Agile Leadership: A Developmental and Integrative Approach
Add to calendarIn this session, we offer a synthesis of several bodies of thought that address processes, people, technology, change and leadership within the context of a large agile transition. While the competencies of agile development are well developed, the exploration and leveraging of other research on systemic change offers real insight to the complex organizational task of sustaining agile processes. We intend to fuse such research with our own experiences leading substantial agile transformations, to help senior leaders gain powerful new tools for leading their own agile transitions.
The workshop will have three parts. The first part explains the framework. The second part presents a guided set of exercises with coaching from the facilitators. The third part is a debrief, during which participants share their insights and next steps.
PART I: Explaining the Framework
At the heart of the framework we present are two big ideas, and a set of leadership capabilities which arise from their synthesis. Here are the big ideas we will present:
Big Idea 1. This is the idea—borrowed from Ken Wilber’s AQAL model—that an organization can be conceptually broken down into four dimensions, or ‘quadrants.’ These are:
- Quadrant 1: Team and organizational culture, dynamics, intelligence, etc.
- Quadrant 2: Structures and processes which govern how things get done
- Quadrant 3: Individual consciousness, cognition and emotional capacity
- Quadrant 4: The products and services which the organization produces
This quadrant model allows for a simplified, though still fully ‘systemic’ view of your organization.
Big Idea 2. This is the idea that beyond competence, there is another measure of human performance, and that is capability. Competence refers to things like programming skills, testing skills, project management and delegation skills, etc. Capability refers to how people think, how they interact and relate with others, their capacity to see whole systems, their ability to think ‘outside the box’. Higher levels of capability, defined in this sense, correlate with increased Agile maturity. We will provide an overview of how different levels of capability, as they map across the four quadrants, impact, either positively or negatively, your agile processes.
Agile Leadership Principles. Pairing the two big ideas—the 4-quadrants view of organizations and the focus on human capability—produces a synthesized, paradigmatic view of organizations, suggesting the following agile leadership capabilities:
- Seeing whole systems—through use of the four quadrants model—rather than mere parts and functions.
- Being able to define the scope of the organizational system that you are acting within or upon, and know how to choose the appropriate scope early, and how to change that scope as agility evolves
- Knowing how you are changing the system, and understanding how far and for how long the system can be out of “balance” (defined as conditions where the state of each quadrant is mutually reinforcing other quadrants)
- Understanding that agile transformation means developing organizational *capability* across the four quadrants, rather merely ‘acquiring’ or enhancing a set of *competences*
- Knowing how to share a practical and realistic vision for the “directional” improvement of the system – with ‘share’ meaning developing this vision in appropriate dialogue with the coordinators and performers in the system, in such a way that the ownership and understanding of developing and implementing the vision of agile development unfolds in a challenging, growing, learning, and positive way
- Knowing how to use customers of the products of the system to pull and catalyze more improvement and change in the system. Understand that customers are the ones who determine value, and therefore the extent to which you should change the system
- Knowing yourself as a leader, with the responsibility of being a catalyst for change in the system, but without the power to force change throughout the system
[About 60 minutes]
Part II: Exercises for Learning to Work with the Framework
In the second part of the session, participants will work alone and in pairs in order to develop an initial assessment of the current Agile capability of their organization (for consultants, this might be a current or recent client). The facilitators will walk participants through a sequence of questions that are designed to help participants discern the levels of leadership and management capability within each quadrant. Further dialog and coaching will be provided to deepen participants’ understanding of the framework, and to provide insight into their own particular situations.
[About 90 minutes]
Part III: What’s Next?
In the third part of the session, participants will share what insights they had during the session, and next steps they will take within their organizations once they are back home.
[About 30 minutes]
- Understand, appreciate and define the critical role, and requisite capabilities, of leadership and management in your organization’s Agile transition process, both for yourself and for your management staff.
- Learn to increase your capacity—and the capacity of your management—to see the whole organization in order to better assess and facilitate the ongoing Agile adoption process of your organization
- Develop a deeper appreciation for the ‘sense-and-respond’ style of leadership which Agility calls for, and the various meeting facilitation and management coaching opportunities such a style calls for.
- Generate some concrete actions and ideas which you will bring back to your organizations.
- Develop a better sense for evolving an agile development organizational system