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This episode of the Leadership Habit Podcast is taken from a recent Crestcom Webinar. You can also view it on YouTube here: How to Apply Agile Principles to Any Organization If you would like more information about future Crestcom Webinars, check out a trainer in your area, or click here: https://crestcom.com/leadership-trainer/leadership-team/
Agile Leadership
Hi, everyone. It’s Jenn DeWall. And in today’s episode of The Leadership Habit, we are going to present to you a recent webinar that we did all about how you can become a more Agile leader and how you can make a more Agile team. “Agile” Is not just a term that is left to people in the software world. There are plenty of leaders now that could benefit from many of the strategies that exist within Agile. So stay tuned to this webinar as I share with you some introductory knowledge into Agile. We want to give you the basics, right? Enjoy!
Full Transcript Below:
Jenn DeWall:
Good morning. Good morning. Good afternoon, depending on where you’re joining from! It’s 10— or it’s almost 10 o’clock here in Colorado. I see a few people logging on. So excited to just talk about some basic principles from Agile today and thinking about how we can, we, as leaders can potentially adopt these characteristics and even just take nuggets to help our team be more efficient, to help our team be more productive, to ensure that our team is focusing on the right things that are actually going to give us the results.
I mean, I know that I’ve worked on teams before where it felt like we didn’t have a clear sense of direction, or we were trying to do too much that we are burning ourselves out. That is something that we want to talk about. And yeah, David Brotman, I am early! I am four minutes early. I just, I mean, I wish I could see everyone’s smiling faces. Maybe for the people that are on maybe just throw out where you’re calling in or logged in from, and then what are you hoping to gain out of this? Why did you want to attend an Agile Leadership webinar? What were you hoping to maybe bring into your leadership skillset or tool kit? How do you want to be maybe more Agile? Go ahead and throw it in the chat!
Hey Shelly. It’s great to see you. I love seeing the names of people that I know, Mr. Dave, David Brotman. I know he is joining us from New Jersey. I am in Denver, Colorado. I’m going to move my mic around and hope that that helps a little bit. But yeah, go ahead and throw in the chat. Tell me where you’re from. Where are you from? Where in the world are all of our people joining us for our Crestcom monthly webinar. And this one is How to Apply Agile Principles to Any Organization. And we’re going to be walking through just different ways to consider Agile. What can we really do now? Agile isn’t a one size fits all approach. There are actually multiple methodologies within the world of Agile. So know that what we’re going to cover today is very introductory.
It’s something just to give you a high-level perspective and view of the objective of Agile, why Agile even came to be. Oh, I love it. We’ve got Toronto, Thornberry, Ontario. I know Shelly! Yes, yes, yes. I’m so happy that you’re joining us. Where else has everyone from? We have, we’ve got Canadians. We’ve got someone from New Jersey, but I think there are a few other people on here that might be from other places, Maine. Oh my gosh. I bet Maine is so beautiful right now with all of the fall colors, Detroit. Hey, I’m from Wisconsin originally. I will absolutely take that, Kayla. I’m so glad that you’re here! For those that have never been on one of our webinars before, I’m Jenn DeWall, and I lead our monthly webinars for Crestcom, and I’m just so excited to share a different skillset. We always cover a variety of topics in our webinars.
Agile Leadership
Jenn DeWall:
This month, we are talking about Agile. Last month, we did an interview and talked about AI and what that looks like and the future of leadership. And next month, we’re actually going to be talking about emotional intelligence. So, which is something that I think ties really well to Agile, to be an Agile leader. It really does require you to have high emotional intelligence, because you need to be able to see that big picture, connect the dots, motivate people, and communicate with them in different ways, based on their personality experience, and insight, Agile and emotional intelligence go together, hand in hand. So I hope that if you come to this one that you also attend next month to figure out how you can actually build those together. So we’re going to get started promptly at 10:00 AM mountain time. We’ve got one more minute to go. Feel free for those that are still joining.
If you want to just drop in again, where you’re joining us from also what you’re hoping to get, or maybe even your favorite thing about fall, because I love that too. I mean, I can think about all the things that I love and Denver, as the colors are changing, I’m going to go ahead and get started. So you’re joining us today to talk about how to apply Agile principles to any organization and what you may or may not realize is that as a result of the pandemic and the abrupt shift that we all had to make as business leaders to either change our processes, to work in a remote world, to change how our team interacts in a remote world, much of what we did to quickly adapt to the changing circumstance and the environment that was created by the pandemic are actually rooted in Agile whether you realize it or not.
Why Agile?
Jenn DeWall:
And it’s really about the characteristics, but why Agile? Why are we doing a topic on Agile? Why is that important? Well, we can probably think about our day to day and what you could likely think of. If I said, are there any things that you do in a day for work that maybe you don’t feel like bring as much value or aren’t as productive? Because if you have an Agile mindset, you are going to look at those things and really question, are they worth it? Because there are some things like meetings. For example, I called this meeting, and it’s not a meeting until someone’s time gets wasted.
What, but how many of you, You have actually sat into a meeting and been like, I don’t even know I’m here. I have so much stuff to do this isn’t productive. I’m not even a part of this, right? Agile is all about figuring out, do our meetings make sense? Does the format of them need to change? How can we modify our process to make sure that people are maximizing their time, that we want them to be as productive as they can? So not all meetings are going to be the same. And then, of course, this, please read the attached email about the email that I sent yesterday, referring to the previous email about flooding the system with unnecessary emails. Please forward this email to your entire staff. How many of you have an inbox that has way too many emails that may or may not be relevant or productive? I’m guessing many of you do.
And every time that you check some of those emails, it’s causing a lag in your ability or in your productivity. Multitasking is actually kind of the opposite of what Agile would want you to do. So our goal today is to think about how we can look at our processes to make improvements so we can be more efficient, more productive, more successful. The important thing is not your process. The important thing is your process for improving your process. Not a lot of organizations and teams have processes for improving the process because they think that, Hey, we did this once and it worked really well. Let’s just keep, you know, why try to recreate the wheel? Well, sometimes you’ve got to recreate it as we saw it as a result of the pandemic. Things shifted so drastically that it forced our hands to make changes. However, we should start to think, Hey, our process must have been great yesterday, but it doesn’t mean it’s right today. And so we need to have processes for thinking, what should we do? Is this worth it? How can we evolve? What can we get rid of, and how do we want to move forward?
