Agility as a movement started with software developers uncovering better ways of doing what they do. Today that movement is driving even business leaders to rethink how they lead their organizations. What does it mean to “be” agile? How can agility be applied to leading organizations? Where do successful agile leaders start? Three stories, three secrets and three tips to apply agility to your life and work and unlock your potential as an executive or a manager.

1. Three secrets of Agile Leaders:
Leading others by leading yourself
Peter Stevens
Author, Speaker, Trainer & Executive Coach @ Saat Network

2. Who is in the room? Would you consider yourself a…
• Developer – you design, create, test or deploy a product or service
• Agile Developer – you subscribe to the values and principles of the
Agile Manifesto
• Anti-Agile – you’re one of those developers who hate “Agile”
• Scrum Leader – you serve as Agile Coach, Scrum Master or Product
Owner
• Manager– Project, Team or Group Manager
• C-Level Manager – You have overall responsibility for your company
or business unit
• Anyone else?

3. Meet Peter Stevens
HB-DGI photo courtesy of Hervé Girard
“Mr. What Really Matters”

4. Denning’s 3 Laws
What does it mean to be agile?
“Agile Manifesto” “Fake” Agility

5. What is agility?
User Stories
SAFe
Sprint
Scrum
Planning
Poker
Story Points
Product
Backlog
Scrum Master
CI/CD
Pair
Programming
Kanban
LeSS
Product
Owner

7. IMHO the first sentence represents the Agile mindset

8. IMHO the first sentences represents the Agile mindset
Learning
Collaboration
Purpose

9. Agility is
Purpose
Learning Collaboration

10. Do you want to be agile?
• Remember your best project?
• What made it a great project?
• Take a look at the agile values
and principles…
• How do the values and
principles match with your
experience?
• Once you understand it, most
people what to be agile

11. Purpose
Learning Collaboration
Fake Agility - 1
This has nothing to do with me

12. Fake Agility - 2
User
Stories
SAFe
Sprint
Scrum
Planning
Poker
Story
Points
Product
Backlog
Scrum
Master
CI/CD
Pair
Programming
Kanban
Product
Owner
LeSSDo Scrum!

13. What does it mean to be agile?
Steve Denning’s Three “Laws” of Agile Organizations
• Law of the Customer
• Focus on customer needs, both existing customers, and even more importantly, new
customers and new markets
• Law of the Network
• Information flows without friction through the organization to seize opportunities or fix
problems
• Law of Small Teams
• Get business and technology working together efficiently to create customer-centric
products

14. Agility is
Customer
Network Small Teams

15. Agility is
Customer
Network
Small Teams
Purpose
Learning
Collaboration

16. Most wishes
from executives on their organizations
map to
one of the three laws of agility.

17. Agility has become a topic for leadership
https://www.wsj.com/articles/are-you-agile-enough-for-agile-management-11565607600https://hbr.org/2016/05/embracing-agile

18. I’d like to share three examples of successful leaders and
reveal their secrets of agile leadership
Secret 3Secret 2Secret 1

19. Change is easy if you want to do it
First Secret:

20. How I lost
10kg

21. “Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these
were largely concerned with the movements of small green pieces of
paper, which is odd because on the whole it wasn’t the small green
pieces of paper that were unhappy.”
-- Douglas Adams

22. I don’t like how sugar makes me feel.
So I want to avoid sugar and carbohydrates.

23. Imagine you’re the captain of a
sailing ship…

24. What happens if you are
caught in storm?

25. Christmas represented a severe thunderstorm!
“They are good,
they are really good”
SugarPressure.com: Trader Joe's Milk Chocolate Peanut Butter Cups
https://www.sugarpressure.com/2010/12/trader-joes-milk-chocolate-peanut-butter-cups.html

26. Do I want to get back on course?

27. If you want to go there,
you’ll get back on course

28. Tip:
You are the captain of your ship!
Change is easy if you want to do it

29. Three secrets of agile leadership
Secret 3Secret 2
Change is easy
if you want to
do it

30. Be Clear on
What Really Matters
Second Secret:

31. How to create alignment among 400,000 people
Every member of the Apollo
mission knew:
1. We are going to the moon
2. It’s not going to fail because of
me
3. If something goes wrong…
Apollo 11 Ready for Launch

32. How to create alignment among 400,000 people
Every member of the Apollo
mission knew:
1. We are going to the moon
2. It’s not going to fail because of
me
3. If something goes wrong,
remember item 1
Chandrayaan 2 Ready for Launch

