Jon Stahl had an enlightening talk at Agile 2011 where he walked through his process for incubating transformational leadership to achieve an Agile mindset.
Confused about adoption vs. transformation? Check out ways to make progress with Culture Gaps.
Agile Mindset – Do you want it?
Jon shows the following short video of IDEO design group to illustrate the Agile mindset and the type of servant leadership needed to support it.
After watching the video with executives who want Agile, he checks in with them:
- “Is this what you really want?”
- “Are you prepared to change your own behaviour to support this?”
- “Are you ready to go first?”
The approach outlined here is to go big or go home. Go big means to help transform an organization or division. Go home, means that rather than help adopt a few Agile practices that may disrupt the organization, to stop work and looks for clients who really want Agile.
Leaders Go First!
The remainder of the presentation is about how leaders can go first by adopting Agile principles as a management team. Jon summarizes this as:
- Live the values
- Lead by example
- Be as transparent as the teams they lead
Here are some example activities for the management team:
- Public display of values
- Visualize projects and plans
- Visual management of key information: people, technology, etc
- Daily stand-up meeting in public place
Agile From the Top Down: Executives & Leadership Living Agile by Jon Stahl 
Thank you Jon, for sharing this at Agile 2011.
