– And what about me then? Am I still needed at all? –

“My company wants to become lean/agile. They don’t need me as a manager anymore! What will happen to me then?”

This or something similar is often the first reaction of managers when an agile transformation program is announced – especially in middle management. Most of them ask themselves: is in agile leadership even possible?

The first trainings and workshops start, the agile manifesto is read and the fear seems to be confirmed. There is nothing in the Scrum Guide about the role of the manager, the agile coach ignores the manager (if he is allowed to join the trainings at all) and many of the classic leadership tasks move to the product owner and scrum master. 

In fact, the answer is simple. Well, at least simple to understand – but difficult to implement. Just like the agile motto:

🌟”Scrum is easy to understand, but difficult to master” 🌟

5 tasks of an agile manager = agile leadership

And what are the tasks 💪🏻 of a lean/agile leader❓
Ultimately, the tasks can be summarized as “Support and develop your employees” – and that is indispensable. 
More specifically, they include:

👉🏻 Be the role model
👉🏻 Empowerment
👉🏻 Vision & intrinsic motivation
👉🏻 Team development
👉🏻 Lifelong learning

Be the role-model

Live and breathe the agile mindset & culture and lead change through it. If the leader is behind the change, the team will be able to change faster.

Empower

The world is too complex to be mastered by one individual. Only when all the knowledge and skills of the team are incorporated and if they make their own decisions will the best solution emerge – and even faster.

Vision and intrinsic motivation

For employees to make their own decisions, they need a vision and a framework. The agile leader must communicate these. A nice side effect: a vision motivates and gets you out of bed in the morning. A vision or a purpose promotes the intrinsic motivation of the team members.

Team development

1+1>2❗️ A team achieves more than a lone fighter. An agile leader helps the team to grow together and removes stumbling blocks.

Lifelong learning

In our fast-moving times, standing still is tantamount to taking a step backwards. An agile leader creates the space for his/her employees (and him/herself) to evolve.

Ultimately, the tasks can be summarized as: Be a leader instead of a manager!

Are you still managing or are you already leading?

I have never been able to stand terms like “human resources” and “human capital” perhaps combined with a “manage”. To me, they represent the epitome of the dehumanization of the working world. They are leftovers from a time when it was still mainly about factory workers 🏭 who were only supposed to be recipients of orders and just not have any ideas of their own💡. People are nothing more than the other factory inventory 🛠 and capital💰.

To me, the term “manager” belongs in the same category. It sounds like soulless and thoughtless people who have to be (micro-)managed like smallest children. It doesn’t fit at all into our modern, complex and fast-paced working world, where we need highly qualified, highly intelligent people. 

If we want to have and keep such people in our companies, if we want to use their potential, we have to treat them accordingly – and for me that means leading instead of managing.

So what is the difference between an (agile) leader and a manager?

👉🏻 Creating a vision vs. setting goals
👉🏻 Inspire people vs. (micro-)manage people
👉🏻 Coaching vs. guiding
👉🏻 Initiating change vs. cementing the status quo
👉🏻 Shaping relationships vs. defining processes
👉🏻 Encouraging teamwork vs. being a lone wolf
👉🏻 Supporting personal initiative vs. making decisions
👉🏻 Rolemodel vs. determine

And what is the difference for you between a leader and a manager?

– Faster and faster, more and more complex –

What a crazy world we live in 🌍

in which change and complexity overwhelm us with the force of a tsunami.

There is even a technical term for it:

The VUCA world

【V】Volatility – Rapid change and huge bandwidths.
【U】Uncertainty – Future unclear even with great experience
【C】Complexity – Countless variables and dependencies
【A】Ambiguity – Unclear relationships of cause & effect.

You can’t control this world, but you can learn to ride the wave.
This is true for managers as well:

Typical command & control management methods are no longer applicable. 
Because the necessary prerequisites no longer exist in VUCA: 

❌ Without consistency of products, customers, competitors 👉🏻 no clear process specifications & sets of rules.
❌ Without long-term forecasts and planning 👉🏻 no MbO and target agreements
❌ Without clear, controllable facts 👉🏻 no central decision-making
❌ Without clear cause and effect 👉🏻 no individual bonus systems

Now what?
Try an environment where the team can make the decision for the best way forward themselves:

【V】Vision – Everyone knows where they want the journey to go.
【U】Understanding – All the necessary information is available to everyone.
【C】Clarity – Everyone has clarity about all the framework conditions 
【A】Agility – Fast adaptation according to the latest knowledge

– Clearly yes! –

Both have a lot of commonalities…

The systemic, solution-oriented approach was the same breakthrough for coaching as agile methods were for software development 👉🏻 a small revolution in mindset that allowed to achieve better results much faster.

Both have similar values and principles

Agile Manifesto:

★ Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
★ Working software over comprehensive documentation
★ Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
★ Responding to #change over following a plan

Systemic attitude:

★ Individual persons over standard „rules“ how a person has to be
★ A working solution over „documenting“ comprehensively the past
★ Collaboration with the client over negotiation “who has the best solution”
★ Adapt to changes in the system over laying out the perfect plan once

Induced behaviour for both:

 👉🏻 Openness & transparance – Allow and accept different opinions
👉🏻 Courage – Be honest to others and yourself
👉🏻 Respect – Trust the competencies of the counterpart
👉🏻 Commitment – Accept own responsibility and trust others engagement
👉🏻 Focus – Clearly define the goal and go for it
👉🏻 Continuous Learning – Adapt to the changes introduced by your actions/deliveries

Commonalities in practise:

Both the systemic and the agile approach are very aware that they are operating in a dynamic, continuously changing system that is influenced by their behavior. With each change/code-release, one has to adapt again to be successful. Nobody can act independently, a lasting solution is only possible in collaboration. A fixed plan from the beginning will fail.

Therefore an overall cycle is defined with the final goal broken down into small, self-contained session/sprint goals. The client/customer is responsible for these goals, only he can judge whether they have been achieved or need to be adapted. 

A key component for both is the confidence in the competence and willingness of all involved.

The focus is on a working solution not on the failures of the past. Retrospectives take place for reflection and new ideas, not to blame – a crucial difference to earlier approaches. 

Regularly everybody reflects where they are and where they want to go, what is (not) working, what has changed. Then the next short-term goals and steps are planned.

The similarities are even evident in sayings such as that of Steve de Shazer for the systematic approach “It’s simple, but not easy” and in agile “Scrum is easy to understand, but difficult to master”.

Realizing those similarities, I found it very fascinating how such similar attitudes and approaches can appear in such very different fields of profession. It seems time was simply ready for this attitude in all facets of life.

Did you ever before realize the similarity between agile methodology and systemic attitude? Let me know what other similarities you see