Practicing Agility as a Leader
What to do when you have to start over as a leader
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Sometimes things don't go the way we planned them. The need for change is inevitable. How you respond to it as a leader will set the tone for your team to proceed with courage or caution.
Growth is an incremental process that usually feels slow, but the cumulative transformation can be inspiring when you step back. There may be extraordinary seasons of growth, but there are also those where you find yourself stalled out, burned out, or having just experienced failure. How do you agilely adapt to these circumstances?
Opportunity for Growth
These seasons may be challenging, but they provide significant opportunities for long-term growth. I say opportunities for growth because growth at these times is not guaranteed. I remember one of my early chances to lead a team. It was a group of 15 working for about six weeks in a cross-cultural context. Before the trip, my co-leader and I were planning out one part. We were unsure how it would go, and I casually said, “if it bombs, at least we'll all grow from it.” My comment was met with the response from my co-leader, “not necessarily.”
That day was the first time I identified the possibility of wasted difficulties and recognized their cost. Waisted difficulties dishearten, wound, and push people apart. Redeemed difficulties, where you learn from failure, can inspire extraordinary growth. But this kind of redemption doesn't occur without honesty, a rhythm of evaluation and a commitment to change.
Honesty
Humility is essential to growing as a servant leader, and I believe a critical ingredient is honesty. You need honesty about the past, present, and future. An honest appraisal of things leads you to see yourself more rightly. I know I contributed to the way things turned out, even when parts were out of my control. I can’t take credit or blame for those things out of our control. I am, however, responsible for how we responded to them.
When it's time to restart, don't miss the opportunity to lead your team to look back and evaluate. You can begin with simple questions like
- What went well that we want to continue?
- What didn't go well that we need to change?
- What do we not understand that we need to learn?
Honesty doesn't have to be punitive. To goal is to honestly see what contributed to the outcomes the team experienced. The team will sense if your goal is growth or blame. The feedback from your team might be about you as a leader. How you give and receive feedback will tell the team a lot. If done well, you will invite their honest and constructive feedback. You are creating a culture where honest feedback can become the norm.
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Rhythm of Evaluation
Adapting as a leader is an iterative process, and the cadence will depend somewhat on your context. Is there a lot of change and unknown? If so, you will need to evaluate more often. This could be a daily standup or weekly check-in. Maybe the work is more static and defined. Every two weeks might be frequent enough to evaluate if you're still on track.
Accountability is an essential tool for staying committed to a change.
Put it in the schedule. It can be so tempting to cancel or delay these meetings. Preset a regular time and protect it even when there is a ton of work to get done. Because if you're not on track, then whatever work the team is doing may not be the right work.
When an extended season like a quarter, semester or year comes to a close, schedule a longer time for evaluation and planning. If you've been consistent in regular evaluation and adjustment, then these "bigger" meetings will be easier.
You want your life to have meaning and impact.
What if your everyday work and life not only felt natural and intuitive but also aligned with your priorities and positively impacted those around you?
Commitment to Change
If talking about change is complicated, then implementing it will be even more challenging. You must break through the inertia of how things have been done.
Accountability is an essential tool for staying committed to a change. Once your team has identified and committed to a change. Share it with your leader and peer teams. This bears fruit in two ways. People behave differently when people are watching, and if you've told others what you're going to do, they will be watching. Secondly, there may be potential synergy with other teams in the areas you want to change. This won't be discovered if you don't share your commitment.
Change isn't a one-time action. It will like require adjustment and potentially cascading changes to stay on course. Add a question to your regular reviews to see your progress in implementing the identified changes. This habit keeps your team focused, owning the change.
Change can be tricky. Sometimes it's not clear how to implement change. This is especially true when the change can't just be mandated but instead needs to be applied solely through influence.
The book Switch is an excellent resource for understanding how to bring about change. It uses a metaphor of a man riding an elephant to illustrate three areas to cultivate change.
- Directing the Rider. The rider represents the rational, logical mind of people. Appealing to the rider is usually the default approach but will have limited effectiveness on its own.
- Motivate the Elephant. The elephant represents our emotions. If not properly engaged, will steam role our rational plans every time.
- Shape the Path. How can you change the environment in which the change is being made? Can you make the new behavior extraordinarily easy and the old one difficult or impossible?
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Staying Agile
When you drive, even on a straight road, you are continually course correcting. The same is true when you lead. You will always be making minor adjustments.
Action Plan
Use honesty and transparency to recognize the need for change and a cadence of accountability to implement it.
Stay at it. Don't let fear of failure deter you. We often overestimate what we can do in a month but underestimate what we can do in a year or two. Commitment and focus will take you a long way.
You can also find this post and other content on both Medium and LinkedIn.
Frequently Asked Questions
Scrum team
How does a scrum team work?
The scrum team is made up of the product owner, scrum master and development team. They each play important roles.
- The product owner maximizes the value delivered by the product.
- The scrum master maximizes the impact of the development team.
- The development team transforms the product vision into reality.
Learn more about how a scrum team works together. Then browse the most common terms in a Scrum glossary and learn what is Scrum.
Is a Scrum Master a project manager?
Project managers and scrum masters differ in where they focus and what they emphasize.
The project manager is focused first on the work. Does the project have everything it needs to get done? The scrum master is focused first on the people. Are they the best team they can be to get projects done?
Continue learning about the relationship between a scrum master and a project manager. Then browse the most common terms in a Scrum glossary and learn what is Scrum.
Can a scrum master be a developer?
