Leadership Agility Quotes

Vision without action is a daydream, but action without vision is a nightmare.

Great ideas don’t die in the market, they die in the shower. People are too scared to pursue them because they appear crazy.

The pace and ability at which an organization is able to effectively innovate will be the determining factor of competitiveness in the future. The future is now.

There is an absolute need for organizations to innovate, grow, transform, and reinvent themselves faster than ever before.

Arming employees with the tools, know-how, and mindset needed to successfully innovate on a continual basis will be paramount to organizational survival.

Innovation is a learned organizational capability. You must train people how to innovate and navigate organizational barriers that kill off good ideas before they can be tested.

The problem with most strategic planning processes is they are not designed to create strategy. They are designed to create consistency and predictability.

Psychological pseudoscience dies hard, especially when there are commercial interests at stake.

Leaders need to correct for cognitive biases the way a sharpshooter corrects for wind velocity or a yachtsman corrects for the tide.

Leaders need to sacrifice "power-over" to get "power-to".

If you don’t collect any metrics, you’re flying blind. If you collect and focus on too many, they may be obstructing your field of view.

Mindfulness requires being a beginner. Setting absurdly high-standards, and being unwilling to be a novice, are the joint enemies of personal progress and change. Nobody benchpresses 100 kilos the first time they enter a gym.

Too few leaders have the emotional fortitude to take responsibility for failure.

People who appear to be resisting change may simply be the victim of bad habits. Habit, like gravity, never takes a day off.

When business leaders talk about the next quarter, they ought to sometimes be talking about the next quarter century.

Strategic coherence is more important than strategic perfection.

Overactive ego chakras kill objectivity, but mindfulness activates the win-win leadership chakras and brings collective and shared leadership.

Don't let your tools become your process.

Delegation is not a binary thing. There are shades of grey between a dictatorship and an anarchy.

The best way to encourage out of the box thinking is to draw the box correctly in the first place.

Don't let Deepak Chopra manage your change program.

The essence of extended rationality is to know when you are being irrational.

That which a team does not want to discuss, it most needs to discuss.

Just stamping out anti-science and bad science will eliminate an enormous amount of business waste

Leadership must evolve into a “science-based craft”, like surgery.

The most damaging cognitive bias is overconfidence (illusory superiority), making leaders use their “gut” when they should be more rational.

Alignment is a force multiplier.

We have minds that are equipped for certainty, linearity and short-term decisions, that must instead make long-term decisions in a non-linear, probabilistic world.

Team performance is directly proportional to team stability. Focus on building and maintaining a stable team. Stability reduces friction and increases credibility and confidence.

The sword doesn't change. So you have to adapt to the sword. You can't change your surroundings. They only change once you have changed.

Many of the cataclysmic leadership failures were failures of rationality. The pendulum of leadership development needs to swing back toward the rational: strategy, creativity, foresight, decision-making, and analytics.

The Future of work is all about CREAM. More Consciousness, Relationships, Empathy, AdaptAgility, and Meaning. We must be building a more human-centered context for stakeholders, as opposed to JUST MORE profits for shareholders".

Stubbornness pays! We tend to think that it doesn’t, we might be hesitant to be stubborn – however only the stubborn succeed.

Creating change-agile businesses will eliminate the need for what we today call change management.

We need leadership books that offer information as well as inspiration. Pop leadership is one of the most destructive forces today.

Behaviorism was a busted flush, but neo-behaviorist theories, especially choice architecture, achieve behavioral change without coercion or the downsides of carrots and sticks.

There was nothing scientific about Scientific Management (Taylorism), and neither was it good management.

The change "grief cycle", for some people, may be excitement, enthusiasm, engagement, effort, and excellence.

Business is the most important institution on the planet for furthering human flourishing.

Humanity can not afford to have 21st Century businesses run on 20th Century science, and (worse) pseudoscience.

Yesterday’s decision-making strategies are ill-equipped to deal with petabyte information flows.

The notion of "business as usual" is a harmful myth.

It is time to euthanize change management.

