Managers and the land of the lost

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Managers and
the Land of the Lost
Steve Martin
Enterprise Lead Agile Consultant
smartin@solutionsiq.com
617-999-7753

Agenda
Challenges for Today’s Managers
Roles & Responsibilities Exercise:
Part 1 : What are you doing now?
What should Managers focus on?
Roles & Responsibilities Exercise:
Part 2: What should you be doing
Part 3: Becoming Less Lost
Q&A

Couple housekeeping tips
Highly interactive with your table-mates
Our time is limited - please refrain from using
technology during session
Please feel free to ask questions
But, want to respect our time box together
May use a Parking Lot for questions
Follow up afterwards to those we can’t get to
during the session
Leave your card to get an electronic copy of this
slide deck

TODAY’S
MANAGERS…

What do I mean by Manager?

Small Group Exercise
Use your sticky notes & sharpie pens.
In your tables/small groups, think of a time
when you had a really amazing Manager.
Write on your sticky notes:
What characteristics did they have?
Think of as many ideas as you like.
One characteristic per sticky note.
Time box: 4 minutes.

So what’s wrong with
Managers today, then?

There is guidance for Team members roles in Scrum
» Voice of Customers
» Owns and Prioritizes
Product Backlog
» “What” not “How”
» Is a facilitator, not a
PM
» Ensures Scrum
followed
» Removes Blockers
» Servant Leader
Product Owner ScrumMaster
» Responsible for:
• Creating product
• Product quality
» Size the work
» Pulls in work
» Commit to the work
Team

There’s guidance for Executives in Agile

ROLES &
RESPONSIBILITIES
(PART 1)

Exercise: Roles & Responsibilities – Part 1
Write down your current job responsibilities on small stickies
» Only 1 responsibility per sticky (we’ll be moving them
around later)
» Be as comprehensive & complete as possible
» Include both official and unofficial responsibilities
Refer to next slide for examples
Time box for this workshop: 4 mins
Time box when you do back at your office: 10-15 mins
12

Examples of Current Manager Responsibilities
Plan budgets
Track and manage to budgets
Keep track of what all my staff are doing
Define metrics for my staff
Collect metrics/data from my staff
Provide weekly status report to my
Management
Make commitments for my staff to
Management
Make sure staff get their work done
Participate in standups
Remove staff members who are not
doing well with a team
Hold weekly staff meeting
Hold weekly 1:1’s with my staff
Do annual performance evaluations
Perform career development/guidance
to staff
Recruit, interview, and hire new staff

WHAT SHOULD MANAGERS
BE FOCUSED ON?

What’s not working today
Mindset

Managers tending to use position of power to:
• Tell/direct subordinates what to do
• Focus on efficiency of individuals and departments
• Over-emphasize cost containment
• Separate teams performing work from their actual
customers/clients, removing feedback loops
• Require unnecessary documentation with layers of sign-offs
• Mandate metrics collection and reporting with little actionable
value as proof of progress
• Reduce risk by ensuring conformity across organization with blind
application of process for consistency purposes

Some impacts to the organization
• Folks wait to be told what to do and how to do it, which
establishes:
– Lack of accountability
• “I just did what you told me to”
– Limitations in creativity
– Culture of fear; no safety net to try things
– Less satisfied workers (lower morale)

Some impacts to the organization
• Waste in the process (hierarchies of signoffs, handoffs), leading
to:
– Complicated governance processes
– Increasing time from concept to in the customers’ hands
• Focus on individual(s) or department(s) rather than the system.
– While you may have local efficiencies, it actually hurts
overall end-to-end delivery (slower, more issues, poor
quality, greater risk).

