Introduction

It is not exactly clear when the idea was born to organize a workshop on agile methods with interested people from the UN and other international organizations. The topic must have come up during an après work discussion on all things agile with like-minded aficionados from Vienna’s international community. Among the questions, ideas and concerns raised in these discussions the plan must have emerged to organize a meeting were international agilists could learn from each other, exchange best practices and share lessons learned. The authors of this article took on the idea and decided to ‘walk the talk’ and organize a workshop on Agile in international organizations. The first idea was to go for a conference, no less.

Initially, the vision for the workshop was to bring together a small group of decision makers and experts from various international organizations to

1. discuss agile methodologies and how they can benefit international organizations and to
2. decide whether it is worthwhile to explore the topic in more detail in the context of a one-day conference with a wider audience. Apart from the explicit outcomes expected from such a workshop, the intention was to establish a common baseline on the basic ideas of Agile as an implicit outcome by exposing the participants to an agile methodology.

The working motto for a possible conference was ‘what can international organizations learn from agile methods to proactively face the challenges ahead’. Some of the anticipated benefits for international organizations included:

• Increased ability/flexibility to respond to change
• High performing teams
• Increased efficiency and effectiveness
• Maximized utilization of existing resources in fulfilling an organization’s mandate
• Increased transparency and accountability within an organization and towards member states
• New management paradigm that facilitates the above and links into existing management methodologies

However, after a few iterations of discussing and planning the workshop, the plan was downsized from a full-fledged conference to a one-day seminar or possibly a roadshow to be part of existing venues, since the authors did not feel in a position to assess whether the topic would offer a broad enough range of discussion points to organize an entire conference.

Several colleagues from International Organizations agreed to participate in the workshop with a view to

1. discussing the potential of agile methods for international organizations
2. deciding whether it would be worthwhile to organize a one-day seminar
3. determining who would be committed to continue working on the idea of organizing a seminar targeting a larger audience from various international organizations.

The workshop participants

The workshop included nine participants from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) and the International Anti Corruption Academy (IACA). By design, the participants represented a mix of IT and Non-IT expertise to ensure that not only traditional areas, typically in software development, would be covered.

The workshop

The workshop was hosted by the IAEA and took place in April 2012. It was organized in two parts:

1. Introductory part to provide a basic understanding of agile methods
2. Facilitated discussion on whether Agile could be of interest to international organizations and on ways to promote the idea within the international community

Given the mix of participants, the introductory part aimed to establish a common baseline so that everyone could actively participate in the process. Some light background reading was distributed prior to the meeting to set the stage for the discussions and in preparation for the teamwork exercises planned for the workshop.

The first part also served as the starting point for a discussion on the areas in international organizations to which the basic concepts of Agile could be applied in a meaningful manner. A possible “map” of benefits that Agile might have in the context of an UN-like organization was presented, including not just software development methods but also other areas of management (see below).

A map of how agile might serve international organisations

Consequently, the possible benefits were not limited to Scrum or Extreme Programming (XP) for IT projects but represented a more general use of agile principles in organizations, including:

1. Scrum as development methodology for internal software development
2. Agile principles for other projects than software development, e.g. in organizing conferences
3. Agile principles as a means to facilitate highly productive teams
4. Agile Leadership
5. Agile principles to initiate a new paradigm of collaboration

As these topics are also in the focus of the Platform for Management or PAM, some of their information resources were used as reference material:

The presentation was complemented by an interactive whiteboard sketch describing the various elements of a standard Scrum process.

A long and vivid discussion followed until everyone was sufficiently familiarized with the basic principles of Agile.

Vision and Scope

The team then elaborated on the vision and scope to answer the questions on how and where international organizations can benefit from Agile.

The deliberations resulted in the following vision:

Vision of workshop participants

In a next step, the team defined the scope in a brainstorming session and then prioritized the topics with 3 votes per team member:

Prioritized list of topics

Joep Winkels is Section Head, IT Infrastructure Services, IAEA

Thomas Spielhofer is an agile consultant and trainer and co-editor of the platform for agile management

“Projects are executed by humans. And humans must interact.”

(Cockburn & Highsmith, 2004, p. 159)

COMMUNICATION AS SUCCESS FACTOR IN PROJECTS

Standards such as PMI, IPMA, PRINCE2 offer a large variety of methods and concepts as well as tools and processes for their implementation. When we take a closer look at these standards, we examine that they are based on standardized methods, processes and measurables to improve project management in practice. Mainly, the success factors described in these standards are clear definitions of the project goals, the analysis of hard and soft facts, intense stakeholder and information management, as well as risk management, monitoring and documentation.

Only parts of these standards take social factors, communication management and language aspects into account (Böhm, 2009, p. 92-93). This seems quite restrictive as lack of understanding, prejudice and bad listening can often be experienced in practice – which is quite painful, laboriously and time-consuming, and therefore also expensive (Motschnig & Nykl, 2009, p. 21).

During interviews with project managers who deal with international projects, it stood out that factors like communication, social and linguistic aspects and transparency are evaluated as important in projects as focusing on processes and documentation (Böhm,

2009, p. 104-105). Therefore, in practice project managers should not only focus on the progress measurement, resource management and on dealing with divergences, but also on communication and a common understanding as well as on the acceptance of differences within the project team (Böhm, 2009, p. 106).

Though, the acknowledged project management standards and certification deliver an adequate basis about tools and methods, some important factors are neglected. One cause that the standards do not take such “soft facts” more into account might be that terms like communication and transparency seem hard to grasp and that there is no common understanding of these and what they might cover.

Agile approaches take communication more into account. The agile manifesto states: “Individuals and interactions over processes and tools” (Beck et al., 2001).

A study on “Successful Leadership in the Agile World” (Kaltenecker et al., 2011) by the Platform of Agile Management explored the motivation of companies to change to agility and the effects and challenges of this change. The study detected several suc- cess factors of leadership in an agile surrounding. Those are aspects like adequate change management when implementing agile methodologies, a trustful attitude and the ability of self-governance, but also the quality of the communication and personal communication strength. Also, personal motivation and the support of the middle management play an important role to also carefully accomplish a cultural change (Kaltenecker et al., 2011, p. 29).

Among other aspects, the study detected that communication in agile teams is more intense, more interactive and more cooperative. Moreover, regular feedback enables a communicative environment that supports open communication and the early detection of problems (Kaltenecker et al., 2011, p. 21). Resulting, people in leading positions should have distinctive communicative competencies.