Meet Jenn DeWall
Jenn DeWall:
My name is Jenn DeWall, and I’m a Leadership Development Strategist for Crestcom. And all that means is I helped to build our leadership classes. And I also facilitate our monthly leadership development classes, but so do many people around the world as if you don’t know much about Crestcom, we’re a global leadership development organization. We operate in over 60 countries. And our goal is to develop managers into leaders. And we do that just based on providing them with the skills and their leadership toolkit to be as effective as possible. And that’s what we’re doing today. We offer these free monthly webinars because we want to help develop leaders. We know that leadership is one of the places that when we develop great leaders, not only are they going to be happier themselves, they’ll be happier employees, better performing organizations, and then there’s a ripple effect into the community, into the world.
What is Agile Leadership?
So I am so excited to have you here today, and we’re going to talk about three things. We’re going to understand what it means to be an Agile leader because it will require us to kind of remove that traditional leadership or maybe that task-oriented mindset that we had, and to think about how can we show up in a different way to help Agile or to build a more Agile team. And then we’re going to describe the key components of the Agile Manifesto. The Agile Manifesto is essentially the working document that was created by a group of software developers, and it’s essentially their rules or their guidance for how to go about incorporating Agile. And last, we’re going to explain the best way to create an Agile team. So what does it mean to be an Agile Leader? Are you an Agile leader?
Well, Agile, if there’s at the start, are those who can adapt to ever-changing and uncertain environments. So if you found yourself having to move around quickly, figure things out, and just pivoted very quickly. You’d likely have a lot of characteristics of Agile, and you may not even know because we often just think, Oh, Agile, well, first wearables. I can tell you that I’ve had a conversation with friends. And when I brought up Agile, they basically looked at me like, what is Agile? I’ve never heard of that before. Is that a new language? What are these terms? For many of us, we haven’t had that exposure with Agile. We’ve left that in the tech world. That’s for software developers, but really there are so many characteristics that come from Agile that can be relevant to you. No matter what industry you were in. Agile methods were first developed in the tech industry to increase success rates in software development and move new products to market quickly and efficiently.
The Agile Manifesto
So when these Agile principles were created, it was really to help design better products that met the customer needs in the ways that they wanted. So, the Agile Manifesto, this is something that created, it was created in 2001 by a group of 17 software developers. And they came together because they wanted to change the way that they addressed, how they created their apps, what they were doing. And they came together to create the Agile Manifesto, to solve two key opportunities.
Shorten the Delay of Benefits
And they are this: to shorten the delay of benefits to users, to resolve product market fit and development graveyard issues. So what that essentially means is we’re just trying to make sure that we’re getting that real time feedback and we’re making changes. We want to be able to adjust to what people need. Think about if you took something from your staff and you found out that something wasn’t working and then immediately addressed it, how much happier they would be.
Get Feedback
The other objective is: get feedback from users more quickly and more frequently to confirm the usefulness of new products continue to improve them. Agile. That means you can no longer if you are truly trying to be an Agile Leader, you can’t practice the set and forget. Like, Hey, we did this in a meeting. We walked through this. It’s so great. That goes to launch. Now we don’t need to think about it again.
No, you can’t. If you think about even the iteration of an app itself, they might create an app, but based on user feedback, based on how the app is performing, they make modifications and enhancements. And we should be looking at that with our team. Why just see that feedback and know that something’s not working. And then just say, well, but I guess there’s red tape. It was created like that. So we should probably keep it.
That’s not going to help anyone. And it’s likely going to create more disengagement. But the Agile Manifesto is founded around or formed around four core values. These values are as follows:
The Four Core Values
# 1 Individuals and Interactions Over Processes and Tools
The first core value: Individuals and interactions over processes and tools. Now, you think about this in the sense of think about being an organization. That’s like, we need to have the best software or the best technology or the best of this. You can have the best of everything, but if you don’t have the right people to leverage it, you’re not likely going to see those outcomes that you envision in your head. So you have to prioritize the individuals and interactions over the processes and tools.
#2 Working Product Over Comprehensive Documentation
Then the second core value of the Agile Manifesto is working product over comprehensive documentation. Now this one came to be because before it would actually launch a product, what they would do is they would document, and they would work through all of the—Hey, we need to do that. This is a consideration. And they would essentially ma market out this whole plan without necessarily taking action and your building. I’ve done a lot of your own gut feeling or instincts, which may or may not be appropriate. And so when we think about the core values, it’s a working product. We’re trying to eliminate the red tape. We’re trying to eliminate the bureaucracy and actually get to designing and creating something, instead of wasting your time, just only planning it.
#3 Customer Collaboration Over Contract Negotiation
Number three, customer collaboration, over contract negotiation. Our goal, if we’re truly Agile, is to serve our customers to the best of our ability. And we can all think of our customers, and we teach this at Crestcom, in two ways, we have internal customers. Those are employees. Those are the ones that we want to keep happy because what’s felt inside of your organization is then felt by your external customer on the outside and your external customer, of course, being that individual that’s investing in your products or services. So we truly are Agile. We’re trying to think about how can we create the best experience for the customers that we serve?
#4 Responding to Change Over Following a Plan
And the fourth principle is responding to change over following a plan. Did some of you just kind of cringe a little bit? What? I mean, we had this plan, this plan looks great. Thank you. 2020 would have actually ended up if we said Nope and January, you know, or actually, in our strategy meetings for the year, we planned this, and we’re going to stay the course because we had that. How would that, how effective would that plan be today? I’m guessing that everyone here had a disruption to their business. And the great thing about Agile is it does help you embrace change, knowing that change isn’t necessarily bad that we have to change. If we want to stay competitive or respond to market conditions. But Agile just requires you as a leader to get a little bit more uncomfortable, being uncomfortable.
The 12 Principles of the Agile Manifesto
So what is the Agile Manifesto? Well, there’s 12 principles within it, and I’m going to review all 12 of them.
#1 The highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of a valuable product
So the first one: The highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of a valuable product. So that means that we don’t have to wait until it goes through all these review cycles. We don’t have to wait until we have them all these meetings to be able to bring something to launch. The key is we’re starting. And then, when we start, we’re gathering real-time feedback. We’re listening to people. What are they saying? What’s working what’s not working. How many of you have been a part of something where you don’t even think about that? You’re like, Whoa, we had this plan. So we’re going to follow through it. If you are following the Agile Manifesto, your highest priority is to satisfy your customer.
#2 Welcome Changing Requirements
Second welcome changing requirements, even late in development. What does this mean for you as a leader? If you find that at the end of a project or you have a strategy and you’re going all the way through, and you might love it, but you’re starting to get some feedback that I don’t know if this is going to work, we might have to adapt in a different way. We might have to change, even though you might be at the end, you still need to change. Agile says we’re not just going to keep pushing something even when we know that it doesn’t work. We want to make sure we’re putting the right things through. And that people are focusing on the right things.
