Agile leadership myths

Agile Leadership Myth #2: Self-Organizing Teams don’t need any help.

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How did we arrive at this place where so many people believe that self-organizing teams do not need help? The fact is, self-organizing teams DO need help.

Self-organizing teams DO need help!

What teams can experience: Teams might not know exactly what kind of help they need or even how to describe it. This can be especially true if they had a manager-led team and were told what to do and when to do it. I hear teams say, “we don’t need managers”, but they often mean that they don’t need managers telling them what to do.

What managers can experience: Managers are often put in a position of shifting from being an expert and telling teams what to do to some new approach that is not clear to them. They may not know exactly how to help a self-organizing team. I call this clumsy management. It is not that they are doing it on purpose, they just happen to be bumping into things when trying to help. Managers are sometimes told to “stay out of the team’s way”, so they end up disengaged and not sure how to reengage. The fact that a manager may not be sure how to help a self-organizing team does not mean that help is not needed. Continue reading →

Agile Leadership Myth #1: Telling people “You Are Empowered” Actually Works

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A major challenge we run into when helping organizations shift or improve is leadership misconceptions. Agile leadership myths cause a lot of these misconceptions. We need to help avoid falling into the trap of these common myths because they limit our success. A root cause of many of the myths is that people simply don’t know what else to do. For example, Myth #1: ‘telling people “you are empowered” actually works.’  Leaders often don’t know what else to do, other than tell teams they are empowered. We see this with Development Teams, Scrum Teams, Delivery Teams, AND Leadership Teams.

A bit of background — there are many agile leadership myths out there. These myths (or assumptions) limit leaders ability to improve, help others, and succeed. Many myths seem to occur at a nonconscious level, meaning they function like many biases. People are not even aware, consciously, that they are happening. Continue reading →

Limit Engagement, Limit Success – Scientific Management Problems

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We require environments where people can provide input and ideas. If we limit engagement, we limit success. We still have organizations who either believe or act like they believe some types of workers are “stupid.” This idea dates back to the ideas surrounding Scientific Management, Fredrick Taylor, and Henry Ford. The concept of the stupid or unskilled worker that I mentioned was common in the early 20th century. In various writings about agile and agile ideas, we often refer to or see references to avoiding Scientific Management, Classic Scientific Management, or Taylorism. These management ideas limit engagement from people, which is going to limit success.

Understanding the past can be quite helpful to see where you might be able to improve today.  Continue reading →

Proposing Open Space Technology Sessions

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When I am at conferences or events being run using Open Space Technology (learn more about attendee driven conferences), people often ask me “should I propose a open space session?” As we get into the discussion I tend to ask the same core questions:

  • Are you passionate about the topic?
  • Are you clear enough on what the topic is?
  • What would your 30-second pitch and summary of the topic to propose at the marketplace?
  • Are you comfortable hosting the session or, if not, is there 1 or 2 more that might help you?

Continue reading →

Open Space Conferences – Attendee Created Conferences!

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Open Space is one of my favorite types of conferences. I was under the impression that most people in the agile, coaching, and leadership communities knew what Open Space was. I was wrong. Many have never experienced it.I_heart_openspace That is sad, to an extent, but that also means there are many people who will experience it for the first time this year (I hope!).

I am co-facilitating, with Allison Pollard, Open Space on Day 2 of the Scrum Gathering San Diego this year.  This will be a very large event, we are guessing 1000-1200 people will participate! Super excited to be co-facilitating with Allison, since she is an amazing coach and facilitator, funny, and intuitive – someone who can observe a group interacting and engage with them in just the right way!   Continue reading →