Now the question arises: How can we achieve and implement good communication within our teams? What does good communication actually mean and how can we build up communicative competencies?

When taking a closer look at the PAM study, it can be seen that communication is characterized by higher communication intensity, higher transparency, more clarity and directness. What does that mean for agile management and practice?

TRANSPARENCY ≠ TRANSPARENCY

Agile concepts integrate higher communication intensity through daily stand-up meetings where people have the room to communicate on a daily basis. Succeeding, we will discuss transparency in the context of agile management. Moreover, we will present various aspects of transparency in the course of an agile project. Subsequent, we will describe transparency as seen from a person-centered viewpoint. Additionally, we portray ways of living transparency in the practice of working in a project team.

Transparency is a key value in agile management as it can improve project performance and productivity (Andersen, 2008, p. 250). In general, it is seen as clear and open communication of business information in teams and to customers, keeping the development process transparent and understandable for all involved parties (Ander- son, 2004, p. 47), (Pechau, 2011, p. 3). Robert Galen (2011) shares his understanding of transparency: “From my perspective, it’s the honest and open dialogue about the cur- rent state of software development within a project context.”

Transparency often implies openness, communication and accountability (Andersen,2008, p. 250), (DePaoli, 2011, p. 2). “Openness plays directly to one of Agile’s key concepts: transparency. Openness (and experimentation) encourages us to find creative ways to tell people what we’re doing (Fancher, 2011).”

In the beginning of a project the transparent formulation and acceptance of project goals as well as a clear description of the project team mission is crucial for efficient team interaction (Patzak & Rattay, 2004, p. 57). The mission statement should answer the question: “Why do we work together here and now?” A common understanding of the project goals is tightly connected with a common understanding of the underlying prob- lem to be solved, which requires extensive transparent information. Moreover, transparent project goals and boundary conditions can help to form a shared product vision (Highsmith, 2004, p. 66). During incremental product development, transparency in the

agile team is important to synchronize work and align decisions according to the current project status (Schwaber, 2004). An agile team can manage problems more effectively through transparency, inspection and adaption (Ryu, 2011). To communicate key information, Highsmith (2004) proposes to post it visually and prominently – on walls or whiteboards for collocated teams, or on visual whiteboards for distributed teams.

If we consider other perspectives on communication, we find that in humanistic psychology, especially in the person-centered approach, “transparency” implies a deeper meaning.

Transparent communication, from a person-centered perspective, is openly expressing what is going on within myself, what I think and feel, at this particular moment appropriate for this particular context. It is being in a relationship, not hiding behind a mask. It is an – optimally respectful and empathic – expression of a person’s congruence. The American psychologist Carl R. Rogers and his colleagues discerned three basic attitudes or dispositions, often referred to as core conditions, that, if perceived by the other person in contact, can facilitate personal development and growth: congruence, unconditional positive regard and empathy (Rogers, 1957). The core conditions mutually correlate with each other, as illustrated in figure 2. Unconditional positive regard is an attitude of prizing, acceptance, warmth, non-possessive caring toward the other. Empathy means that a person senses accurately the feelings and personal meanings that are being experienced by the other person and that she communicates this understanding to the other (Rogers, 1978/1998, p.10/11).

figure 2: The Core Conditions (Motschnig & Nykl, 2009, p.122)

Transparency can be seen as an aspect of a person´s congruence – the congruent expression of personal experiencing appropriate in the particular context. The concept of congruence signifies a matching between a part of an ongoing experiencing process in awareness and the self (Rogers, 1959/2009, p. 28/29/30/31/38).  It refers to the internal, relational and ecological integration of a person (Cornelius-White, 2007, p. 198). A congruent person is in a state of openness to experience. “Openness to experience is critical to optimal functioning because it enables the person to receive and process any and all experiences and draw from those experiences to make effective decisions in life (Cain, 2010, p. 22).” In relationship, a congruent person is often perceived as real, genuine, not hiding behind façades or professional fronts (Rogers 1973/2004, p. 276). Congruence implies an empathic, unconditionally prizing approach to the complex variety of personal experience. Being real, congruent is a steady process. “Only slowly can we learn to be truly real (Rogers, 1983, p. 127).” A congruent person is able to live her feelings, be them and to communicate them if appropriate. Transparency doesn´t mean to fully disclose every feeling or thought in every moment, but to be able to clearly communicate those if perceived as relevant. What could this imply for a business environment that is characterized by rapid change and the necessity of sound decisions? Rogers states: “It leads me to the conclusion that the most trustworthy entity in our uncertain world is an individual who is fully open to the two major sources: the data from internal experiencing, and the data from experiencing of the external world. … In such an individual, functioning in a unified way, we have the best possible base for wise ac- tion. It is a process base, not a static authority base. … It represents a continual process of testing hypotheses in thought and action, discarding some, but following others. It recognizes that there is no such thing as static truth, only a series of changing approximations of truth (Rogers, 1978/1998, p. 250).”

Inspired by Rogers, David Ryback (1998) sketches an approach to management that includes openness to personal experience to deal with the demands of the corporate landscape in the twenty-first century marked as intensely competitive as well as mutually interactive at the same time (p. 2). A cardinal rule in creating a business supporting openness to experience is being honest, which Ryback (1998) describes as always telling the truth (p. 60). Such honesty encompasses personal honesty as in personal revelations, being honest about one´s own feelings and intuitions. “By selective sharing of personal feelings and opinions, the executive can forge a stronger sense of group identity, proving herself as a secure leader to whom others can look for inspiration and sup- port. By being sensitive to the issue of the surrounding corporate culture, the emotionally intelligent executive can articulate those concerns in a personally involved context and draw others in to feel personally involved as well (Ryback, 1998, p. 113/114).” Moreover, honesty encloses honesty with business clients. „Being honest with clients and customers means a greater sense of loyalty to them. Ultimately, this will mean better customer relations. It also means taking more initiative to satisfy the client/customer (Ryback, 1998, p. 60/61).”

Peter Senge (1990/2006) sees telling the truth as an effective strategy for dealing with structural conflict. Commitment to the truth means “a relentless willingness to root out the ways we limit or deceive ourselves from seeing what is, and to continually challenge our theories of why things are the way they are. … It also means continually deepening our understanding of the structures underlying current events (p. 148).” An exercise that may help reflecting personal thoughts and feelings, bringing hidden assumptions to the surface and showing how they influence behavior, is the left-hand column exercise. “The ‘left-hand column’ comes from a type of case presentation used by Chris Argyris and his colleagues. It starts with selecting a specific situation where I am interacting with one or several other people in a way that I feel is not working – specifically, that is not producing any apparent learning or moving ahead. I write out a sample of the exchange, in the form of a script, I write the script on the right side of the page. On the left- hand side, I write what I am thinking, but not saying at each stage in the exchange (Senge, 1990/2006, p. 180/181).” Table 1 shows a template for the left-hand column exercise. By making personal thinking and feeling transparent and inquiring others´ points of view, learning can happen that may raise more differentiated and appropriate action.

