insynergi®

T: +44 (0)203 6510066 | E: info@insynergi.org | www.insynergi.org

RELEASING POTENTIAL:

DevelopingAgile Teams and Leaders

RELEASING POTENTIAL:Developing Agile Teams and Leaders

Is training as we know it dead?

An agile team is able to act quickly, adapting rapidly to drivers for change coming from inside or outside the business. It is resilient and responsive to changes resulting from many di�erent situations including restructure, changing market conditions, diversi�cation or merger and acquisition. The most e�ective agile teams have great leaders, capable of inspiring and empowering sta�.

‘Agile’ the method is not new – it started life in software development – and many organi-sations have invested heavily to train sta� in the ‘Agile’ approach. More recently agile or business agility has become synonymous with rapid delivery and pervades all aspects of business operations. Yet despite the training ticking all the boxes, too often there is a failure to translate agile thinking into day-to-day workplace reality and organisations are not reaping the expected bene�ts of responsiveness, �exibility and innovation.

Is training as we know it dead? Most management professionals have had some project or change management training and know what a good leader or an agile team should look like. While some people may still require further training, many HR and L&D professionals as well as project and programme managers do not need more of the same. They know all the theory – the di�culty is in putting this theory into practice.

This whitepaper sets out how to bridge the gap between theory and reality and will help professionals gain a clear idea of how best to develop agile teams comprising high per-forming sta� and great leaders.

Changing expectations

A number of factors are driving the need for agility in teams. Globalisation and the virtual nature of collaboration now mean that people in locations across the globe have to work more closely together. In this borderless workplace, a more dispersed and international workforce is increasingly formed into temporary teams taking on project-based assign-ments. New team members have to be selected and teams have to form faster than ever and then disband e�ciently ready to create new teams as needed. Added to this, there is more variation in supply chain arrangements than ever before, with new collaborations inside and outside the business.

Global austerity has also driven the need for teams to be faster, cheaper and more e�ec-tive, delivering products and services quickly both to internal and external customers while keeping costs to a minimum. As teams succeed in delivering more with less, often working 24/7 due to globalisation and the need to work across time zones, there is an expectation of ever-increasing rates of service delivery.

24:7GLOBALISATION

Bridging the gap between theory and practice

In this agile environment, today’s middle management needs knowledge to solve prob-lems but more importantly that knowledge must be supported by the soft skills to make the right judgment call and act quickly when faced with a problem. Issues are rarely one dimensional and detailed technical knowledge has to be complemented with an aware-ness of emotional intelligence when dealing with people.

Just about every middle manager is running projects today, whether they call themselves a project manager or not. They may understand the theory of the project management process and be comfortable de�ning the project at the start, guiding it through to comple-tion and wrapping it up at the end. However, in each individual project there will be certain steps in the accepted project management process that are unnecessary this time. Manag-ers need to know that they are empowered to skip those steps provided they understand the inherent risk in doing so.

Middle managers increasingly have all the knowledge they need to manage projects but often lack the con�dence to deliver. This is a gap in capability that might be better addressed through coaching and mentoring rather than with traditional training. The practical application of skills is the missing piece of the jigsaw and a coach or mentor, internally or externally sourced, can help guide the manager to �ll that gap.

A mentor will have �rst hand experience of the process and can tell the manager how to approach a particular situation. A coach, on the other hand, will draw out the issues and work through a solution with the manager. The latter has coaching skills rather than being an expert in the particular �eld. A coach who can sit alongside a manager when needed and provide feedback when (s)he is uncertain of the next step is invaluable in bridging the gap between theoretical models and practical results. This in turn builds con�dence in the manager’s capability to deliver.

PRACTICALAPPLICATION

OF SKILLS

THEORY PRACTICE

Mitigate against losing talent

One of the more visible green shoots of economic recovery is the increasing number of job adverts for project management roles as businesses feel able to invest in change. In its report ‘Predictions for 2015: Redesigning the Organisation for A Rapidly Changing World’, Bersin by Deloitte comments, “Employers, once in a position of power over employees, are no longer in control. Today, thanks to tremendous transparency in the job market (driven by Twitter, LinkedIn, and other online professional networks), people with in-demand skills are �ooded with targeted job opportunities online” .