#3 Develop Working Products More Frequently
Number three, develop working products more frequently. We want to be able to get feedback on them. We want to, instead of just thinking about things in theories of like that could work, that could work. We want to actually deliver and do that more frequently so we can get the feedback to make things better.
#4 Collaboration Between Business Stakeholders and Developers
Number four, collaboration between business, stakeholders, and developers. Now, Agile is all about what I would like to say is that together we rise. How can we learn from each other? How can we partner with each other? How can we all come together to solve a challenge, to be better?
#5 Build Projects Around Motivated Individuals
Number five, build projects around motivated individuals and give them the support that they need. This means you want to choose the right people on your team, and you want to then give them the right tasks and the right resources for them to be able to accomplish what you need them to accomplish. Now, a lot of Agile requires you to be a little bit more hands-off as a leader, which can feel a little uncomfortable. However, if you think about this, if you were a leader, especially a servant based leader, and you delegated something to someone, you gave them all the support that they needed and decided here’s my outcome. This is my afters. This is the final. This is what success looks like. Now, go and make this happen. And then, they were able to use their own strategic thinking, critical thinking skills, decision making to make that happen. That creates a happier employee.
#6 The Most Efficient Communication is Face-to-Face Communication
Number 6 -the most effective and efficient-this is from the 12 principles- the most effective and efficient communication within the development team is face-to-face conversation. We can’t just send everything over email and think that we’re going to get a great result. Why? All of us have email overload to some extent, and not all emails are a priority. If you have an important message, you need to have everyone come together face to face and face to face. For many of us could still be in a remote setting. And in that sense, I would still recommend having everyone turn their cameras on. Have them join in for the dialogue. You want to have eyes on your people. When you have eyes on your people in those meetings, you can look at their visual cues. Does it look like they’re confused? Does it look like they’re confident in what you’re saying? You lose all that. And those are opportunities to think about. Are we getting it right? Do we need to change the process? So really embracing the face to face conversation.
#7 A Working Product is the Primary Measure of Success
And number 7- a working product is the primary measure of success. What is the effectiveness of our product? How well is it working? What adjustments are we making? That is how we determine whether or not we’re successful. It’s not just, Hey, well, we, we put that product out there or we accomplished that goal. Or we made that process and set and forget, no, it needs to be functional.
#8 Agile Processes Promote Sustainable Development at a Sustainable Pace
Number eight, Agile processes promote sustainable development teams, and users should be able to maintain a consistent pace. Now, this is really important. When you think about the bureaucracy or red tape that can sometimes come up in organizations, these might delay the ability for your teams and where any, in any individual your customer to engage or to do what they need, what they need to do to be successful. So wanting to think about sustainable development, how can we make sure that people can be as productive as they can be?
#9 Continuous Attention to Excellence and Good Design
Number nine, continuous attention to excellence and good design will enhance your agility. Again, you cannot go for a set and forget with Agile principles if you’re incorporating them, you need to determine ways that you’re evaluating. How is it working? How can we continue to make it better instead of just saying, yeah, that didn’t work, but I guess we’ll probably get to that one. I know I’ve worked at organizations where we know that let’s say there’s a leak in the tire and the tire could go flat, but we’re like, let’s just patch it for now. No, fix the tire.
#10 Simplicity is Essential
Number 10. Simplicity is essential. Think about it. If you’re even giving communication to someone and then it starts to become very overwhelming to someone. People are not going to pull out what you need them to pull out. If you’re truly Agile, things should be simple. It should be easy to understand your problems should be easily framed. You are thinking about trying to identify your problem. And let’s say one or two sentences versus having to give you a brief summary to try and describe it. You want to try and make things as simple as possible.
# 11 The Best Requirements and Designs Emerge from Self-Organizing Teams
Number 11- The best requirements and designs emerge from self-organizing teams. Allow the teams to come to their conclusions, allow the teams to come up with their strategies, allow others to be the best that they can be.
#12 Teams Must Reflect on How to Become More Effective
And finally, number 12 – teams must reflect on how to become more effective at regular intervals and adjust behavior accordingly. Now, I can’t tell you how much I see this in my experience from teaching leadership, where organizations, individuals, consultants, what have you, we’ll implement a product, or they’ll go through a full— let’s say client experience, where they’re working with them. And then when it’s done, they’re on the next project, they don’t even bother to think about what worked. What did we do well, what didn’t work? How can we then take that and move it into something different? And you might find this at your organization because you’re operating so fast that you feel like you don’t even have time to sit back and reflect. Well, if you’re truly trying to be an Agile Leader, you’ve got to face the music. You’ve got to build in feedback times to figure out, is this working? Is this not working? And you’ve got to suspend your ego. This means that you’ve got to let go of, this is my best idea. And I think it’s the best exactly as it is. It may not be. And that’s okay because the benefit of Agile is bringing everyone together to make something great.
Agile Methodologies
So there are multiple Agile methodologies. We’re going to talk about briefly two of them that are common, but know that there are many different frameworks for how people actually apply Agile. And one Agile methodology is called Scrum. Scrum, I believe, is a rugby term, but Scrum was a word that I didn’t know. And I know when I first started hearing about it, I was like, Oh, that sounds really confusing.
Scrum
Well, Scrum was just a framework for project management that prioritizes accountability, teamwork, and iterative progress to achieve a specific goal. So if we’re operating from a Scrum perspective, then we have the emphasis on how can we using our assigned roles, understanding what’s expected of us, come together, focus on the right things in this certain amount of time to achieve X. So on your slide is a brief overview of what the Scrum process works, or it looks like if you notice that bottom left circle that says product backlog, essentially think of your, to-do list. Think of all the things that you want to accomplish in a strategic initiative. And then you could even take that to your individual level. What are all the things that you want to accomplish? Well, then you move into a meeting with your team, and you say, I know we’ve got a lot, but not all things can be created equal.
The Scrum Master
So what do we want to focus on? And those are your sprint planning meetings. And then you create your essential list of to-dos. All right, this is what we’re going to do. We’re going to do it by when. And then they go into a sprint, which is a short interval of time where they only focus on those identified as “to-do.” And after the sprint is complete, it goes into the finished work. And then we’re talking about or reviewing it. What were our insights gained? How can we change going forward? Now that’s kind of the basic principle, but what’s important here is that there are defined roles. Now there’s the Scrum master. The Scrum Master is the servant leader. Now that is the way to say that the Scrum Master is there to overview or to watch the team, to allow them the autonomy in their own decision making, but to be there as a support.
