Shane Hastie, Director of Agile Learning Programs for ICAgile, conversed with us about his ideas on significance of Agile Leadership in the age of digital disruption.
He has shared valuable thoughts around what are the essential behaviours of an Agile Leader that can drive success. Let’s read;
Q1. Why is Business Agility being talked about so much these days?
Shane: The pace of change is increasing and the management approaches which were effective in the 19th and 21th centuries are no longer applicable today. The pressures on organisations mean we need to find new ways of working in order to remain relevant in this new age. Customers are more demanding, employees expect to be treated with respect and valued for their unique contributions not as mere “resources”, society requires that organisations be good corporate citizens and governments are responding to the pressures from their citizens. Business Agility is the capacity and willingness of an organization to adapt to, create, and leverage change for their customer’s benefit. Every organisation today needs to be agile in all aspects of their operations – it’s necessary
Q2. According to you how important is it to shift from reactive mind to creative mind to lead an Agile transformation?
Shane: Carol Dweck gave us the ideas about fixed and growth mindset and it is absolutely clear that to enable and lead change in organisations a growth/learning/adaptive mindset is crucial. Fixed/reactive mindsets resist change and fatally sabotage adoption of new ways of thinking and working in organisations.
Q3. Please share your view on Agile Leadership in the age of Digital Disruption?
Shane: In the digital age, the old ideas of leadership are no longer valid. Command and control, hierarchies and many layers of authority get in the way of responding to customers needs and producing value quickly, so leaders need to take a completely different view of their roles. The need different skill-sets and attitudes from what was the norm in the industrial age. Leaders need to focus on building community, fostering collaboration, removing obstacles and creating environments where people are empowered to achieve the organisation’s goals.
Leaders need to facilitate learning, inspire creativity, communicate a compelling vision and provide their people with the support they need to be successful.
The Agile Manifesto states:
Build projects around motivated individuals.
Give them the environment and support they need,
and trust them to get the job done.
This is not an easy shift for a traditional leader, but it is an absolutely essential one.
Q4. What are the essential behaviours of an Agile Leader?
Shane: First and foremost agile leaders need to be role models – they need to live and breath the principles of agility; respect for people, continuous learning, customer focus and organisational sustainability.
An agile leader is a coach and mentor, helping their followers to become the best possible versions of themselves.
They convey a clear mission and purpose that followers can align around. They delegate outcomes not activities and they ensure that their people are both enabled and empowered to achieve the outcomes.
They create conditions of psychological safety through being vulnerable, admitting their own mistakes, seeking feedback and constantly learning.
Q5. What are the signs that your strategy as a Leader isn’t working? What is next once identified?
Shane: Any time you find yourself telling someone what to do and how to do it, you’ve disempowered them. Start from the assumption that your people want to do a great job and your role is to enable them to do so. If skills are lacking then provide skills training, if knowledge is not there then find ways to share it with them. Daniel Pink talks about the three big motivators for knowledge workers – autonomy, mastery and purpose. Ask yourself what has happened to remove or reduce one of these motivators and take steps to correct that loss.
Q6. Where do you see Agile Community heading in 2019?
Shane: Agile software development is now the prevalent approach for building software intensive systems, there is no longer a discussion about should we adopt agile in the IT space.
The big moves that are happening now are the recognition that these ideas are also applicable in areas beyond software development.
Any organisation can benefit from an agile mindset and approach. Removing bottlenecks, empowering people and delighting customers result in more profitable and sustainable businesses.
Areas that have been blockers and bottlenecks to change are beginning to come along on the agile journey – people operations, finance and marketing are three areas where business agility is starting to take hold, and the results can be amazing in terms of unleashing the creativity and productivity in the rest of the organisation.
Q7. One questions you think I should have asked you. Please answer the same as well.
Shane: The Question: Why did you write the book #NoProjects?
Answer: The project paradigm is fundamentally broken, it doesn’t fit for most knowledge worker initiatives and results in huge levels of waste – of time, money, manpower and motivation. Moving beyond projects and thinking about long-lived, products or services brings a radically different viewpoint to the work and results in better outcomes for everyone involved.
Shane Hastie is the Director of Agile Learning Programs for ICAgile.Over the last 30+ years Shane has been a practitioner and leader of developers, testers, trainers, project managers and business analysts, helping teams to deliver results that align with overall business objectives. He has worked with large and small organisations, from individual teams to large transformations all around the world. He draws on over 30 years of practical experience across all levels of Information Technology and software intensive product development. Shane was a director of the Agile Alliance from 2011 to 2016 and is the founding Chair of Agile Alliance New Zealand.