21st century leaders will be growers, not knowers.

Risk is managed not through cautious planning but through bold experiments combined with frequent inspection, feedback, and adaptation.

But for those that have not already attained mastery, structure and doctrine are needed because formlessness is useless to the beginner.

Strong executive commitment is a success factor for implementing Scrum, and management can best demonstrate their support of the transformation through their actions.

High Performance Teams and Execution Speed, has no value, if you are going in the wrong direction!

A good manager focuses on managing impediments, process, team’s health, protects the boundaries of self-organizing teams, promotes a healthy culture, and helps eliminate waste.

If you focus on the strength of the team, you will begin to find work as a positive challenge.

APM focuses on team management, from building self-organizing teams to developing a servant leadership style. It is both more difficult, and ultimately more rewarding than managing tasks.

By adopting an agile mindset and providing improved engagement, collaboration, transparency, and adaptability via Scrum's values, roles, events, and artifacts, the results were excellent.

While Abraham, gifted with physical agility and uncommon athletic prowess, had to make his mind, Teedie, privileged beyond measure with resources to develop his mind, had to make his body.

Your first investment should be in yourself. Learn new skills. The market can go up or down but you’ll never lose your skills. This is more true today than ever before. Diversify your skills.

USE EMOTIONS AS INFORMATION. Horses use emotion as information to engage surprisingly agile responses to environmental stimuli and relationship challenges: (a) Feel the emotion in its purest form (b) Get the message behind the emotion (c) Change something in response to the message (d) Go back to grazing. In other words, let the emotion go, and either get back on task or relax, so you can enjoy life fully. Horses don’t hang on to the story, endlessly ruminating over the details of uncomfortable situations -- from an October 30, 2013 article on the Intelligent Optimist magazine

Frame your problem statements into actionable tasks and goals that lead to a solution. Problem statements incite procrastination and resistance whereas solution statements inspire hope and motivation.

Situational leadership articulates that effective leaders are the ones able to change their behavior according to the situation at hand. It identifies leadership styles relevant to specific situations.

Pop leadership abuts pop psychology, and is very destructive. In no other serious domain of human endeavor (surgery, playing the violin) is the subject distilled down to nice-sounding aphorisms that mean nothing.

What is the difference between project management and project leadership? Although there is an elusive line between them, the core difference is that management deals with complexity, whereas leadership deals with change.

Consciously Constructive Human Capital Development, Perpetual Reinvention: innovation & Creativity, Adaptability, Resilience and Agility, are not only CORE DRIVERS, but also the DEFINING features of economic success in the 4IR.

Agile project leaders help their team balance at the edge of chaos—some structure, but not too much; adequate documentation, but not too much; some up-front architecture work, but not too much. Finding these balance points is the "art" of agile leadership.

The function of leadership – the number-one responsibility of a leader – is to catalyze a clear and shared vision for the organization and to secure commitment to and vigorous pursuit of that vision.  This is a universal requirement of leadership.”[11] Jim Collins

Only experience can refine a leader's art. High-uncertainty projects are full of anxiety, change, and ambiguity that the team must deal with. It takes a different style of project management, a different pattern of team operation, and a different type of project leader. I've labeled this type of management leadership-collaboration.

I made a lot of mistakes along the way and wish I had access to the information in this book back then. Common traps were stepped in—like trying a top-down mandate to adopt Agile, thinking it was one size fits all, not focusing on measurement (or the right things to measure), leadership behavior not changing, and treating the transformation like a program instead of creating a learning organization (never done).

A value-added step in a process is defined by three characteristics. First, the step must be something that the customer is willing to pay for. Second, the step must directly change the form, fit, or function of something to produce a product or service. The final characteristic of a value-added step is that it is so important that it must be done right every time to successfully produce the intended product or service.

It is not loyalty or internal motivation that drives us programmers forward. We must write our code when the road to our personal success is absolutely clear for us and writing high quality code obviously helps us move forward on this road. To make this happen, the management has to define the rules of the game, also known as "process", and make sure they are strictly enforced, which is much more difficult than "being agile".

