Become the CEO

Dr. Amir Khoshnevis revealed a great tool for effectively managing people and projects a few months back called Responsibility Charting (Leadership Insights, Oct 2010). You should definitely check it out.

As a partner in a web-application development business, I thrive on discovering new methods for improving efficiency, creativity, and accountability. Responsibility Charting has already found its way onto my whiteboard because it seems so simple. Define only the constant elements: 1) the goal, 2) the people and their roles, and 3) the deadline, and then simply let the team members tackle the remaining variables and complete the project.

Easy-peasy, right? But in practice, it has raised some questions for me. How do we hit these deadlines without browbeating? How do we keep the lucky individual(s) now responsible for the final product motivated? I believe a part of the answer can be found in a concept called Agile Leadership.

Agile Leadership is an offshoot of the term Agile Development, a software development methodology introduced in the 90's. The dot-com boom required developers to begin responding quickly to the rapid changes in the marketplace, but standard development methods were just too cumbersome, regulated, and micromanaged to get products to market in a timely fashion. This prompted an industry-wide shift towards a more fluid model that focused on quick, incremental changes, adaptable solutions, and more open collaboration between teams.

In a nutshell, this Agile Development method values:

Adaptive over predictive
Collaboration over documentation
Continuous feedback over periodic reviews
Generalization over specialization
Working models over perfected systems

(While there is certainly value in the items on the right, Agile Development adheres to the belief that more value can be found in the items on the left.)

This fundamental shift in thinking revolutionized project teams, and the people involved were happier and more motivated. In fact, companies like Google & Twitter have thrived on this model, and the old dogs like Microsoft & Yahoo quickly followed suit. Soon after, business experts (like Lee Iacocca and David Wilkinson) began championing these same principles to help stodgy, risk-averse, highly regimented business overcome their challenges, thus coining the term Agile Leadership.

Since the introduction of the dot-com era, our world has not slowed down one bit, which warrants the question, "Am I an Agile Leader?" Let's ask some questions by re-examining the values above:

Adaptive over predictive - Am I effectively implementing and responding to changes quickly, or do I tend to only tackle problems with predictable outcomes?
Collaboration over documentation - Do I encourage "employee networking" within my business and espouse open collaboration, or do I prefer crisp, tight meeting minutes and laborious documentation?
Continuous feedback over periodic reviews - Do I encourage experimentation and provide consistent feedback for continued growth, or do employees work off a checklist of expectations?
Generalization over specialization - Does my team have the freedom (and desire) to "wear several hats" around their core skills, or is the excuse "that's not my job" all too typical?
Working models over perfected systems - What new idea am I currently road-testing (think "beta"), or am I waiting to unnecessarily perfect it before implementing?

One quick litmus test is our response to social media. Few would disagree that social media provides an unparalleled avenue for reaching out to customers in a way never before possible (in fact, the benefits can be exponential!). So if that's the case, why is social media such a thorn in the side of small businesses? I'll tell you why:

It's unpredictable.
It lacks proper documentation.
It requires continuous feedback.
There's no resident specialist.
It's "just not ready".

List look familiar? Social media success demands an agile method of thinking, and in our fast-paced world, so do many other challenges. What other ideas in your practice could benefit from this philosophy?

I am challenging myself to model adaptability, collaboration, stepping outside the comfort of my specialties, and act on working models, and hope the very same for you. Combined with Dr. Khoshnevis' project management recommendations, I believe we have a winning combination.

Asher Lewis is a principal of Silver Glade LLC in Houston Texas, a software and web application development firm that specializes in creative ideas, intuitive solutions, practical strategies, and dynamic results. He can be reached at asher@sglade.com