Agile leadership
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The major criteria standing in the way of agile adoption or improvement are in the hands of managers, not the teams themselves. But many managers have been trained to think in ways that are a century old. Agile organisations require a new mode of management and a new style of leadership. This talk discusses why this is and what this new paradigm might be like for your organisation.
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Agile leadership
- 1. Management & Leadership of the Agile Organisation What needs changing? March 2017
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- 6. “Scientific” Management The Machine model – 3 premises: 1. It is possible to know all you need to in order to plan what to do 2. Planners and doers should be separated 3. There is but one right way 5
- 7. The Problem with Power 6 The Powerful The Powerless Ambition Politics Mistrust Fear Greed Resentment Resignation
- 8. Our Management ’operating system’ • Management creating plans • ‘Resource’ allocation • Milestones • Steering Groups • Progress reports • Measuring individual performance • Annual budgeting • Organisation silos • Timesheets 7
- 9. Our Operating System is in need of an upgrade 8
- 10. 9
- 11. The Management Problem 10 Outcomes PlansActions Knowledge Gap Alignment Gap Effects Gap Ref: Stephen Bungay, The Art of Action, 2011
- 12. The Usual Reactions 11 Outcomes PlansActions Ref: Stephen Bungay, The Art of Action, Knowledge Gap: More detailed information Alignment Gap: More detailed instructions Effects Gap: More detailed controls
- 13. Helmuth Von Moltke , 1869 12 Outcomes PlansActions Knowledge Gap: “Do not command more than is necessary or plan beyond the circumstances you can foresee” Alignment Gap: “Communicate to every unit as much of the higher intent as is necessary to achieve the purpose” Effects Gap: “Everyone retains freedom of decision and action within bounds Ref: Stephen Bungay, The Art of Action,
- 14. Directed Opportunism 13 Outcomes PlansActions Knowledge Gap: Limit direction to defining and communicating the INTENT Alignment Gap: Allow each level to define how they will achieve the intent of the next level up and ‘backbrief’ Effects Gap: Give individuals freedom to adjust their actions in line with intent Ref: Stephen Bungay, The Art of Action,
- 15. 14 Alignment Autonomy Intent: what and why Actions: how Adapted from: Stephen Bungay, The Art of Action Confusion Clarity Inaction Effective Targeted action Misdirected action
- 16. Alignment needs to be achieved around intent, and autonomy granted around actions High alignment enables high autonomy 15
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- 18. 17 BA Mission Statement: “To ensure that BA is the customer’s first choice through the delivery of an unbeatable travel experience.”
- 19. 18Source: Michael Sahota, Agile Leadership, 2017
- 20. The importance of employee engagement • Managers account for at least 70% of the variance in employee engagement scores across business units –Gallup poll • Only 35% of people feel engaged in their work. 43% feel “detached” or “actively disengaged”. 22% feel “unsupported” –Towers Watson, 2012 (32,000 people worldwide) 19
- 21. 20Source: Management 3.0, Jurgen Appelo,
- 22. A word on Structure “Any organisation that designs a system will produce a design whose structure is a copy of the organisation’s communication structure” - Conway’s Law 21
- 23. Management is a key factor in organisational agility – either constraining or enabling it 22
- 24. 23 Culture
- 25. McKinsey 7 S framework 24 Strategy Structure Systems Shared Values Skills Staff Style
- 26. Sahota model 25
- 27. Schneider model of Culture 26
- 28. 27 Turn the Ship Around! - L. David Marquet • Control • Competence • Clarity
- 29. 28 Autonomy, Mastery, Purpose Autonomy, Competence, Relatedness Control, Competence, Clarity
- 30. LEADERSHIP drives CULTURE drives PERFORMANCE 29Source: Deloitte University Press, Feb 2015
- 31. Teams over Individuals • Work is accomplished by groups, not individuals • Individual performance is a myth • High performers distinguished by diverse groups 30Source : Harvard Business School 2004, Betacodex
