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Sponsored by
Enterprise Agile Coach & Transformation Leader & Paylocity
Talk to Kelly about…• Agile across the organization• Leadership development• Sustainable Agile culture change• Team dynamics
Find Kelly at…• Blog: http://blog.agilitytransformation.com/• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kellyfidei• Twitter: @kfidei
Getting Intentional
About Rank and
Power
in Agile
OrganizationsKelly Fidei
Enterprise Agile Coach & Transformation Lead
March, 2016
“The higher you travel on the organizational
ladder, the further your grasp on reality
loosens.”
Julie Diamond, A User’s Guide to Power
Does agile mean…
There will be no more
rank in our organizations?
No more power differential?
No more senior leaders killing agile without agilistas having a voice?
No more abuses of power or misuse of rank?
How the evening will go
Topic introduction
We map the positive core of power and agile
(Appreciative Inquiry interviews)
Open space in World Café format
Harvest and share ideas
Topic: “We like agile, but…”
How agile are we really?
Sometimes agile doesn't travel effectively beyond the team level …
… or into leadership
… or into the culture
Power, rank, and the ways they show up in organizations can block agile from moving beyond teams, into leadership and the organizational culture
Then agile can “die on the vine”
Why bother talking about rank and
power in agile?
How power is used relates to respect, a core value of
agile
Middle and senior management sometimes make decisions
affecting agile without understanding it or without agile
practitioners having a say
Agile practitioners marginalized in low rank don’t have
enough of a voice in the business overall to use agile to
positively impact business outcomes
How rank and power are used or abused impacts agile
sustainability
(“We tried agile but it didn’t get past management.”)
Why does agile have trouble moving beyond
teams, to leaders and culture? Hierarchical
rank-related power can block it
High rank traits (think Steve Jobs, corrupt politicians,
Enron):
Less inhibition, more decision-making power. More enamored of
own ideas, less open to feedback, more freedom from social
pressures
Heightened sense of control, higher sense of ability to predict
outcomes
Less empathy toward others, less able to judge own and others’
emotions, less willing to take on others’ perspectives
Greater access to money, resources, information; less oversight,
less accountability
Terms
Power – ability to impact, influence. A force. Can be used to help or
harm
Types of power:
Positional power – people follow you because you have a certain role
(CIO, director, manager, etc)
Social power – the power that comes from your social status or position
(you can have this, but lack personal power, eg, the CIO who beats up
scrum masters and product owners so much that they lose respect for
him and do their own thing)
Personal power – “real power.” Your authority resides in other people.
Earned or lost daily by who you are being with people. You can sit on a
throne, but without other people’s true respect and willingness to follow
you, you have no real authority
Rank – dynamic network of power in motion up or down a hierarchy.
The higher your social rank, the less you notice it
Hierarchy – vertical structure of relationships with power differential
(manager, parent)
The “Death Zone” of Rank That Kills Agile
Examples: the “agile expert” (the obnoxious “sage on stage” vs “guide on the side,” traditional leaders vs servant leaders, mid or senior level management
You receive less immediate feedback on your actions
You don’t experience the consequences of your decisions or actions as others do
You live in a bubble, surrounded by others who have a personal stake in your powerful role
They may be dependent on your for their livelihood or afraid of your authority
Being associated with you enhances their career success
May be emotionally dependent on you for acknowledgement in the organization (love and attention)
Everyone in your bubble affirms your high-ranking role, and you can no longer see yourself clearly, evaluate yourself or your effectiveness
It’s easy to choose only the information that confirms what you already believe and ignore what doesn’t (“facts be damned”)
A closer look at rank
Power and privilege
Earned or inherited
Conscious or unconscious
Social or personal
It organizes your communication and identity
Outer role, eg CIO, CEO, Director who supports or doesn’t support agile
Inner role, eg, highly experienced scrum practitioner, team with high collaboration and high velocity
Ways to recognize rank out in the world
Cultural Hegemony Marginalized Groups
White Non-white
Male Female
Heterosexual Gay or lesbian
Fit Obese
Healthy Handicapped
Rich Poor
Employed Unemployed
Socially skilled Autistic / ADD/ADHD
Educated Uneducated
1st world Developing country
Ways to recognize rank in agile organizations
The guy who thinks he’s better than you because he knows more about agile*
The kickass team vs the struggling team
Money – who gets paid more
Parking – heated underground garage
“In crowd” vs “out crowd”
Hackthon winners
Outward rank – Sr. Director, Sr VP, CIO
Inner rank – the QA of low outward rank who is sleeping with the Sr. Director
Spiritual rank – the “wise” agile coach (ug )
*Conveniently forgetting agile is about who and how you are being as well as what you know
Rank is not going away
So how do we get intentional about rank
and power in agile organizations?
Grow agile leaders
Grow agile culture – “organizational
agility”
Proposal
Conscious culture creation – of agile culture in all
aspects of the organization
Grow agile leaders
Grow agile culture
Culture eats agile for breakfast
Agile
Grow agile leaders
Servant – leadership – move from the definition of leader
as “driving results” to a definition of leader as “creating
environments to empower results”
Even the best servant leaders can’t create great agile
outcomes unless they are supported by an agile culture
Interview your partner: Discover the positive
core of this group around power and agile
Tell a story about a High Point experience you had in your own power at work. A time you felt powerful, alive and engaged. What did you value most about yourself in that moment?
What core factor gives life to the power of Agile in your organization? Without which your organization would not be agile?