Table 1: The Left-Hand Column Exercise

Living congruently, being authentic, in work contexts maintaining relationships with others characterized by empathic understanding and rather unconditional positive regard might be a starting point to compensate the missing “soft” or “social” facts and methods in project management. Transparently sharing information, ideas, thoughts, feelings and reactions is basic to building interpersonal trust (Johnson & Johnson, 2006, p. 124), (Ryback, 1998, p. 123). Through communicating personally transparently, honestly, the own business environment may be sustainably and positively influenced as it promotes deepening the understanding of and transforming the structures underlying current events (Senge, 2006, p. 148/239).

Concluding, communication and transparency are key factors in (agile) project management which are hardly considered in project management standards, though experience from practice proves its importance.

Studies with agile teams show that transparency is one aspect to be considered when trying to improve communication (Kaltenecker et al., 2011, p. 26).

Here, the term transparency was viewed from different perspectives: from a business context in an agile project environment, and from a humanist, person-centered viewpoint. Information transparency can be achieved by openly sharing information (e.g. on white boards) whereas developing context-appropriate personal transparency, being and honestly expressing myself in my relationships, is a continuous complex process. In an atmosphere based on unconditional positive regard and empathic mutual understanding, honest transparency may have tremendous facilitative effects (Cain, 2011, p.150).

Additionally, it was shown that transparency can be supportive and is a curial part of well-functioning business or personal relationships.

Resulting, in practice it is important to raise “information transparency” to improve communication flow. But in order to be able to enable sustainable well-functioning relationships it seems necessary to take the attitude forming the concept of congruence in the person-centered approach into account in business settings.

Christina Böhm works as project manager and researcher in the international EU-project “iCom – International Constructive Communication in the Context of ICT” at the Postgraduate Center, University of Vienna, in co-operation with the Masaryk University, Czech Republic.

David Haselberger, Mag.  works as scientific staff in the EU-project iCom

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This work was supported by the European Union’s territorial cooperation program “European Territorial Co-Operation Austria-Czech Republic 2007-2013” of the under the EFRE grant M00171, project “iCom” (Constructive International Communication in the Context of ICT).”

REFERENCES

Andersen, E. S. (2008): Rethinking Project Management: An Organisational Perspec- tive. FT Prentice Hall

Anderson, D. J. (2004): Agile management for software engineering: applying the theory of constraints for business results. The Coad series. Prentice Hall PTR

Beck, Kent/Beedle, Mike/van Bennekum, Arie/Cockburn, Alistar/Cunningham, Ward/Fowler, Martin/Grenning, James/Highsmith, Jim/Hunt, Andrew/Jeffries, Ron/Kern, Jon/Marick, Brian/Martin, Robert C./Mellor, Steve/Schwaber, Ken/Sutherland, Jeff/Thomas, Dave (2001). http://agilemanifesto.org/ [27. 11. 2011]

Böhm, Christina (2009): Projektcontrolling in unternehmensübergreifenden und interna- tionalen Projekten: Ein praxisorientierter Ansatz in Zusammenarbeit mit der ifb Austria AG (Magisterarbeit). Wien: Fachhochschule des bfi Wien, Projektmanagement und In- formationstechnik

Cockburn, Alistair & Highsmith, Jim (Hg.) (2008): The software project manager’s bridge to agility. Unter Mitarbeit von Stacia Broderick und Michele Sliger. 1. Aufl. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Addison-Wesley (The Agile Software Development Series)

Cornelius-White, J. (2007). Congruence as Extensionality. Person-Centered and Expe- riential Psychotherapies, 6(3), 196–204

DePaoli, Michael (2011): Maintaining Collaboration & Transparency Even with Distribut- ed Teams. Online: http://www.agilepalooza.com/SantaClara2011/slidedecks/Maintaining_Collaboration.pdf [6. 12. 2011]

Francher, David (2011): My Day of Agile.

Online: http://davefancher.com/2011/03/31/my-day-of-agile/ [6. 12. 2011]

Galen, Robert (2011): Agile Project Management – The Clarity of Transparency. Online: http://www.projecttimes.com/robert-galen/agile-project-managementthe-clarity-of- transparency.html [6. 12. 2011]

Highsmith, J. (2004): Agile project management: creating innovative products (Agile software development series.). Addison-Wesley

Johnson, David W./Johnson, Frank P. (2006): Joining Together. Group Theory and

Group Skills. Boston: Pearson Education

Kaltenecker, Siegfried/Spielhofer, Thomas/Eybl, Sabine/Schober, Johanna/Jäger, Ste- fan (2011): Erfolgreiche Führung in der Agilen Welt. Eine Studie der PAM. Published by

Siegfried Kaltenecker and Thomas Spielhofer. Vienna: Platform for Agile Management. Online: http://p-a-m.org/2011/11/erfolgreiche-fuhrung-in-der-agilen-welt-eine-studie-der- pam/

Motschnig, Renate &Nykl, Ladislav (2009): Konstruktive Kommunikation: Sich und an- dere verstehen durch personenzentrierte Interaktion. Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta

Patzak, Gerold & Rattay, Günter (2004): Projektmanagement. Leitfaden zum Manage- ment von Projekten, Projektportfolios und projektorientierten Unternehmen. Wien: Linde Verlag

Pechau, J. (2011): Conflicting Value Systems in Agile Software Development Projects.

16th    European    Conference    on    Pattern    Languages    of    Programs.    Online:

http://hillside.net/plop/2011/papers/D-25-Pechau.pdf [6. 12. 2011]

Rogers, C. (1957): The Necessary and Sufficient Conditions of Therapeutic Personality

Change. Journal of Consulting Psychology 21(2), p. 95-103.

