The “agile” label has been used heavily in the software development world for many years and is now in vogue for businesses and IT/EA governance programs (and many other disciplines, I’m sure). This label is meant to describe a trait that all businesses or organizations aspire to be - responsive, fast, nimble, or in a word...agile. In essence, “agile” should be as much a leadership philosophy as it is a governance or software development methodology. If we want our EA programs and our governance programs to be agile, then it’s going to come down to the people - the leadership - to make it happen. So, what is agile leadership and how is it achieved?
Agile leadership is essentially the antithesis of bureaucracy, and it involves the blending of three major leadership functions that typically suffer in a bureaucratic world; setting expectations, empowerment, and accountability.
- Expectations – What are the results that you or the organization want to achieve? Know what they are and state them.
- Empowerment – Do you have talented, experienced, responsible people? If so, then allow them to make decisions without seeking approval. That’s what empowerment is.
- Accountability – If your people know their expectations and are empowered to make decisions, then they must also know they will be held responsible for their decisions.
There may be nothing that will allow an organization to better achieve agility, speed, and responsiveness than the simple actions of setting expectations, empowering the right people, and then holding them accountable. It also stands to reason that few things will give the people being empowered greater satisfaction. It’s worth pointing out here, the research Frederick Herzberg did regarding job satisfaction (Herzberg, F., 1987) where the top four factors leading to job satisfaction were 1) Achievement, 2) Recognition, 3) Work itself, and 4) Responsibility.
The most important thing to understand about bureaucracies is that they are not out-of-control, uninvited party crashers that ruin businesses. Rather, they are structures intentionally put in place to achieve a very specific objective – to make sure bad decisions are not made. The benefit would be great if the costs were not so high. The price of this desire for near perfect decision making is that large chunks of time are consumed and there is almost no accountability. When decisions are finally made, after multiple reviews and through the seeking of consensus, the amount of time elapsed often renders the decision irrelevant (or weakened, at best). Also, who’s accountable? The answer is largely no one; and when nobody is accountable, progress tends to not take place.
Unfortunately for many, forsaking the stifling and unaccountable safety of the bureaucracy feels risky. However, for an organization with talented, experienced, responsible people, the risk is easily mitigated. These people know what needs to be done and how to do it, so to confine them to a bureaucracy is really an absolute shame. If an incorrect path is taken the sheer speed with which it is taken will usually soften the impact significantly. In other words failing fast is a lot better than failing slow, or failing through inaction or atrophy (which is the most common outcome of bureaucratic structures). As agile EA leaders, all we have to do is know our people and empower the right people – the upside in speed and agility, not to mention job satisfaction, will be tremendous.
References
Herzberg, Frederick. (1987, Sep-Oct). One More Time: How Do You Motivate Employees? Harvard Business Review. Retrieved from http://scholar.google.com/scholar_url?url=https://xa.yimg.com/kq/groups/22741279/1871431599/name/One_more_time.pdf&hl=en&sa=X&scisig=AAGBfm1uUvvj1BuLUUxfm4pTEoVgU2GfjA&nossl=1&oi=scholarr
Scott,
ReplyDeleteThanks for you insights on Agile Leadership. We have been trying to incorporate more agile methods into our organization mainly around projects. I'm going to review the thought of Agile Leadership with my team. Governance is often looked at as bureaucracy or red tape, but it is not often understood what value of governance brings to an organization.
Thanks
Troy
Scott I like your point here "However, for an organization with talented, experienced, responsible people, the risk is easily mitigated." I completely agree with this point, but what if your organization is dysfunctional? Would you propose gutting it and employing people that fit this criteria, training the current employees, or would you forego beuracracy?
ReplyDeleteHi Scott,
ReplyDeleteThank you for the read about a great topic. I couldn’t agree with you more. I have found that not only do agile leaders create a more desirable work climate producing more desirable results, but the work load on the leader becomes lighter as well. I have found that taking the time to properly train employees in the beginning, laying out clear expectations, and then delegating responsibilities takes a huge load off of my plate. As opposed to having to micromanage, constantly shadow, and eventually picking up the pieces. A key phrase the military teaches us, is to trust but verify. I think that these words should ripple throughout all leaders.
Thanks again for you post.
Nate
I find your post extremely interesting and closely related to a recent presentation of mine on managing risk-taking through Enterprise Architecture. Risk is basically "An undesirable outcome that poses a threat to the achievement of some objective.” Because Enterprise Architecture has a broader understanding of the enterprise it enables them to identify connections and risks better than others. In the area of risk, there are risk-takers, risk-management, and risk control. Risk-takers are similar to your Agile leaders that are accountable for creating value but responsible for their actions. They also need to communicate their approach and the risks they are taking. Risk management is an approach communicated on how risk will be handled. Risk control measures and monitors risk taking. Agile leadership that you speak of just needs to make sure that above all any risks that are taken are within defined limits and the approach and potential for risks are communicated. Chaos results only when risk takers are left without limits, monitoring, and any responsibility for their actions. Thank you for this very thoughtful blog.
ReplyDeleteScott, very interesting post. HBR provides insightful articles on employee motivations. One of the interesting things that caught my eye this semester is a Forrester article on How to Create an Innovative Culture. Agile is one of the cornerstones of that transformational article. Agile, in may ways can be done wrong, but only by allowing the flexibility of self-formation can it yield the results that we all look for in changing a culture. All in all, the change to scrum or Kanban empowers the teams to solve tangible problems and make progress incrementally.
ReplyDeleteInteresting post. This is a growing issue for many organizations as they scale Agile across the enterprise. One of the things that I found that many companies are struggling with was the management of some parts of the organization embracing Agile, while other parts continue to embrace traditional or waterwall methods. Organizations are finding themselves at the collision of the two cultures. Managing this transition will need to be solved to get to Agile at scale.
ReplyDelete