Employers, once in a position of power over employees, are no longer in control.

Star project managers and skilled people are in demand and could leave at any time. Put-ting in place great leaders and agile teams will go a long way towards mitigating the risk of losing talent. The opportunity to develop and grow could and should be an internal one rather than a reason to work elsewhere.

The �rst step is to �nd out exactly what capability the organisation has right now. An audit of the organisation’s skills and competence could reveal hidden talents and knowledge as well as identifying any gaps. It is important not to cut back on sta� development. The clichéd view of “If I train my people they will be quali�ed to leave” could back�re as employees are attracted by new roles that appear to o�er more opportunities to develop. However the right sort of sta� development is key to motivating individuals and a great deal of frustration can arise from an inability to execute projects using newly acquired skills.

Tim Harford, author of the book “Adapt”, which sets out the case for adaptive processes, argues that every business, once it is successful, tends to put structures and processes in place to support its successful model. Meanwhile in the left �eld somebody else is building a stronger, competing proposition that the �rst business hasn’t even thought of. Perhaps we should apply this thinking to traditional learning.

Star project managers and skilled people are in demand and could leave at any time. Put-ting in place great leaders and agile teams will go a long way towards mitigating the risk of losing talent. The opportunity to develop and grow could and should be an internal one rather than a reason to work elsewhere.

The �rst step is to �nd out exactly what capability the organisation has right now. An audit of the organisation’s skills and competence could reveal hidden talents and knowledge as well as identifying any gaps. It is important not to cut back on sta� development. The clichéd view of “If I train my people they will be quali�ed to leave” could back�re as employees are attracted by new roles that appear to o�er more opportunities to develop. However the right sort of sta� development is key to motivating individuals and a great deal of frustration can arise from an inability to execute projects using newly acquired skills.

Tim Harford, author of the book “Adapt”, which sets out the case for adaptive processes, argues that every business, once it is successful, tends to put structures and processes in place to support its successful model. Meanwhile in the left �eld somebody else is building a stronger, competing proposition that the �rst business hasn’t even thought of. Perhaps we should apply this thinking to traditional learning.

Harford argues for continual adaptation, reinvention and change – and an organisation that is �exible in this way has much to o�er its people. Employees need not be bound by �xed hierarchical structures and can forge their own route through the business to see their skills and talents rewarded, supported by coaching and mentoring. Leading compa-nies such as Apple and Google have adopted this approach very successfully.

Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin outlined their philosophy in a letter to share-holders: “We encourage our employees, in addition to their regular projects, to spend 20% of their time working on what they think will most bene�t Google. This empowers them to be more creative and innovative. Many of our signi�cant advances have happened in this manner. For example, AdSense for content and Google News were both prototyped in 20% time. Most risky projects �zzle, often teaching us something. Others succeed and become attractive businesses.”

Instead of o�ering traditional box-ticking, knowledge-based training that all too often simply provides employees with accreditations to impress their next employer, guiding people through �exible career development supported by coaching and mentoring is likely to lead to greater retention of talent and create the leaders of the future.

Among other things, agile teams collaborate, sharing ideas and knowledge. In his book “The Impact Code” Nigel Risner found that we retain 25% of what we hear, 50% of what we see and read and 75% of what we do. There is no stronger argument for work-based action learning. However, when we teach, we retain a staggering 90% of content and so an action-based collaborative learning environment can create dramatic improvements.

Creating great leaders

83% of companies are seriously worried about their leadership pipelines and only 8% have strong programmes to build leadership skills. A really good leader in an agile environment will have con�dence, resilience, a positive attitude and the ability to inspire. He or she will have the con�dence to empower their team, giving them freedom to innovate.

In an agile environment where people can move quickly and easily, the leader has to have enough con�dence to “let go” as decisions will be made and things will happen more quickly than they expected. This will leave them free to concentrate on direction and true leadership.

For a variety of reasons some leaders may �nd it hard to let go and foster this interdepen-dence. Leaders who have worked their way up through the organisation may �nd it di�-cult to fully empower others particularly if they are still coming to terms with and adjusting to their own empowerment. The support of a coach and mentor can help to unlock this potential providing challenge and reassurance.

