Organizational Agility

There are two points I am trying to make today:

1. Knowledge Workers need Autonomy
2. Agility and Micro-Management don't belong together

What is the difference between a manager and a leader? The manager gives orders, the leader inspires to follow.

In a highly dynamic business, like startup companies, agility is paramount, on every level. Not on a project or development methodology level, but all throughout the organization. It has to be an intrinsic part of the organizational culture, since top-down indoctrination would cost too much latency.

But Agility does not justify chaos. Speed yes, but not at the expense of applying intelligence and common sense, nor not being held accountable for acceptable results.

Knowledge Workers need Autonomy.

(see "Thinking for a Living", by Thomas H. Davenport)

There is a big difference between task-orientation and goal-orientation.

Often people confuse task-orientation with process-orientation. And agile-cultured folks tend to be allergic to "process", rightfully so. Task focused work, in my mind, is even worse than process. Because process focus implies that at least someone spent some thought on how to do things, even if that may be out of date or not always applicable. 

Task delegation without much regard for the higher purpose of the business, the value proposition of the work, has a tendency to create chaos, and often misses the goal. Yes, I hear you Scrumsters, "but we have Planning sessions". Why would we have to plan tasks, why not goals (on a value-added grain)? 

I understand that tasks are intended to track progress on an atomic level. But what we really should track is progress toward a goal, not of a task. In an agile business, a team lead should not have to track things at the task level. That's so outdated in the knowledge-worker age! And those are often the managers who then "hold accountable" their individual contributors (IC) for the high-level goals, that the very manager prevents them from addressing, to to constraining the ICs autonomy (by clobbering them with tasks). 

The accountability focus on tasks invites micro-management. And that is not conducive of the kind of flexibility required in an agile business. Why do you hire smart people, when you end up telling them how to do their job anyway?

If a development supervisor, project lead, or product owner feels they need to task-delegate, because they don't see their subordinates do exactly what the team lead has in mind, then the superior is not a goal-oriented leader, but a manager of tasks. They cause a trust problem on both ends. The superior doesn't trust their troops' capabilities and goodwill, and the ICs don't trust the superior's leadership competence. 

Agility and Micro-Management do not belong together!

(Bernd Durrwachter, 2011)