- 32. Empower Teams • Control through bosses • Information flows up, commands flow down • Top-down decision-making • Rules for containment • Control through Transparency, peer pressure • Principles, shared responsibility 31Source : Harvard Business School 2004, Betacodex
- 33. Cross-functional Teams • Groups aligned by function • Work requires handoffs between groups • Co-ordination via managers • Cross-functional teams • Co-ordination among peers • Faster delivery 32Source : Betacodex
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- 36. Pluralistic - Green Paradigm 35 ACHIEVEMENT PARADIGM SUCCESS OR FAILURE HIERARCHY CORPORATIONS OUTCOMES TOP-DOWN DECISION-MAKING DECISIVE LEADERS PLURALISTIC PARADIGM MORE TO LIFE PLURALISM NON-PROFITS RELATIONSHIPS BOTTOM-UP CONSENSUS SERVANT LEADERSHIP
- 37. 36
- 38. Valve • ‘Flat’ Structure. No bosses. • People choose their own projects • Desks with wheels • Temporary roles within team • Peer reviews and stack ranking • “Like high school” 37
- 39. 38Source: http://www.slideshare.net/reed2001/culture-1798664 Patty McCord, Chief Talent Officer
- 40. Evolutionary Purpose • Living entity • Strategy emerges organically • Competition is irrelevant, “competitors” are embraced • Profits come naturally when focussing on purpose • Radically simplified budgeting, no variance tracking • Workable solutions, fast iterations • Sense what’s needed. No targets • Change programs irrelevant 39
- 41. Wholeness • Self-decorated spaces, no status markers • Clear values, ground rules • Meditation, silence, reflection, storytelling practices • Shape roles according to own need • Time commitments • Training in conflict resolution, relational skills, culture-building • Interviews by future colleagues • Everyone’s voice is heard in meetings 40
- 42. Self-management • No hierarchy. Self-organising teams • Staff functions performed by teams themselves, esp. hiring, salaries • No job titles or job descriptions • Fully decentralised decision making based on advice process • Radical transparency of information sharing • Simplified or no policies for expenses, holidays, working hours • Formal multi-step conflict resolution process • Team performance over individual. Peer-based appraisals 41
- 43. Examples of Teal Organisations 42
- 44. ‘Integral’ model 46 Interior Perspective Exterior Perspective Individual Perspective Collective Perspective People’s beliefs and mindsets People’s behaviour Organisational Culture Organisational Systems (structures, Processes, Practices) Source: Ken Wilbur & Frederic Lalouxi
- 45. ‘Integral’ model 47 Interior Perspective Exterior Perspective Individual Perspective Collective Perspective People are motivated by money and recognition Individualistic behaviour, cut corners to make the numbers Internal competition, individual achievers Top-down target- setting, individual incentives Source: Ken Wilbur & Frederic Lalouxi
- 46. ‘Integral’ model 48 Interior Perspective Exterior Perspective Individual Perspective Collective Perspective Explore and challenge personal beliefs Role-modelling from people with moral authority Organisational Culture Put in place supporting structures, processes, practices Source: Ken Wilbur & Frederic Lalouxi
- 47. A few pioneering organisations are showing us the way to Organisations inspired by the next stage of human consciousness 49
Editor's Notes
- Start with the conclusion: The way managers do their job today has its roots in practices from over 100 years ago. They have been trained to manage people and/or projects, but that is no longer appropriate. Managers need to manage the environment and the system and empower the people. But how? OR Do we really need managers at all? Agile has become mainstream with more companies using agile than not. But to be successful, agility must run through the entire organisation. And this is where a lot of companies fall short; why agile transformations are so hard. Decades of ingrained culture and practices take both commitment and perseverance to change. But what needs changing?...
- Version One publishes an annual “State of Agile” survey. This is the 2015 one. Notice any patterns?
- 6 of the top 8 causes are related to “management”
- How about here?
