This past Wednesday (14 July 2021) I shared in the introduction post to this short series on Managers and their new leadership role. Today we’re looking a little deeper into why Vision is so vital to successful teams.
Managers (including Line, Team, Project, Program, Process, Development, etc.) work primarily in the Team and Product areas:
Managers are responsible for creating a culture that enables:
- Expectations (Individual) to be met
- Everyone aligning their individual vision(s) with the Team’s Vision
- Engaging all other Managers and Stakeholders that are involved in the Product, Service and/or Results that makes the organization sustainable.
The expansion of the Manager’s role into leadership may be an uncomfortable change, and a quick look at the following image sheds some light on why that might be:
Although former managerial responsibilities are absorbed by an Agile team, there are some significant leadership gaps Agile has missed. And, therein lies the answer for what the Manager’s new role can be (far right column of the picture above).
The sunburst diagram for the Flow Leadership Framework and Mindset shows the gaps that Agile and Scaled Agile don’t address:
Vision (and strategy) encompasses a little over two-thirds of everything we do in Flow (21 of the 30 action areas in the outer ring in the picture above).
Managers need to learn why Vision is one of the most powerful elements of the new mindset needed for the organization to succeed with an Agile transformation (or Scaling Agile, etc.). The picture above explains why this is. The managers that can leverage this will be way ahead in the game.
If you use our other view for the 18 tiles in Flow, 12 of the 18 (again, two-thirds) have Vision at their core:
Vision isn’t just some abstract thing leaders should think about once or twice a year. In the Flow Leadership Framework and Mindset, we use Vision daily, in everything we do. Not only that, we move Vision from the abstract to the concrete in a way that permeates all areas of the organization. Managers should intuitively understand this and if not, then they will be fighting an uphill battle for the balance of their career.
Here are the links to my most recent blog posts on Vision (plus a few from my website):
- What’s your Passion #48 – Winning Transformations
- What’s your Passion #46 – F.L.O.W.
- What’s your Passion #44 – Leadership & Personalities
- What’s your Passion #43 – CVO not CEO
- What’s your Passion #41 – Servant Leadership
- What’s your Passion #38 – Modern Agile: Learning
- What’s your Passion #37 – Modern Agile: Safety
- What’s your Passion #35 – Modern Agile: Deliver Value Continuously
- What’s your Passion #34 – Modern Agile: Make People Awesome
- What’s your Passion #33 – Loyalty
- What’s your Passion # 28 – Varax
- What’s your Passion # 27 – Flow vs. anti-Flow
- What’s your Passion #24 – Change Vision
- What’s your Passion #19 – Friction
- What’s your Passion #18 – Hugging Porcupines
- What’s your Passion #17 – What’s your Why?!
- What’s your Passion #16 – Four Lenses
- What’s your Passion #14 – Prioritization à la 1984
- What’s your Passion #12 – Kintsugi
- What’s your Passion #11 – Kokoro
- What’s your Passion #7 – One Language, One Mind and One Plan
- What’s your Passion #6 – Vision comes First!
- Whats your Passion #3 – Flow VALUE Defined
- What’s your Passion #2 – Flow Friction Analysis
- What’s your Passion #1 – Group Think
- Flow Manifesto
- Surviving Scaled Agile – your roadmap to success
- Flow’s History & Results!
- Training, Certifications & PDUs / SEUs
- Flow Leadership
- Videos
Roughly half of all of my posts, so far, have dealt with various aspects of Vision and how to use it in your daily work. If you are a Manager and want to change how you think about leadership, the posts above are a great starting point.
Want to learn more about how Flow will up-skill your managers as Leaders? Then let’s chat!
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In these five (5) blog posts (numbers 51 through 55) we explore the five areas outlined in the “Manager-Agile-Flow” image above – here are the link-backs to each one:
- #50 – Intro
- #51 – Team Vision
- #52 – Mindset Guide
- #53 – Sustainability
- #54 – Pursuing Excellence
- #55 – Coaching & Mentoring
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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