For organisations to adopt agile ways of working, the senior leaders have to change their ways of working. However, agile behaviours have not brought them the position they are in today and it is not easy for them to unlearn what had led them to success is not easy.
Many companies, divisions are making huge investments in adopting agile methodology due to its many benefits. The benefits include speed, product quality, service quality, lower costs and focussed customer orientation. For this to be a success, the leaders have to change their behaviours and accept the agile methodology else the benefits would be limited.
In companies that have successfully implemented agile, the following four qualities are the common traits shown by leaders that can be attributed have been responsible for its successful adoption.
Prioritise, focus on a few important aspects that are critical to the organisation
There are a few common factors that are common to agile, but selecting a few critical factors requires an in-depth knowledge of the organisation and its culture. They should be able to articulate the priorities in a way the organisation recognises and act on.
Commit themselves to act as role models of behavioural change.
It is easy to talk about what needs to be one than to make an actual public commitment to new methods. The effective leaders commit themselves t the daily workouts publicly in team action plans. These models are explicit in how they adopt it in their work and routines, what and how they communicate and how they engage the organisation. the plans are specific timely.
They enable and empower themselves and their teams
leaders recognise that behavioural change does not happen just by thinking about it. They seek help in terms of coaching, feedback to reflect and build skills. They do not consider seeking help as a sign of weakness. They understand that to achieve results they first need to invest. leaders also recognise that others need help and act as a coach for their teams and in coaching others they also reinforce their learning.
One of the most difficult behaviours is pushing down decision making to those closest to operations, customers. This is empowerment and it is not easy to decide when to let go and when to tell them what to do.
They reinforce transparency and accountability. They empower the teams more and demand more transparency in the team activities so that quick actions can be taken when required.
They champion, reward and celebrate new behaviours.
leaders in an agile setting face a continuous challenge: to encourage, reinforce, model behaviours that are unfamiliar to the organisation. these include pushing for a minimum viable product to test the thesis, to encourage experiments and celebrating failures as an opportunity to learn. Leaders need to change how they celebrate success and reward desired behaviours. They may also need to take some tough decisions like dropping past performers who are unable to cope in the new setup.
Agile leadership is always about change. The shift to agile adds a new layer of urgency, complexity and challenge. For an organisation to be successful the leaders must show their capability to change and take the team along.
Agile starts or stops at the top
By Deborah Lovich, Vikram Bhalla, Elizabeth Lyle, and
Vinciane Beauchene - BCG 2018/05
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