- It is clear from this that 6 of the top 8 causes are related to “management”. These are things that team members themselves have recognised but are unable to do anything about. Scrum Masters and Agile Coaches are particularly adept at spotting this type of problem, but again, they usually cannot resolve them. Agile fails because organisations ‘bolt on’ agile practices at team level without addressing the underlying organisational operating system. Examples: predictive plans, progress reports, individual measures, annual budgets, org silos, etc This is where management must be able to step in. But…The problem a lot of organisations face is that their management have little understanding of agile, the problem the teams are facing and their implications, and/or have no relevant training and experience in how to fix them How do you fix “company philosophy or culture”, “management support (of course I support you!)”? What do you mean “ineffective management collaboration?”. A lot of managers today are ill-equipped to understand these things, let alone deal with them. But why? What is at the root of these problems? Let’s look at how managers are trained to think
- In 1911 Frederick Winslow Taylor introduced his concept of “Scientific Management”. He espoused simplifying jobs and optimising them, training workers for maximum efficiency, with managers monitoring performance, incentivising, rewarding and optimising worker efficiency. He deliberately separated the roles of Thinkers and Doers, the idea being that only the thinkers had sufficient knowledge to plan all the work, and the doers were paid to just do the work, and were not required to think. This thinking grew from the fact that a lot of the labour force were poorly-educated and most jobs were menial. People were treated just like machines. “Managers were programmers of robot workers” – Stephen Bungay This led to a generation of managers, tools and techniques for managing and planning that are still in use today. Think about the hierarchy at your company – how many layers of management are there? Managers managing managers? Who or what are they managing exactly?
- The problem with Theory X thinking : Reinventing Organisations Case Study https://www.dropbox.com/sh/w5r7138w074bihw/AAAH-VvMyCpZKouDlxXHGy2na/Readings/Reinventing%20Organizations%20Case%20Studies.pdf?dl=0
- Tell story of my 300-line Gantt chart People are not resources, swapping people around is counter-productive How effective are date-based milestones? An ‘alternate universe’ This creates competition that mitigates teamwork. Explain Tell story of project stopped temporarily for lack of budget Explain delays caused by silos with no clear communication mechanism Working hours as important as results? Today, we instinctively realise this thinking is inappropriate in a modern workplace, where so many people are paid to think, to apply their own expertise, so why do we still apply all the old thinking?
- Fortunately there are a lot of ideas out there to hep us
- Discuss what SJ is advocating? That employees are free to tell management what to do? Complete autonomy? We need smart people to tell us what needs doing in order to reach the organisation’s strategic objectives We have strategies, we make plans and we hire smart people… so why is it that the outcomes we want so often don’t materialise
- So why is it that managers still feel the need to micro-manage? To control at the detail level? Knowledge Gap: The difference between what we would like to know, and what we actually know Alignment Gap: The difference between what we want people to do and what they actually do Effects Gap: The difference between what we expect our actions to achieve and what they actually achieve
- Explain von Moltke’s philosophy of ‘independent obedience’
- Walk through bridging each gap
- Tracy’s dilemma: 20 minutes before the flight’s departure, a passenger arrives, hot, sweaty and flushed. Passport, ticket, Frequent Flyer Gold Card. “Sorry, Flight is closed” Passenger insistent. No reply from supervisor, no customer service agent available. Ask the audience: What does she do? It depends on how the organisation will react – praise or punish.
- Getting back to Agile…
- http://www.gallup.com/businessjournal/182792/managers-account-variance-employee-engagement.aspx
- Walk through Jurgen’s “ Six Eyes “ monster Note how similar these are to Leadership, i.e. Managers Lead. Energize people – give them purpose, clarity Empower teams – give them decision-making control Align Constraints – strategy, purpose, objectives Develop Competence we’ve talked about, but what about Structure?
- Originally coined by Fred Brooks in The Mythical Man Month An HBR study found that the often co-located, focused product teams created software that tended more towards tightly-coupled, monolithic codebases. Whereas the open source projects resulted in more modular, decomposed code bases.
- So, if leaders need to create and manage culture, what is that exactly? Well, there are some models we can look at…
- Strategy: the plan devised to maintain and build competitive advantage over the competition. Structure: the way the organization is structured and who reports to whom. Systems: the daily activities and procedures that staff members engage in to get the job done. Shared Values: called "superordinate goals" when the model was first developed, these are the core values of the company that are evidenced in the corporate culture and the general work ethic. Style: the style of leadership adopted. Staff: the employees and their general capabilities. Skills: the actual skills and competencies of the employees working for the company.