The Product Owner
They’re setting that vision and then allowing other people to make it happen. And then there’s the product owner. That’s responsible for what they want as well as the team members that are going to make that happen. But the Scrum Master is the highest level of the hierarchy if you will, but all of those people have a unique role within the process. So if you think about your role as a leader, thinking about, Hmm, do people know what’s expected of them? Or how do I want them to impact this or interact with this strategy? What role do I want them to play? Now, the benefits of the Scrum framework is that it increases productivity. People know what’s expected of them and you’re focused. So obviously, you have a faster speed of being able to accomplish things. You’re more adaptable because you’re getting real-time feedback and people are accountable.
User Satisfaction
They understand what’s expected of them. And ultimately, you have user satisfaction. So whatever you’re working on, you know that because you’re addressing it, you’re focusing on it, you’re getting real-time feedback, you’re able to incorporate that to deliver in a better way. So if you wanted to embrace, let’s say a more Scrum framework because remember, this is more an introductory level. There are plenty of resources out there to help you actually incorporate this. But if you wanted to just start, one of the first places is with you and acting like a servant based leader, which means that you are not there to take all the glory and say, look at my team and me. You are there to help people be the best that they can be. You are there to set the stage to set the vision and then say, okay, now team, I’ve got everything. Let’s think about what we want to accomplish. Now. I want you to go. You have the task; make it happen.
Communication
Another tip in a Scrum framework is recognizing that we’ve got to communicate. One of the things that they talked about in the Agile Manifesto is that we have to have face to face communication. If we’re trying to really improve the speed of how we do things, we’ve got to communicate, which means that not all things can actually be sent over the email. They need to be done over face to face. So you can have a real-time dialogue. Also, define rules. Make sure when you’re thinking about delegating a task, or you’re coming up on a project that people understand what their specific role is. When they understand what their role is, then they’re better able to be a self-starter. They’re more confident because there’s less ambiguity, which we know humans do not thrive well in ambiguity,
Focus
Focus, you know, going back to the Scrum framework. If you think about it here, they might have an entire product backlog, or let’s just look at it as our long-running, ever aspirational to-do list all the things. But then they go together, and they focus, okay, well, what do we really want to accomplish? Why does this matter? That’s the benefit of having the meeting? We can’t treat all things as equal. We have to think about all of the things. What do we want to be known for? What do we want to succeed? Those are the questions you want to ask in a meeting and then determine the to-dos based on that meeting. So it’s all about focus now.
Emotional Intelligence
Emotional intelligence is huge because as if we’re thinking about a Scrum framework, it does allow you to say, okay, here’s the big picture. If I’m thinking about the individuals that are part of this process, what resources do they need? What additional support do they need? Where could there be potential bottlenecks or obstacles that I need to help address? So emotional intelligence, you have to be able to see that big picture and adapt accordingly.
Collaboration
Encourage collaboration. Hey, think about this. Maybe someone else has solved something in your organization that you have a problem with today. How can you go out and reach with them? We’re talking about that cross pollenization. How can we get other people to talk, to share information? So then we can solve problems in a faster way. And another tip is to define what done looks like. Oftentimes in a team environment, people might stop doing their roles because they think they’re done based on what think done means. Well done to someone else might not look the same. So you need to determine what does done look like? Does done mean you’ve done a quality check review on something? Does done mean you followed up with someone?
What Does “Done” look Like?
Everyone needs to have a shared definition of what done looks like. And by doing this, that then says, I am done. I know that I’ve met this set of criteria and now it can move into the next phase. Or now we can focus on something else. And of course, learn, learn, learn! The biggest thing about Agile. If we’re going to get comfortable with uncertainty, we need to be able to learn, learn not only how to adapt in those situations to manage our own emotions, but also how to learn new techniques, new tools, new concepts, Agile. If you want to be Agile, it will require you to be a lifelong learner.
Now, before I go any further, I actually want to just send this poll earlier, but what is, how much do you know about Agile? It just kind of want to understand our audience here. I’m gonna launch a poll. Are you a beginner? Are you an intermediate? Are you an expert in Agile? Have you written a book about it? Beginner. Okay. I got a few in the beginners. Absolutely. Yeah. There’s a lot to learn about Agile and there’s a lot of valuable nuggets. Okay. Great. We’ve got a little bit more. I’ll hold this up in a little bit. We’ve got one expert. Perfect. I’m happy to have you. I hope I represent this well. All right, I’m going to go ahead and share this. If you think about it, the majority of people are still new to Agile, but what you’re not new to, what you may not realize is that, again, going back to all of the characteristics, the actions that you took at the pandemic, you actually are more Agile than what you probably think. And so, while it’s new to you, these frameworks and know that there are many different directions that you can go, you likely have a foundation, but the primary foundation will always be your mindset.
How are you looking at it? Do you have a fixed mindset? Or do you have a growth mindset? So majority of people here are beginners. I welcome you. We’ve got an interview, a few intermediate and an expert, which is great! We know that we’re all in this together. And the challenges with Agile in general is that again, we looked at that as something that was, Oh, that’s for the people over there in IT. That’s for our tech team. They’ve got that figured out. No, there’s so many great principles that we can incorporate into our day to day, whether or not we’re working in the software side of a business.
Kanban
So I’m going to go into the second methodology now, which is Kanban. So Kanban is a great tool, especially if you’re a very visual person. I think that it helps you understand, What am I supposed to do and by when am I supposed to do it? Where are there bottlenecks? So on and so forth. Kanban is an Agile tool which uses a shared visual Workboard to break down complex projects, into manageable trunks and track progress. So one potential Kanban board might look like this and keep in mind, if you Googled Kanban board, you would likely find so many different ones, but the Kanban board.
Columns
So you see multiple columns. That’s a big piece of the framework. We’re thinking about what do we want to accomplish? And then it goes into a range of, okay, what are the actions required to accomplish that? Which our requested. And then we move them into the next phase phase, which is in progress. Now, what you may notice at the top of your screen is the number three and the arrow that says WIP limits. Now WIP means Works in Progress. So essentially the things that need to be done. Why did they have a limit?
WIP
Well, if you ever say, well, this needs to be done. And this needs to be done. AND This needs to be done. AND THIS needs to be done. Then you might be putting too much on your people. They’re not going to be as productive. They’re spreading the resources everywhere, because they don’t have all the time. So the limits are there to help you focus. And those little cards, those are the tasks. Those are what we need to accomplish. And Kanban can come in a variety of ways. Organizations can be on boards, look different. Some of them do them virtually. If you’re face to face, maybe you have a big working Kanban whiteboard, but it’s essentially a place where everyone can come to say, okay, what’s going on? What’s everyone working on? Or what is our focus for the week? Where are we in progress in the queue? And then when is it done?