Rogers, C. (1959/2009): Eine Theorie der Psychotherapie, der Persönlichkeit und der zwischenmenschlichen Beziehung. München: Ernst Reinhardt Verlag

Rogers, C. R. (1973/2004): Entwicklung der Persönlichkeit. Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta Verlag

Rogers, Carl R. (1978/1998): On Personal Power – Inner Strength and ist revolutionary

Impact. Constable and Robinson Publishing

Rogers, C. R. (1983): Freedom to Learn For The 80´s. New York: Macmillan Publishing

Company

Ryback, D. (1998): Putting emotional intelligence to work: successful leadership is more than IQ. Butterworth-Heinemann

Ryu, Sue (2011): Building an Effective Scrum Team. Online: http://www.agilejournal.com/articles/columns/column-articles/6016-building-an-effective- scrum-team [6. 12. 2011]

Schwaber, K. (2004). Agile project management with Scrum. Professional Series. Mi- crosoft Press

Senge, P. M. (1990/2006): The fifth discipline : the art and practice of the learning or- ganization. London: Random House

Erfoglreiche Agile Führung – was ManagerInnen brauchen um im agilen Umfeld in Führung zu gehen

Sich selbst-organisierende Teams, wie sie Scrum mit sich bringt, stellen für viele Führungskräfte schwieriges Neuland da. Wie schaffe ich als LinienmanagerIn optimale Rahmenbedingungen für hochperformante Teams? Wie behalte ich Überblick und Steuerung eines Projektportfolios ohne wie gewohnt involviert zu sein? Wie gehe ich mit der Sandwich Position zwischen (oft wenig agilen) Stakeholdern und Chefs und meinen agilen Teams um? Viele Führungskräfte sind mit Scrum überfordert und werden eher zum Impediment denn zum Enabler. Wie aber macht man es richtig?

In interaktiver Form möchten wir diese Fragen zur Diskussion stellen und diese Diskussion unter anderem durch folgende Erfahrungswerte anreichern:

• Eine Studie, in der wir 58 Scrum-PraktikerInnen aus 5 verschiedenen Organisationen zu „Erfolgsfaktoren von Führung im agilen Umfeld“ interviewt haben
• Ein Kompetenzmodell, das diese Faktoren in einen größeren Unternehmenszusammenhang einbettet
• Berichte, wie sich diese Kompetenzen im Einzelfall bewährt haben (Case Studies)
• Eine vielfalt an persönlichen Erfahrungen, die wir als Linienmanager, Berater und nicht zuletzt als Herausgeber der Plattform für Agiles Management www.p-a-m.org gemacht haben

Thomas Spielhofer (https://www.xing.com/profile/Thomas_Spielhofer?sc_o=mxb_p) und Siegfried Kaltenecker (http://www.loop-beratung.at/index.php?id=174) freuen sich auf eine spannungsvollen Abend”

Siehe auch: Event auf Xing

Q: Is leadership still privilege of line management?  There are some hints towards leadership as a team sport but it is not fully explored. Isn´t there more interplay between coaching employees and receiving feedback from them, aligning and developing yourself by helping others, getting fresh impulses for your vision?

A: We may not have emphasized this enough, but the reason in the leadership leadership self-development learning cycles (page 77) that we emphasize reflect and learn is to use all the feedback you can get to develop yourself as a leader.  In the on-the-job development teaching model developed by Toyota of North America that we discuss on pages 118 to 119 an important part of the process is getting feedback and input from the people you are developing.  Toyota more than most emphasizes developing the team members–the hourly people on the floor.  The role of team leader is an hourly position and an intermediate step to line management for those who have the motivation and interest.  The team leader is ideally one out of five team members but probably closer to one to seven in reality.  Still one out of seven hourly employees who has gone through intensive development to become a team leader and is being developed by the group leader to hopefully grow into a group leader role (first level of line management) is very unusual outside Toyota in my experience.  So it goes all the way to the floor.

Q: What are the risks or downsides of lean leadership? What could be a potential pitfall to lead in a lean way? How do lean leaders cope with conflicts fostered by fear as much as denial? Does “Toyota Way” necessarily mean there is no disagreement let alone resistance at all?

A: In the final chapter we cite a bunch of leadership models of other management thinkers that have a lot in common with the lean leadership model.  The basic assumptions of our model:  leaders must be committed to self development,  leaders must develop their own competency to develop others,  leaders must be exceptional problem solvers, leaders must deeply understand the work that they lead by going to the gemba, leaders must build winning teams, are not all that unusual in defining any exceptional leader.  So I would rephrase your question as:  Are there risks and downsides to having a business that depends on developing excellent leaders, as opposed to merely okay leaders that do just enough?  I think there are much more risks and downsides to running an organization with mediocre leaders.  I do not think there are excellent lean leaders and excellent leaders of a different ilk.  I think we are defining excellent leadership and arguing it is something that needs to be explicitly cultivated in a disciplined way over long periods of time.  We are arguing that growing leaders from within is generally preferred since outside leaders with “portable management skills” will not have the culture in their DNA.  Some would say that is inbreeding and to get fresh ideas and renew the organization you need a revolving door of super leaders who come from the outside.  There are cases when that may be necessary, if the current leadership is getting stale and not exploring broadly the market and business models and not reflecting enough on themselves and the organization, but that is a need or a turnaround when the organization is failing rather than a recipe for success.

Q: How does it work in other areas than the automotive industry?  Are the case studies of lean leadership outside of Toyota? What about the broader context of economic turbulence? Is the Toyota Way to be applied anytime anywhere? Does it guarantee infinite success?

A: There is nothing in the book that I can see that is in any way unique to the automotive industry.  We, particularly with Gary’s deep experience, simply were using case examples from Toyota to illustrate the points. But when we look at excellent companies of any type we see similar characteristics.  In fact I pointed out in the original book, The Toyota Way, in the final chapter that Jim Collin’s description of level V leaders who come from American companies in many different industries could just as well be describing a Toyota leader. I do see some very specific characteristics in Jim Collin’s work that are very different from many other books about great companies and great leaders such as his emphasis on building culture, leaders who are passionate about their business that they are building to last, leaders who are humble, leaders who are always grooming the next generation of leaders, leaders who deeply understand their business, and more.    On the other hand, in the dynamic world we live in nothing whatsoever guarantees infinite success.  In fact, nothing guarantees that the earth will exist for an infinite time let alone any individual organization.  On the other hand the success of Toyota, going back to Sakichi Toyoda’s automatic loom company back in 1926, means the company has survived for 86 years.  The uninterrupted growth of Toyota Motor Company since after world war II with 50 years of profitability, interrupted only by the Great Recession. is a testament to the leadership.  The fact that Toyota expects to sell more cars in 2012 than ever before in its history after four years of recession, negative publicity in the United States over safety and quality, the worst earthquake in recorded Japanese history, and the worst flooding in Thailand, its Asia outpost, to me demonstrates its resilience and adaptiveness.

