• Agile Transformation

If you want to grow you have to take risks

What I love most about my work? Sketching a better future. And then setting out together with a group of people on the road towards that sketched image. As far as I’m concerned, call it: guiding change. Sounds simple, but it is not. Because in order to change, you have to dare to take risks. And precisely those risks always cause discomfort. As a process facilitator, I expect myself to be at the forefront of dealing with this discomfort. How do I do that? I take the cow (or snake) by the horns.

In this blog, I will give you more insight into my vision and approach as an Agile Transformation Coach. You can read more about our vision on Agile Transformations in general in the manifesto High Impact Happy Teams. If you want to get started immediately with an Agile Transformation in your practice, then you would do well to read more about our Agile Coaching on the job. But for now, you might want to be taken through these two mini-cases from practice first. Take advantage of them.

Contradicting your own principal

Picture yourself: you walk into the office building full of energy for a new job. With enthusiasm, you hang up the flipcharts you are going to use that day. The atmosphere is great and the morning flies by. Agile working suits the group well and they are eager to get started. The concept of self-organization is certainly embraced. Both by the team members and the CTO present. But then.

Mid-afternoon, you ask the question you always ask to check how things are really going in the organization: ‘How are we going to divide this work?’ And without hesitation, the CTO (also your client) immediately starts explaining who is best suited for which part of the work. Uhm, we were talking about self-organization and Agile working, right? What next. What are you going to do? Contradict your own client? In front of all his people? Don’t you then run the risk of losing the assignment? Should you even do that?

It is exactly what I did. Three beliefs help me dare to do this:

1. I am 100% co-responsible for a culture in which I do not speak out;
2. He probably wants to learn and change;
3. I do it with a good heart.

Result: a happy CTO who asks me at break time to do this more often. He feels that he, too, continues to learn precisely because of this.

Name your imperfections directly

Picture yourself: together with colleagues at the client organization, you have been working hard lately and with fine results. Yet something is faltering. A few things are less successful than hoped for: you have had setbacks on that one part of the Agile Transformation and you find out that you have paid too little attention to another part. Just a little too late.

Tomorrow you have an update with the client, a high-ranking manager. What do you do? Focus only on the positive results? Hope your client doesn’t ask critical questions and make sure you really do have everything on track next time? Doubt.

My approach to such situations: always directly name what didn’t work out. Show that you have achieved good results as well as that there are imperfections in your work. These are the three helping beliefs that help me dare to do this:

1. It shows that you are above the matter. I am able to take the same viewpoint as my client;
2. It’s okay to show my vulnerability and lesser sides.
3. It makes the relationship with the client more honest and personal.

If you also want to grow

As a professional, as a coach, as a team or as an organization. Even as a human being. If you want to grow, you usually cannot escape taking risks. Of course, not rashly. But: if you do what you did, you get what you got. Yet this is not always so clear to everyone. Perhaps by now you yourself are open to that change, you dare to take risks, but you don’t get the management on board. Recognizable? Feel free to recommend a training Inspirational Agile Leadership or contact me. Then together we can take the snake by the horns.

PS You might also find this interesting? I wrote another blog on how to deal with fear culture in the organization.