Agile coaches as servant leaders serve the Agile community, working side by side to unravel complex situations. They do that by applying Agile leadership tools, techniques, and capabilities that ultimately drive the customer up to success. In this meetup, Peter Stevens shows us three secrets of Agile leaders to thrive and help others do so in a complex world. In this journey, he started answering the question, what is Agile? And why it is so important to go back to the Agile manifesto to understand it and develop strategies. Then, he unraveled these three secrets and the key to applying them through personal agility.
What does it mean to be Agile?
Agility is often related to its best practices, frameworks, and tools. Understandably, this is in a more tangible way for an entry-level person to approach Agile learning. Yet, the most valuable lesson that can take time to grasp and apply, it’s the meaning behind the Agile manifesto. The Agile mindset is the heart and soul and is behind those 4 values and 12 principles.
Stevens discussed and proposed a way to understand these values and principles to apply them to Agile leadership in a complex world. In his view, a simpler way to understand and apply agility goes through constant learning, collaboration, and purpose. These are encouraging and sustainable reasons to uncover better ways to deal with complexity.
Three secrets Agile Leaders implement to thrive:
All important decisions require intention and a genuine desire to see them to completion. Change is easy if you want to do it. When challenges arise and blockers are everywhere, staying true to the reasoning behind the change is key to keep pressing on.
Once the decision is made, then the next step is creating clarity on what truly matters. Once the goal or goals are set, then everything else that is not aligned to them falls into waste. Waste must be eliminated. Therefore, focusing on identifying what truly matters, eliminating waste, and having the courage and commitment to communicate it in a simple, but concise way to the team is a game-changer strategy.
Finally, the third secret is in plain sight, in fact, developers have been doing it all the time. Applying agility to leadership will unravel complexity, volatility, and uncertainty one short iteration at a time. In this way, Jeff Sutherland’s words come to life once you are achieving your goals by doing half of the work in a quarter of the time.
How do you apply it?
Stevens would say, “there is huge potential to improve performance through personal Agility”. There are certainly a few questions to ask yourself to find out if you truly want change. Applying the Agile mindset to your own personal complex world can drive you directly to achieve your goals.
If you are interested in learning more about this last item, check out the full meetup video below.
Key topics:
What is does it mean to be Agile?
Agility is
Three Secrets
Personal Agility