In order to anchor agility in companies, organisations and teams, a further element must be internalised in addition to the methodology including the associated roles: The agile mindset.
Agility in posture
The change towards an agile organisation is a change. And this change always begins in your head. The best methodical knowledge and organizational prerequisites for agility are of no use if the mindset of the teams and employees does not fit.
But what does agile mindset mean? It is an attitude and posture towards daily doing in every area. Because this determines how we start with new ideas and projects, how we run processes in the long term and how open we are to change. Practices from the agile methodology can be transferred to the mindset:
- Exchange with the inner team, consciously deal with his emotions and thoughts – this can also be done with the help of Time Boxing every day at a fixed time (Daily)
- Take small steps and appreciate intermediate successes (Sprint)
- How would I like to be? And what do I want to do for it? Create a prioritized list that can live and evolve dynamically (Product Backlog)
- Plan every week or every day what you want to do for your development (Sprint Planning)
- To rejoice in one’s own progress and make small successes visible. Continually asking yourself: Where am I right now? Did I really want to go there? (Sprint Review)
- Reflect yourself with thoughts and feelings: How have I developed this week? What went well and where can I improve? (retrospective)
If these components of the agile mindset solidify in one’s own actions and colleagues go through the same process – i.e. develop one’s own agile mindset – this has a direct positive effect on the handling of the agile methodology in the team or organization.
Personality traits – digital transformer mindset
In addition to the agile mindset, which represents an attitude, there is a level of even deeper personality traits, which represent the (digital) transformational mindset.
The digital mindset was investigated in a large study (www.dci.digital) and contains six different dimensions, all of which are bipolar:
- Openness and agility vs. persistence
- Critical ability vs. harmony orientation
- Customer centricity vs. task and organization centricity
- Creativity and design motivation vs. process loyalty
- Open dealing with failure vs. avoidance of failure
- Proactivity and entrepreneurial action orientation vs. reactivity and situation orientation
In summary, it can be said that no change to an agile organization can be successfully managed without the right agile mindset (attitude) and (digital) transformational mindset (personality traits) of the employees.