Priorities
So the great thing is, is that when you shift things through those columns, one thing can’t come in until something goes out. So it forces you to really focus on what you want accomplish. Instead of saying, I want this and I want this, and I want this. When you may not have visibility or resources into who could actually accomplish that. This is another just sample Kanban board that you could do. Think about it in a more simple way. Here are your to-dos. You write them on different colored post-its. Then once you’re ready to work on them, you move them into the in progress. And then as you’re working on them, you’ve complete. You go to done.
Stops
Other things that they add into Kanban boards are also stops. Those are points where, Hey, I’ve had something to do, but I’m blocked. Maybe I need this, or I need that and I can’t move forward. But again, these are just overall tools that you can use to give those visual snapshots to what you’re doing. The bonus is when you share this with your team, it helps people understand maybe the roles, expectations, and also the workload of your peers. So if you see, Hey, someone’s got a really busy week right now, based on this. Maybe I won’t be so frustrated if they don’t instantly respond to my message. You know, those are just great ways to help us better connect with each other.
Flexibility
So benefits of Kanban are many, it’s flexible. You can adjust that. You can adjust your WIP, you can adjust what you focus on. And it’s all about continuous delivery. We want to make sure that we are taking action. That’s going to yield results. So it increases productivity. It allows us to focus because we can’t just over inundate that with works in progress, not everything can be equal. So if you think about your role as a leader, how can you prioritize in a different way to make sure it’s very clear, what’s important to you, the team, the organization, so on and so forth. Kanban also makes you more efficient. Again, you’re not wasting time on the wrong thing. So then you’re saving time. So if you want to try and incorporate a little bit of Kanban, and again, I would encourage you to take this one step further and learn more about Kanban. Think about your to-do’s and then really prioritize those two dues. What ones are most important, one most important? What ones are essential, maybe there’s some that are important because they’re urgent, but maybe some are important for a longer running change and really be critical about what you’re allowing to go into the workload.
Initiative Fatigue
Anyone ever suffer from initiative, fatigue? I wish I could see that where essentially your boss might be saying, I want you to do this, but wait, let’s also do this. And then let’s also do that. And let’s also do that. And all of a sudden you have an employee that’s like, I don’t know. I might sleep at my desk or I might need coffee. No. When we actually really are forced to prioritize. When we truly identify the things that are going to be the most value-added, you can reduce stress and anxiety for your employees, and you can also improve their confidence because they know what’s expected of them. And they feel like they have a reasonable amount of time or resources to be able to accomplish a task successfully. If you give them too much, they may not be able to produce in the way that they want to, which could create disengagement.
Visualization of Priorities
So other tips. Think about your to-dos. And then if you lay them out in a visual perspective, where are their bottlenecks, what processes might be taking a little bit longer than what you thought that you could maybe look at and revisit and figure out how you could save some time. Or what other person do you need to get involved to make sure that you can reduce the bottleneck. Another thing. And I’ve said this multiple times within Kanban is prioritize. Prioritize, prioritize, prioritize. You can not make everything the same. I know that there is so much opportunity. There is absolutely so much opportunity, but we all know the phrase “paralysis by analysis.” We don’t take any action when we see all the actions to take. So we want to make sure that we’re very clear and that we limit our work in progress. And at the end, ultimately analyzing our workflow. What works, what doesn’t work? How can we continue to get better?
Iterative Tools
Everything in Kanban or inn Agile is iterative. We’re not just saying that because we came up with this once that’s a one and done, we’ve got it all figured out. No, we are embracing change and saying, how can we continue to make this better for our employees, for our customers, for anyone that we serve.
While Scrum and Kanban are both popular tools to help organizations become more Agile. It’s important to remember that they’re not the only way to build an Agile team. There are other methodologies out there. And the other thing to keep in note is that you don’t necessarily want to say I am all in and we only do Kanban, or we only do Scrum because there are then going to be different situations, different scenarios that one of those approaches may not be the most effective. So we’re not saying to use this approach, and that is your end all be all because you have to have that growth mindset where you’re always changing.
Removing Barriers to Success
At the heart of an Agile organization is leadership that removes barriers to success increases employee independence, trust, and personal accountability. When we think about one of the focuses of Agile, it is really to be able to clear those obstacles, reduce that red tape so people can do what we need them to do. And when we do that, we’re giving them a sense of autonomy. We’re giving them a sense of employee independence. Hey, I do get to have that impact. I am connected to the big picture. I see where I produce value. And when you give people that autonomy, you’re building trust with them. You say I trust that you can do this specific task. Or I know that if I give you this assignment, that you’re going to figure out great ways to solve this.
Think about the wonders that you could have on your team if you gave people the flexibility and opportunity to just be the best that they could be. That is one of the benefits of Agile, but it really requires servant based leadership. That means hands-off. It can’t always be well. This is the way that I’ve done it. And it’s the best way. So it’s going to require some of you to just pull back and say, okay, maybe I can learn something from this.
How Can You Embrace Agile?
So how can, how can leaders embrace Agile? How can you essentially become more Agile? You don’t have to develop software, but you can take all these characteristics and think about how you could maybe modify your own behavior or your daily tasks to be better. So number one creates stability to encourage agility. Number two, focus on clear communications, three, make conflict more constructive. This is going to require you people that might run from conflict to say, okay, conflict, maybe isn’t that bad. Maybe there’s some good that can come from it. Learn from our failures, allocate resources effectively, and embrace lifelong learning.
Create Stability to Embrace Agility
Now we’re going to go into each of these. So how do you create stability to encourage agility? Well, one of the things that you need to do is create stability, which means psychological safety. There’s gotta be consistency there. People have to know what’s expected of them. There’s gotta be a clear target. They can’t feel like there is going to, there are going to be consequences. If they try something new that is going to try to serve or solve a challenge, we need to make sure that people feel safe and comfortable in the environment that they work in.
Focus on Resilience
The next piece is to focus on resilience, resilience, especially with the pandemic is an essential requirement of all the leaders in our organizations. We need them to be able to say, okay, if this happens, we can get through it. If there’s a no, I can find another way. If that was shut down, we can figure out an alternate route. We want people or leaders that feel empowered to continue to persevere. And that perseverance, that belief that, okay, we can make things better just because it didn’t work out is what’s ultimately going to achieve the right result for your organization.
Set Clear Priorities
To create stability you also need to set clear priorities and goals. That means that you can’t just say these are all the things that I want to accomplish. No, you need to try and look at one, two, three. What are the top three things that you want of your team of your organization? This is what I want you to focus on. You cannot be everything to everyone.
