The book is divided in three parts. Part one covers the understanding and dynamics of the Agility Shift by explaining what and why, by weaving the relation web for agility and discovering the five dynamics of the agility shift. Part two explains what it means to make the agility shift at all levels of the system. Talking about the agile leader, the agile team and the agile organisation. Part three focusses on putting agility into work. How can you shift to agile learning and development and recruiting, reinforcing, recognizing and retaining your agile talent?
Agility shift can be summarized by the three C’s: Agility Competence, Agility Capacity and Agility Confidence and is first and foremost a shift in mind-set. A shift from the false comfort of “a plan” to achieving a state of readiness to find the opportunity in the unexpected. To build this readiness you can make use of your own Relational Web.
To download the QRC The Relational Web: The agility shift web
Becoming an agile leader asks for a leadership mind-set for agility, whole-person agility and learning agility. To build a team make use of lessons from improvement, high-stake and development teams: work with the same understanding of the givens, agree to the givens, practice gift giving, practice finding the game, provide opportunities for interaction, make communication and coordination expectations explicit, expect role elasticity and learning agility, develop resource awareness, practice rapid prototyping: fail faster, learn quicker, work at a sustainable pace and capacity, create an agile manifesto for your team.
When agile leadership and the first teams are in place you can start co-creating the agile organisation by weaving the organisational relational web (create groups that foster employee camaraderie, maximize your relational web potential, and improve the proximity between members of your relational web), Structuring for the agility shift (create opportunities to identify the bare spots, get input on barriers and enablers, and resist the urge to formalize) and las but not least expand engagement to build capacity for decision making (empowerment) and converge planning and action to maximize your organizational agility.
The last part explains what the shift means for agile learning and development and recruiting, reinforcing, recognizing, and retaining your agile talent. You get an overview of competencies, skills and practices and performance indicators as well as a helping aid for recruiting for agility with sample conversation topics/scenarios and questions and tips to listen and look for specific performance indicators.
Conclusion: No matter what agile framework you are using, this book will bring you above the level of framework techniques and gives you helpful insights to become more agile. A must read for agile leads!
Over Henny Portman
Henny Portman is eigenaar van Portman PM[O] Consultancy en biedt begeleiding bij het invoeren en verbeteren van project-, programma- en portfoliomanagement inclusief het opzetten en verder ontwikkelen van PMO's. Hij is auteur en blogger en publiceert regelmatig artikelen.