This combo is very doable, but it depends on the person. Some people are great team contributors but are not good scrum masters.
Often, people suggest the type A personality to be the Scrum Master because they seem like the typical leader type. Unfortunately, what usually happens here is that person begins to act like the team's boss, which is not the role of the scrum masters.
Learn more about the roles of a scrum team. Then browse the most common terms in a Scrum glossary and learn what is Scrum.
What’s the right scrum team size?
With less than three, you don’t get much of the benefit of collaboration or shared momentum. More than nine, and the logistics of coordination start to eat away at the benefits of coordination.
Learn more about how a scrum team works together. Then browse the most common terms in a Scrum glossary and learn what is Scrum.
Scrum design
What are the three pillars of Scrum?
Scrum is founded on three essential pillars, and each leads the team to ask a critical question.
- Transparency. How does this make things more visible?
- Inspection. Where does this create space to evaluate?
- Adaptation. When does this encourage growth?
Learn how to apply the three pillars of Scrum and then explore the most common terms in a Scrum glossary.
What are the values of Scrum?
There are five values critical to the practice of Scrum: commitment, courage, focus, openness, and respect.
- Commit to achieving the goals of the Scrum Team.
- Courage to do the right thing and work on challenging problems.
- Focus on the Sprint's work and the Scrum Team's goals.
- Open about all the work and the challenges with performing the work.
- Respect each other to be capable, independent people
Learn how to align Scrum values with your organization and then explore the most common terms in a Scrum glossary.
What is the sprint goal in scrum?
The sprint goal encapsulates the product owner’s vision into a concrete statement for the development team to measure the sprint against. The sprint goal provides a theme for the sprint’s work helping the team see how all the parts come together.
Learn more about the role of the sprint goal in scrum and explore the essential Scrum glossary.
What is Scrum?
What is the definition of scrum?
Scrum is founded on three essential pillars leading teams to ask the following questions:
- How does this make things more visible? (Transparency)
- Where does this create space to evaluate? (Inspection)
- When does this encourage growth? (Adaptation)
Further explore the definition of scrum. Then browse the most common terms in a Scrum glossary and learn what is Scrum.
Is Scrum hard to learn?
This is because Scrum’s simplicity makes learning easy, but Scrum truly changes how you work, and that adjustment can be difficult. It changes power dynamics and expectations within the team and between the team and the rest of the organization.
You can explore further is Scrum hard to learn, along with the pros and cons of Scrum. Then browse the most common terms in a Scrum glossary and learn what is Scrum.
When did Scrum start?
Scrum was initially used as a term related to project management in 1986 by Hirotaka Takeuchi and Ikujiro Nonaka in their paper “New New Product Development Game” In the Harvard Business Review. The first recorded Scrum project came a little later in 1993 from Jeff Sutherland.
You can learn more about Scrum’s backstory. Then browse the most common terms in a Scrum glossary and learn what is Scrum.
What do all the scrum words mean?
Learning Scrum for the first time can be overwhelming. There are a lot of new terms and concepts in Scrum. I’ve listed the most common terms in a Scrum glossary.
Learning to apply Scrum
How to choose between Scrum and Kanban?
Important factors include your team size and the type of work you do. Kanban is very process-oriented, so you should consider how defined, static, or long your process is?
You can explore Scrum and other agile approaches. Then browse the most common terms in a Scrum glossary and learn what is Scrum.
How does scrum help an organization?
Scrum forces clarity and prioritization, which are critical to organizational effectiveness. It provides a competitive edge by allowing teams to adapt as the market or priorities change. Teams operate more effectively because Scrum combines empowerment of the team members with alignment to top priorities.
Learn more about scrum’s impact on organizational culture. Then browse the most common terms in a Scrum glossary and learn what is Scrum.
Is scrum a methodology or a framework?
Scrum is more of a framework than a methodology, and it helps teams adhere to Agile principles and get stuff done. Scrum provides basic rules but doesn’t prescribe how to do the work. It provides principles, values, rules, and some core structure but still leaves a lot undefined.
Learn more about scrum as a framework. Then browse the most common terms in a Scrum glossary and learn what is Scrum.
What’s the difference between scrum and agile?
When people say “agile,” they usually refer to it as a mindset. Scrum is a framework for how to organize people and work in an agile way. If you’re practicing Scrum, you’re working in an Agile way.
Learn more about the relationship between scrum and agile. Then browse the most common terms in a Scrum glossary and learn what is Scrum.
How to use Scrum
Why use Scrum?
It forces clarity and prioritization, which provides the focus necessary for teams to be effective. Scrum embraces complexity and change by keeping many things simple and iteratively evaluating and adapting.
You can learn more about why to use Scrum and three challenges Scrum solves. Then browse the most common terms in a Scrum glossary and learn what is Scrum.
When does Scrum not work well?
Scrum isn’t always the best option for teams. Scrum can fail when there is a substantial mismatch between organizational culture and the Scrum values. It also depends on the nature of the work you do. If you work if very linear, predictable and tightly defined, you may not experience many benefits Scrum provides.
Find out more about aligning your organizational values with Scrum or how Scrum might fit in your context. Then browse the most common terms in a Scrum glossary and learn what is Scrum.
How do I know when to use Scrum?
Scrum functions at its best when you have a dedicated team focused on developing a singular product. Its agility shines when there are time constraints combined with uncertainty.
Explore the pros and cons of Scrum along with expectations vs. realities with Scrum. Then browse the most common terms in a Scrum glossary and learn what is Scrum.
