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Getting Intentional

About Rank and

Power

in Agile

OrganizationsKelly Fidei

Enterprise Agile Coach & Transformation Lead

March, 2016

“The higher you travel on the organizational

ladder, the further your grasp on reality

loosens.”

Julie Diamond, A User’s Guide to Power

Does agile mean…

There will be no more

rank in our organizations?

No more power differential?

No more senior leaders killing agile without agilistas having a voice?

No more abuses of power or misuse of rank?

How the evening will go

Topic introduction

We map the positive core of power and agile

(Appreciative Inquiry interviews)

Open space in World Café format

Harvest and share ideas

Topic: “We like agile, but…”

How agile are we really?

Sometimes agile doesn't travel effectively beyond the team level …

… or into leadership

… or into the culture

Power, rank, and the ways they show up in organizations can block agile from moving beyond teams, into leadership and the organizational culture

Then agile can “die on the vine”

Why bother talking about rank and

power in agile?

How power is used relates to respect, a core value of

agile

Middle and senior management sometimes make decisions

affecting agile without understanding it or without agile

practitioners having a say

Agile practitioners marginalized in low rank don’t have

enough of a voice in the business overall to use agile to

positively impact business outcomes

How rank and power are used or abused impacts agile

sustainability

(“We tried agile but it didn’t get past management.”)

Why does agile have trouble moving beyond

teams, to leaders and culture? Hierarchical

rank-related power can block it

High rank traits (think Steve Jobs, corrupt politicians,

Enron):

Less inhibition, more decision-making power. More enamored of

own ideas, less open to feedback, more freedom from social

pressures

Heightened sense of control, higher sense of ability to predict

outcomes

Less empathy toward others, less able to judge own and others’

emotions, less willing to take on others’ perspectives

Greater access to money, resources, information; less oversight,

less accountability

Terms

Power – ability to impact, influence. A force. Can be used to help or

harm

Types of power:

Positional power – people follow you because you have a certain role

(CIO, director, manager, etc)

Social power – the power that comes from your social status or position

(you can have this, but lack personal power, eg, the CIO who beats up

scrum masters and product owners so much that they lose respect for

him and do their own thing)

Personal power – “real power.” Your authority resides in other people.

Earned or lost daily by who you are being with people. You can sit on a

throne, but without other people’s true respect and willingness to follow

you, you have no real authority

Rank – dynamic network of power in motion up or down a hierarchy.

The higher your social rank, the less you notice it

Hierarchy – vertical structure of relationships with power differential

(manager, parent)

The “Death Zone” of Rank That Kills Agile

Examples: the “agile expert” (the obnoxious “sage on stage” vs “guide on the side,” traditional leaders vs servant leaders, mid or senior level management

You receive less immediate feedback on your actions

You don’t experience the consequences of your decisions or actions as others do

You live in a bubble, surrounded by others who have a personal stake in your powerful role

They may be dependent on your for their livelihood or afraid of your authority

Being associated with you enhances their career success

May be emotionally dependent on you for acknowledgement in the organization (love and attention)

Everyone in your bubble affirms your high-ranking role, and you can no longer see yourself clearly, evaluate yourself or your effectiveness

It’s easy to choose only the information that confirms what you already believe and ignore what doesn’t (“facts be damned”)

A closer look at rank

Power and privilege

Earned or inherited

Conscious or unconscious

Social or personal

It organizes your communication and identity

Outer role, eg CIO, CEO, Director who supports or doesn’t support agile

Inner role, eg, highly experienced scrum practitioner, team with high collaboration and high velocity

Ways to recognize rank out in the world

Cultural Hegemony Marginalized Groups

White Non-white

Male Female

Heterosexual Gay or lesbian

Fit Obese

Healthy Handicapped

Rich Poor

Employed Unemployed

Socially skilled Autistic / ADD/ADHD

Educated Uneducated

1st world Developing country

Ways to recognize rank in agile organizations

The guy who thinks he’s better than you because he knows more about agile*

The kickass team vs the struggling team

Money – who gets paid more

Parking – heated underground garage

“In crowd” vs “out crowd”

Hackthon winners

Outward rank – Sr. Director, Sr VP, CIO

Inner rank – the QA of low outward rank who is sleeping with the Sr. Director

Spiritual rank – the “wise” agile coach (ug )

*Conveniently forgetting agile is about who and how you are being as well as what you know

Rank is not going away

So how do we get intentional about rank

and power in agile organizations?

Grow agile leaders

Grow agile culture – “organizational

agility”

Proposal

Conscious culture creation – of agile culture in all

aspects of the organization

Grow agile leaders

Grow agile culture

Culture eats agile for breakfast

Agile

Grow agile leaders

Servant – leadership – move from the definition of leader

as “driving results” to a definition of leader as “creating

environments to empower results”

Even the best servant leaders can’t create great agile

outcomes unless they are supported by an agile culture

Interview your partner: Discover the positive

core of this group around power and agile

Tell a story about a High Point experience you had in your own power at work. A time you felt powerful, alive and engaged. What did you value most about yourself in that moment?

What core factor gives life to the power of Agile in your organization? Without which your organization would not be agile?

Tell about a time you experienced a sense of wonder, surprise, or delight because power got used for good in your organization. What happened? Who was involved? What did you most value about them and about yourself in the situation? How did it promote the sustainable growth of agile beyond teams to leaders and culture?