- An example of Leadership, Culture His CO once empowered him, so he studied all he could and when he took command of USS Santa Fe, the worst ship in the fleet, he was determined to do the same. He realised, that his approach relied on three pillars: divest control: “I intend to” emphasise competence : specify goals, not methods Provide clarity : begin with the end in mind, use guiding principles for decision criteria Marquet created not followers, but leaders. In one year: Re-enlistments – 3 to 36 Officer retention – 0% to 100% Weeks to qualify in subs – 45 to 38 And the Santa Fe became the best sub in the fleet EVER!
- Three people have produced very similar pillars to support Leadership.
- Ask : what do empowered teams feel like? Story : Teams re-structuring themselves at Spotify
- Human consciousness has evolved hugely. Each stage includes aspects and behaviours of earlier stages
- In “Frontiers of Excellence” (Nicholas Brealey, 1994) Robert Waterman revealed that Theory Y had been a secret weapon in Procter & Gamble's competitive armoury for many years A senior P&G executive had invited McGregor in the mid-1950s to set up a detergent plant in Augusta, Georgia, along the lines of Theory Y. The Augusta plant was run in a non-hierarchical way with self-motivating teams along the lines of Theory Y, and by the mid-1960s it was 30% more productive than any other P&G plant. The principle was subsequently applied to other P&G plants, but the company kept the story secret for almost 40 years, regarding it as a competitive advantage.
- Logic – Why constrain smart people? Google’s 20% time times 5
- No time tracking, no holiday policy Their model is to increase employee freedom as they grow, instead of adding process and rules Top of market compensation, $10k benefits for everyone, no internal rankings Their policy for expenses, entertainment, travel, etc : “Act in Netflix’s best interests”
- Teal breakthroughs – Evolutionary Purpose, Wholeness, Self-Management Tell stories : - Buurtzorg – 7000 nurses in 600 teams, 30 support staff. Regional coaches, intranet. Hire an expert in labour law? FAQ, hired a freelancer. FAVI – brass foundry (taps and gearbox forks). 50% market share, quality and on-time delivery. Decentralised planning, purchasing, scheduling etc ESBZ – Pupils have full learning responsibility, teaching themselves and each other. Adults are mentors and coaches, providing curriculum, modules, exercises and tests. Students self-pace to annual expectations. Weekly 1:1.
- In 1980, Ricardo Semler, who had played in a rock band in his youth, took over Semco from his father. He couldn’t understand why companies had all these rules that told people how to behave, so he started democratising the business. One-third of managers left in 2 years.
- FAVI, based in Hallencourt, France, has been making gearbox forks for 25 years. Branched out into other parts and sub-assemblies for industry, including rotors for electric and hybrid vehicles. No - Human resources, - Planning - Production launch - Scheduling – Methods, - Purchasing Stories: The quality trip to VW
- See HBR Background image There are already a few models for self-organisation:
- Which side is right? Do we focus on the tangible elements of structure and process, or the intangible substance of culture? Ken Wilber’s Integral model shows how this manifests
- People who have a more Orange / Theory X mindset (upper left), will create financial incentive schemes and ambitious targets (lower right). This will affect people’s behaviour (upper right), creating a culture that esteems great achievers above team players (lower left)
- In a hierarchical (Orange) organisation, culture is set by the CEO and filters down through assumptions, norms and concerns From a Teal perspective Organisations have a distinct culture of their own, but how can people consciously bring about that change? To shape culture: Put in place the structures, processes and practices that support that culture, People with moral authority lead by role-modelling the desired behaviours People are invited to explore how their personal belief system supports or undermines the new culture
- Organisations have come a long way over the last few hundred years, and the way we look at them is still evolving. Existing Managers need to look at these new paradigms, and see how their organisations should adapt to new ways of thinking about people, structures, decision-making and organisational culture.