Saying that “the business is IT’s customer, and the customer is always right” seems like a good idea when there is deep dissatisfaction with IT that stems from a long history of unreliable service. But over the long term, this value trap sets up the IT unit for failure because customers are often wrong (especially about matters in which they are not experts), and calling colleagues “customers” puts a wedge between IT and the rest of the business.9

The most important element of leadership effectiveness is authentically living the Vision of the company.  The values and ambitions of a company are not instilled entirely by what leaders say; they’re instilled primarily by what leaders do.  In a healthy company, there are no inconsistencies between what is said and what is believed deep down – the values come from within the leaders and imprint themselves on the organization through day-to-day activity.

Agile coach: The individual is an agile expert who provides guidance for new agile implementations as well as existing agile teams. The agile coach is experienced in employing agile techniques in different environments and has successfully run diverse agile projects. The individual builds and maintains relationships with everyone involved, coaches individuals, trains groups, and facilitates interactive workshops. The agile coach is typically from outside the organization, and the role may be temporary or permanent.

Shifting customer needs are common in today's marketplace. Businesses must be adaptive and responsive to change while delivering an exceptional customer experience to be competitive. Traditional development and delivery frameworks such as waterfall are often ineffective. In contrast, Scrum is a value-driven agile approach which incorporates adjustments based on regular and repeated customer and stakeholder feedback. And Scrum’s built-in rapid response to change leads to substantial benefits such as fast time-to-market, higher satisfaction, and continuous improvement—which supports innovation and drives competitive advantage.

SEVEN CHANGE MASTERY SHIFTS • Change Mastery Shift 1: From Problem Focus to Opportunity Focus. Effective leaders tend to perceive and to innovate on the opportunities inherent in change. • Change Mastery Shift 2: From Short-Term Focus to Long-Term Focus. Effective leaders don’t lose sight of their long-term vision in the midst of change. • Change Mastery Shift 3: From Circumstance Focus to Purpose Focus. Effective leaders maintain a clear sense of purpose, value, and meaning to rise above immediate circumstances. • Change Mastery Shift 4: From Control Focus to Agility Focus. Effective leaders understand that control is a management principle that yields a certain degree of results. However, agility, flexibility, and innovation are leadership principles that sustain results over the long haul. • Change Mastery Shift 5: From Self-Focus to Service. Effective leaders buffer their teams and organizations from the stress of change by managing, neutralizing, and/or transcending their own stress. • Change Mastery Shift 6: From Expertise Focus to Listening Focus. Effective leaders stay open and practice authentic listening to stay connected with others and to consider multiple, innovative solutions. • Change Mastery Shift 7: From Doubt Focus to Trust Focus. Effective leaders are more secure in themselves; they possess a sense that they can handle whatever may come their way; their self-awareness and self-trust are bigger than the circumstances of change.

According to research by Korn/Ferry International, “Learning agility is a leading predictor of leadership success today—more reliable than IQ, EQ [emotional intelligence] or even leadership competencies.

three mortal leadership sins (i.e. not walking the talk, leading from power and not authority and assuming agreement) that can derail even the most adept and agile of leaders. 

Leaders facilitating team responsibilities must link accountability to motivation in order to be highly effective.

Leadership – inborn or learnt? The case for situational leadership

It has been said that we have been given two ears and only one mouth, so we should listen twice as much as we talk. Listening is an art form, and asking questions is a tool to active listening. Yet, asking

stories. It is unimportant, disregard

High power high interest stakeholders – manage closely; High power low interest stakeholders – keep satisfied; Low power high interest stakeholders – keep informed; Low power low interest stakeholders – monitor with minimal effort.

