133. "Lean-Agile Leadership" series #1 - what makes a great leader?
Surviving and thriving in rapid changing environment today depends on how fast organizations are able to pivot and adapt with products and services that add value for customers. Those who can make the transition, are delivering high performance by accelerating growth, delighting customer with higher employee engagement, aka, Business Agility.
In practice, moving towards Agility at scale requires lifting up "Lean-Agile Leadership" through cross-functional collaboration, where most of impediments are structural ones that are beyond the ability of a single team, and can only be resolved through leadership engagement.
During Q2, I am planning to summarize some thoughts on leadership capabilities, start with exploring common characteristics.
QUESTION 1: is hierarchy really the enemy of Business Agility?
Everyday when I open LinkedIn App, there's a flood of infographics comparing leaders and managers, some cynical and provocative by bashing hierarchy, which gives the impression that if hierarchy are flattened, people can deliver better outcomes by having the autonomy and power to determine what to do, is it that simple?
Reality is quite complex: teams often don't actually have the capabilities of how to make decisions, especially with conflicting priorities, misalignment and limited capacity & time, under pressure of delivery, and leaders do need information and predictability of teams to drive meaningful decision making and provide clear directions.
QUESTION 2: what did empirical study say about impediments to achieve Business Agility?
Easter break was a good opportunity to relax, reflect and reconnect with the mind, I got some more time to deep dive into 5th Business Agility Report, contributed by nearly 300 organizations across the world.
The results show that innovative approaches are required to overcome the systemic and ongoing challenges that organizations face in a rapid changing internal and external world. we learn that higher performing organizations are better able to continuously improve their ways of working, which benefits their customers, raises employee satisfaction, and ultimately improves their financial bottom line.
However, many organizations are facing very similar challenges, such as resistance to change, change management, leadership and management capabilities, unsuitable practices and processes etc. are constraining the potential of Business Agility.
Hierarchy itself is not the root cause, rather the collaborative leadership across and between hierarchies rather pose challenges, due to lack of aligned incentives and objectives, this requires practices and new type of leadership capabilities, leadership is no longer just a role, it's the action that people take, and it can be at any level.
In this context, I will publish a new blog series on Lean-Agile leadership, to find out better ways to prepare organizations that are fit for now and future. In this first article, let's go back to the basics, to understand what it takes to become a lean-agile leader.
QUESTION 3: what qualities are common for great leaders?
A clear, exciting idea of where they are going and what they are trying to accomplish.
What can Lean-Agile leaders do?
Align & communicate a shared vision, is hard, it consumes a lot of energy and time, therefore use vision to describe the future state of the solution under development can help to reflect customer and stakeholder needs, as well as capabilities proposed to meet those needs, even vision doesn't have all the answers, apply vision in shorter interval, e.g. every 10 or 30 weeks, in a language that people can understand and relate to easily.
Nothing worth doing is ever easy, do what is right, the problems to solve, not what is easy, courage means leaders take risks, nothing is certain except change itself.
What can Lean-Agile leaders do?
Reduce fear through holistic, empirical data, sitting at table remotely from people, you often see problems, but doing Gemba walk, go and see where the works are done, you will see lots of solutions.
For example, when Elon Musk took over Twitter, he joined the engineers and teams to understand problem and creative approaches to solve them.
The core of integrity is truthfulness, to tell the truth, to all people in every situation, be honest and put ego aside. Integrity boosts courage and provides orientation to do the right thing that matters.
What can Lean-Agile leaders do?
be authentic and lead by example
Humility is having the self-awareness and self-confidence to recognize the value of others without feeling threatened, it means that you are willing to admit you could be wrong, that you recognize you may not have all the answers, great leaders are those who are strong and decisive with humility.
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What can Lean-Agile leaders do?
Decentralize decision where the information is, takes courage, ego can be the roadblock, at the same time, teams would need help from leaders, so balance behaviors that can support decentralized and centralized decisions.
Proactive Listening, in order for people to feel empowered, spend time talking and listening about they want to accomplish. Giving control has 2 conditions, first the competence, second, organizational clarity, so people know what to do.
Leaders have the ability to look ahead, to anticipant with some accuracy where the journey is going, because of increasing competitiveness, only the leaders and organizations that can accurately anticipate future trend, market development can possibly survive.
What can Lean-Agile leaders do?
Agile Framework such as Scrum focuses on optimizing the outcome for a team, a sub-system, which doesn't guarantee the optimization for the system as a whole, as a result, "tragedy of the commons" appears:
Shared resources become quickly exhausted because of competition between the subsystems.
Only leaders have the authority, influence of changing systems: the way how people collaborate and interact, leading by example.
Agile doesn't mean no strategy or no planning, in fact, there's a much more frequent planning, applied at regular interval.
Realize that your strategy needs a strategy. The strategy palette from BCG proposes five distinct approaches to strategy, helping leaders to match their approach to their business environment and execute effectively, combine different approaches, and animate the strategic collage of approaches.
FOCUS
Successful leaders maintain a positive focus no matter what is going on around them, on the next steps they need to take to get them closer to the fulfillment of business goals rather than all the other distractions that are presented to them.
The ability of a leader to make sure that everyone is focused and concentrated on the most valuable use of their time is essential to excellent performance.
What can Lean-Agile leaders do?
Ask the question: what really matters? Not on the surface, rather what really move the needle to provide business outcomes? For yourself, strategy and teams.
Being aware of the judge, critic and censor in your then letting all that go to perceive and assess the objective truth. Prioritize attention to relationship with customers by applying empathy, reduce working in progress, focus on outcomes over input/output. More input doesn't guarantee better outcomes.
Best leaders strive to perfect is the ability to communicate effectively and persuasively.
What can Lean-Agile leaders do?
Stick to value No.1 of Agile Manifesto:
Individuals and interactions over processes and tools. Every dependency is a call for collaboration, knowledge transfer and communication, every dialog is an opportunity to practice and be inspired with new ideas that get you one step closer to solution.
Effective communication is a key factor that influence the quality of collaboration, communication occurs in many forms, including verbal and non-verbal, written, visual, and listening. It can occur in person, on the internet (on forums, social media, and websites), over the phone (through apps, calls, and video), or by mail, considering audience, practice active listening, make message as clear and explicit as possible, use the right medium or platform.
To summarize,
Many leadership qualities have been identified that are important to great leaders across history. But those 7 specific qualities of leaders that seem to stand out as being more important than the others.
Great leaders find the balance between business foresight, performance, and character. They have vision, courage, integrity, humility and focus along with the ability to plan strategically and catalyze cooperation amongst their team.
Source: BCG, Quote Fancy, Spotify, Brian Tracy