are shifting and new focal points are being added. New or modified processes are therefore often necessary to help managers and their teams with this change. Freedom in task assignment and self-organized teams instead of rigid regulations are an important lever for processes that promote agility.
Agile roles
The role of the agile leader, as well as that of the other team members, must be transparent and clarified for everyone so that agile leadership can succeed.Agile working is well described especially at the team level. The fact that in certain frameworks like Scrum additional roles like the product owner are introduced can be confusing. As a department head or division manager, it is not easy to directly recognize what one’s own role can contribute to the success of agile work at team level or what needs to be taken into account. This makes clear communication and role descriptions all the more important (for more information, see tip no. 1). Only if it is clear what team members and managers can expect from each other will team members have the security they need for self-organized agile work.
Interim conclusion: Prerequisites for agile leadership
Our view of agile leadership is based on a balanced view of mindset, processes, and roles. After all, agile leadership is not a one-(wo)man show: it cannot simply be one person “leading agile”, because agile always presupposes the team and the organization. Agile leadership only emerges from the interaction of the person’s mindset, the organization’s processes, and the roles in the team. Only when these three parameters are right can the leader truly lead in an agile manner.
Practice also shows that the behavior of middle and senior managers is crucial (in both positive and negative ways) to the success of agile working. The following explanations of misconceptions and tips will help you avoid pitfalls and empower your employees in the best possible way.
Misconceptions
To help agile leadership succeed, let’s clear up the top 5 misconceptions:
You as a leader are completely convinced of the “agile way” and support every new idea from your team? Kanban, Retros, Sprints – you try everything because agile is the future?
Actionism can easily arise here and actionism is the opposite of focus. A basic tenet of agile working is to keep the number of parallel tasks to a minimum in order to quickly complete the tasks you’ve started. This includes not euphorically saying yes everywhere, but also consciously not doing things or not doing them yet. Therefore, rather try out a method until you know what exactly you are missing, and then choose the next suitable element for it.
Whenever something unplanned happens or a plan is missing, do you motivate your team: “We’ll do that in an agile way”?
In uncertain and ambiguous situations, acting without a plan is not the best option; on the contrary, you should even have already anticipated several possible scenarios. Your job as a leader is to always give the team clear direction so that good decisions can be made even in uncertain situations. Agility is not an excuse for constantly changing direction and being planless.
Scrum, Kanban, SAFe, LeSS or Nexus? And rather with Trello, Confluence, Jira or Planner? The question of the right method and the right tool is not fundamentally wrong, but often comes far too early.
It is better to start with this question: What do we actually want to do and for which internal or external customers? What is our target image of the product we want to work towards?
Then comes the question: Which people need to work on it to make it work well? And do we share the same view of what we want to achieve?
Once you’ve figured that out and tried it out, you can ask yourself: don’t we need a tool here? And: do we want to work in sprints (and why) and what do we discuss in between? The method then often emerges on its own.
As an agile leader, you eliminate all problems that might prevent your team from working? That’s very laudable, but:
A cornerstone of agile working is the empowered team. As a leader, you should support your team in all tasks that they cannot solve on their own. However, always make sure that you simultaneously empower your team to solve these tasks themselves in the future. If not, the tasks will quickly pile up on you and you will become the bottleneck in the team.
Do you focus everything you do on your customers? Do you use tools such as personas, customer journeys and other tools to map as precisely as possible what their requirements and wishes are (or what you think they are)? But have you ever talked to your customers in a structured way?
One of the cornerstones of agile working is customer orientation, a second one is empiricism. Together they require the real involvement of real customers. We can’t rely on acting in the customers’ best interest if we haven’t asked them. Focusing on empiricism brings us back down to earth and helps us test assumptions we’ve made.
Practical tips
And now?
6 success tips for agile leadership
As a leader, you remain accountable for results, which means you need to ensure that the people on your team have the necessary competence and know the framework of their role. In terms of competence, go into a coaching role and support your team wherever there are difficulties.
