Many companies have implemented Scrum and are “doing agile.” However, many companies struggle to achieve the expected benefits. The management team has implemented scrum and then expects a miracle to happen. However, often they have failed to embrace the true nature of scrum and especially forgot the part that talks about creating self-organizing autonomous teams. Agility isn’t a gem that can be bought; transforming your operating model to become future-proof is a difficult task. It’s not just a small update, it’s a major overhaul of how your organization operates. Agile is not just a framework used in the IT department; becoming truly agile requires a digital transformation of the business and other departments like HR, finance, and operations. You also have to overcome organizational impediments like anti-agile company culture, top-down leadership behaviour, counter-productive organization structure, and approval processes. Only top management can enable this shift. If we look at some the Silicon Valley-style digital first organizations, we discover that these companies still heavily rely on managers. However these managers do something completely different than the ones we find in traditional enterprises. In my presentation we’ll dive into some of the learnings from how management works in these companies.

1. Photo by Reynermedia
Do we still need
managers?

2. FUTURE-PROOF YOUR
ORGANIZATION
ORGANIZE RESPONSIVENESS
by
Jurriaan Kamer

3. “Insanity: doing the
same thing over and
over again and
expecting different
results”
Albert Einstein

4. “Insanity:
implementing scrum
and expecting a
miracle”
Jurriaan Kamer

8. AGENDA
- management in agile orgs
- how to apply these insights?
- agile management team
transformation

9. How many
managers in the
audience?

10. “Management, like the
combustion engine, is a
mature technology that
must now be reinvented
for a new age.”
Gary Hamel
Photo by McKinsey & Company

11. Do companies
like Spotify still
have managers?

12. How does management
operate in agile
organisations?

13. photo by Giuseppe Milophoto by Techcrunch

14. Photo by eGuide Travel
Spotify

15. At Spotify, a manager
has a maximum of 5
direct reports
Photo by Heartwork.com

16. “As a leader, always
blame yourself first”
Photo by Heartwork.com

17. “I was used to people
telling me ‘shut up and do
your job’”

18. “Now they say: my job is to
make you successful, what
do you need?”

19. Agile à la
Spotify

20. At Spotify managers are
focused on coaching,
mentorship, and solving
impediments rather than
telling people what to do.

21. With 60 teams,
do you get 60
bricks or a
nice castle?

22. Photo by eOffice.net
Airbnb

23. Photo by eOffice.net
“We simply
give the
team a clear
purpose”

24. Photo by eOffice.net
“Our tech
managers are
engineers”

25. photo by Steve Jurvetson
What drives your people to
work for your company?
A powerful purpose drives the
company.

26. Facebook

27. “No manager will tell
you what to do”

29. “I don’t want people
asking me for
permission. In almost
every case, if someone
asks me for permission,
something’s wrong”

30. “When people ask
you for permission,
they don’t bring
any of their own
responsibility to the
request”

31. AGENDA
- management in agile orgs
- how to apply these insights?
- agile management team
transformation

32. How to apply these
insights?

35. Simply following
the checklist
won’t work

36. (c) Jurgen Appelo
From boss
to leader

37. “We need to have
a shorter time to
market, be able to
faster respond to
change, and have
more innovation.”
Find the executive
who feels the pain

38. Provide a clear transition
path: start small

39. Bring the
challenge
to the team
€
What do they need
to make more
impact?

40. Managers get
coaching to be
able to let go
of the old ways

41. “On higher management
levels, it feels like losing
control”

42. Continuously communicate
about the necessary change
and the challenges. €

43. Executive
sponsorship
Consistent example
behaviour
Communication
Management
enables the
transition

44. Management team
agile transformation
EXPERIMENT

45. Photo tiarescott
- decision making based on
detailed memo’s
- information is filtered out and is
often wrong or out of date
- not always of impact of
decisions
Management team meetings
as an impediment to agility

46. Can you help us:
• learn what it is to be
agile
• spend more time fixing
impediments
• be more transparent
and accessible
• let go and give more
responsibility to teams

47. Kanban: backlog out in
the open
Agile inbox: get on their
agenda instantaneously
Sprint review: question for
their people, “did we
work on the right things?”
Retrospective

48. Drawing by Henrik Kniberg
A3 management
Helps
management
teams to
prioritise which
areas they want
their company
to improve on,
and delegate.

49. Photo by ICT media
ANWB has an agile CIO

50. Photo by Reynermedia
Do we still need managers?
The most agile and innovative companies on
the planet still have many many managers,
but they operate very differently.
To move to this new way of management, we
need management to enable the transition.

51. Image by zen-mama.com
“A leader is best when
people barely know
he exists, when his
work is done, his aim
fulfilled, they will say:
we did it ourselves.”
Lao Tzu

52. Thanks!
Follow me at
@agile_cio
WWW.AGILECIO.NET