Scrum, SAFe or Kanban will not make your company Agile

11/8/2021
#leadership, #agile, #team

I've had a small coaching business helping men to become more successful with women. Many coaches in this field will provide you with lots of 'pick-up lines'. Although these things seem to bring you some initial success, women will soon find out you are just good at bringing pick-up lines. Meaning, your character and personality have not changed. You probably still are the insecure, validation and approval seeking wussy on the inside as you were before you knew these pick-up lines. 

I see a similar thing happening in business with Agile Transformations. People are trained in using the framework, (the pick-up lines), but deep down, people - especially managers and C-level executives - are still hanging on to their 'Command and Control'-principles. They still want to be in charge: making decisions, have people ask for permission, set the rules, choose the tools,...

To have any Agile framework work, you need to teach and coach people to step away from Command And Control. You need to learn them to delegate responsibility and create an environment of trust. You can do this by authorizing people to make decisions on their own, and trusting them to make the right decisions. It also means you have to trust them they will learn from their mistakes. As a manager or C-level executive, your role now will be to teach and coach these people to make that kind of decisions and learn from their mistakes. In the process you will create an environment of trust.

Without trust and responsibility, you are just doing the same thing, but in a different way.

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