Managers Are People, Too!

I'm working my way through Scott Ambler 's article about the Agile Community and their apparent incontinence. While I'm not sure, someone who sold out to the PMI for millions of dollars then gets to wag their finger at the collective Agile Community. He has some solid points about how we all collectively messed up and how we can do better in the future.

One particular idea that often strikes a chord with me is the stance the Agile Community takes toward managers, directors, VPs, and Leadership. Management is treated as the enemy. This toxic stance had done far more harm than good to teams and organizations.

A recent example is a LinkedIn post I created that started like this:

"Your boss should be your next Scrum Master. A manager or director is best positioned to help a Scrum Team effectively deliver value to customers and the organization."

As you can imagine, the majority of the comments were not supportive. (Check them out here if you want to dig into the fray.) The comments range from "My manager is far too busy to help our team" to "My manager's command and control style would destroy our team's ability to self-organize."

Another response of many given:

Managers do not have the required time or patience. Many do not have minimal people skills. Few managers believe they personally should be growing their people.

Agile purity is undoubtedly at play here, as is a large amount of hubris. The managers and directors in many organizations are quite intelligent and have worked their way up the corporate ladder through the muck that is office politics. They are connected, capable, and hungry for success (delivery of value.) It might surprise many that most managers primarily care about their employees and are not looking to make their lives miserable.

As the community turned its nose up at managers, it also ignored management disciplines such as change management, risk management, measuring and validating value (EBM!), practical goal setting (EBM!), technology road mapping, and governance. While these are not the most exciting topics, they are critical considerations when working with mature organizations.

However, the attitude towards management and leadership is the far greater problem.

We often downplay the manager's role in strategic thinking and planning: "Self-organizations" and "self-management" are often used a bat to club a manager for getting involved rather than ideas designed to empower teams to decide "how" to do their work. Neither "self-organization" or "self-management" mean in the exclusion of management and leadership. Team still need long-term organizational plans and goals, along with budget and a corporate vision.

Agile consultants and practicioneers are often dismissive of managers and leadership structures: Rather than seeing management as a strategic partner, they are viewed and painted as obstructionists. How many times have managers been labeled as "resistant to change" or even as "impediments?" I've even seen instances where managers were targeted as the "old way" that the transformation was meant to disrupt. It shouldn't be shocking to see managers and leaders acting with skepticism about future agile initiatives.

We've undervalued the experience the managers bring to the table: The managers and leaders we think we are working to disrupt have years of experience and expertise in the organization and could be especially useful with improving delivery and outcomes. Rather than leverage this expertise, the preference is often to dismiss these leaders who have deep industry knowledge.

We didn't pop the Scrum Bubble: Broader organizational goals are important. Managers and leaders work towards these goals and needs the support of individuals and teams to be successful. The overemphasis of coaching and working with teams rather than the wider organization causes friction between team goals and the broader organizational objectives. Scrum Masters - the Agile Coaches of the organization - focused too much on Scrum and the Scrum Team and not enough of the needs of leadership and management.

It's time for the Agile community to stop treating managers and leaders as the enemy and start seeing them as essential partners in driving success. One key partnership going forward is seeing more managers fullfil the Scrum Master accountabilities.

It’s time to evolve and learn from our mistakes, bringing leadership back into the fold. The future of Agile depends on it.