Leaders usually need to be directive and supportive during the forming stage,

Ask team members to share a favorite travel photo, but not name the place. Team members ask questions and try to figure out where the photo was taken. Ask team members to share their favorite photo and

According to the findings, the most effective team building practices in creation of virtual networks of practice are: ‘(1) recruitment and selection; (2) training and development; (3) rewards and recognition; (4) supervisory support; (5) rules regarding knowledge disclosure; (6) time pressure; and (7) collaborative programs and projects (Jolinka and Dankbaar

the enablers of situational leadership are empathy, active listening and a propensity to understand complex human and team interactions. The challenge in leadership is all about applying the proper situational behavior. We have to analyze the situation and shift from our incumbent approach towards a situation, to the style which the situation warrants and which leads to the optimal outcome. By integrating and implementing ideas of situational leadership in our work place we can become better leaders.

The clearer and more simply the vision is stated, the easier it is for team members to buy into it.

Exhibiting vulnerabilities requires being confident in yourself and being able to laugh at your own mistakes. People who have to appear perfect often feel that way because they lack self-confidence. Yet, being willing to open up and be vulnerable can do more to make a team come together than standing aloof.

has been said that we have been given two ears and only one mouth, so we should listen twice as much as we talk.

Thomas Alva Edison, the great American inventor, once said: "I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work." Edison knew the power of failure in giving us a feedback, on what we are doing wrong, and how we can improve ourselves. Many people we know are afraid of taking the first step, taking a risk and moving away from their comfort zone. They are afraid of the difficulty that the first step poises. Of

Describe the behavior you would like to see, rather than the behavior you don’t want to see.

Many times people use should instead of ‘I want’, this is the case with parents and children. The admonition of: “you should be nice” is actually saying: “I want you to be nice”.

The word ‘why’ carries guilt and finger-pointing into our team communications. It is better that we leave it out of our messages as it doesn’t have any positive impact on what we are saying. Rather, it is clearer to state what we want to achieve or alternatively ask information gathering questions using the word ‘how’. For example Ashley might ask: “Tina, can you please explain how these figures impact the transfer to operations?” Notice that while ‘why’ structures a closed ended question, ‘how’ questions are open-ended and investigate as to the process that led to a certain consequence.

Try masks the intent and carries an element of implicit failure within the message. As Yoda said, you either do it or you don’t, there is no try.

Although science is not easy in complex human systems, we cannot afford to throw our hands in the air and give up. It may take decades, but it is a game worth playing and winning.

Eliciting the user stories is a dynamic collaborative endeavor which supports the concept of value. Essentially, just gathering requirements will populate the backlog with unnecessary user stories that do not contribute value.

For a law enforcement organization to run smoothly it needs positive leadership. Positive leadership is when a leader interacts with the frontline. Interaction is not just getting to know those a leader works with and serves, although knowing your people is an important component to leading. Interaction is as well to continually develop and train and develop not only ourselves but those the leader serves in an effort to build a common outlook. In the end positive leader understands that a strong common outlook between the top and frontline establishes trust, or even better mutual trust. The leader's true work: Be worthy of his or her constituents' trust. Positive leaders know the side with the stronger group feeling has a great advantage.2 Strong trust encourages delegation and reduces the amount of information and tactical direction needed at the top or strategic level. With less information to process and a greater focus on strategic issues, the decision making cycle at the top accelerates and the need for policies and procedures diminishes, creating a more fluid and agile organization. Mutual trust, unity and cohesion underlie everything.

Ownership means that team members acknowledge responsibility for work and its results as a facilitator or strategist joined in collaboration.

leaders are also representatives of company policies, processes, and procedures.

Through collaborative problem-solving approaches, human capital is turned into an individual sense of ownership.

global virtual high performance teams revolve around four concepts: (1) relationships, (2) accountability, (3) networking, and (4) leadership.

Relationships are of keen interest to successful team managers

Leadership’s role is to develop individuals who understand and practice integrity, courage, initiative, decisiveness, mental agility and personal accountability. These fundamental qualities must be aggressively cultivated which in turn allows for an atmosphere of adaptability at the lowest level, on the street. “I am here now in the situation that requires a decision…”  I AM EMPOWERED, SUPERENPOWERED TO DECIDE and ACT!

The leadership team would then spend most of their days walking the floor trying to understand where we were struggling and why. This is a new role for most executives and one we encourage executives to embrace if this process is going to be successful. We