Some Considerations for Today’s Managers
1. Servant Leadership
2. Motivation
3. Leadership Agility
4. Designing the organizational environment

What is Servant Leadership?
“A servant-leader focuses primarily on the
growth and well-being of people and the
communities to which they belong. While
traditional leadership generally involves the
accumulation and exercise of power by one
at the ‘top of the pyramid,’ servant
leadership is different. The servant-leader
shares power, puts the needs of others first
and helps people develop and perform as
highly as possible.”
(Greenleaf 1970)

Benefits from Servant Leadership
• For an organization1:
– 15-20% increase in business performance
– 20-25% increase in group productivity
– Consistently appear in best 100 corporations to work for
• For an individual2:
– Tend to be more highly regarded
– Greater productivity – they are “connected” to get things done
– Since they share, are also great beneficiaries of knowledge
1. Wong, Dr. Paul T. P. and Davey, Dean (2007, July). Best Practices in Servant Leadership. Servant Leadership Research Roundtable, Regent University.
2. Heskett, James (2013, May). Why Isn't Servant Leadership More Prevalent? Forbes. Retrieved from
http://www.forbes.com/sites/hbsworkingknowledge/2013/05/01/why-isnt-servant-leadership-more-prevalent/

Shout it out…
What are some examples of
what Servant Leadership
might look like?

Motivation
People can accomplish much
more when inspired by a
purpose beyond themselves

(First) Three Levels of Leadership Agility*
26
Each level reflects a greater capacity to deal with
complexity and rapid change.
Each level builds upon, but expands the range of mental
and leadership capability over the levels below
Expert Achiever Catalyst
Bill Joiner, Stephen Josephs, Leadership Agility: Five Levels of Mastery for Anticipating and Initiating Change

Agile Leadership Principles
Why Do We Care?
There is a relatively low level of catalytic behavior demonstrated by managers
» 10% Pre-Expert
» 45% Expert
» 35% Achiever
» 5% Catalyst
» 4% Co-Creator
» 1% Synergist
27
90%
Bill Joiner, Stephen Josephs, Leadership Agility: Five Levels of Mastery for Anticipating and Initiating Change

Focus on the Environment

Focus on the Environment
In an agile organization, the
job of leadership and
management shifts from
managing individuals and
teams…
29
…to managing, and
continuously improving, the
organizational environments in
which individuals and teams
operate

ROLES & RESPONSIBILITIES
(PART 2)

Managing and Directing
People
Defining and enforcing
policies and rules of
engagement (abstracting
out details)
Making project decisions
Managing to the project
portfolio
Examples of the Shift in Leadership Focus
Designing organizational
environments (motivation, etc.)
Establishing objectives; keeping
attention closer to where things are
happening; keeping necessary details
transparent
Push decision-making down to teams
Collaboratively establishing and
managing to broad business goals and
objectives

Coordinating project
implementation details
with business
Managing systems and
processes
Solving problems
Examples of the Shift in Leadership Focus
Building trusting relationships with
business, characterized by
transparency and collaboration
Designing organizational
environments (org structures, etc)
Understanding what those problems
reveal about underlying organizational
dynamics/structures and our own
thinking; people close to the problem
space solve problems as they arise

Write down what you should be (or
want to be) doing on small stickies
» Only 1 responsibility per sticky (we’ll
be moving them around later)
» Typically involves things you
should/want to do, but don’t have the
time to do
Time box: 4 mins
33

ROLES & RESPONSIBILITIES
(PART 3)

Consider everything that we learned today.
Put “characteristics of great managers”
down the left side (by keep/start doing)
Move items into the appropriate columns.
» Add new items as needed
» Move higher value activities towards the
top of your sheet of paper
» Move lower value activities towards the
bottom…
Time box: 5 mins
37
Keep/Start
Doing
Stop Doing /
Delegate

Q&A

APPENDIX

TABLE 2: THREE-TIER MODEL OF ROLES NEEDED FOR TRANSFORMATION
ROLE TYPICAL TITLES FOCUS AREAS
Executives Leaders of the
organization, such as:
• C-levels
• Executive Vice
Presidents
• Managing Directors
• Set vision, guideposts, and culture for Agile
transformation
o Is consistent and transparent on why they are
doing what they are doing
o Empower Management and Agile Teams, then
get out of the way
• Renegotiate contracts and relationships with their
customers’ Executives
Management Typically directly manages
staff on teams
• Associate Vice
Presidents
• Directors
• Senior Managers
• Paves road for smoother Team execution by
removing organization-wide blockers
o Empower Teams, then get out of the way
o Regularly shows up to reviews and are
“present” to give valued feedback
Agile Teams Individual contributors • Deliver high valued, high quality working product
• Alter direction as needed based upon feedback
from stakeholders

Environments, Cause & Effect

Managers and the land of the lost

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