Communicate Frequently
Communicate frequently! Keep people on the same page. I know that in this remote life, that there are some people that are like out of sight out of mind. I mean, I know I have employees out there. I haven’t even seen them in a virtual camera in a long time. You need to communicate, and it’s best if you can try and do face to face to figure out real time what’s going on for certain challenges know what’s appropriate to send over email and know what needs to be conducted over a meeting. That is an important distinction for you. If it’s something that’s more technical, if it’s something that could be potentially confusing, you need to pick up the phone, have a phone call, have a conversation to make sure that they’re all on the same page.
Establish Trust
And of course, establish trust. Show people that you trust them, that you trust in their abilities and their capabilities and be consistent. If you really want to create stability on your team, you actually need to. And this comes down to emotional intelligence. You need to be a consistent leader. You need to consistently manage your emotions. You need to be consistent when you manage when something doesn’t go right. You need to be consistent in how you communicate that consistency is going to help trust or help you build trust. As well as a feeling of stability.
Make Sure Everyone Understands the Vision
Number two is to focus on clear communications to ensure that everyone understands the vision. We’re not well, we had that meeting at last Monday. We talked about the strategy. I know that we talked about this for like a five hour working session, and then I’m going to come down to the team and just say, yeah, this is what we want. Give them insight into the vision. What are you trying to accomplish? Why is that vision important too often, we just give tests and we can’t necessarily live in that way in Agile. You want to share the vision and allow people to maybe find creative solutions to help you get there.
Connect the Dots
Connect the dots. So that goes with the same thing, make sure that people understand how, what they’re doing, what you’re asking them is to do or they’re or how their role is actually helping you move forward. You want to connect the dots for everyone. This is especially true for your younger employees that might be new to your organization. You want to make sure they understand what’s going on. Instead of them just being more tactical and looking at a small piece of their role. If they have more autonomy and they, you are more inclusive in their conversation, you want to find some solutions that you had no idea that were there because you overlooked them based on your own role.
Face to Face Communications
Embrace face to face communication and create regular checkins and opportunities for feedback. I’m talking about opportunities where at the end of a project, or after you kicked off a big proposal, what worked, what didn’t work. Don’t just move on to the next, because you feel like you don’t have time. The faster you try and move on to the next, the more that you’re just going to likely spend time trying to fix the same problem, have the same conversation. You already knew it was going to be a problem and you could have solved it before. So maybe sure that you’re taking that feedback and actually leveraging it. So you can save time down the road. We’re talking about short term pain for longterm gain. As a rule of thumb for every user who tells you about a problem, there will be between 10 and 100 other users who have experienced the same problem and didn’t think to get in touch. We as leaders, when you truly want to be Agile, have to facilitate conversations and relationships between others, it will help us solve our problems faster.
Make Conflict Constructive
Make conflict more constructive. Yes. So I’m talking to the person that might be the avoider that sees conflict and is like, how do I get out of here? Can I, can they see me? I’m just going to look at my phone. I won’t, this is awkward. Or you know, that person that might be like, well, this was my idea. And I really liked my idea. I think this is going to work. No. If we are thinking about conflict, because it’s going to happen, no matter what type of process you do as a leader, we need to also have a mindset that says, yeah, I can handle it. And that’s the embracer mindset. You see conflict and you say, okay, great. These are different points of view. This is new feedback. You look at it as a blessing because it’s truly something that’s going to help you improve a customer experience or solve a potential organizational challenge.
Not all conflict is bad. We know that conflict is necessary to move us forward. However, if you want to think about how conflict is handled on your team, you have to think about how you manage conflict as a leader. So starting with that, embracer mindset. Conflict is going to happen, but how do we want to leverage it? How do we want to use it? How do we want to resolve it? And other ways to make conflict, more constructive, respect, differences, and approaches now for truly thinking about Agile. That means that there’s not a fixed way. Perfection basically can’t exist in Agile because there’s no definitive end point.
Continuous Improvement
It’s all about continuous improvement. So we need to respect differences in approaches. We need to say, Oh, maybe my approach isn’t the best approach. Maybe that’s a good approach. Hey, I wonder what they have to say. So using conflict as an opportunity to just hear different voices that may not always have that same opportunity to contribute, focus on the collective outcome.
It’s not a me, it’s a we. How do we make sure that everyone feels that they’re working towards that same shared vision? And when you do get everyone around the same collective outcome, this is what we’re here to do. Then it’s easier to gain consensus. Hey, well, if we’re trying to solve this problem, then maybe this is what we have to do, which makes it easier to reduce the conflict. Because everyone is bought in most importantly, let go of you, go let go of, and you go, there’s no place for it. It’s not about you being the greatest person on your team. It’s not about you being the greatest leader. It is about the collective team and organization coming together to build off of each other’s ideas, to be the best that they can be, and leverage that power of diversity.
Inclusive Culture
We know there’s so many benefits to having diverse teams and to having an inclusive culture. And this is really what you want to do. If you’re thinking about Agile, it is asking that person that’s quiet to share their contribution. It is inviting someone else to the table that doesn’t normally get a seat. You want to leverage the power of diversity because these voices will help you create greater products, processes, and so on and so forth.
Learn from Failure
Learn from your failures. Again, this one is often overlooked because people are so quickly moving on to the next thing they’re caught up on the next that they don’t even have to take the time to learn from the failures, which means that they’re going to repeat them again. Hopefully not, but they could. So if you really want to learn from failures, and if you want to help your team become more Agile and learn from their failures, one of the things that you have to do is avoid assigning blame. Maybe you create team rules that when conflict happens that, Hey, we’re not about blaming. We’re talking about the solution at hand. We’re not going personal. We’re not saying, you know what, Jonathan, you really, you didn’t do this in the process. Absolutely not. We’re not doing that because that’s not productive. It’s just going to cause more lag and your time it’s going to cause more friction between the team. And it’s going to get you further away from your goal. So avoid, avoid assigning blame,
Optimize Failure
Then optimize failure. Hey, it’s not a matter of whether or not you are going to fail. You are absolutely going to fail. I’m going to fail. We’re all going to make mistakes. However, we can’t live there. We have to figure out how to quickly learn from our failures, fail fast. What can you take from it? And then move on to the next and how can you improve in the future? You can’t live in your failures. So you can’t bring all that baggage from the tasks that didn’t work on that project that didn’t go as planned. You’ve got to just take the learnings from it, with you and keep moving.
