Each month we will be sharing four, carefully-chosen articles from the Latest Issue of our flagship publication ‘theHRDIRECTOR’ which exemplify the high standards we strive to archive. We hope you find this in-depth article of interest and decide to become one of our valued Subscribers.
Process and standards were synonymous with quality – achieving an ISO accreditation offered a sense of security that you were operating within parameters. Now, pace of change means any process implemented six months ago may well not be fit for today. A layer of control has to be implemented without becoming ‘controlling’ and obstructing adaptability and innovation – first step is understanding that there’s a relationship between standardisation and agility.
Article by Philip Alexander, Director – Agile Business Consortium
In today’s business world, the tectonic plates are shifting and we can no longer be certain of the standards and parameters that were the bedrock of the old days. Indeed, ISO requirements – the bastion of standardisation – have evolved to reflect the need to value the individual and move away from the culture of top-down control, placing more trust in teams. Big changes have happened and are continuing to happen when it comes to the philosophy of work. The arrival of global behemoths such as Google, Amazon and Facebook and latterly relative newcomers like Airbnb have been gamechangers. These worldwide companies are necessarily fleet of foot, highly-adaptive to change, and yet have
Clearly-defined strategic visions and a direction of travel set by their boards and clearly communicated to their staff. They achieve their success in part through agile approaches, a focus on people rather than process, and by putting their trust in multi-skilled, autonomous teams that are managed effectively. This includes a recognition that not every role within those teams should be treated in the same way. While every organisation needs some degree of structure, successful modern businesses are no place for the old autocratic world of rigid hierarchy.
Leaders devolve appropriate power and authority, but agile leaders recognise that people work best when they are enabled, engaged and energised. Empowering individuals is a necessary skill as it balances the emerging needs and tensions of the organisation
In agile organisations, there is mutual trust between management and teams. Team members need to feel psychologically safe, because without this, rather than real innovation you have ‘group think’ – teams coming up with results they think you want to see, and doing so through the lens of individual or team self-interest. To encourage real innovation, leaders need to establish an environment of respect and trust. Highly-engaged and psychologically-safe teams will adopt the agile mindset of questioning, evolving and challenging the established way of thinking, innovating and learning from that innovation. They will have evolving standards that adapt as the business grows. To reach this level, teams need to be empowered, with responsibility handed down from managers and accepted by individuals within the teams. Those evolving and communicating the company’s overall direction and strategy need to understand the fundamental human drivers that allow each individual to bring the best of themselves into work every day; the need to understand the meaning and purpose of what they are trying to achieve.
It would be wrong to think this approach is a generational thing – it’s not about age, it’s about mindset. The rate of change in all industries is so fast that everyone needs to be able to adapt and innovate. HR departments and team leaders need to be asking: “Are we as an organisation supporting our teams to do what they want to do? If not, what do we need to change in our approach that will help them to succeed”? Agile working, the ability to challenge, adapt and adopt, will then become the norm. This approach does not mean the end of leadership and structure, there is no place for a rudderless ship. For motivated, psychologically safe, agile teams to work effectively there needs to be a clear overall strategy and direction that trickles down to teams and to the individuals within those teams. If an agile team is able to set its own overall vision that dovetails with, and contributes to, the organisation’s strategy, it will give its members a profound sense of belief, purpose and meaning. It’s taken as read then that the actions of an organisation’s leaders are fundamental to establishing this kind of culture and behaviour - but culture cannot be imposed, it is something that has to be built organically.
Agile business thinking holds that there are nine principles of agile leadership: Actions speak louder than words – agile leadership is not only about driving and promoting change, it is also about being the change. Those who lead by example and actively engage in their own development, inspire people. Likewise, inspirational leaders work on themselves first before working on others, and improved quality of thinking leads to improved outcomes. Agile leaders value high quality thinking which will result in meaningful action and they view problems from different angles, taking input from those closest to the problem, ensuring they are in touch with reality rather than relying solely on electronic information to inform their decision making. Organisations improve through effective feedback, but receiving feedback can often be perceived as a negative experience, so agile leaders must lead the way by soliciting meaningful, useful and timely feedback from peers and colleagues, ensuring they are visibly responding to the suggestions made. People require meaning and purpose to make work fulfilling and so agile leaders is about focusing on building and sharing a common understanding and purpose. Where there is a vision of change that is meaningful and applicable to the organisation, agile leaders are aware of what is in the hearts and minds of their colleagues, and can unify and align those values into inspired action.
Emotion is a foundation to enhanced creativity and innovation and so agile leaders inspire others to bring their best selves to their work. They understand that emotion is an important part of the human experience, and when individuals work with their emotions, they achieve more of their potential. Innovation and creativity rely heavily on the respect that the agile leader encourages, by being; accessible, open, honest and transparent. Leadership in many shapes and forms, lives everywhere in the organisation and agile leadership should permeate all aspects of an organisation, and realise the leadership potential of all its people, to accelerate an organisation’s ability to learn and adapt, and develop an in-depth understanding in their organisation’s leadership capability, by providing opportunities for their people to lead. Mentoring tomorrow’s leaders in the principles and practices of servant leadership, sowing the seeds for the agile culture to thrive. Leaders devolve appropriate power and authority, but agile leaders recognise that people work best when they are enabled, engaged and energised. Empowering individuals is a necessary skill of the agile leader, as they balance the emerging needs and tensions of the organisation. They recognise that empowerment is not an “all or nothing” concept, it is a continuum of leadership behaviour that responds to the context for change. Collaborative communities achieve more than individuals.
Agile leaders build communities based on trust, respect and meaningful working relationships, and provide those communities with all they need to operate efficiently, but then to let them function autonomously within their boundaries. They understand forgiveness, positivity, generosity and gratitude are important parts of a healthy working environment. The healthy functioning of the group, together with the preservation of psychological safety, allow the agile leader to encourage learning and development whilst also balancing sustained output and performance. Great ideas can come from anywhere in the organisation, and people who are close to a problem usually have the best ideas about how to solve it. Agile leaders allow themselves to be open to the influence and ideas of others, regardless of their status or position. They stop, listen and give time to really hear the thoughts and ideas for improvement from their colleagues. Even if some ideas are not used, the Agile Leader encourages a continuous flow of creativity by helping people to understand which ideas were useful and which were not.
Modern leadership is about moving to create the right environment to bring out the best in your people. It’s about not being scared to change your mind and about adopting a permissions structure that allows your people to challenge accepted thinking and to innovate, all the while being guided by strategy. Organisations should not be afraid of setting strategy and direction and trusting their Agile teams to innovate while moving in the agreed direction. To return to our earlier examples of; Google, Facebook, Airbnb and the plethora of other successful global tech companies that lead the way in this style of working, they all possess a really strong spine in the form of their clear and understood strategies and direction of travel. Their Agile teams give them the muscles to operate in a way that brings them extraordinary flexibility and responsiveness. They show that having a clear strategy and standards is acceptable in a modern, fast developing organisation as long as teams and individuals are empowered to take an Agile, adaptable approach to meeting challenges and opportunities.
