How Can Agile Coaches accelerate Enterprise Transformation?

Frameworks or models has been always thought of as predefined rules and steps that are there to follow. The Scaled Agile Framework also gets entangled between such illusive ideas of success. If after following the steps, people don’t get success, they blame the practices not being compatible with the business. What they unable to understand is, it’s a mindset first.

To make the Agile practices thrive in your business, the organization needs to create such environment and it can only be possible through an inside-out transformation. So, the question is, how to find such a worthy agile leader or mentor?

temenos blog-1.jpgYou must have often heard people saying, Servant leadership, thought leadership, change maker, and many more peerless titles. However, it would never strike a chord what it means to be one. Not-so-long ago, I read about “Stewardship” - a term coined by the famous author; leadership expert -- Peter Senge. He says that every leader is a steward or teacher. They are responsible for building organizations where people can unceasingly expand their aptitude to deduce complexities, clarify vision, and embrace a shared mental model --- that would be the beginning of an ideal learning organization.

“If you do not manage culture, it manages you,
and you may not even be aware of the extent
to which this is happening.”
– Edgar Schein

Leaders are not there to only order,  and you are not supposed to follow whatever said frantically. That’s not how it works. A good agile leader knows how to complete the agile lifecycle without losing his focus from system and people. Like I said before, agile is a mindset, so the success is limited by culture. Think of yourself as a medium that connects the people with the current status of the organization.

Leadership is influence! Influence is all about having communication with your people, your system, your process and to yourself too. Every transformation starts with a transformed being. When you choose to change yourself, you get the idea why might people ask for change --- a wisdom from your own experience. It is about building conscious trust that should reflect in your organization’s identity, vision, and values.

An agile leader is also a teammate, companion. Staying within a team he turns the tide of the whole work culture. He brings unrivaled methods, insights to create a common agile language, that everyone can keep pace with. Do not be confused here. An agile coach’s goal is not setting the framework. It is to achieve the shared goal with the help of agile methodologies. That is why he is a big team player, whose every action, movement, voice, message inspires people to share a compelled vision.

Last but not the least, an agile coach is a “Platform maker” for the organization. Getting engaged, working hard for a happy customer, supporting new skills and Innovations. That’s what we all want to achieve. But before that ask yourself these three important questions:

Do your people understand what means to have a good culture?

Do your management or stakeholders have enough trust on this investment?

Is everybody in your organization knows -- how, why we are doing things and what we want to achieve together??

The reason why your organization needs an agile mentor or coach is to create this awareness platform for agile practitioners. So that they can nurture, innovate new contexts of success, develop, face changes and resolute the complexities…...

With this, the first part of the blog ends. Of course, there’s more! If you’re more detailed oriented and knowledge seeker, register for our upcoming series of free webinars on “How can you be an Effective Enterprise Agile Coach?” and also don’t miss out our upcoming blogs.


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