Thoughts on Agile Coaching
Part 2 — The Foundation
Let’s first examine three key ingredients that not only motivate people in complex cognitive work but also lead to better performance and greater personal satisfaction:
- Autonomy
- Mastery
- Purpose
Disclaimer, I did not just make these up, it’s based on exhaustive and extensive research by MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) and financed by the Federal Reserve Bank. These are from Dan Pink’s “Drive”.
One might ask, well what do these have to do with high performance and aren't our employees already motivated by getting paid to do their job. Sure, but we’re expecting more here.
Autonomy comes from Scrum already so we don’t need to dwell too deeply into that, the teams are responsible for organizing themselves, only gently guided by the ScrumMaster (who is coached by the Agile Coach). They get to work in peace, without outside interference and they get to keep their team members thus maintaining the established team spirit. Nobody tells them how to do their work. So, not only is this a proven method to keep them motivated but it also enables first step towards high-performance: no bureaucracy or external hierarchies are in the way of doing what they do best. What we want is engagement (passion), not compliance which traditional management gives us.
Next up: Mastery, which in and of itself is one of the end goals of high-performance as mentioned earlier. Mastery is our urge to get better at stuff. It’s as simple as that. People want to see a linear progression at something they do, be it fly-fishing, football or playing guitar. Why? There’s not financial incentive for them to do so, why would they do it? Because it’s fun, because getting better is satisfying. This is why we have Linux, Apache, Wikipedia and so many others. It’s people, highly technically sophisticated people, who have jobs by the way. They are giving away their free time for free only for the challenge, mastery and making a contribution.
How can we tap into this reserve then? How can we unlock this potential in all of our teams? This is where the purpose motive comes into play. And this is the tricky part. First we should have a set of company core values defined based upon which we hire and fire, basically. These can be e.g.
“Extreme Independence — Small teams alone aren't enough. Those teams must have the freedom to make quick decisions and take risks.”
“Pride in Craft — Although our teams move fast, we try hard never to compromise on creativity or quality. Our players generously share their precious time with us and we want to return the favor by giving them deliriously fun game experiences.”
These two examples are from Supercell, Finnish, billion dollar video-game company established in 2010. Leadership by believing and trusting in the Team is the name of the game here. We don’t demand high-performance but we expect it and lead by example. We set the expectation for the Team. It’s something we can pursue (Mastery) but it won’t work without proper definition of what it is that we should be passionately engaging in. That is why we need to truly examine our values and what it is that we deliver to the customer that is so valuable that it wakes us up smiling on a Monday morning.
