Whether it’s GE’s lean-startup inspired FastWorks program, Zappos' move to Holacracy, or the US Military's new team-of-team structure; agile, lean, and responsive organizations are all the rage. But this shift from hierarchy to network is creating a leadership gap. Mangers often can't get out of their own way and reflexively apply a top-down mindset that stifles much needed collaboration. In this talk I’ll help you understand the essential skills you need to empower and enables agile, lean, and responsive organizations.

1. 1
Agile Leadership
w/Bob Gower

2. Organizations are our superpower.

3. Organizations are our curse.

4. We are wired to conform. Going along with the group
feels natural, safe, and normal most of the time.
Conformity is the norm not the exception.
Organizations win. When there is a conflict between
the needs of the individual and the needs of the
organization, the organization will usually triumph.
Leaving groups feels life threatening. Whether we quit
or are kicked out, it can be psychologically, and even
physically, uncomfortable to separate from an
organization. This includes work, family, hometown,
religion and more.
Groups win.
In the 1950s psychologist Solomon Asch did a series of studies that
demonstrated how susceptible humans are to group influence.

5. Organizations exert powerful influence on:
ENVIRONMENT & SOCIETY
All environmental and social problems can be traced back
to group behavior.
This can be conscious and deliberate on the part of leaders
of the group — Nazis or Enron. Or can be unconscious an
unintentional.
Many bad things happen when people play by the rules,
and try to win, a bad organizational game.
INDIVIDUALS
Nicholas Christakis, and the Human Nature Lab at Yale,
have conducted numerous studies that show that good
and bad things travel along social networks.
He’s demonstrated that your personal likelihood of
being obese, having a heart attack, being happy, or
quitting smoking are all heavily influenced by people
you spend time with.
We become the people we hang out with, and we tend
to hang out with people in the groups we belong to.

6. We need leaders who create
organizations that bring out
the best in humanity.

7. Individual
Workers
Business
Metrics
Environment
& Society

8. 8
Agile Organizations

9. 9
VUCA
(volatility, uncertainty, complexity, & ambiguity)

11. Many of our most important institutions are running on an
OS developed over 100 years ago.
11
A COMPLEX WORLD
Sometime in the last 30 years this model of top-down
decision making stopped working. Complexity, both inside
and outside our organizations, has made things increasingly
uncertain and unpredictable. The rate of change – both
technological and social – is accelerating.
This world requires a new way of working and organizing.
We need an OS that distributes authority, increases
transparency, and embraces learning. The organization is
reborn as a network, a team of teams capable of delivering
both outcomes and meaning.
Everyone is a thinker now.
A COMPLICATED WORLD
The operating system that most businesses run on was
invented around 1909 by Frederick Taylor. The big idea
was to divide the workforce into two groups: thinkers
and doers. Managers should focus on optimizing
productivity, planning, and training. Workers should
focus on their individual output.
It worked. For decades, productivity soared.
Corporations scaled to new heights. And the
relationship between managers and workers, as well as a
maniacal focus on efficiency, were burned into our
consciousness.

12. 12

13. How do you think about people?
13
Theory X
ON THE WHOLE, PEOPLE…
dislike work, find it boring, will avoid it if they can
must be forced or coerced to make the right effort
would rather be directed than accept responsibility
are motivated mainly by money and job security
have little creativity, except for getting around rules
Theory Y
ON THE WHOLE, PEOPLE…
need and want to work
can self-direct in pursuit of a shared goal
will seek responsibility and thrive on it
are motivated by the desire to fulfill potential
are highly creative, under the right conditions
MCGREGOR 1960

14. A new class of company is leading the way.
WL GORE NETFLIXJSOC WHOLE FOODSGOOGLE
VALVE SPOTIFYMORNINGSTAR BUURTZORGRED HAT
“disruptors”
“exploit new technologies and approaches”
“faster than the competition”
“see things others don’t see”
“faster”
“unique culture”“maniacal customer focus”
“always changing”
“learning organization” “self-organized”“teal”
“lean”
“agile”

15. SEMCO
WHAT THEY DO
A diverse Brazilian company that operates in the service
sector, including environmental consultancy, facilities
management, real estate brokerage, and inventory
support.
WHY THEY’RE SPECIAL
After taking over the company from his father in the
1950s Ricardo Semler modernized the management
practices including employee profit sharing, flexible work
hours and location, and an innovative program that
allowed employees to set their own hours and salary.
Video: Ricardo Semler on rules

16. WL GORE
WHAT THEY DO
An American multinational manufacturing company best
known as the developer of Gore-Tex fabrics.
WHY THEY’RE SPECIAL
Followership: You become a leader at Gore by attracting
people to your project not by being placed above them.
Dunbar’s Number: “By trial and error, the leadership in the
company discovered that if more than 150 employees
were working together in one building, different social
problems could occur. The company started building
company buildings with a limit of 150 employees and only
150 parking spaces. When the parking spaces were filled,
the company would build another 150-employee building.
Sometimes these buildings would be placed only short
distances apart.” — Malcolm Gladwell, “The Tipping Point”