Q: How we can truly recognize culture in all its dimensions and how would existing cultures map, over time, to lean leadership? Where to start when an organization and its management are not lean yet? What exactly is the path that leads us from traditional command-and-control to lean management?

A: I always recommend that an organization look back to the forming of the culture, which generally means look back to the founders.  Look for the common elements that allowed the company to be successful over time.  We know the majority of startup companies go out of business within five years so if the company has gone beyond that there are probably some strong foundational elements in its culture.  So build on those–do not start from scratch.  The Toyota Way is Toyota’s vision and it illustrates the power of a strong culture based on the principles Toyota has identified, and I have talked about from the outside, and that can be useful for holding up a mirror to your culture and defining what you want to be.  Then you simply have to start working hard at moving in your True North direction.  Some companies do this very aggressively from the CEO level across the entire enterprise, as Gary and his colleagues were forced to do in the case of Dana.  Others start with pilot areas and learn and then spread the learning in a more controlled way.  What Toyota calls the model areas should be visited often by senior executives who should be working to develop their own skills.

We have some good examples in The Toyota Way to Continuous Improvement (with Jim Franz) and the seven in-depth case studies are from different industries and none are Toyota.  We show the trials and tribulations of trying to move a traditional command and control organization to a lean organization.  In every case some exceptional lean leaders emerged, and in every case it was a struggle to spread it across the organization and sustain it over time.  At some point, if the CEO does not get it, self develop, and become a lean leader (or a level 5 leader), the company will begin to move backward.  It is too hard to maintain the momentum when you are working against the pressures of a CEO who is thinking short-term,  focused on fast achievement of growth and profits, and does not have a passion for building leadership and culture.

Q: Where does the broader context of management, its improvement and renewal fit into lean leadership, as discussed by other authors such as John Kotter, Henry Mintzberg, Stephen Denning, Seth Kahan?

A: There are a lot of bread and butter basics to running a successful organization in today’s rapidly changing world.  We tried to emphasize in our leadership book the connection between a long-term vision, a mid-term business plan, and annual plans through hoshin kanri that achieve business needs and develop people.  But in general the lean movement has focused heavily on operational excellence. Critics who say that operational excellence is not itself a strategy are correct.  There is a lot to understanding the business environment, customer needs, your competition, and creatively evolving your business model and your products and services that cannot be neatly captured in leadership for operational excellence.  What is common between improving operational excellence and forming a business strategy is Deming’s Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA).  Any effect strategy development process must go through an intensive plan stage with a thorough analysis of the environment, including competition.  Based on the broad analysis a vision for the business must be created.  That will lead to more focused initiatives which must be deployed through the organization to get concrete action to achieve the strategy requiring operational excellence.  That leads to checking the results of what is put in practice and adjusting the business vision. Thus the development of even the basic management disciplines, the business model of the company, and operational excellence all require continuous improvement through PDCA.

Q: How do employees perceive and experience lean leadership?  Clearly not all employees are destined to be lean leaders, and some that are, will not be on an “accelerated” path.  How do lean leaders position themselves relative to employees, and how do they draw on the potential and insights of employees?

A: Our experience is that if leaders emerge and are developed who really get the fundamental concepts of lean leadership–respect for people and continuous improvement to achieve challenging goals–working level employees love it.  Many lean case studies have documented the rising morale as companies mature on their lean journey.  In The Toyota Way to Continuous Improvement we have an example from the labs of Henry Ford Health System in which the head of the labs, Richard Zarbo, embarked on his own journey of self discovery to remake himself as a lean leader.  He learned to engage employees and found creative ways to get employees in each work group to come up with process improvements which they share at monthly meetings.  Over five years he was up to thousands of process improvements.  Satisfaction with every aspect of the business, including how coworkers related as friends, went from very mediocre to over 95% satisfaction.  Those who struggle the most are the managers themselves, at any level, who do not understand or want to commit to self development.  If they grew up in a command and control environment and want to continue to lead in that way they will not fit in if the organization culture actually changes and leaves them behind.  Those who do self develop will universally describe what they learned and how they developed as the most important transformation of their careers, and that it has made them better people outside of work.

Q: How many organizations would have the capacity and appetite to embark on a journey of lean leadership? It feels to us there is an intermediate step that is buried in Toyota’s past that we are not privileged to. Liker & Convis however state that you should be able to reach it in 10 to 30 years. Is that a realistic, let alone attractive option for organizations which face an average life-expectancy of less than 20 years?

A: Toyota grew up, starting with the strong leadership of Sakichi Toyoda, living and evolving the Toyota Way in Japan and then intentionally teaching it as they grew globally.  It is hard to define any real intermediate stage.  We can certainly see individual leaders who excelled and those who failed, often leaving the company.  We can also see cases where the leadership pool was diluted and improvement stagnated.  We discuss it in the chapter on “developing others” when Gary was brought to the Toyota plant in Georgetown, Kentucky to become the first American president.  The site was in terrible shape culturally by Toyota standards because of the large number of people who had left because of the big demand from learning from Toyota, as well as rapid growth of the plants.  We describe some of the things Gary and his team did to work to turn around the culture going back to the basics.  Akio Toyoda has described in many interviews, and we quote him a great deal in Toyota Under Fire, how he needed to reinvent Toyota because it was getting stale.  There is never a time that the organization has arrived and will stay really excellent forever without constant reflection, adjustment, and sometimes rebuilding.  I often use the analogy at the individual level of our health.  What is the pathway that will guarantee every person will become healthy for a long and happy life?  What can we do personally to ensure that we will get healthy and stay healthy without adjusting in a disciplined way as we age?  Is there a secret food or a secret exercise that will make you healthy for life.  We know a lot of things that will make you unhealthy and we know a lot to define a vision for leading a healthy lifestyle.  But we have no way of ensuring that every person will buy into the vision or have the discipline to do what it takes every day to live that lifestyle.  Well organizations are not any easier to keep on a healthy, robust path than individuals.  The only benefit an organization has is it can select individuals who already have the potential for disciplined learning and growing, and we can let go people who become serious liabilities to the company.  Individuals have only themselves.  If the vision for the organization is to be short-lived and have make a big splash while it prospers, making as much money as possible, there are many ways to do that without going through the pain and hard work of developing exceptional people and leaders over decades.  But the organization will then fail, or others will come in and lead short-term turnarounds cutting the bad parts, salvaging what is working, and perhaps growing by purchasing other businesses knitting together an organization that makes them profitable until it implodes again.  Not everyone has the passion or vision to be great or to build a great organization.  We are really speaking to those who do have that passion.  For others they can find a way to get by, and perhaps even make themselves personally rich if they get lucky.  So the answer it that for many organizations, maybe most, they will never develop the sustained leadership excellence and culture to be “built to last” in Jim Collins words.  We, and others like Jim Collins,  are providing some insights for those that have the passion and basic competencies to build something truly great for the long term.

