Agile People: A Radical Approach for HR & Managers (That Leads to Motivated Employees)

256 Pages·2016·2.03 MB·English

by  Pia-Maria Thoren

ADVANCE PRAISE
“If there is any person I associate with HR and Agile, it is Pia-Maria Thoren. I
don’t know anyone in Europe who is so dedicated to bringing those critical
areas together. I have worked with Pia-Maria on many occasions and know her
to be very knowledgeable and a great pleasure to hang out with. A book by her
hands will certainly end up high on my backlog.”
—JURGEN APPELO, AUTHOR OF MANAGING FOR HAPPINESS
“Pia-Maria is a pioneer in the area of Agile HR. We solicited her advice in the
very early days of preparing for our transformation in way-of-work at ING’s
Dutch HR department. Pia-Maria helped us to get good at oversight in the
complex matter of what it takes to become truly ‘agile’ as an HR department.
Anyone interested in agile transformation should be interested in Agile HR
(more appropriately phrased ‘Agile people/employee services’) and I
recommend all of them to pay close attention to what Pia-Maria has to say.”
—ERIC ABELEN, LEAN COACH, ING
COPYRIGHT © 2017 PIA-MARIA THOREN
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-61961-626-4
Dedication and Kudos
To you, Agile People, for supporting me in my mission to develop a network dedicated to creating better
organizations. Thank you for putting all the hard work into making it possible to run our meet-ups and
conferences. I hope this book will support our mission and that one day we will be able to look back and see
Agile People as the beginning of a new world of work.
Also, thank you, Brooke, for your valuable support. Without you, this book would never have been written.
Thank you to all the contributors who have made this book come alive by participating in interviews and
providing quotes and blurbs. The book was a team effort—in the true Agile spirit—more than an individual
accomplishment, thanks to all your valuable contributions.
Thank you, Jennie and Alexandra, for helping me carry out all the interviews—it was hard work, but I’m
very proud of the result.
CONTENTS
CONTRIBUTORS
INTRODUCTION
1. THE BIRTH OF AGILE
2. ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURES
3. MODERN AGILE
4. PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT
5. GOAL SETTING AND OKRS
6. AGILE REWARDS
7. AGILE RECRUITMENT
8. LEARNING AND DEVELOPMENT
9. THE REISS MOTIVATION PROFILE
10. AGILE LEADERSHIP
11. AGILE MANAGEMENT
12. AGILE TOOLS
13. EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT
14. AGILE AND THE BRAIN
CONCLUSION
AGILE GLOSSARY
PRINCIPLES AND PRACTICES
FURTHER READING
APPENDIX
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
CONTRIBUTORS
LEILA LJUNGBERG, SNOW SOFTWARE
When Leila started to work with HR in the IT community, she soon realized
there was a lot to learn from IT. She infiltrated the competence network that
focused on Agile practices and then started to build an HR function from the
base principles of Agile. They called it Agile HR back then. Nowadays, she
keeps finding ways of using Agile values to evolve people and cultures to be the
best they can be. She strongly believes we all have the leadership within us to
grow and work hard to create an inclusive atmosphere with an impact on results.
MATTI KLASSON, KING
Matti thinks motivated and happy people make really innovative and amazing
products that delight their customers! He gives organizations, groups, and
individuals tools and guidance. He helps them remove obstacles and waste to
make it easier for them to grow and develop to be competitive and adapted to
change. With twenty years of experience in systems and software engineering,
Matti is a true believer in DevOps and Agile movements.
BONNITTA ROY, APP ASSOCIATES INTERNATIONAL
Bonnitta works with a network of leaders who are bringing participatory
practices into the workplace. She is founder of APP Associates International and
a member of the European Center for Leadership Practice. She designs
transformative practices for individuals and hosts collective insight retreats for
groups at Alderlore Insight Center.
BJÖRN SANDBERG, PREPARATUS
Björn has worked in various positions within HR and has been deeply involved
in major transformations and changes, inspired by Lean | Agile. By getting into
what it really was about, he realized it was possible to start developing next
generation HR. It’s a necessary step to be able to sustainably support businesses
facing a fast-changing and complex world.
FABIOLA EYHOLZER, JUST LEADING SOLUTIONS
Fabiola is the CEO of Just Leading Solutions, a New York-based consultancy
for Lean | Agile People Operations—the 21st century HR approach. She helps
enterprises to accelerate their Agile transformation by focusing on their crucial
asset: their people.
RIINA HELLSTRÖM, PEOPLEGEEKS
Riina has been recommended internationally by peers and strangers as a brilliant
Agile and people professional. In 2010, she followed her passion and founded
her own consultancy to drive the Agile organization development and Agile HR
scene forward. Her company, Peoplegeeks Ltd Oy, is a modern people and
business consultancy helping clients succeed in business through modern HR,
Agile transformations, Agile management, people analytics, and by digitizing
people services and developing and building modern leadership and
collaboration across the organization.
CECILIA WESTERHOLM BEER, BISNODE
Cecilia is a business-driven, curious, passionate leader focused on engagement
and change management. She possesses extensive experience in most areas of
strategic organizational development, performance, productivity, change
management, employee and client engagement, workplace strategy, workforce
planning, organizational design, and strategic implementation. Over the last
fifteen years, she’s worked in human resources, with jobs in management and at
the director and VP level.
INTRODUCTION
CHOOSING TO ADAPT
“In the struggle for survival, the fittest win out at the expense of their rivals