33. Joerg Ewald
General Manager
Volirium AG
To save my
company, I first
needed to take
care of myself

34. To get the right things done,
master three basic skills
Doing Work
QuestioningSetting Priorities

35. Scrum defines a role to address each aspect
Solves the Problem – Development Team
Voice of Common Sense
Scrum Master
Voice of the Customer
Product Owner

36. For individuals, Head, Body and Heart
must cover all three Doing Work
Body
Questioning
Heart
Setting Priorities
Head

37. Personal Agility is the gateway for people who don’t work
in teams (like executives)

39. Tip:
Get Clarity on What Really Matters and
Communicate it right away
People will notice the difference right away
Clarity Can Be Transformational

40. Three secrets of agile leadership
Secret 3
Create clarity
on
what really
matters
Change is easy
if you want to
do it

41. Software developers
have solved
your biggest issues!
Third Secret:

42. Walter Stulzer
Executive Director
FutureWorks.ch
We wanted to
change,
but we literally
could not.

43. Situation
Futureworksemergesoutofthe
fissionofalargerpartnership
Walterwantstostepbackfrom
dailybusiness,passthetorchtoa
functionalleadership
Theydedicated10%oftheir
leadershipcapacityto
improvementand
startmanyinitiatives
Noneofthegoalshavebeen
achieved
Two years go by…
Image ©2019 Peter Stevens
Licensed CC-BY-NC-ND

44. Second try, they worked in Sprints (focused)
Waltercommittedtobeingpartof
thesolution,trainedwithhis
leadershipteamon
ScrumandPersonalAgility
Theydedicated10%oftheir
leadershipcapacityto
improvementandstartworkingon
afewinitiativesatatime
Allofthegoalshadbeenachieved
Six months go by…
Image ©2019 Peter Stevens
Licensed CC-BY-NC-ND

45. Six months later…
• “We accomplished everything needed
to achieve our initial goals.
• “Half of our initial ideas proved unnecessary, so we didn't do them.
• “We were able to achieve all our goals with ½ the work & ¼ of the time
• “And the the results are already visible in our finances!”
-- Walter Stultzer, Executive Director, Futureworks AG

46. How Walter’s team did it
• “I committed to making this a
success
• “I communicated WHY, then WHAT
• “We applied Scrum to improving
the company
• “Every three weeks or so, my
management and I got together…
• “Personal Agility was the most
important part of all

47. Source: © fotolia.com
Do you
have
too
much
to do
but
not
enough
time
to do it?

48. Capacity
Given that you have too much to do,
how will you invest your capacity?
Waste
Stuff That
Matters!
Demand
“to do’s”

49. Initiatives
By stretching yourself too thin, you slow to a crawl
Waste
Cap
acit
y
Stuff That
Matters!

50. Impact means doing what matters
Stuff That
Matters!
Waste
Capacity
Demand
“to do’s”

51. What are the top agile practices used in Development?
• Daily standup
• Sprint/iteration planning
• Retrospectives
• Sprint/iteration review
• Short iterations
Source: VersionOne, 12th Annual State of Agile Report, 2018

52. As part of their job to improve your organization,
does you manager…?
Practice
• Daily standup
• Sprint/iteration planning
• Retrospectives
• Sprint/iteration review
• Short iterations
% of development teams that use
• 90%
• 88%
• 85%
• 80%
• 69%
Source: VersionOne, 12th Annual State of Agile Report, 2018

53. Speed comparison
This is you working on one thing at time
1 week

54. 1 week
20 weeks
Speed comparison
This is you working on five things at once
1
2
3
4
5

55. There is a huge potential
to improve company performance
by eliminating excessive multitasking in management.

56. Tip: Start with Yourself
Apply Techniques from your Dev Teams
Apply Agility to Leadership

57. How to apply these three secrets of agile leadership
Apply Agility to
Leadership
Create clarity
on
what really
matters
Change is easy
if you want to
do it

58. Would you like to be the next Futureworks?
Walter Stulzer, Executive Director

59. Start with yourself
Individual
Apply Personal Agility
to your life or project

60. How to become an agile leader?
Leadership
Product Development
Apply Personal Agility
to everything you can’t delegate
Executive
Action Team
Product
Team
Product
TeamProduct
TeamProduct
TeamProduct
Team
viral, invitation, not commanded

61. https://saat-network.ch/tenhttps://saat-network.ch/ebk

62. Would you like to be like Walter?
• Peter Stevens
• Co-Founder
Personal Agility Institute
• peter@saat-network.ch
• @peterstev
Walter Stulzer, Executive Director

63. Thank You!