Re-Frame Failure
Frame failure as an opportunity to reflect and learn. We talked about this in past webinars, frame-storming. What are the benefits of this? How can I look at this as an opportunity? Oh, well maybe by this failure, I see a different way that we can serve our customer. Or maybe by this failure, I see a different way. I can communicate with my team failure. Isn’t bad. There are so many learnings of failure, but we sometimes just miss them because we’re either, again, moving too fast. Or sometimes we just don’t like to admit we failed. And when we do that, then we’re not learning. We’re not able to change our behavior to make sure that it can be different in the future.
Embrace Change
And most importantly, embrace change. Failure is going to happen regardless of whether you want it to or not. But you do have to embrace the fact that change is going to happen. One of my favorite quotes is “comfort should scare you.” When you live in a place of comfort. Well, that’s when you become more risk averse, you’re not as tolerant to any type of change or disruption. And we know that in today’s climate, whether it’s affected by tech or just the fact of globalization or the pandemic- change is the one constant. And we as leaders need to get better at managing how we respond to change. Welcome it, and create a safe space for experimentation and creative thought.
Remove Fear of Failure
Make sure that you’re removing the fear of failure. Hey, I’m not going to fire you. If you get this wrong, I’m going to give you a challenge. I want you to see what you can come up with and reward them for that. Instead of making them feel well, if you don’t get this right it’s game over for you. No, you need to give them a safe space to be able to experiment and provide honest feedback, honest feedback, but what works on a product, a process, maybe even a communication style. This requires you to go back to embrace failure, having that embracer mindset. Hey, we’ve got to have this conversation. If we have this difficult conversation, then we’re likely going to be better.
Provide Honest Feeback
Instead of having an undercurrent of maybe inefficiencies or frustrations that I’m not sharing, we need to provide honest feedback to make sure that we are not going to repeat that same failure in the future, and then identify opportunities. That’s going to move the team forward. What can you do differently now? You could look at these as aha moments. Maybe you create a list of aha moments. What did we gain? Oh yeah. I learned that we can do this a lot quicker. Oh, I learned that this personality style prefers this when we talk to them. So maybe that’s how you want to present your information. What are the “aha moments?” Create aha moments make you do it on a Friday where you’re like, let’s talk about our aha moments for the week. What insights
Allocate Resources
Did you gain? Allocate resources, effectively. Strategically allocate resources. Now going back to the Kanban methodologies that we even talked about, Scrum and Kanban, both require you to prioritize, to focus, to say, okay, not all things are created equal. And these are truly the things that are going to have the biggest impact on our bottom line or on solving this challenge. And so this is what we’re going to focus on. We’re not going to say all things are equal because then we’re just dividing our resources in terms of employees time, or in terms of the financial component. So we need to strategically allocate resources and make sure that they are connected to the big picture that they have a why. This is why we’re doing it.
Understand the Why
Now. The why is important obviously for solving the challenge, but the why is also important for the employee to understand, because it gives them motivation. It gives them competence and it gives them that sense of meaning. And if you want to allocate resources effectively, you also need to consider how time is spent. Are there recurrent meetings that just, you know, you feel like you have them, but they’re not necessarily the most productive or you just have them because they’re standing in on your calendar. Oh, maybe it’s time to reconsider whether or not that’s worth it. Maybe you shorten your meetings. Maybe you make them more frequent. We’ll talk more about some solutions at the end of this webinar.
Delegate and Empower
Delegate and empower. When we talk about allocating resources effectively- you are a resource! And you as a leader, if you are going to do great things, you can’t do it all either. So you’ve got to prioritize and think, what do I want to accomplish? Okay. And if I want to accomplish that, what needs to go off of my plate? Who can I delegate that to? Delegation is such an amazing way to build the competence of your team to free up your time. So you can produce more value or contribute in a way that maybe is more meaningful for you, but leverage the power of delegation and empower people to have their own sense of autonomy and ownership. The more that they have, that the more they’ll be.
Embrace Testing
And embrace testing. You don’t have to have an idea and then say, all right, well, we’re just going to push it through because we had this idea. Absolutely not. If we’re thinking about Agile, it’s, we’re not believing that we have it right the first time. There’s no such thing as perfection. Those are the things that we know to be true. We are always going to change. And testing or pilot groups are just great ways to slow down before you speed up and then hit that accelerated about on drive over the cliff, unintentionally.
So we want to make sure that we’re using testing is what we’re doing, right? And reduce red tape. People might spend a lot of time documenting something or having to dot these i’s and cross these t’s. And do, does that really matter? Maybe it mattered earlier in the day or earlier. Maybe it mattered years ago in the business, but does it still matter today? It requires you to ask those tough questions as a leader. Does this make sense? If it doesn’t make sense, maybe it’s time to remove that red tape so you can free up someone’s time and ability to focus and solve that challenge.
Make Your Team Accountable
And also make your team accountable by doing things like a Kanban board, that’s a visual way that you can see that they’re accountable or even adopting the Scrum. There are so many different ways, but make sure that once you connected them to the big picture, you know, that they have their assigned tasks, that you then have a way to measure it. What are key performance indicators or KPIs or milestones that you can put into place that people are working towards so you can help their accountability.
Embrace Life-Long Learning
And last, but certainly not least. If you want to be a more Agile leader, if you really want to show up in a way and solve problems differently and make a greater impact, you have to embrace lifelong learning. Now, again, this goes against the notion of perfection, Hey, I’ve, I’ve mastered this. I’m great at this. And this means that you can’t have that ego. Like I’m so good at this. Absolutely not. You can be good at that. And then tomorrow, what you’re good at may not even matter.
So you’ve got to keep working to get better. It’s not about you. It’s about how can I continue to learn new things, to develop people in a different way. So it requires us to have a growth mindset that belief that things can change. We’re not just here victims of circumstance. We absolutely can make an impact. And we have to challenge the status quo just because something’s been done once or it was done that way. Doesn’t mean it’s the way that we need to continue to do it. So we need to practice curiosity. Huh? I wonder what would be different if we did that? I wonder, Oh, I see something really great that they’re doing over there. I wonder how we would do that?
And even in lifelong learning, in terms of getting feedback, we talked about the feedback and reflection part of Agile and how that’s so important. But even if you think about your standard meetings or one-on-ones. If you came to those with a place of curiosity, instead of a wad and should do this, if you truly sat, I wonder what came up for them. Maybe you would uncover a new challenge or bottleneck in your process that you could solve.
So embrace curiosity, and of course prioritize your own professional development. We become so immersed in our day to day that we forget that, Hey, life is happening. Oh my gosh, we can do other things because we use the excuse of time. And while I can understand that we don’t have time to do all things. What we want to do is still prioritize us. What are we doing to make sure that we can be the best that we can be.