because they succeed in adapting themselves best to their environment.”
—CHARLES DARWIN
Darwin was an early proponent of adaptability. He believed that plants and
animals adapted to new circumstances and changes in their environment in order
to survive. His famous phrase, “survival of the fittest,” refers to a species’ ability
to adapt, not to its physical strength. The ability to adapt to a changing world is
what allows some species to survive even the most dreadful environmental
changes. The same is applicable for our organizations. The difference is that in
the business environment, we don’t have to wait two million years for the
adaption; we will survive by actively choosing to adapt.
Choosing to adapt is the heart of the Agile philosophy. In the past, Agile was
primarily associated with software development and the IT sector. Today, it’s
increasingly used by human resources teams and applied to entire organizations.
Agile is a way of moving forward and creating value. It’s a mentality that allows
people and groups to meet challenges, learn quickly, and respond to change. It’s
a different and new way of managing teams, individuals, projects, and
development.
Agile is an operational strategy to meet a rapidly changing and complex
world.
—BJÖRN
My colleague, Tomas, introduced me to Agile in 2009, when I was working as a
project manager in HR and IT transformations. We were implementing a talent
management solution for a large international manufacturing organization. I was
struggling with project management because I am not a structured person,
although the job required structure. I did what I had to do, but I wasn’t happy
following time schedules, making detailed project plans, or mapping out exactly
what everyone was supposed to do each day, and when. I learned to behave in a
structured manner, though it’s against my personality. And I did it well, but I did
not feel good about my work.
The project management role didn’t feel right to me. I couldn’t understand why,
until I attended a four-day course that transformed my life. My colleague had
read a book about Agile and suggested we attend a workshop to learn how it
could be applied to what we were trying to accomplish. During those four days, I
learned there was a better way to run projects, businesses, and even my own life
than the approach I’d been using.
In the 1990s, many IT companies embraced the Waterfall approach to
management, which is a linear and sequential design process. We were using a
variation of it for our big project. Agile, on the other hand, is an incremental
approach. Work is completed in small batches or sprints, and then evaluated and
tested. The method is collaborative and allows errors to be fixed or feedback to
be taken into consideration as you move forward.
Later experiences and studies of frameworks for personality traits also taught me
that people are very different on a foundational level. Some are flexible and
spontaneous by nature and others crave order. How we operate and what
motivates us is built into the fabric of our DNA. It’s also taught during our early
upbringing. The Reiss Motivation Profile, which identifies an individual’s
sixteen primary needs, has been an invaluable tool in my life and in working
with others. It will help you to better understand how you and your coworkers
are wired so you know which roles and positions you will find most fulfilling.
We’ll cover it in depth in Chapter 9.
I’m not prone to discussing the generational thing, like millennials, because
to be honest, I think individual changes in people are a lot bigger than a
group born in the ’90s. Still, I think it’s a shift; a shift in expectations. I
don’t think it’s only the millennials. I think it’s bigger than that.
—LEILA
This book is about how to use Agile principles and practices in HR departments
and throughout entire organizations. It is intended to inspire people to
experiment with different tools and explore new avenues. Through
experimentation and trust-based management, organizations can expect to
increase employee engagement and ensure longevity in the marketplace.
Although Agile originated in the tech sector, the philosophy applies to
companies large and small in any rapidly changing industry and an ever-
changing world.
You can do a lot of different things and be a part of different communities.
Your workday could consist of five or six different elements. I work part-
time as an Uber driver, and I can work part-time as an online teacher. The
possibilities to work are huge for people who see those kinds of
opportunities. You don’t really have to have a 9–5 workday anymore.
—LEILA
My goal is to demonstrate, both through my own experiences and through the
experiences of the companies I’ve consulted with, that when people feel better,
they perform better. I’ll show you how to adopt new leadership and management
styles that promote the formation of self-directing teams. Together, we can help
people feel safe and inspired so they will share their unique skills and ideas for
the mutual benefit of individuals, teams, and entire organizations.
This book is for anyone interested in fostering more creative and productive
work environments: consultants, customers, executives, employees, and
educators. Those environments attract and retain top-level employees who are
empowered to bring their A-game to the table every day. My intention is to share
Agile principles and practices so that we can create better organizations together,
without hierarchy or restriction. Above all, this book is for professionals within
HR—a department that needs to find a new purpose. Managers are taking over
more and more HR-related tasks as a consequence of cost reductions and the old,
controlling HR role is not valid anymore.
The mission for Agile People is both bold and broad, and I believe it has the
power to make a huge difference in the world of work. I hope you find
inspiration in it and allow yourself to explore its vast potential. Creating a better
tomorrow starts today.