Gibson Paul - The Agile culture: leading through trust and ownership

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LEADING THROUGH TRUST AND OWNERSHIP

Pollyanna Pixton
Paul Gibson
Niel Nickolaisen

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ISBN-13: 978-0-321-94014-8
ISBN-10: 0-321-94014-8

Text printed in the United States on recycled paper at RR Donnelley in Crawfordsville, Indiana.
First printing, February 2014

This is the Agile book Ive been waiting for. Enough with the rituals of process. Lets get into what really matterscreating the culture that teams need to thrive.

Marty Cagan, founding partner, The Silicon Valley Product Group

A book full of practical tools and real-life storiesa great resource for every leader involved in a serious Agile transformation.

Hendrik Esser, director of portfolio and technology management, Ericsson

What is culture? How do we create a culture? What are our cultural problems? These questions can have lofty, philosophical, theoretical answers that sound profound. Unfortunately, profundity rarely gets the job done. The authors have once again broken an important topic into easily understood parts. Not only do they make the questions understandable, they provide specific, actionable techniques for answering the questions and addressing the challenges. This book is as much a how-to as it is a what-is-it and a why-do-I-care book. Everybody who is in a leadership role, or deals with people in leadership roles (thatd be just about everyone, right?) should read this.

Steven Doc List, vice president of learning, Santeon Group

The content is phenomenal! Just an incredible distillation of years of experience.

Christine DelPrete, senior director of technology, Amirsys, Inc.

To my mother, an amazing woman. And to the McKinney family, who
have taken me in as one of their own.
Pollyanna Pixton

I dedicate this book to my wife, Carrie, who has been my companion, my
help, and my support for the last forty years and without whom none of
this would have been possible.
Paul Gibson

This is dedicated to my family and friendsthe people who have helped
me have a wonderful life.
Niel Nickolaisen

Its all about the people...

Change, or any transformation activity, is daunting. As experts tell us, You dont change people, you can only change the process. So how do we, as leaders, motivate and inspire our employees and organizations to change?

Command and control leadership limits creativity, broad thinking, and the ability for us, as leaders, to get the most out of the talent in the organization. The Millennials that we hire today are very social, and they interact and learn through social means in a very virtual and boundaryless hierarchy. Large organizations, by their very own weight, are not nimble. But in todays social/cloud/mobile world, organizations need to experiment and pivot more rapidly. To compound this dilemma, process tends to govern too tightly, with every exception or edge case being overmanaged. Process becomes a controlling means to an end and not a guideline. Organizational outcomes tend to be measured in vanity metrics. Trust is completely eroded, and creativity is muffled.

Dealing with this requires a shift in our leadership model: a move from command and control to a collaborative model that builds trust and pushes ownership and decision making deeper into the organization, while retaining a good balance of process and policy. The outcomes demonstrate an organization with energy and creativity, surfacing the talent and resilience to innovate and pivot as the business dictates.

I like this book, and the authors, because these ideas have been applied successfully with groups within IBM and within elements of Pitney Bowes. With the help of many employees who piloted the initial workshops, the authors polished many of the early models and refined them to the point where they were able to publish them for this book. Additionally, the authors provide metrics that can help you know whether you are on the right path to building a high-performing, collaborative team and creating a culture of trust.

Now, what do I have to say about the authors and why I admire them for writing this book? Paul Gibson and I worked together from 2007 to 2010 at IBM. He is truly a proper British gentleman. He helped me with the Agile adoption initiativeduring which we trained, in 18 months, more than 8,000 employees on Agile approachesresulting in over 60 percent of projects using Agile. The success of the Agile adoption is directly correlated to his passion and commitment to the IBMers and their wanting to get off the dreaded six-month project death marches. As we rolled out Agile at IBM, it highlighted the need for better communication and collaboration. This is how I met Pollyanna Pixton and Niel Nickolaisen.