What we appreciate

• The book provides missing link to fully understand how a lean organization is built up, nurtured and continuously improved. Simply speaking, you cannot say lean organization without saying lean leadership. Through a balance of theory, practical steps and story telling, Liker & Convis describe the essential ingredients for organizations to prosper in the decade to come. It is an easy read, with concepts that challenges thinking of most contemporary businesses, and once you start thinking of the implications, it even challenges your individual contributions to the world of work.
• Confirmation that the five values that define Toyota Way: spirit of challenge, Kaizen, genchi genbatsu (go and see to deeply understand), teamwork, and respect, do not automatically result in leadership. Trust is an essential, if not the key, element of leadership. Hard cuts, though sometimes inevitable as the Dana case study shows, must be a last resort.
• Liker & Convis offer a clear explanation of Toyota´s leadership development model. Basically, this model consists of 4 levels: (1)commit to self-development, (2) coach and develop others,(3)  support daily kaizen, (4) create vision and align goals. We see the importance of “True North” as overarching vision, which is central to decision making. We see the importance of lean leadership throughout the hierarchy, a need for shared responsibility according to expertise and the concept of leadership as a team sport. Last but not least, we see the importance of first line managers to provide a role model for the behavior they want to see in place.
• The Toyota Way focuses on culture of leadership rather than metrics or processes, and links the cultivation of leadership, as a leader’s primary responsibility. Personally, we were especially impressed by the ways Toyota dealt with its triple crisis (recession, recalls due to technical problems, earthquake & Tsunami). Although facing severe economic problems, the company resisted the temptation to “manage” the crisis by layoffs and used this it as an opportunity to learn and improve instead. In Liker´s words: “The recommended solution to these problems wasn’t fundamental change but increased attention to fundamentals.” This also underscores the interconnection between corporate culture, strategy, and leadership. In other words: attention to culture and leadership is not optional as both have strong impact on the company’s business value and success.
• Acknowledgement that not all individuals are predisposed to leadership and that an enabling environment is not enough.  An emphasis on self-development, a passion to learn and grow in pursuit of mastery. What we appreciated most was the emphatic exclusion of quick fix solutions and the repeated emphasis on ensuring you start with the right people and deliberately grow leaders from there. Progress is discussed in terms of decades, not even years and definitely not in months. This underscores the long-term if not life-long commitment required to grow a lean organization. If there is a recipe for Toyota’s success, according to Liker & Convis “it is a deep, time-consuming, and expensive investment in developing everyone in the organization, and truly believing that your employees are your most precious resource.”
• Valuable reference points and benchmarks of lean leadership presented in a way that encouraged us to think “how would we have behaved in that situation,” which is an enriching exercise even if you are well versed in the values and principles of lean leadership.

What we ask ourselves

Read Dr. Liker’s response to the following questions

• Is leadership still privilege of line management?  There are some hints towards leadership as a team sport but it is not fully explored. Isn´t there more interplay between coaching employees and receiving feedback from them, aligning and developing yourself by helping others, getting fresh impulses for your vision?
• What are the risks or downsides of lean leadership? What could be a potential pitfall to lead in a lean way? How do lean leaders cope with conflicts fostered by fear as much as denial? Does “Toyota Way” necessarily mean there is no disagreement let alone resistance at all?
• How does it work in other areas than the automotive industry?  Are the case studies of lean leadership outside of Toyota? What about the broader context of economic turbulence? Is the Toyota Way to be applied anytime anywhere? Does it guarantee infinite success?
• How we can truly recognize culture in all its dimensions and how would existing cultures map, over time, to lean leadership? Where to start when an organization and its management are not lean yet? What exactly is the path that leads us from traditional command-and-control to lean management?
• Where does the broader context of management, its improvement and renewal fit into lean leadership, as discussed by other authors such as John Kotter, Henry Mintzberg, Stephen Denning, Seth Kahan?
• How do employees perceive and experience lean leadership?  Clearly not all employees are destined to be lean leaders, and some that are, will not be on an “accelerated” path.  How do lean leaders position themselves relative to employees, and how do they draw on the potential and insights of employees?
• How many organizations would have the capacity and appetite to embark on a journey of lean leadership? It feels to us there is an intermediate step that is buried in Toyota’s past that we are not privileged to. Liker & Convis however state that you should be able to reach it in 10 to 30 years. Is that a realistic, let alone attractive option for organizations which face an average life-expectancy of less than 20 years?

What we got out of the book

• A stark reminder that true leadership is an essential yet endless, time-consuming and expensive commitment that regresses the moment you stop injecting energy.
• There are no quick fixes and no recipes.  Even with lean leadership baked into the culture of Toyota, they still have to pay constant attention to its development.
• The true depth of concepts, like Kaizen and gemba walks, that have been watered down through poor interpretation.
• The significant relationship and context required when coaching leaders.
• Respect for people, not as a gentle approach but offering constant challenges to encourage individuals and teams to reach beyond their comfort zone. Respect must not be an excuse for letting things go. As Akio Toyoda puts it in his foreword: “If we do not give people accurate feedback based on real behavior they are not growing and we are not respecting them.”
• A benchmark for what investment in people can be.
• When selecting people, mindset and culture are more important than skill.

Jeffrey K. Liker, Gary L. Convis: The Toyota Way to Lean Leadership. Achieving and Sustaining Excellence Through Leadership Development.New York (McGraw Hill) 2012.

Find out more about Jeffrey K. Liker and The Toyota Way

Find out more about the co-author of this review: Marius de Beer is a software engineer, coach, consultant, mentor and trainer.

Dear Organizers of the Stoos Gathering

I am sorry that I cannot join you. At the same time I am happy about the great response to your initiative. Thank you for the invitation to contribute at least some ideas via email. Here is my 2 cents’ worth:

I am still wondering if a big “revolutionary” or “radical” gesture is helpful in winning over managers. On the one hand, this gesture is perhaps too much of the same in terms of “heroic management”, where you are supposed to be the solution hero for every problem. On the other hand, remembering Maestro Senge´s “People don´t resist change. They resist being changed”, I doubt that a revolutionary approach shows appropriate respect to managers today.
As to the expected outcome of the Stoos Gathering, I would be happy to learn more about:

• • getting in touch with managers and helping them to start their own learning journeys (e.g. by clarifying what´s in it for them in the short-term as well as a long-term perspective);
• • starting with the change from where they are right now, appreciating that there are many things to build on and continue;
• • practical ways of building trust and fostering relationship, while addressing critical aspects of current management practices;.
• • the essential combination of self-confidence and humility on the side of the potential helper (coach/consultant/you name it).

