Excerpt - How Much Autonomy Should Teams get from Their Agile Leader?

 As I was doing some exploring this weekend, I came across a great article that resonated with me on so many levels.  I'm sharing an excerpt of the content here with you along with some thoughts to consider as you continue your agile journey!  The full article can be found here if you're interested.

 Ownership?

When the work is complex, when teams have to grow continuously, and when employees have to find creative solutions every day to really help customers, something special is needed to be successful. When every situation, challenge, and customer is too unique, people need to be empowered to think and decide for themselves. Ownership ensures that they think outside the box to come up with innovative solutions that really help customers. In case of unexpected problems, difficult challenges, or when things go wrong, ownership ensures that teams feel responsible to solve this. They don’t have to wait for others to come up with solutions. When they feel ownership, they don’t blame others for their challenges. Even when it gets tough, these teams continue to look for solutions and find opportunities. This is crucial because in complex environments, solutions can only be found by exploring and experimenting, learning from failures, and continuously growing as a team. Ownership gives them momentum to overcome unexpected challenges and obstacles.

As a leader, it’s wonderful to see teams take ownership. Not only is this often the only way to be successful, but it also gives a deep sense of satisfaction to leaders. It’s the agile leader’s job to create an environment in which people and teams grow, work together, laugh, build trust, and do beyond-exceptional things for the customers. Micromanaging—telling people which tasks they have to do and making all kinds of small decisions—is not only too slow in this rapid world, but it also doesn’t bring out the best in people. It often kills their brainpower, their creativity, and the synergy within the teams. Again: agile leaders create a working environment in which employees thrive and let them be proud on their work.

It’s the agile leader’s job to create an environment in which people and teams grow, work together, laugh, build trust, and feel proud on the things they do for their customers.

But what is Ownership?

Ownership is the mental state of a team when they feel accountable for their results. Teams that pick-up ownership voluntarily are teams that take responsibility for the results of the product or service. These teams are proactive and have the passion and energy to really make an impact for the users of their product. They work together, give each other feedback, continue, are open minded, and learn continuously. They seek solutions and collaboration and are not searching for excuses. They also help other teams to grow. As entrepreneurs, they take ownership of both the strategy and the way it is implemented. In addition, they realize that they own their own challenges, solutions, and customers. The product or service feels like their own child in a beautiful way. This gives teams pride, creativity, energy, passion, and satisfaction in their work.

And how much Autonomy should a team get?

When should a specific team get more autonomy? Or when should the leader intervene? This depends on the maturity of the team. A highly mature team can independently organize their work and achieve great results, but a team just starting still needs a lot of help, guidance, and support. If the team is very mature and the agile leader gives little freedom and often intervenes, the team will become frustrated and passive; they will no longer come up with solutions themselves. Good people will leave, and if they don’t they will just passively do what they are told to do. Low quality and high risk will result. The team actually needs more space, and the manager should let go a lot more.

On the other hand, it also does not work if a team that is just starting out gets too much freedom from the manager. The team feels lost; they do not know exactly what they have to do, and they can’t assess the risks themselves. The team itself cannot come up with solutions on their own because they lack sufficient knowledge. This, too, results in good people leaving. The people who stay experience frustration from the lack of clarity, and they slip into passivity, also resulting in low quality and high risk. Although the results are the same, the team needs less space, and the manager must intervene by increasing the borders and offering concrete help.

To know when to let go and when to step in is a daunting challenge. Based purely on signals of passivity, low quality, employees who leave, and lack of improvement, the agile leader can’t know whether intervention or letting go is best; he must first know the maturity of the team to know how much freedom they need in order to take ownership. But the big question is: how do you know the maturity of the team? Can the team members decide that for themselves? How can the manager know for certain? Experience has shown that the answer can only be found by talking about it together. The Ownership Model helps to facilitate this discussion, making it clear whether intervention is necessary or whether to let go is the better option.

Two Red Zones

The two red zones occur when freedom and maturity are not in balance.

• Too much freedom: Chaos. If the team is given more freedom than matches their maturity, they won’t take ownership. They feel lost, and with too many opportunities and uncertainties, they lack the perspective to make effective choices. Because they can’t adequately anticipate the consequences of their choices, it ends up in chaos. As a consequence, they will experience frustration and demotivation. The rest of the company may be exposed to harmful consequences.
• Too little freedom: Captive. If the team is given less freedom than matches their maturity, they will feel captive or imprisoned by their environment. They lack the room for initiative; they will just follow orders and they will be unable to grow as a team and develop their own working methods. As a consequence, they will also experience frustration and demotivation, which may affect the quality of the product or service they deliver and the satisfaction of the customers of those products or services.

So now what?

One of my takeaways from this article is that giving your teams ownership is not a static activity.  As teams mature and evolve over time, as they encounter new obstacles or tackle new objectives -the concept of their level of ownership really evolves as well.  Our customer's needs change.  By extension, that means our team's goals and objectives change as well.  It means that the conversation WITH our teams needs to evolve and grow over time as well.  

You may be wondering "Coach Dan, how can we continue to create an environment where our teams have the right level of ownership to be able to be customer focused and agile?"  That's a great question!  Here are some things to consider and try!

• Share your vision - and how the team's outcomes are making a meaningful contribution toward achieving that vision.  Seeing how their day to day activities connect with the value we deliver to our customer definitely creates a culture of ownership. Bonus activity - Want to amp up the ownership of a more mature team?  Show them how THEY have influenced the vision and direction you've outlined!
• Challenge them with the "what" - encourage them to figure out the "how".  Teams that feel empowered to solve their problems, or chase their opportunities are highly invested in delivering high quality results.
• Let them solve their own problems.  Become less of a "here's how you go fix this" person and more of a "what do you think we should do" person.  
• Pressure test!  Pressure test!  Pressure Test!  Help them think through their decisions.  If you are uncomfortable with a direction - point them to resources that will help sharpen their decision.  "Opening the kimono" so to speak, and showing them how your decision making process works can help your teams develop new skills and help to not only mature that team, but encourages them to take more ownership.
• Build confidence!  Celebrate the successes AND the failures.  Lessons are everywhere, and taking the lessons from both successes and failures help teams feel more confidence in their NEXT campaign, project, program, whatever.  Acknowledge.... ask what we can learn...  ask what we are doing differently next time... and celebrate!
• Continue the conversation.  Teams evolve and change over time.  Their comfort level for feeling ownership will also evolve over time.  Teams that pivot to new objectives, or have significant changes to their backlog / stakeholders / whatever may be hesitant to take ownership.  Give them space and encouragement.  They got this!

There are many more things to try, and I'd love to learn from YOU!  What are you trying and learning from, to help your team and team members increase their ownership?\

We all win together.