In terms of frameworks, you have different roles. For example, a product owner can only manage the requirements well if both the overall goal and his or her scope for decision-making are completely clear. Defining the overall goal is your task as a manager, ideally with your team. Clearly negotiating the respective scope for decision-making is also your job as a leader.
In agile frameworks such as Scrum, various new roles are introduced, e.g. the Scrum Master, the Product Owner or in larger setups also Chapter Leads. In the process, the agile roles are given individual management tasks that were previously classically collected by a manager.
If you work with such roles in your area, it is advisable to create transparency as to who is responsible for which topics. In this way, you can avoid duplication of effort, misunderstandings and possibly frustration when managers knowingly or unknowingly block each other.
Empowered and self-organized teams are an important pillar of agile working. They are based on the belief that people and interactions matter and that employees know their availabilities, skills, and processes best through daily collaboration.
In the agile context, one speaks of an empowered team when a typically small team can take over all things itself for a defined task area without having to rely on competencies from outside for this.
Self-organization in the agile context means: The team has autonomy over the solution finding and the “how?” within a work process. It controls its own work flow. Agile teams act in a self-organized manner within the guidelines and guard rails set by management.
The Delegation Poker tool is well suited for a visualized and documented negotiation of decision latitude with your team. Once you have defined the decision-making power, stick to the agreements and encourage the team or the authorized representatives to actually make decisions themselves within the agreed framework. Always make sure to question and renegotiate the arrangements made at regular intervals.
Transparency is a cornerstone of all agile ways of working. The principle applies: a lack of transparency leads to unnecessary inquiries or misunderstandings and thus always to extra work.
For you as a manager, this means: Let’s get it done, together!
Don’t hold back with information, but be as open as possible with your team and other teams. If you create a Microsoft Teams board, for example, then regulate the visibility in such a way that as many people as possible within the organization have read access.
Whether you like it or not, you will always be a role model for your employees’ behavior to some degree. If you want agile values such as transparency and openness, focus and clear priorities, and true customer orientation to be lived, you must also represent them credibly yourself:
By holding regular retrospectives with your leaders, you signal that it is wanted that team leaders also ensure time for reflection with their teams.
If there are boards where you plan specific milestones in the leadership circle, make that as transparent as possible. Show employees and managers that you trust them.
Be a role model for agile values and principles and live the principle “Inspect & Adapt”.
Communicate openly and promote open communication and transparency.
In the VUCA world, it’s no longer the case that once you create a plan, it’s immutable and you’ll be working off it for years. But it’s also not the case that you can work on a myriad of equally important priorities in parallel.
That’s why it’s important that you, as a division manager or department head, support your team leaders in courageously deprioritizing topics. In this way, you clarify the priority of another topic. If you regularly ask for all topics, it will be more difficult for the other levels to establish a meaningful prioritization.
Therefore, create a clear priority list for the entire team that everyone knows and is always up to date. It is best to involve your team in the development and regularly look at the list in the team meetings. Use the MoSCoW prioritization for this (see graphic). Important: A priority has the meaning that one topic should be implemented before the other topics. If all of your topics are listed under “Must” in the MoSCoW prioritization or all topics have priority 1, no one can follow this. In the end, the topics that are left behind are those for which there was not enough time – and not those that were deliberately put on the back burner.
By translating the overall strategy for your area into objectives, you help the managers and indirectly the employees to classify their contribution to the overall success. At the same time, you may also hand over decisions on the design of certain options to the next levels.
The objectives you provide should describe target states. By also explaining what value it adds to which customers for the objective, you empower the team to find the best solution on their own.
If you’re not sure how many targets you want or need to hit, discuss with your managers: Again, a tool like Delegation Poker helps to jointly determine what kind of guidance you actually want to be involved in. This way, you also make sure that there are no misunderstandings and that someone is not waiting for you to decide, even though she or he should actually decide for themselves.
Conclusion
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Learn how to use delegation poker here.
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Here’s how continuous improvement can happen through retrospectives.
Conclusion
There is no patent remedy for the success of agile leadership. But with our tips, a start has been made. If you want to find out how we can support you in agile working, please contact us.
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