A while ago we started working on a movie to illustrate the essence of agile leadership. What is it about? Are leaders still needed in an agile environment? These and other questions I got a lot during my agile leadership training.
The below movie explains through the eyes of "Jill" what an agile leader on a daily basis does.
Jill is a typical agile leader. She struggled with her role, what to do and what not to do. Along the way she discovered that agile leadership is all about creating the right environment for her self-managing agile teams to thrive.
She focuses on four areas:
- Is it clear what teams have to achieve. With all the things they do, are they focused on the customer? And do they - preferably - have a tangible goal that is customer focused?
- Do the teams take ownership? Ownership is already important in more traditional organizations, but is crucial with agile organisations. It means that teams are pro-active, proud and have a can-do mindset.
- Are the teams focused on learning fast from users? They shouldn't be focused on just getting stuff to customers quicker, but getting quicker feedback from users and customers. The leader has to remove roadblocks and impediments so the teams can get this feedback quicker.
- Last but not least: culture. Is it a culture of team-collaboration, candidness and vulnerability? Often the habits in the organization decide whether the culture is healthy or not.
Have fun watching and sharing the video! Feel free to give feedback so we can further improve the movie.
About Peter Koning
Peter is public speaker, author of the book 'Agile Leadership Toolkit' and leadership coach in larger companies in the Netherlands. He is married, has two kids and is a fan of Formula 1 (Max Verstappen).
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