Evolvagility: Growing an Agile Leadership Culture from the Inside Out

by Michael Hamman, Lisa Cooney

Organizations around the globe are struggling to adapt to an increasingly complex and turbulent social, economic, technological, and business environment. Many are responding by embracing agility as a way of working--some with a primary orientation around operational agility (e.g., Agile software development methods), others focusing on customer development agility, while others are embracing business agility. In almost all of these cases, agility is concerned with processes and practices, with systems and structures--a form of outer agility. But the biggest challenges with agility revolve not so much around its outer aspects--its processes, practices, deliverables, and business outcomes--but around the sensemaking, communication, and relationship intelligence of an organization's people--its inner aspects. This is where we find the human problems of resistance, conflict, communication breakdowns, broken promises, people going through the motions with little passion or conviction, deteriorating product quality, managers micro-managing-the world--the world of inner agility. Many organizational leaders and managers take an objectivist approach to the growing of inner agility, treating mindset and culture as reified goals to be attained, rather than as holistic qualities to be cultivated. Mindset and culture are viewed as behavioral attributes which exist somewhere out In those people out there; in those behaviors out there; in those habits and beliefs out there. From such a perspective, the tendency is to think about and treat mindset and culture from the outside in--as those aspects of organizational reality that we can somehow fix or change from the outside; whether through inculcation, motivational inducement, reasoned argument, or training and mentoring. Growing an Agile Leadership Culture from the Inside Out takes an alternative perspective--one in which we view mindset and culture not from the outside in, but from the inside out. From this perspective, we are interested in the inner capabilities that determine how people think; how they make sense of complex situations around them; the beliefs and values they hold; people's ability to hold perspectives that are different from their own; their ability (or lack thereof) to relate with others in ways that leave those others empowered and enabled. But, even more than this, we want to know how we might help ourselves and others grow those capabilities. Again, not from the outside in--the world of processes and structures or even behaviors; but rather from the inside out--from the world of sensemaking and consciousness, and from there out into the world of relationships and, beyond that, out into the world of organizational environments. Evolvagility synthesizes a human technology from a variety of fields that include adult developmental psychology, relationship systems, executive coaching, and organization development. It leads us toward a deeper understanding of the anatomy of human sensemaking, and how it impacts people's capacity for effective and creative action. And it provides a practical methodology with which we might increase the capacity of that inner sensemaking in order to help ourselves, and others, make sense of the complexity and ambiguity of the situations we ind ourselves in as players in 21st Century organizational life.

Genres: Leadership, Management

315 pages, Kindle Edition

Published January 14, 2019

Reviews

[Tarald Røste · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was not an easy book to read. Both the language and the though-processes described here require careful attention, and (at least for me) frequent pauses for reflection.

But Hamman makes me think, and revisit ideas and beliefs I hold and take for granted. And his eloquent descriptions and explanations made many things click into place for me. It was as much a journey of self-discovery as an education in leadership and agility, and I feel richer for the experience.

Recommend to read it with someone, like a book-circle, and to hold some shared sensemaking conversations about the topics as you go!

[Peter Faulks · Rating 5 out of 5]

Deeply insightful, it has changed the way I look at things and helped me shape the work I’m doing. I’ll have to read through again to learn more - it took me ages as I slowly absorbed the concepts and language.

[Rainer Feest · Rating 5 out of 5]

How the Paradigm Shift from Predict-and-Plan to Sense-and-Respond can succeed? "The ability to grow organizational agility rests ultimately on growing the inner sense-making capacity of individuals, whether alone or in relationship with others. In order to grow Sense-and-Respond organizations you need to grow Sense-and-Respond minds."

Not an easy read but very valuable thoughts and ideas for our VUCA (volatility, uncertainty, complexity und ambiguity) world. It is a book you will have to work with and my plans are to do exactly that.

[Tony Richards · Rating 5 out of 5]

If like me you've come across expressions like VUCA and moving from a predict and plan to a sense and respond world. Then this book provides real substance behind those ideas, combined with practices you can use to put these ideas into action. Michael shares an incredible amount in this book, along with a fantastic list of places to learn more and dig deeper into the world of developing our minds to make sense of complexity.