Roles are changing rapidly in organizations.
Agile purists believe all management is evil.
That is simply NOT the case.
Although former managerial responsibilities are absorbed by an Agile team, there are some significant leadership gaps Agile has missed.
Flow expands the manager’s leadership role and plugs the gaps created by Agile methodologies.
Flow not only answers the question of “what do we do with our managers if we go Agile?” The Flow Leadership Framework and Mindset actually expands the manager’s leadership role in at least five (5) key areas.
The first column are the traditional duties for a Manager. In Agile, many of those tasks are transferred to the team. Flow enables the Managers to shape the new culture where Agile (or Kanban, Lean, or whatever way of working you are using) can thrive:
It was brilliant for Agile to transfer as many of the management tasks to the team as possible (middle column in the picture above).
What wasn’t so bright was creating a whole layer of resistance by labelling all “management” as evil and that they should be eliminated. Agile failed to answer the most basic of all questions for the managers and that was: “hey dude, what’s in it for me?!” That created unnecessary politics and organizational resistance to change.
So much so that Harvard Business Review recently had an article about “Have We Taken Agile Too Far?” In this HBR article they talk about “working backwards.” This is a great concept since it aligns perfectly with what we teach in the Flow Leadership Framework and Mindset about the need for both top/down and bottom/up transformation.
It’s not an “either/or” situation – it’s a “both/and.”
Most Agile “purists” will cringe at this statement. And, that is good since the statement is still true and exposes the lie (i.e. that all management is evil) that has been propagated by the Agile purists for much too long. Time to stop doing that.
In the next five (5) blog posts (numbers 51 through 55) we will explore the five areas (listed in the image above) for Flow more in-depth:
- #50 – Intro
- #51 – Team Vision
- #52 – Mindset Guide
- #53 – Sustainability
- #54 – Pursuing Excellence
- #55 – Coaching & Mentoring
Want to learn more about how Flow will up-skill your managers as Leaders?
Then let’s chat!
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For those that are not familiar with the Flow Leadership Framework & Mindset, it is what’s next for businesses and organizations that are ready to succeed regardless of the methods, frameworks or management tools that they use throughout their enterprise. Flow is methodology agnostic.
Are you ‘in the zone’ of optimal performance right now as a person, team or enterprise? Did you get there by accident or by focused intentional acts?
“Flow” gives you the way of working and mindset needed to create and maintain an optimal state of high performance as an individual, team or organization.
The Flow Leadership Framework turbocharges everything you do, including “business agile” leadership and Scaled Agile.
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PS Here are the associated links to this blog post for:
#culture #scrum #agile #pmi #pmp #kanban #lean #flow #scaledagile #transformation #change #transform