Imagine you have a magic genie lamp. What three wishes do you have for enhancing the health and vitality of power in agile cultures and agile leaders?

Harvest, gallery walk

*Take notes on stickies – you will use them later

Open Space in World Café Format

3 rounds, 1 host per group, others rotate

Host’s job – encourage participation. Hold a space that’s

both safe and courageous. Encourage people to “harvest”

ideas on the paper “tablecloth:” doodling, note taking

Guidelines

Have fun

Encourage participation from everyone

Offer high quality listening (don’t pontificate, but do let your

voice be heard)

World Café Question Cluster 1

What’s important to you personally about power and rank in agile?

and . . .

What do we still need to learn about it?

World Café Question Cluster 2

What have you heard so far

about power in agile that had

real meaning for you?

What surprised you? Or puzzled

you? Or challenged you? What

question would you like to ask

now?

World Café Question Cluster 3

What would it take to create

change on this issue?

To develop agile culture?

To develop agile leaders?

Harvest

Gallery walk with one rep from each group

What will you do differently as a result of

our conversation today?

Enterprise Agile Coach & Transformation Leader & Paylocity

Talk to Kelly about…• Agile across the organization• Leadership development• Sustainable Agile culture change• Team dynamics

Find Kelly at…• Blog: http://blog.agilitytransformation.com/• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kellyfidei• Twitter: @kfidei

Appendix

Experiential game on rank and power

in agile organizations (15 minutes)

Debrief (10 minutes)

Open space in World Café format (40 minutes)

Game: “Raising Awareness and Creating Choices:

Rank and Power in Agile Organizations*1. Set the context – this is a game to become more aware of rank and power in agile organizations, and to create

more choices around these

2. Purpose of the game: Increase your social status relative to others’ and decrease theirs. Gain power and influence.

3. Everyone comes to the table holding facedown cards with roles. No peeking.

4. Pick up one role card arbitrarily, and tape it on the back of the person next to you. (See tape on table)

5. Everyone gathers in a rough circle

6. Facilitator tells the group the setting, and asks them to enter in twos and threes til everyone is in the space.

7. As soon as you enter the space or a new group, make up things to say or do with the other people near you.

8. Cardinal rule – you can look at other people’s role cards on their backs, but you cannot look at your own or ask someone to tell you what it is. Just interact with others per their roles.

9. Play for 5-10 minutes

10. Facilitator asks participants to line up from lowest rank to highest rank according to their best guess of their role (as learned from interacting with others during the game). Observer.

11. Tell each other what your roles are. Ok to take off the card from your back and look at it.

12. Debrief – observations, learnings, actions, next steps

*Credits to Second City Improv Training Center. This is an adaption of an improv game learned there by Kelly.

Context options for game

On break from agile demo – milling around the water cooler

In demo

In a discussion on:

Whether to try agile at your company

Whether to stop trying agile at your company

“What’s “true” agile?”

Scaling agile at your company

Agile team building event – at the pizza parlor after demo

Roles (write on cards, place on table

facedown, near several rolls of tape) CEO – Outspoken in demos

CIO – “Chainsaw”-Aggressive-Defensive style

Sr. VP (stakeholder)

A senior director who opposes agile, doesn’t understand it, and is planning to kill it (command and control)

A senior director who supports agile (servant leader)

An agile coach who is the “sage on the stage” vs the “guide on the side”

An agile coach who is the “guide on the side” vs “sage on the stage”

Scrum master – Constructive leadership style (humanistic, encouraging, affiliative)

Scrum master – only recently a command and control project manager

Dev Lead

QA Lead

Team member who ways she’s agile but does 1 hour stand ups

A developer who has religious debates on the “right” way to do agile

QA – Passive-Defensive style, super into manual regression testing

Junior QA – sleeping with the married CIO in secret

Experienced QA – in a wheelchair, likes to learn, sees self as father figure, swears a lot

Developer – brilliant, high introvert

Janitor (speaks only Polish)

Leaders are the architects of culture –

this means YOU

• Leader – someone who sees something they care about, and takes action with others

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.” Margaret Mead

• If elements of the culture are not getting you the business results you want, leadership sometimes takes action to speed up culture change

• Values based leadership: Respect, courage, willingness to tell the truth, commitment to creating a safe environment to tell the truth

Leaders manage culture, or culture

manages leaders

• If leaders are not proactive about managing culture, then culture will manage THEM

• What does an agile leader look like? Sound like? Who is one you’ve known?

• What are some ways an agile leader can impact culture?

How to create an agile culture?

(vs being a “buzz saw leader” or a “cog in

the wheel culture”)

Agile and

non-agile

styles of

culture,

governance

and

leadership

Agile

cultural

styles

Non-agile

cultural styles

A portrait of a culture

Humanistic Encouraging

Develops others

Resolves conflict

consistently

Affiliative

Cooperates

Be friendly

Achievement

Works toward self-set goals

Takes on challenges

Self-actualizing

Maintains personal integrity

Emphasizes quality

Portrait of an agile culture

Open Space

The Guidelines

• It starts when it starts

• It ends when it ends

• Whoever shows up are the right people

• Whatever happens is the only thing that could have

The Law

• “Law of Two Feet”