BETA
This is a BETA experience. You may opt-out by clicking here

More From Forbes

Edit Story

One Thing That Organizations Miss In Driving Successful Agile Transformations

Forbes Coaches Council

Alan Trivedi is a principal at Adaptovate and trusted advisor who helps leaders accelerate value delivery and improve culture with agility.

Purdue University produced an insightful infographic emphasizing that for the first time in history, there are five generations working side by side: traditionalists, baby boomers, Gen X, millennials and Gen Z. Each generation holds different motivational values, and these differences contribute greatly to how values are manifested into behaviors. In turn, this creates unique challenges and opportunities for organizations seeking greater agility to meet fast-changing market demands.

Erin Meyer, in her book, The Culture Map, emphasizes how different every individual is — even if individuals have been working in the same environment for years, they have a unique style and set of preferences, interests, aversions and values. One missed opportunity in agile transformation efforts is enabling better leadership through motivational values.

A leader’s lack of clarity around motivational values poses a significant challenge in driving agility, especially for those who lack leadership experience. For example, in agile ways of working, the product owner role can be responsible for driving prioritization, improving decision-making, championing value delivery and creating alignment among senior leaders and team members. Individuals who transition into this role often receive some level of training, coaching and mentoring with experienced agile professionals. This might enable product owners to build fluency for their role, but it does not build the leadership skills needed to drive agility in the organization. To drive successful agile transformations, leaders must know what they value and learn to express those values authentically. 

Know your values.

Stacey was a young, energetic, high-performing and well-respected senior financial analyst. Due to her track record, she was appointed as the product owner, leading a complex project to redesign the enterprise financial reporting process. For this project, she reported directly to the vice president of the financial planning and analysis group. I was her coach, and we had regular coaching sessions where the topic was often about becoming a successful product owner; however, our third session took a different turn. She mentioned she was having trouble with one of the leaders, Alicia, who challenged every decision she made. She was frustrated. Stacey felt she was doing everything a successful product owner would do yet constantly being undermined by Alicia. She was so successful in her previous role as an analyst, so what had changed?

Stacey was now in a leadership position that required her to drive prioritization, improve decision-making, champion value delivery and create alignment among senior leaders and team members — all of which were new to her. I presented Stacey with a list of 25 motivation values and asked her to pick her top three to discuss for our next session. I also asked her to identify the one value she felt was not being honored by Alicia. In our fourth session, she came back and said, “I value competence because I feel like I am very good at what I do, and Alicia doesn’t respect it.” So, we started the conversation by exploring beliefs, thoughts and behaviors she felt demonstrated competence. Stacey now had more clarity about how one of her values — competence — manifested for herself and what she expected from others' behavior.

Action item: Ensure that newly appointed agile leaders know their values; this motivates them and gives them the purpose for driving successful agile transformations.

Authentically express your values.

In Bill George’s book, Authentic Leadership: Rediscovering the Secrets to Creating Lasting Value, he asserts that authentic leaders know their "True North" and have a clear idea of who they are, where they are going and the right thing to do.

Stacey made her values visible to her team and had an open discussion about what is important to her and how that aligns with the project's vision and mission. Subsequently, she improved her working relationship with Alicia, the team and senior stakeholders. Expressing your values authentically requires clarity around your values, beliefs, thoughts and behaviors. Moving from values to behaviors is how we navigate from deeper-level motivations to surface-level expression. Let’s explore each one of these.

Our beliefs are our truths. Stacey told me that she valued competence and believed that competence was about providing solutions that positively impact others. She could have also said competence is about doing the best you can do. Neither is right or wrong, but the interpretation has a significant impact on what she thinks about competence and how she shows it and recognizes it in others.

Next, our thoughts are what we think about our truths and how we interpret them. Stacey thought competence was about continuously improving her skills by practicing her craft. This was her idea of competence.

Finally, behaviors are how we express ourselves. Every time her group met, Stacey showed up with ideas and solutions to help the team and project move in the right direction. She did not intend to present them as the correct answers; rather, they were suggestions. Stacey felt that this behavior was reflective of her values, beliefs and thoughts. However, Alicia interpreted this behavior as telling everyone what the solution was. Stacey had an open conversation about how she expressed her value by providing suggestions and explained that she wanted others to do the same so everyone was contributing to a solution. This conversation changed the team's entire dynamic, as it was made clear that Stacey intended to empower the team through greater competency. 

Action item: Create experiences for your leaders and teams that establish clarity across their values, beliefs, thoughts and behaviors. 

In conclusion, agile transformations occur to address complex and fast-changing environments. These transformation journeys often result in significant organizational changes that challenge leaders and their teams to work differently. The journey becomes more complex as generational diversity increases. To address diversity, organizations must enable their leaders to lead with values and have authentic discussions about how values manifest into the right behaviors. This will help accelerate and drive success in agile transformation efforts.


Forbes Coaches Council is an invitation-only community for leading business and career coaches. Do I qualify?


Follow me on LinkedInCheck out my website