Team Agility

I'm not really much of a manager. Probably a slightly better coach, but mostly I'm a leader. I can give people direction and help them find the path. I don't like to tell them exactly what steps to take, just where I want them to end up. And when possible, I can walk in front of them or with them depending on the situation.

But I have a problem when I don't know where we should be going. Usually the company Vision and Strategy give guidance. But when the strategy work is still ongoing, one needs to make do without one.

In uncertain conditions it might be good to go to basics, identify the 'axioms'. When there are many unknowns, what can you rely on?

What can you rely on?

What me and my team decided to do was to improve our own group work. We are a loose group of people who work in the customer front in different roles. We are also guiding the work of others as project managers and team leaders. If we can work together seamlessly, it benefits the whole unit.

We decided to work more in pairs and coach each other. Some wanted to expand their profiles, some wanted to still concentrate more on their current role. We also decided to invite each other to our retrospectives and to arrange sessions specifically for sharing knowledge. Then we decided to change our work planning meetings (that had previously concentrated on resourcing) to sessions that combine resourcing, ongoing projects and new sales cases to get a better visibility to where we are and where we are going.

Add visibility. Prepare for changes.

These changes will increase staff liquidity, our visibility and our ability to respond to changes (which I call agility). Regardless of what the new strategy will be, these changes will help to implement it.

This post originally appeared in my LinkedIn profile. Feel free to check it out too.