: Learn how to evolve to agile via a multi-pronged approach from examples of leaders who have successfully built an agile culture by empowering their teams to do their best work.

1. Effective Leadership of Agile
Organizations: Building a
Culture of Servant Leadership
Carl Shea,
Enterprise Agile Coach
Nidhi Srivastava,
Global Head Consulting Practices
July 2018

2. Agile Companies Need Agile Leaders
Traditional decision-making
styles and ways of working
are different from agile
Agile organizations are flatter
with people in the lower
grades in the hierarchy
authorized to make decisions
Skill sets and behaviors that
have helped executives rise to
the top may not facilitate agile
The work of the best agile
teams gets disrupted when
leaders aren’t able to change
their legacy ways
Command and control must give way to new behaviors and flat structures.

3. Enabling Agile Leadership
Agile organizations need to change the leadership culture.
How leaders communicate
organizational goals, and
how they react to success
and failure
The way leaders make
decisions and empower team
leaders
The hierarchy leaders establish
to control resources and
manage results
The power
leaders invest in
agile teams

4. Change Leadership Mindsets
In large traditional organizations, the leadership is accustomed to:
Make consequential
decisions
Predict, control, and focus
on self
Base authority on rank,
experience and expertise
Assign blame on failures and
inculcate culture of fear
In agile organizations, the leadership helps teams:
Make important decisions
Sense and respond
Draw power from empowering
others via emotional intelligence
and trust
Learn from failures, celebrate
lessons and move forward

5. Coach Leaders on How to be Agile
Coaching helps successful leaders, who are accustomed to command-and-control, to adopt
lean-agile mindset. Effective coaches:
Tailor their teaching to an
individual’s leadership style
and behaviors
Instill practice and confidence
to learn how to engage with
employees and cede control
Make the individual aware of
his actions that enhance or
inhibit the adoption of agile
culture
Provide opportunities to help them
develop personal relationships with
team members

6. Build Trust for an Agile Mindset
Adopting an agile mindset requires leaders to build trust throughout the organization.
Show confidence in teams to
make decisions
Cultivate individual
relationships with colleagues
Understand failure as a
learning opportunity rather
than a reason to assign
blame Appreciate the value of the
team members instead of
fostering a superior and
hierarchical dynamics

7. Instill Personal Commitment to Change
Create a program to build
awareness that the
organization is changing
Seek informed consent from
both leaders and teamsProvide strong backing from
executive sponsors
Learn about agile
methodologies and a leader’s
role in supporting the teams
implementing them
Engage in discussions to
understand why the
organization is moving to
agile, and the challenges
they will confront
Bring in experienced
teachers to guide the
transition, for an outside
perspective
Paint a clear picture of the journey and how teams will contribute to success.

8. Learn from Amazon and Facebook
Support team’s decisions, even
if the top level doesn’t
Embrace organizational
failures
Acknowledge that employees
have personal lives they bring
to their jobs
Recognize and correct poor
choice quickly
Avoid complacency and lead
by example
Ensure that top executives
do not drive every decision
Demonstrate that scale and
growth are not obstacles to
maintaining a lean-agile culture
Amazon and Facebook have successfully empowered teams to do their best work. They:

9. Embrace Agility for an Equal Ecosystem
Agility is people driven; invest
in people and culture, and not
just technology
Establish incentives and
rewards that recognize teams
instead of individuals
Measure the success of
leaders based on how they
help others grow
Enable every stakeholder to
contribute value to the whole
organization
Metrics of reward and recognition and leadership success criteria change in agile
organizations.

10. Effective Leadership of Agile
Organizations: Building a
Culture of Servant Leadership
Copyright © 2018 Tata Consultancy Services Limited
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