Dank Natal - Agile HR

Powerful and complete. Hellstrm and Dank are speakers for our times. HR in Silicon Valley or SpaceX is nothing like company policies from any textbook, or any book, until now. Finally, Hellstrm and Dank guide us through nurturing an ever-evolving, lightning-quick business that can keep up with tech giants, global shifts and the chain of firsts required to get us to Mars and beyond, address climate change, be the next Google and establish equitable psychological safety in an exhilarating, uplifting, profitable place to work. Welcome to Agile HR, were so glad to have you.

Joe Justice, Agile business innovator

Introducing scientific thinking when evolving our next-gen organizations is a gain not only to HR but to everyone touched by them. This is more than a book, this is a mindset leap.

Mattias Skarin, Enterprise Agile Coach, Crisp

Dank and Hellstrm have distilled years of Agile HR knowledge and experience into one practical book. This is the toolkit every HR professional of the 21st century needs. I wish I had had this book years ago.

Tracey Waters, Director of People Experience

A great book by the pioneers of agile HR, Dank and Hellstrm! They were able to capture their passion in this book, and I am sure many readers will be eager to follow their guidance.

Tom Haak, Director, HR Trend Institute

Agile HR takes you from the sticky status quo to the future of work. Its a full toolkit thats pleasantly practical, relatable and relevant. This is a must-read for anyone who is passionate about HR.

Arne-Christian van der Tang, Chief Human Resources Officer, TomTom

To see this book in print brings me more joy than I can fully express. The Agile HR movement has been growing organically for some years now and the more HR professionals and organizations can get onboard and inspired by this way of working, the more successful businesses will become. This is the book anyone curious about the Agile philosophy needs to read. Its also for anyone thats already taken a leap of faith to leave behind old hierarchical and traditional business approaches for something more effective, by providing inspiration on how to create a culture where the Agile mindset is lived and breathed by all. Once you start on an Agile journey you never go back.

Nebel Crowhurst, People & Culture Director and early Agile HR adopter

This book brings the best of Scrum into People Operations.

Jeff Sutherland, Founder and Chairman, Scrum, Inc

This book may become the foundational text for Agile in HR. It provides solid advice all the way through, accurate on Agile and HR, and easy to approach without prior experience in Agile. And while becoming an expert takes time and practice, this book will ease the process a lot, by connecting the dots to a coherent whole.

Petri Heiramo, Certified Scrum Trainer, Agile Enterprise Coach

Never has the HR profession had such an opportunity to transform our workplaces and this is an essential read for anyone who has been looking for a better, more human way than traditional, legacy approaches. Natal and Riina provide inspiration along with practical tools and techniques to give everyone the confidence to take the next step on their Agile HR adventure!

Charlotte Goulding, Director of People at Infinity Works

This book should be mandatory reading for all HR professionals. Written by true experts in Agile who know exactly how to explain key concepts and facts in a way that makes them easy to apply in a commercial environment, this book will elevate your HR practice and will turn you into a raving fan of Agile HR. This book is a true game changer!

Karen Beaven, Director PXI, The Creative HR Agency

RIINA:

To Miksu, Axel and Oscar,

Tack fr ert std, era kramar och er krlek. Jag lskar er.

To Natal,

For better or for worse we made it.

Thank you and you rock!

NATAL:

To Tim,

Im nothing without you.

To Riina,

Yeah, we did it!

Big hugs

A turning point in my HR career was working as the Global Head of Talent at a large international bank and realizing that the time-consuming and difficult internal process I oversaw appeared to have little perceived value within the business. Over a period of almost six months we would ask managers at every level of the organization to painstakingly put their people into one of 25 talent boxes and then use the data to produce detailed reports for senior executives to review. While this alone might seem unproductive, what made it worse was the data didnt even seem to determine how people were selected for talent programmes or promotions. Indeed, most managers, including the senior executives, were fearful of discussing the information with employees and preferred instead to keep the whole process secret.

Ive always believed there is a direct link between business success and inspired employees, and if given the right opportunity everyone has the potential to make a difference. Never a fan of hierarchy or adhering to the command-and-control ladder, at this point I became convinced that the main role of HR was to build great places to work, where people could be successful in their job and find purpose in their career. To achieve this, I also knew HR needed to move beyond traditional processes and begin to understand the human experience of work.

In search of this vision I decided to step out into the consulting world and when asked to help a successful start-up evolve their performance and reward structure, I literally stumbled upon Agile. With posters on the wall declaring No show ponies here and We believe in the power of experimentation, I could sense from the minute I walked in the door this assignment would be different.

The project context reflects where a lot of tech departments are currently, with teams working Agile but still using a traditional approach to HR, for example with performance management based on managerial feedback, individual ratings and bonuses. Of course, I did what most HR consultants do and reviewed the engagement survey data, interviewed key people and looked at the best-practice examples from the industry. I then presented my masterplan to the sponsor and was dumbfounded when they asked: How do you know this will work?

As I muttered stock phrases like HR best practice, I quickly realized that in this business, people were expected to validate decisions through experimentation and evidence, rather than through opinion or what was done before. Why should HR be any different?

Luckily, I was in the right environment to begin my Agile learning and people happily volunteered to participate in small, safe experiment teams that tested different ways to discuss and share feedback, use peer-based performance tools and even try different rating scales. After several months of listening and observing, we had the data to start making changes. The first was the removal of quarterly bonuses, based on evidence that performance conversations were heavily focused on money and ratings, rather than on career development and feedback.

In the past, just contemplating such an organizational change would have led to a huge project involving months of approvals and committee meetings. Instead, I discovered that by working