Cannot butI hope that my 2c’s worth make sense!

Good luck to you all,

Sigi

Introduction

Allegedly one core benefit of agile methods is an increase in productivity. That seems intuitive, as we know that improving teamwork pays off in terms of productivity at least over a longer period. Human interaction and collaboration is one focal point of agile methods after all. Agile methods such as Scrum for one incorporate wisdom that is much older than agile methods, such as the positive effects of co-location and thereby induced direct communication. But Scrum furthermore advocates cross-functional teams with direct customer interaction. It also allows the teams to self-organize. All of these points could be contributing factors to high-performing teams. More on how to create high performing teams can, for example, be found at http://p-a-m.org/2011/09/high-performing-teams/. This article now focuses on how well proven the productivity gains are based on studies of real cases.

How to measure productivity

But how can we measure productivity gains by agile methods in real life? Unfortunately productivity in software engineering still appears quite difficult to measure even in the 21^st century. One way would be to measure overall business output. But typically the overall output of software companies is determined by more factors than the output of its engineering. We would thus have difficulties isolating the impact of agile methods from other contributing factors. Other known approaches are synthetic benchmarks such as the function point analysis or – more simply – the lines of code (LOC) produced in a certain interval per FTE (Full Time Equivalent). Both have their shortcomings in measuring productivity. Particularly LOC as the older method does not sufficiently regard the complexity of the problem being solved: a hundred lines in programming a critical kernel function are hardly equivalent to hundred lines of standard web interfaces. Nor does it consider the quality of the implementation applied: good, state-of-the-art, object-oriented design might deliberately pursue lower LOC rates. Furthermore, many benchmarks are impeded by their own intention: some create a mirror of more or less comparable companies (or projects within one single organization), for example one using agile methods the other not. Unfortunately, the company or project that is reflected rather poorly in this mirror will be reluctant to have the outcome made public (an obstruction that probably goes for using any benchmarking).

Further complexity in productivity measurement is added by the circumstance that productivity is not an isolated factor. Even if we managed to compare projects where all other factors, such as product quality, are similar at a certain point in time, we would still face a possible trade-off: high short-term output could have been gained by piling up technical debt. In consequence, the outcome of a team should ideally be evaluated over the life cycle of a solution. A short-term solution might produce quicker results at the expense of maintainability; a more sustainable approach will consider the longer term with sufficient focus on product quality. But few researchers have the patience to conduct their studies over a stretch of 5-10 years. We certainly wouldn’t:)

Real-world studies

Yet there are studies to be found that take on the challenge. To start with, Scrum founder Jeff Sutherland tackled the question over years. He has delivered both productivity comparisons of companies as well as guidelines on how to achieve what he calls “hyper-performing teams”. (For instance see his presentation on “systematically achieving hyperproductivity”: http://jeffsutherland.com/PracticalRoadmapGoogle14Dec2009.pdf, or his response to the specific case of a company: http://scrum.jeffsutherland.com/2008/09/shock-therapy-bootstrapping.html). As far as the productivity comparison is concerned, again one must ask the question of how the data is measured. In the case of the presentation above, Jeff Sutherland uses velocity as a yardstick (he used other methods on other occasions). What does that measurement tell us? Assuming that the companies in this example follow the Scrum methodology, “velocity” tells us how the team rated the complexity of all of their own stories (requirements) implemented during one sprint. The yardstick is story points, an abstract unit, addressing relative and not absolute size, in a way that is not standardized – not even within the same organization. So we compare the subjective rating of two teams in an abstract currency. What does that tell us? It can certainly give us indications to formulate hypotheses of how productivity evolves with agile methods. But can it prove productivity gains of one team over time, or can it reliably measure productivity differences between two teams? We think not.

Other sources provided individual case studies such as by Eric D. Brown (http://ericbrown.com/agile-project-management-product-strategy-a-case-study.htm): “85% of the product features in half the time at less than half the cost.” Studies based on broader data have been conducted by universities and large companies. An overview of such studies has been provided David Rico et al. in “The Business Value of Agile Software Methods” (J.Ross Publishing, 2009). While the book delivers a good overview of studies, we found the conclusions derived to be… well… breathtaking. We learned that agile methods are 18 times as cost-effective as conventional methods. Quite impressive! But what does the figure 18 mean? Taking a closer look at the metrics revealed that Rico et al. focused on LOC per hour and number of defects. We can follow the qualitative arguments provided – that using agile methods leads to more code being produced and the code being of higher quality. But we are hesitant to believe that methods can be measured accordingly in such a one-dimensional way. Beside the fact that the old LOC measurement seems a bit outdated, we are uncertain how this metric is applied in this meta-study: it is unclear to us how the data across many studies with different methodologies had been compared. However, an interesting aspect becomes overt if we crosscheck the studies quoted by Rico et al: many of the studies quoted show significant improvements in productivity when applying agile methods, many of them around 80%. However the researchers measured it, they came to similar conclusions regarding productivity. So if we choose to live with the methodological questions raised above, this is a strong piece of evidence of productivity gains by applying agile methods.

Conclusions

All in all we see a reliable indication that productivity gains are to be expected by implementing agile methods, given they are properly applied in an enabling environment. That goes for increased output before a release due to high-performing teams, as well as for reduced maintenance effort after the release due to better software quality. We also acknowledge that determining the impact of organizational changes on productivity remains haphazard. Finding a quantitative indication in hard currency on what can be expected by introducing agile methods might have to wait for some time to come.

On December 7th, 2011, I was kindly invited to join the Scrum Meeting in Karlsruhe. The topic that day was “leadership in agile organisations”. A great opportunity for this platform to learn more about what Scrum practitioners, coaches and managers in Karlsruhe, a city with a strong agile tradition, expect from agile leadership. At the beginning of the event I was given room for a short presentation regarding the results of our study “successful agile leadership” (http://p-a-m.org/2011/06/exec-summary-of-the-study-on-successful-agile-leadership/). Furthermore, we went through the draft of the agile leadership model that Sigi Kaltenecker and I had developed. This presentation was followed by a vivid discussion by the group. Before the group diverted into smaller groups with informal (but no less vivid) talks, the facilitators gathered a round of structured feedback: each participant was asked 1.) what she/he would take home from this event and 2.) what could be improved in the agile leadership model.

