Becoming truly Agile and enjoying high-performance teams takes a lot of effort and is a huge challenge for many companies. It requires agreement and alignment of executive management all way down through the individual contributors and including cross-functional teams.
What are some of the biggest hurdles that slows down Agile adoption? All too often its leaders that aren’t ready for needed change.
Many leaders are stuck in old habits. Many leaders have past success and have made their way into an organization because of that very success. They have a formula that has worked before. And that formula could be based on more traditional management styles, like waterfall and “command and control” mentality. When companies are looking to transform to Agile, we often find leaders who don’t really understand what it is at it’s core or if they do, they still believe their way is better. For example, many leaders have trouble giving up control or changing their habits. Especially when they ultimately own the results of teams and the pressure is on. This regression in behavior sends mixed messages to the teams and sends the Agile transformation off the rails.
Leaders need to lead by example. Borrowing from a SAFe 5.0 principle, it’s vitally important for leaders to lead by example. If leaders “talk the talk” but don’t “walk the walk”, many employees will follow in their footsteps. For many people, change is difficult and it’s easier to stick with what they know. If they see leaders taking the same approach, they will justify their behavior and stay with what is comfortable. They will feel that they don’t really need to change because leaders aren’t either.
Transforming to Agile is largely about leaders giving up control on many fronts and providing autonomy to teams to deliver customer value. This doesn’t mean leaders don’t lead or make big decisions. But there needs to be a shift to less control and more autonomy and servant leadership. And if leaders can’t lead by example and give up the reins on many of these things it will contradict the efforts of the Agile transformation.
Great leaders dig into the values and principles that Lean-Agile teaches and have an honest introspective about how they align with them. They then work to change and embrace the transformation, ensuring that they lead by example.
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