17. BUURTZORG
WHAT THEY DO
A Dutch home health-care organization founded in 2006
byJos de Blok and a small team of professional nurses who
were dissatisfied with the delivery of health care. It has
become the largest neighborhood nursing organization in
the Netherlands.
WHY THEY’RE SPECIAL
They are organized around self-managing teams of 10-12
nurses who serve about 50 patients each.
A 2009 Ernst & Young study found that Buurtzorg uses
close to 40% fewer hours per client than other nursing
organizations. All while taking time to connect with clients
over coffee and encouraging patient autonomy.
Patients stay under care about half as long as in other
nursing companies that see patients as products.

18. VALVE
WHAT THEY DO
An American video game developer founded in 1996. They
developed Half-Life, Counter-Strike, Portal, Day of
Defeat, Team Fortress, and Left 4 Dead video games as
well as the software distribution platform Steam,
WHY THEY’RE SPECIAL
Valve is a flat organization without bosses and uses open
allocation system that allows employees to move between
teams at will.
The Valve employee handbook gives two guidelines for
new hires: find something to work on and find other great
people to work here. Oh, and your desk has wheels.

19. MORNING STAR
WHAT THEY DO
A California based company that processes 25% of
California’s tomato production, and supplies
approximately 40% of the U.S. industrial tomato paste and
diced tomato markets. It has 400 employees and
revenues of $700 million.
WHY THEY’RE SPECIAL
They have no supervisory management and encourage
workers to innovate independently, define their own job
responsibilities, and make equipment purchasing decisions
(in consultation with experts).
One especially innovative technique is the Colleague
Letter of Understanding (CLOU) where individual
employees create a kind of contract with each other
about what specific activities they commit to.

20. 20
Agile Leader

22. Shifts for Org Agility
DOING to THINKING & DOING
Expect, encourage, and reward strategic thinking at all
levels of the organization — especially the “front line.”
RISK AVERSION to SAFE TO TRY
Make many small bets and remove barriers to action.
A mediocre decision is better than no decision. A
definitive “no” is (almost) as valuable as a “yes.”
PERSONAL SUCCESS to GROUP OUTCOMES
Create incentive and accountability systems that reward
and encourage good group behavior.
CONTROLLING to COACHING
Help people become the best versions of themselves
rather than micromanaging and directing.
KNOWING to CURIOUSITY
Ask questions and seek increased clarity, never assume
the answer you have is the final answer.

23. Values of the Agile Leader
SYSTEMS even over FREEDOM
Set up the rules of the game — collaboratively — and
play by those rules yourself. No one owns an
organization.
TRUST even over EXPEDIENCY
A system that has a strong foundation of trust requires
less time, energy, and money to run. Strong leaders
never sacrifice trust for short-term gain.
LEARNING even over SUCCESS
Projects are measured in how much your organization
grows and learns more than how much money they
make (but that’s important too!)
EFFECTIVENESS even over EFFICIENCY
Focus on the outcomes you’re trying to achieve,
including team engagement and impact. Cost-out
consolidation efforts may not be worth it.

24. Leadership Tool: Collaborative Decision Making
“yes”
Integrative Decision Making (IDM)

25. Leadership Tool: Collaborative Decision Making
“yes”
“no way”
Integrative Decision Making (IDM)

26. Leadership Tool: Collaborative Decision Making
“safe”
Integrative Decision Making (IDM)

27. Leadership Tool: Psychological Safety
After years of intensive analysis, Google discovers
the key to good teamwork is being nice

28. Leadership Tool: Psychological Safety
STEPS TO FOSTER IT
1. Frame work as a learning problem,
not an execution problem.
2. Acknowledge your own fallibility.
3. Demonstrate curiosity and ask lots
of questions.
[re:Work] Manager Actions for Psychological Safety

29. Leadership Prime Directive: Create Trust
Connect, Then Lead Cuddy, Kohut & Neffinger
warm / caring
strong/competent

30. Leadership Prime Directive: Create Trust
Connect, Then Lead Cuddy, Kohut & Neffinger
TRUST
warm / caring
strong/competent

31. Leadership Core Skill: Emotional Agility
“Abandon the Idea of Being Fearless
Instead walk directly into your fears, with your
values as your guide, toward what matters for you.”
Emotional Agility Susan H. David

32. Leadership Core Skill: Emotional Agility
Emotions are Data not Directions
Emotional Agility Susan H. David

33. 33
Organizations are
People-Growing Machines

34. Thank You
34
bob@theready.com
@bobgower