Tell about a time you experienced a sense of wonder, surprise, or delight because power got used for good in your organization. What happened? Who was involved? What did you most value about them and about yourself in the situation? How did it promote the sustainable growth of agile beyond teams to leaders and culture?
Imagine you have a magic genie lamp. What three wishes do you have for enhancing the health and vitality of power in agile cultures and agile leaders?
Harvest, gallery walk
*Take notes on stickies – you will use them later
Open Space in World Café Format
3 rounds, 1 host per group, others rotate
Host’s job – encourage participation. Hold a space that’s
both safe and courageous. Encourage people to “harvest”
ideas on the paper “tablecloth:” doodling, note taking
Guidelines
Have fun
Encourage participation from everyone
Offer high quality listening (don’t pontificate, but do let your
voice be heard)
World Café Question Cluster 1
What’s important to you personally about power and rank in agile?
and . . .
What do we still need to learn about it?
World Café Question Cluster 2
What have you heard so far
about power in agile that had
real meaning for you?
What surprised you? Or puzzled
you? Or challenged you? What
question would you like to ask
now?
World Café Question Cluster 3
What would it take to create
change on this issue?
To develop agile culture?
To develop agile leaders?
Harvest
Gallery walk with one rep from each group
What will you do differently as a result of
our conversation today?
Enterprise Agile Coach & Transformation Leader & Paylocity
Talk to Kelly about…• Agile across the organization• Leadership development• Sustainable Agile culture change• Team dynamics
Find Kelly at…• Blog: http://blog.agilitytransformation.com/• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kellyfidei• Twitter: @kfidei
Appendix
Experiential game on rank and power
in agile organizations (15 minutes)
Debrief (10 minutes)
Open space in World Café format (40 minutes)
Game: “Raising Awareness and Creating Choices:
Rank and Power in Agile Organizations*1. Set the context – this is a game to become more aware of rank and power in agile organizations, and to create
more choices around these
2. Purpose of the game: Increase your social status relative to others’ and decrease theirs. Gain power and influence.
3. Everyone comes to the table holding facedown cards with roles. No peeking.
4. Pick up one role card arbitrarily, and tape it on the back of the person next to you. (See tape on table)
5. Everyone gathers in a rough circle
6. Facilitator tells the group the setting, and asks them to enter in twos and threes til everyone is in the space.
7. As soon as you enter the space or a new group, make up things to say or do with the other people near you.
8. Cardinal rule – you can look at other people’s role cards on their backs, but you cannot look at your own or ask someone to tell you what it is. Just interact with others per their roles.
9. Play for 5-10 minutes
10. Facilitator asks participants to line up from lowest rank to highest rank according to their best guess of their role (as learned from interacting with others during the game). Observer.
11. Tell each other what your roles are. Ok to take off the card from your back and look at it.
12. Debrief – observations, learnings, actions, next steps
*Credits to Second City Improv Training Center. This is an adaption of an improv game learned there by Kelly.
Context options for game
On break from agile demo – milling around the water cooler
In demo
In a discussion on:
Whether to try agile at your company
Whether to stop trying agile at your company
“What’s “true” agile?”
Scaling agile at your company
Agile team building event – at the pizza parlor after demo
Roles (write on cards, place on table
facedown, near several rolls of tape) CEO – Outspoken in demos
CIO – “Chainsaw”-Aggressive-Defensive style
Sr. VP (stakeholder)
A senior director who opposes agile, doesn’t understand it, and is planning to kill it (command and control)
A senior director who supports agile (servant leader)
An agile coach who is the “sage on the stage” vs the “guide on the side”
An agile coach who is the “guide on the side” vs “sage on the stage”
Scrum master – Constructive leadership style (humanistic, encouraging, affiliative)
Scrum master – only recently a command and control project manager
Dev Lead
QA Lead
Team member who ways she’s agile but does 1 hour stand ups
A developer who has religious debates on the “right” way to do agile
QA – Passive-Defensive style, super into manual regression testing
Junior QA – sleeping with the married CIO in secret
Experienced QA – in a wheelchair, likes to learn, sees self as father figure, swears a lot
Developer – brilliant, high introvert
Janitor (speaks only Polish)
Leaders are the architects of culture –
this means YOU
• Leader – someone who sees something they care about, and takes action with others
“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.” Margaret Mead
• If elements of the culture are not getting you the business results you want, leadership sometimes takes action to speed up culture change
• Values based leadership: Respect, courage, willingness to tell the truth, commitment to creating a safe environment to tell the truth
Leaders manage culture, or culture
manages leaders
• If leaders are not proactive about managing culture, then culture will manage THEM
• What does an agile leader look like? Sound like? Who is one you’ve known?
• What are some ways an agile leader can impact culture?
How to create an agile culture?
(vs being a “buzz saw leader” or a “cog in
the wheel culture”)
Agile and
non-agile
styles of
culture,
governance
and
leadership
Agile
cultural
styles
Non-agile
cultural styles
A portrait of a culture
Humanistic Encouraging
Develops others
Resolves conflict
consistently
Affiliative
Cooperates
Be friendly
Achievement
Works toward self-set goals
Takes on challenges
Self-actualizing
Maintains personal integrity
Emphasizes quality
Portrait of an agile culture
Open Space
The Guidelines
• It starts when it starts
• It ends when it ends
• Whoever shows up are the right people
• Whatever happens is the only thing that could have
The Law
• “Law of Two Feet”