Exec Team Agile experience

Background: A Government Ministry was asking their people to move to Agile ways of working and the Exec Team wanted an opportunity to experience those shifts for themselves.

Approach: As part of a two-day leadership team development off-site, we crafted a one-day exercise around one of their key cultural shifts - 'connected whole over individual parts' or 'from me to we'.

We started by quickly laying the foundation around 'what is Agile?', demystifying the language (sprints, backlogs, spike, devops, product owners, scrum masters, scrum, lean startup, human-centred design, kanban etc etc etc!) and defining the role of a leadership team in these ways of working. (This snippet from a John Cutler blog cuts straight to the chase.)

We then leaned into what it looks like to 'think big, start small and act fast'.

We used a Retrospective format to understand the progress to date on the cultural shifts. This enabled us to frame the challenge and we then moved through the Challenge Canvas.

The Exec Team did 'customer discovery' interviewing with pairs of employees to understand the impact of the changes from their perspective. They then designed a measurement system which would enable them to track progress. They reframed the challenged into a 'how might we...? question (which is where we got 'from me to we'), considered possible solutions using Doblin's Ten Types of Innovation and their innovation tactics. With this solution in mind, they then developed a 'safe-to-fail' experiment which they would run in the coming month.

Outcome: This rapid-fire Agile experience gave the leadership team a strong sense of the challenges around leaning into complexity and uncertainty with your team. Together, they were able to gain insights into the shifts in mindset, behaviour and practices being asked for in implementing Agile ways of working. And on a practical level, they grew their own confidence in the use of Agile toolsets and how they might guide their teams.