Agile leadership in the modern workplace
Table of contents
Agile leadership in the modern workplace: methods, characteristics and difficulties
Agility is the goal of many companies. A joint study by the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) and the management consultancy Kobaltblau shows as much. 75 per cent of the companies surveyed in Germany, France and Switzerland want to lead and work in an agile way. Yet two thirds of the companies surveyed say they haven’t achieved these goals. They probably won’t achieve them either. There’s an explanation for the gap.
Taking stock: in many places, agile leadership is poorly understood
Jürgen Weibler, professor of business administration at the FernUniversität in Hagen, says in an interview with the "Wirtschaftswoche" that when it comes to agile leadership, "more is said than done." He’s pointing to a problem the study touches on too: there is still little understanding of what agile leadership actually means. Agile management and agile working are often treated as opposites. The connection between them is overlooked. A few examples:
- According to the study, successful agile companies focus on processes so they can respond to changing priorities. Companies struggling with agility focus instead on individual areas such as project management.
- 70 per cent of companies see support functions (HR, finance, administration and so on) as not agile. Here too, there is a gap between companies that have succeeded in becoming agile and those that have failed.
- Line management is also often described as not agile. Many companies still believe in the central importance of a boss who can "lay down the law." Weibler counters that this demonstrably destroys motivation.
- Almost 100 per cent of agile companies also use scaling frameworks, often two or three. Among the other companies, an average of 40 per cent use scaling frameworks, with an average of one framework in use.
- Companies struggling with agility still associate it with the traditional areas of IT and research. Successful companies, by contrast, see product development as the most agile function, which, as is well known, directly affects almost every part of the business.
According to the official definition, agile leadership covers every step that makes behaviour and decision-making in a given area of responsibility flexible, fast and easy to adapt. Three points can be drawn from the contrasts above and from the definition:
- There is no single approach to agile working. Different approaches are possible, as long as they deliver results. Agile methods aren’t "golden rules" either, but concepts that can be adapted to your own situation.
- Agile leadership is unthinkable without agile work processes. How else are decisions meant to be made quickly and flexibly if they can’t also be put into practice quickly and flexibly?
- Agile methods are often introduced with too little planning and meet resistance even in management. Nothing else explains the high rate of rejection when it comes to support functions. Poor basic knowledge is the likely cause.
Organisation vs. methodology – or: success vs. failure
This lack of basic knowledge shows in the different approaches. What stands out is that successful companies consistently make the whole organisation more agile. Companies that fail, by contrast, tackle agility in isolated parts of the organisation and seem to rely on the benefits of individual methods. What they don’t recognise is that established methods require implementation across the organisation.
An example: Scrum is probably the best-known agile method, and it comes from software development. It has several roles: Product Owner, ScrumMaster, team. The supposed managers only set requirements and clear obstacles out of the way. The team decides for itself how to reach the goals. Everyone involved talks regularly, often daily. This doesn’t work in isolation. Say a specialist on the team falls ill and has to be replaced. If the organisation as a whole can’t make that happen, the method fails.
Other agile methods such as Unified Process, RAD or AMDD are just as all-encompassing. So the rule is: agile leadership doesn’t work without agile processes. And those can’t be achieved unless the whole organisation commits to the goal, fully and completely. Weibler puts it like this: a little anarchy does no harm when it comes to breaking down entrenched structures. Of course, there still needs to be a stable framework within which everything operates – people need some continuity and a slower pace. But even that framework can be "periodically reviewed and revised."
Characteristics of agile leadership
We’ve set out in detail why it’s so hard to go from wanting to lead and work in an agile way to actually doing it. One thing remains: what exactly marks out agile management? After all, these traits are useful for self-reflection. You can ask yourself whether you’re still on the right course. Agile leadership is characterised by the following:
- freedom
- a high degree of equality
- willingness to make changes throughout the organisation
- a culture of trust
- boundaries instead of rules, to create a framework
- effective, regular communication
- willingness to let go of things you’ve grown attached to
- quick decisions made close to where the work happens
- autonomous employees
Sources:
Agile leadership: definition and principles (WPGS, in German)
Agile methods: definition and overview (Haufe, in German)
Leadership in agile companies (WirtschaftsWoche, in German)
Agile transformations: typical mistakes (Computerwoche, in German)
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