 Agile Leadership Toolkit: Learning to Thrive with Self-Managing Teams

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A er Reading This Book

Now that you’ve read this book, let’s revisit the main theme and the
reasons why we needed a new toolkit. This will support you in
implementing the tools and effectively developing the mindset needed.

WHY A NEW TOOLKIT?

The world around us is changing faster and faster. As Kotter says, “The
greatest challenge business leaders face today is how to stay competitive
1
amid constant turbulence and disruption.” New technologies, new
market opportunities, and new competitors emerge unexpectedly and
unpredictably. This is why agile and working with agile teams is becoming
more and more popular. This requires a new way of leading organizations.
Agile leaders lead their teams in this completely new way. They lead
because they create precisely the environment that their self-managing
teams need in order to grow and thrive. Within this environment, the
teams optimize the processes themselves, increase their own effectiveness
and efficiency, and make all kinds of decisions on a daily basis. That
makes these teams self-managing. They organize their own work and have
all the skills to do that. These agile teams are agile in and of themselves,
because they can respond quickly to new technologies, threats from
competitors, and the ever-changing expectations of their customers. They
don’t have to wait for official approval, management decisions, or top-
down strategic changes. Because they have a short feedback loop with
their customers and users, they can continuously experiment with new
ideas, improve their products and services, and align with other self-
managing teams.

1 . https://hbr.org/2012/11/accelerate

The agile leader is the architect of this environment. He takes the humble
responsibility to create this environment for his people and teams. When
the teams don’t flourish, when things go wrong, or when customers are
not satisfied, the new leader doesn’t punish his people for doing wrong
things. Instead, he sees it as feedback of the environment he created. He
asks for help from his employees to find improvement, and together they
adapt and improve the environment.

AGILE LEADERSHIP TOOLKIT

Agile leaders provide an inspiring environment for their agile teams to
thrive. But how do they create such an engaging environment? This
requires not only a new mindset but a lot of new skills. They must unlearn
the old skills and learn the new ones. They become masters in leading
inspiring environments because they practice a lot—just as a chef doesn’t
become a chef by reading a book but by preparing thousands of meals
with tools ranging from knives to ovens. To help agile leaders, this book
provides practical tools, metrics, and examples that are put immediately
into practice and grow along the journey. Learn by doing.

Where to Start
The tools described in this book are split into four components (Figure
5.1). As mentioned at the start of this book, the tools can be used
independently and don’t have a strict order. To explain the tools in this
book, I used the top-down approach. Starting with goals, working down to
ownership, learning from customers, and, last but not least, working
continuously on the culture.

Figure 5.1 The four tool components

Several managers who started to use the tools somehow started with the
Ownership Model (Tool 3). Others started with the T2L metric (Tool 5). I
often advise a starting place that’s based on the immediate pain or
frustration within the organization. Let’s have a closer look at common
pains and determine the most practical tools to start with.

Demotivated teams. If teams are passive, people are leaving, or

the managers feel that they constantly have to push the teams to do
more, it’s probably good to begin with the Ownership Model (Tool
 5) and the Freedom Matrix (Tool 4). Also, have a candid workshop
with several representatives of the teams on what ownership is and
what kills it.

Lack of focus. If too many things are important, or if priorities

switch constantly, it’s probably good to start by introducing a KVI
(Tool 1) with a focus on the customer and what drives value for the
organization.

Low quality. Are customers complaining about the quality of the

product or service? Are teams ignoring these quality issues or don’t
know how to solve them? If so, it may be good to start by using the
Validated Learning Board (Tool 6) and track whether solving bugs
are also reducing complaints. This often fosters in the organization
the belief that they can fix things and that they can actually improve
the quality. Next, it gives a little confidence to your frequent users
that problems are actually being structurally solved. Probably a
good next tool is the Ownership Model (Tool 5); ask the teams what
they need to deliver quality and actually be proud of what they
create.

Talents leaving. Is it hard to hold on to talented people or recruit

talented people? Two tools could help out: Ownership Model (Tool
3) and Habit Matrix (Tool 7). Most talented people are driven by the
2
autonomy they are given to grow their mastery and
craftsmanship. The Ownership Model shows that people leave when
the have too much and too little autonomy. The Habit Matrix can be
used to drive the learning culture.

Lack of customer focus. If employees focus on their own work

and don’t keep the customer in mind, a good tool to start with is the
T2L metric (Tool 5). Reducing the customer-learning delay in the
organization is crucial to having customer focus. When it takes
months for employees to get feedback on their work from the
customer’s perspective, having a customer focus is hardly possible.
Starting with a workshop to visualize the current T2L and
brainstorm ways to minimize it is an insightful and energizing way
to begin. Using that feedback and TO-GRIP pattern (Tool 8) is a
practical step forward.

2 . Daniel Pink, “The surprising truth about what motivates people.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc

Complex Environment
The environment that the agile teams need is complex. It’s never been
done before for this specific group of people, and what’s needed for
success can’t be analyzed upfront or copied from other organizations. It’s
the unique environment that the teams need at this moment in time. After
a while, the environment needed can be different due to all kinds of
reasons, like a change in the people who work at the company, growth of
teams, new technologies, and new market situations. Continuous
improvement of the environment and especially the underlying culture
needs the constant focus of the agile leader—not because he’s so smart
and can oversee everything, but because he uses the collective insight of
different people. Not because he builds on previous successes, but because
he asks for help openly and candidly.

Structure and Culture

By both improving the structure (tangible things like meetings, metrics,
mandates, and overviews) and improving the culture (intangible things
like habits and heroes), the agile leader can continuously improve the
environment. If, for example, he wants to improve the customer-centric
nature of the culture, improving the T2L is often a good first step because
it gives teams quick feedback from actual users. Having a tangible KVI
supports the customer focus. But also, having a keen eye for habits and
heroes is crucial to anchor a customer-centric culture.

The tools in this book support the agile leader in continuously improving
the environment, both for the tangible as well as the intangible.

Sketch, Go, Learn

The implementation of every tool in this toolkit is complex. It can’t be
analyzed upfront what the tool should look like. Sketching a first version
of the tool, experiencing how the tool works in real life, and learning along
the way are the only ways to implement a good version of each tool.
Getting honest feedback on how the tool really works on the “floor” is
crucial to improving the environment. This requires the agile leader to be
candid and vulnerable toward his agile teams while implementing the
different tools. The leader has to be vulnerable, admitting that he doesn’t
own the truth or have all the answers, and candid, showing his passion
and drive to continuously improve and asking others to be honest as well
and to verbalize what they think and feel.

The eighth tool, TO-GRIP, can be used for many things, from improving
marketing campaigns to improving the quality of products. This can also
be said for implementing any of the other tools in the book. Creating a
group of people to support and drive the change will help the agile leader.
Asking a few people to give honest feedback on how the change really is
going and to brainstorm together on improvements with a steady rhythm
is a powerful way to continuously improve the environment, one step at
the time.

Find Peers
At different locations throughout the world, we want to create a local
community of peers who work with these tools. Contact me through the
website www.tval.nl (http://www.tval.nl) to start or join a local community. I
want to create a community where agile leaders learn from each other and
share discoveries, mistakes, challenges, and successes.

Have fun with your own journey in becoming a better agile leader for your
self-managing teams so they can thrive!
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