What the participants take with them:

What the participants think we can change/improve:

What I take with me:

• The reverberation of a very warm hosting and an unobtrusive yet very effective event facilitation by Jürgen Hoffmann and Heiko Stapf. Thank you, guys!
• The impression of a very well established Scrum community: a group around 30 people having vivid and sometimes controversial talks, and yet being able to moderate themselves -only very few interventions by the facilitators were made. Talking about team building and talking about scrum masters/facilitators making themselves superfluous by enabling the team to lead a constructive dialogue by their own means -this was an impressive example for me to behold.
• A lot of attention and resonance regarding the topic “agile leadership”
• A list of specific feedback to our agile leadership model for us to chew on over the next months. Thanks to all the participants, this is very valuable for us to further improve the model

On the one hand this concept reflects a deep change in what it means to successfully lead teams and organizations in the 21st century. On the other hand the concept uses soccer as a metaphor for agile team work. First of all, Slide 5 of the presentation at the Scrum Safari in Cape Town summarizes some of the most important differences between ”traditional leadership“ and ”leadership as a team sport”. Whereas the traditional approach builds on a leader who acts as a single point of authority, a privileged decision-maker and a one-way-street communicator, leadership as a team sport takes a very different route. Here, the focus is on a dense network of reciprocal relationships, a goal-oriented combination of diverse perspectives, open communication, team-based decision-making and professional conflict resolution. Performance is not driven by command-and-control anymore – it is driven by mutual understanding and helping. Success is the result of the flexible collaboration of various forces. In other words, everyone is allowed to take the lead whenever this seems to be necessary for the benefit of the whole team. Leadership of this collaboration is therefore neither limited to a formal position (e.g. the team lead) nor to a single person (e.g. one key player). On the contrary, as in soccer every player can set important impulses, make the decisive pass, strike whenever a position seems to be promising and score for the benefit of the whole team. As we all know, a defender can as well get the decisive goal as a midfielder or a forward.

What can we learn from soccer for leading in an agile environment? Perhaps, this is the most important lesson: to win a game, i.e. to be successful as a team depends on the willingness to help each other. This help consists of running to be in the right place at the right time, whether you have the ball or not. For sure, the contribution of each player in terms of passes completed and importance for strategy or tactics is always different. As the network analysis shows (see Slide 6), there are always players who are more active or agile. But one must not forget that this agility does not necessarily mean that the most active ones dominate the whole game. Neither does the coach. Actually, his influence is quite limited. A soccer team is a self-organizing unit following a very specific dynamics. Slide 7 reminds us of the fact that these dynamics is also strongly influenced by the broader organizational context of the soccer club´s management, its fans or the sponsors who spend a lot of money to see “their” team win.

Likewise, in organizations leadership is more about the collective than it is about a single manager or employee. And it is definitely more about the actual relationship of this collective with its customers (“sponsors”) and stakeholders (“fans”). In other words, it is as much about the specific qualities and competences that the team can actually realize as it is about your opportunity to instantly create value for customers and stakeholders.

What we have learned from our interviews with diverse practitioners during the study on “Successful Leadership in an Agile World” mirrors our own experience as managers and consultants who have been involved in different companies. The lesson, in a nutshell: effective cross-cultural, hierarchy-bridging collaboration of different members is a key factor for success. This success factor is also the focus of a current case study which is briefly presented in the second part of the slide show (see Slide 8). In this case, the IT department of a mid-sized media company realized leadership as a team sport by

• mindfully contracting with the CTO, clarifying the idea of a “fresh start”, the problems to be solved, the “most valuable players” to be included and the expected results to be tracked.
• building a core team for driving the “fresh start”. This team consisted of members from different teams, areas of expertise and hierarchy levels (besides the initial idea of a rotating membership which was actually never realized);
• kicking off the “fresh start” by creating and aligning “mission statements” from diverse perspectives, identifying the most important stakeholders and their mutual relationships as well as running a classical retrospective identifying what had gone well so far, what had not gone well and what the team thought they can learn from their experience;
• conducting interviews with the identified customers and stakeholders, distilling their most important needs and pains in order to make sure that the so-called “re-loading of agile principles” delights customers (or at least meets their interests);
• facilitating a large group event with all members of the IT unit, re-creating the missions statements, presenting what the core team had learned from their interviews, openly discussing the results on cross-functional table groups and collectively defining and prioritizing measures for success;
• monitoring these measures and continuously inspecting and adapting them;
• presenting stories of successful change including intense peer consulting on different levels (all ScrumMasters, all Product Owners and almost all line managers in homogenous groups to foster their learning processes according to their specific roles);
• coaching of ScrumMasters and training of Product Owners by external experts;
• agile leadership training of a hierarchy-bridging group of managers;
• regular retrospecting of the “fresh start” change process and its management;
• developing a strong culture of continuous learning and improvement.

The importance of leadership as a team sport is also reflected by the current theoretical discussion on leadership and organizational design. Indeed, leadership as a team sport is not a new concept in the academic field. Katzenbach and Smith´s landmark book on „The Wisdom of Teams. Creating the High-Performing Organization“, first published in 1993,  was one of the first books addressing the concept of „shared leadership“. According to Katzenbach and Smith, leadership is shared when

• everyone takes responsibility for the team´s success as well as for individual growth;
• results are achieved and presented collectively;
• authority is distributed according to expertise;
• communication creates a network of trustful relationships;
• important decision are aligned with each team member;
• processes are reviewed regularly and adapted if needed;
• the quality of collaboration is also on the agenda for regular retrospection.

With his concept of a “leaderful practice“, Joseph A. Raelin even goes beyond Katzenbach and Smith´s ideas. Raelin defines four qualities of contemporary leadership:

1.)     ”concurrent“, i.e. there is not only one person leading at one time but a lot of team members;

2.)     “collective“, i.e. leadership is driven by the informal communication and decision-marking of various experts rather than formal authority;

3.)     ”collaborative“, i.e. it is about intense team work;

4.)     ”compassionate“, i.e. based on individual responsibility for the team´s success and mutual growth.

As Raelin puts it, we need organizations that give everybody the opportunity to lead and set decisive impulses that potentially make a difference – according to the organization´s current situation and the needed expertise. ”The essence of leadership is collaboration and mutuality.”