Most success depends on colleagues, on the team. People at the top have large egos, but you must             never say ‘I’: it’s always ‘we’.  Frank Lampl
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In a recent article written by Tony Rost, CIO of Metal Toad, a leader asks, “How am I going to screw up our Agile transformation?”  This strikes me as a critical question for leaders of Agile teams.  The Project Management Institute (pmi.org) says “Anecdotal evidence points to the relationship between the sponsor and project manager as the greatest contributing factor.” Leadership plays a critical role for driving new initiatives.  As Agile approaches grow in organizations, the role of project sponsor has evolved from control to collaboration, from leading to supporting.  This is not a simple change for an established leader.  As Tony Rost says “You will fail by not realizing that Agile is an executive leadership philosophy, not a project management workflow.” These kinds of fluffy answers from Agile zealots can seem, to me, pompous and esoteric.  That said, this answer is dead on. That’s why a leader must change to drive Agile success. It’s not about ‘Agile’ as much as the needs of the organization.  Here are the four critical adjustments leaders must make to drive Agile success to drive impact. 

All new solutions, including large maintenance work, require a strategic vision with a clear return on investment.  That’s the job of a leader. Work effort must be aligned to the strategic organizational goals including a shared understanding of the impact desired. In the past, leaders made these decisions and pushed them down to others for implementation.  Today, great leaders are part of a team of people who make these choices collaboratively. Sometimes we forget that strategy is a ‘guess about the future’.   Strategies can be wrong.  Projects fail.  Agile sets up failure as an asset, a way to tack (think sailboat) to the best solution.  Best evolves. Even with Agile improving throughput this way, there still has to be a shared vision and Big Picture.  It may change but it shouldn’t ever be missing.  This includes right up front:

• Why the strategy was chosen (leadership)
• Who chose it (leadership)
• What will you have that you don’t have now when you get where you think you’re going (high level objectives or features)
• What it’s going to take to implement (risks, constraints)
• What is a realistic range for the Return on Investment (business goals)

Here’s an example: how often have you seen an initiative continue well after it’s clear to all that the strategy is not going to work?   All of us have experienced pet projects launched by leaders who were not clear on WHY.  Agile is no different. I’ve seen some pretending to be Agile wasting budgets. The word Agile can’t be used as a Get-out-of-jail-free card.   Anyone who leads an area with Agile teams must be crystal clear how to answer these questions above. I’m a big fan of our Project Charter template which creates a standard set of answers which you can find here.  To avoid controversy, call it an Agile Charter.  I know there are people in the Agile world that want to throw out everything used before including a Project Charter. I guarantee that answering the Charter questions with all stakeholders including leaders will drive support of successful agile philosophy. 

Your company has a culture that is accepted, expected and invisible.  When you change the culture by flattening the hierarchy, as happens in Agile by encouraging constant collaboration and promoting equality of voices, you have really kicked your culture in the shins.  People feel more comfortable with the known bad then they are with the unknown good.  This is very troublesome when change happens to them without explanation. When everyone is equal, everyone can be blamed. The unconscious bias to hierarchy in large organizations is a powerful force.  Being leaderless is scary.  Leaders are shocked when their Agile teams begin with enthusiasm then irrationally and unconsciously seek to elect the leader as the decision maker in their Scrums. It’s easier and more comfortable to defer to the leader. In a hierarchy, it’s common to blame up.  We’re all good at it.

Leaders must explain the behaviors expected of the teams and encourage the Scrum Masters, Product Owners and Developers to watch out for these dysfunctional behaviors. Everyone coaches everyone. What a leader can NOT do, is reprimand people who are not playing their roles correctly.  The Scrum teams themselves must learn to self-align.  If the leader takes this over, the hierarchy is back.

In every meeting and every conversation, leaders must reinforce the collaborative culture required for Agile repeatedly.  Once is not enough. Most important, the leader must model Agile behavior by constantly pushing decision making to the team as a whole.

The deepest fears in organizations rolling out Agile are about jobs and careers.  Given truly equal and collaborative work provokes important career questions:

• How do you measure performance when everyone is equal?
• How do promotions happen?  If everyone is equal, how can promotions occur?
• How does succession planning occur?

HR organizations are watching Agile transformations and trying to figure out how they will adapt HR to be Agile too.  Is it enough for retention, employee engagement and collaboration to replace project work and bell-curve performance incentives?  In keeping with Agile, Is there a need to provide continuous performance feedback within an Agile team – by definition, isn’t that what they are doing already?  Is HR the best group to teach collaboration and conflict resolution, or should that be left to the teams themselves?  Can HR supply continuous learning outside Agile teams?  What would that look like?  If all Agile teams are equal, and all companies are Agile, wouldn’t employees jump between best paying jobs?   Agile is made up of diverse approaches and people which makes the predictability of answers here pretty difficult.

These are difficult questions and a great place for leaders to initiate discussions with HR and all employees, working in a subtly Agile way to redesign talent management.  There will not be one perfect answers for all companies.  Culture and strategy will promote or prevent these decisions.
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Leadership roles will continue to change as well.  Will you need more or less leaders?  Consider using Key Accountabilities rather than complicated, competency based job descriptions to redefine career planning.  Key Accountabilities are 3 – 5 measurable statements that describe the role of a person in an organization.  I describe these as ‘what 3 – 5 things do you have to do each day for the business to be successful?’  This is a good way to begin to evolve talent in an agile organization.  For more information, contact us at info@russellmartin.com .

Great leaders invest in projects with different amounts of risk.   Piloting innovation driven prototypes can be on part of the work portfolio.  Piloting implies that you are going to build a small piece and then decide whether to go for more or not.  Differentiating between Agile projects and pilot / ‘skunk works’ requires clarity.   Agile is often implemented in organizations doing parallel work.  For example, a single person could be involved in multiple sprints and multiple Scrums.  This may not be the purest approach, but it is common.    Pilots create quick results for low cost and quick judgment using totally dedicated teams.  The more risky the strategic need, the more likely a pilot can help.  In contrast, a true Agile approach prioritizes features for each sprint until the customer (owner) has received enough value. 
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Leaders must be clear in the own head and in their language to others the how and why of different approaches to getting work done.     Agile is not the only approach that works.  In some cases, Top Down development with traditional Project Management still has its place.  Check out methods like Design Thinking for innovative, people driven projects.  Experiment with the Duarte method to align the culture and team to the need.  A leader’s job is to drag the rest of the business kicking and screaming toward an impossible future.   Stay open to new ways of doing. 

​To lead in a collaborative and hierarchical organization requires new vision and outcomes.  Being vulnerable is one of the pre-requisites for leaders.  As Brene Brown says in her book Daring Greatly:

     “Vulnerability sounds like truth and feels like courage.  Truth and courage are not always comfortable,        but they are never weaknesses.” 
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Continue to strengthen the hands of your strong.