Lean-Agile Leadership: The six responsibilities of management

An organization becoming agile poses a challenging question: What is the role of a manager in an agile organization?

The Scrum guide does not mention the role of managers, leaving people - especially middle managers - with the nagging question: "Will the organization still need me, once we are agile?" Unfortunately, many agile coaches and consultants fail to answer this question adequately. Managers feel left behind, and become resistant to the change because they see their accomplishments and role in danger.

The SAFe® framework provides an answer to the role of managers. In short: Managers are still needed, and still valuable - even though their responsibilities change. Gone are the days of awkward status reports, jour-fixes and pointless, never-ending meetings. Those highly skilled individuals in the company who took the challenging route of managing knowledge workers will embark a new journey, filled with tremendous opportunities for growth - both individually, and corporately.

Now, let's take a look at the responsibilities of a Lean-Agile leader:

1 - Lead the change

The second of Deming's 14 famous points for management states very clearly that management must step up to the challenge of leading the change. It is not enough that your teams become agile - you yourself must lead the way to agility. Everything you do must be a clear signal that the tide is turning! Without your cooperation, it will not turn. You are the key success factor in this change initiative!

2 - Lifelong learning

Yesterday's knowledge is good to manage the challenges of yesterday's business world - you need today's knowledge to compete in the buiness of tomorrow!

Knowledge workers learn something new every day. As an agile leader, you lead by example. Grab a book, go to seminars / trainings and/or meetups to learn how the world of work is changing, and how you can participate in that change. Encourage your teams to follow suit.

3 - Develop people

There's that old joke: CFO to CTO: "What if you train your people and they leave?" - CTO to CFO: "What if we don't, and they don't?"

To compete in today's market, you need a workforce up to standard. And the standard goes up every day. You must constantly invest time, money and energy to ensure every person you work with has cutting edge skills!

4 - Inspire, align, minimize constraints

Gone are the days of Command and Control. Nobody possesses the combined intelligence of cohorts of knowledge workers. The best thing you can do for your people is to enable them to go further than you could imagine. And there are three important steps in this:

Inspire - give them reason to do what needs to be done. Use inspiration instead of control.

Align - Today's challenges in industrial development are beyond a single person's capacity. Ensure that people are on the same page.

Minimize constraints - Your organization was probably built to optimize utilization, while maximizing constraints on what people could do with their ability. Now, your responsibility is to tear down all barriers that block people from harnessing their full potential!

5 - Decentralize decisions

Intelligent people can make smart decisions. And those doing the work know much better than anyone else what the consequences of their decisions are. Once the people with the detailed expert knowledge can make the decision, your processes will be much smoother and change will happen more rapidly.

In some organizations, decentralization is a long journey. Making the change happen is your job.

Just remember: Not every decision should be decentralized. It takes some learning by trial and error which decisions are best left at a central point, and which are best decentralized.

6 - Unlock intrinsic motivation

The toughest challenge for a Lean-Agile leader is to unlock the intrinsic motivation of people. While Dan Pink's "Drive" is a great starter, the journey is extremely challenging. It's very easy to demotivate people, it's very difficult to help them being motivated. The first step is acknowledging that you can not intrinsically motivate them.

Your keys to unlocking intrinsic motivation will be resolving demotivating factors, coaching, enabling, trusting, empowering - and most of all: getting out of the way.

Curious to know more? Ask me for a "Leading SAFe" course. All of my courses are taught using Training from the back of the room, giving you ample room to learn. Contact me if you want a SAFe class in English or German.