Leadership is a lonely place and there is no rulebook. Leaders at the very top of the organi-sation may feel they have no-one to turn to for feedback and support. Organisations should be looking to embed a coaching culture and encourage individuals in this position to �nd a mentor who must be someone they can respect and learn from. The mentor may well be someone from outside the organisation or could be someone at a di�erent level in the organisation. Conversely with coaching, seniority is not necessarily vital – the best coaches are people who are skilled in drawing out the detail of the issue and the options available in order to reach a commitment to act. A combination of both can provide exceptional results.

of companies are

seriously worried about

their leadership

pipelines

83%have strong

programmes tobuild leadership

skills

8%

Do one thing

With the right leaders in place, the challenge of attracting and retaining high performing people will be so much easier. With the right people in place, building agile teams that are responsive, �exible and productive becomes e�ortless.

So where should you start? Take 10% of your learning and development budget for this year and run a coaching and mentoring pilot for middle to senior managers. The aim should be to make these managers feel valued and singled out for special attention. Map their personality and competence to give them greater insight into themselves and create a culture of collaboration as a result.

Coaches and mentors can work with managers, bridging the gap between knowledge and experience and shaping the great leaders of the future.

KNOWLEDGE EXPERIENCE

COACHING&MENTORING

COACHING AND MENTORING IN THE PUBLIC SECTORMany Public Sector departments have been thinking about how best to develop senior project lead-ers. Over the course of a year, one Public Sector department has been running a programme designed to bring together a cohort of professionals who led multi-million pound change initiatives. They replaced traditional classroom style learning and, while there is still an opportunity to learn new material, much of the development comes from creating a community of collaboration where profes-sionals share their talents and expertise.

Personal coaches or mentors support the programme with the aim of putting the learning into prac-tice as swiftly as possible. As a result, many high-risk, high-value programmes across the Public Sector now have a greater likelihood of success.

NEXT GENERATION SUPPORTCoaching and mentoring for the skills needed to put knowledge into practice will help bridge the technical and soft skills gap. Insynergi has designed the following programmes to help leaders develop agility within their teams. The programmes can be delivered on a one-to-one basis although can be much more effective with peer group collaboration.

• Becoming a High Performer. Provides team members with strategies to become more agile and focused as they put existing knowledge into practice.• Building High Performing Teams. Leaders wishing to boost the performance of their team will benefit from insights that will help them foster balance, trust, highly effective communication and an overlapping skillset.

For more detail on insynergi coaching programmes visit www.insynergi.org or email info@insynergi.org

insynergi®

T: +44 (0)203 6510066 | E: info@insynergi.org | www.insynergi.org

References 1Predictions for 2015: Redesigning the Organization for A Rapidly Changing World. Bersin by Deloitte

http://www.bersin.com/blog/post/Predictions-for-2015--Redesigning-the-Organization-for-A-Rapidly-Changing-World.aspx

citing Source, “Dice Tech Salary Survey Results – 2014,”

http://resources.dice.com/report/dice-tech-salary-survey-results-2014/ 2http://investor.google.com/corporate/2004/ipo-founders-letter.html 3Predictions for 2015: Redesigning the Organization for A Rapidly Changing World. Bersin by Deloitte. Citing Deloitte Consulting

http://www.bersin.com/Practice/Detail.aspx?id=18145

About insynergi®Founded in 2009, insynergi® provides bespoke coaching, mentoring and training support for all levels within an organisation. The insynergi® team collectively has 300 years’ experience in supporting cross industry sectors at a local and global level. The company has its headquarters in London and is able to provide support globally. insynergi® is part of the Outsource Education Group which has over 50 sta� and a turnover of in excess of £5m.

For further information visit www.insynergi.org or email info@insynergi.org and call 0203 651 0066.

insynergi®

Exhibition House | Addison Bridge Place | London W14 8XP | T: +44 (0)203 6510066 | E: info@insynergi.org | www.insynergi.org

Company Registration Number: 6745958

insynergi® specialises in bespoke staff development solutions primarily inthe area of programme and project management together with the wider

aspects of management, leadership and personal effectiveness.

Training

programmes which utilise our ChangeAcademy model of action learning

insynergi® Change Academy

an innovative approach to developingleadership and delivery skills

Consulting

helping to facilitate change forsignificant improvement in performance