Thinking of professional development as essentially the gas for a car were the car. And the professional development is the gas. We need to continue to fuel up to make sure that our car can go the extra mile. I just came up with that or out of the spot. I know that ones have been around, but didn’t plan on saying that, but we do need to make sure that we are fueling ourselves, feeling your curiosity, fueling the, you know, and challenging ourselves.
Remove Obstacles
So to become more Agile leaders must find obstacles to performance and remove them. Facilitate connection among employees and create psychological safety and room for failure. So one of the key things here is as a leader, are there any obstacles, someone who’s facing on your team that you can remove? Again, maybe it is the red tape. Maybe it’s just a funky process that needs to be evolved. What are the things that you can do to essentially make it easier for people to go about and be as successful as they can be? Or how can you make sure that you’re facilitating connection among your employees, helping them learn from each other? One of my favorite quotes is “every person you meet is your teacher and your student.” How can you create that mindset within your team? Where everyone says, Oh, I wonder what that department did or I wonder what he did. How can we learn from each other instead of just thinking that we have to do it alone? And we want to create psychological safety and room for failure, failure is inevitable, but we don’t have to live in failure. You just have to learn how to recover from failure faster than before.
High-Level Agile
So tools to make a more Agile team. These are just some high-level ways that you could potentially incorporate more Agile practices. Again, I’d recommend you to research more about Agile, think about Kanban. Because there are a tremendous amount of resources out there that can help you go and take this and implement one step further than what we’re covering today. As it’s very introductory.
Daily Huddles
So tools to make more Agile teams, daily huddles, maybe instead of your standing weekly eating where everyone just kind of jokes around and talks about the weekend, or doesn’t really, isn’t really productive if you give them their time back. And maybe you have a few 15 minute huddles every morning where you say, okay, this is what you’re gonna do. That’s what you’re doing. Here’s your brief status update. Alright, good, good to go. Have a great day. You’ve got this! In those brief meetings, it allows you as a leader to quickly uncover any type of challenges or obstacles so you can remove them. And it just allows everyone to again, get visibility into what everyone else is doing.
But the key here is that they’re short and succinct. You can not call it a daily huddle. If it’s just ends up an hour long meeting. These are meant to be very quick interview or very quick information exchanges for you to identify, to share, to learn and grow. So not something that’s long. Also focus on recognition, make sure that people understand how, what they do is connected to the big picture and why you need them. You need to recognize that. And whether that’s in a meeting or whether that’s in an email or whether that’s what the gift, you need to tell people why they matter. Because to truly be Agile, you need competent people that feel that they’re independent, that they can contribute, that you trust them. And recognition is one of the ways that you can build that.
Diverse Hiring Practices
Also, if you want a more Agile team considered looking at your hiring practices, are you looking for different personalities that could compliment the team, our personalities, even part of what you’re looking at, what skills do you need to be able to move forward in the future? Are those represented on your current team? So being intentional about your hiring, making sure that you have the right fit. If you talk about a practice like Scrum, where you really are working independently with groups of people, you need them to all figure out how to work together. So that’s where it’s so much more important to be able to understand the styles of people.
Kanban Boards
Embrace Kanban boards, thinking about Kanban boards. What are you trying to accomplish? There are plenty of digital resources or Kanban boards out there. You could put that on a big whiteboard in your office or big white piece of paper and use post-its to move them through the columns. You could just go on and download an app. Also using progress dashboards. That’s a project management tool, but progress dashboards are essentially little cues where you can see, okay, are we at 40% complete 50%, 60%?
When we have those type of visual cues, it can a help people understand how we’re performing. So you as a leader can see that. But B if you’re thinking about, or if you have a process that’s dependent on one person’s work before the next can begin. When you have those progress dashboards, it allows people to anticipate that and manage their time better. I don’t know. Of course there’s digital time tracking tools because in Agile, a big piece of that is understanding where does our time go? Is our time spent on our phones is our time spent wasted in meetings is our time spent trying to figure out what we’re supposed to do.
We want to figure out how we’re using our time so we can either remove those bottlenecks or those inefficiencies, the things that aren’t as productive. So you could use apps such as ours or timely or top tracker. And there’s also a project management tool called or called Trello or Asana. Now those are great resources for teams. If you haven’t used a sauna that allows you to have kind of a team view, a global view of what everyone is doing, Oh, this is what Amy is going to be doing. And then Christian’s going to be doing this. It’s just a snapshot that allows us to see that. And it’s a bonus. If you’re thinking about newer employees, as they’re trying to get acclimated into your team, one of these tools is a great way for them to get insight into how your team functions.
Other Resources
Now, there are many things that you could look at another resource that I’ve really been actively listening to is a podcast called Agile for Humans. And I think that this host does a great job of talking about how we can incorporate Agile into leadership. So it’s something that I would definitely recommend that you checking out, but there are plenty of Agile podcasts out there. The whole goal is to keep learning. Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time.
Don’t Give Up!
I thank you so much for joining this webinar. And I hope that you left this today, knowing that if you’re stuck in a problem, it doesn’t mean to give up. It just means what’s another way to look at it. How can you be more Agile? Agile requires resilient leaders. Giving up is the opposite of resiliency. We’ve got to try one more time. We’ve got to look at it in a different way. I hope that by attending this webinar today, you’ve gained some tools, insights, or just some new ways of thinking about how you can help your team and yourself be more productive and more Agile.
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Now, if you enjoyed today’s webinars, please stay connected with us at Crestcom next month’s webinar. Topic is Emotional Intelligence. We would love to have you there also connect with us, subscribe to the leadership habit podcast. There we interview a variety of subject matter experts and thought leaders all around the topic of leadership. And of course, if you are interested, please reach out to us. We would love to come into your organization and offer a leadership workshop. It’s a two-hour leadership workshop and we cover things like communication, how to maintain our customers. We’re actually looking at some Agile practices. So if you’re interested in that, follow up with us, crestcom.com. We definitely want to offer that to you. I’m Jenn dwell, and I am so happy to have you here today. And I hope that you gained something valuable. Thank you for investing in yourself today. And I hope to see you in November for our Emotional Intelligence webinar. Thank you. Bye!
Jenn DeWall:
Thank you so much for listening to today’s episode of The Leadership Habit Podcast. I hope you enjoyed today’s webinar all about Agile leadership, and I hope that you’ve taken something from it that you can use right away to bring back to your team, to help make you more efficient and more productive. If you like this week’s episode of The Leadership Habit podcast, feel free to share it with your friends or leave us a review on your favorite podcast streaming service.
