As a vital link between the executive committee and their team, the local manager anchors individuals in the company's project and provides the conditions for the success of their missions. They are responsible for achieving their team's objectives and clarifying the impacts of new strategic directions. They support change at organizational, collective, and individual levels. In the context of transitioning to agility, or even scaling agility, their role and challenges become even more significant.
Balancing individual needs with those of the collective
The local manager supervises and supports their collaborators in accomplishing their missions. During the implementation phase of agile methods, the interactions and working framework of their team are transformed. Individuals shift from close collaboration focused on a specific activity to forming a workgroup centered on a value chain. This leads to increased collaboration with a multidisciplinary and often co-located workgroup, representing a structural change in their daily routine that can cause individual resistance.
These resistances are mainly linked to the fear of the unknown and the need to find one's place in the new organization. The manager assists team members in identifying and overcoming their hesitations. They must integrate their collaborators into agile teams by considering two dimensions:
- Each individual's ease in embracing change
- The company's transformation timeline
Cela requiert une compréhension fine des individus, de leurs motivations et de leurs freins afin de pouvoir les embarquer dans des équipes agiles avec succès.
From top-down to bottom-up: a paradigm shift
Agility, before being a change in working methods, is an evolution in approach.
It enhances the autonomy and responsibility of production teams, leading to more decentralized decision-making. Top management remains responsible for strategic vision, middle management for its operational implementation, and the production team becomes fully decision-making on the "how."
This represents a significant change for the local manager. Previously, they organized and planned their collaborators' activities. Now, they grant more freedom to the team to find solutions to expressed needs, guiding team members in their inquiries and processes. The local manager simultaneously supports the collective in implementing solutions envisioned by subordinates, demonstrating trust and letting go.
This increased responsibility can be challenging to grasp. Barriers may arise from the individual to whom power is delegated and from various management levels. The manager plays a central role in evolving habits, including their own. They must accept a loss of decision-making power, be vigilant about their behaviors and those of their hierarchy to avoid disrupting the team's work, and engage in evangelization to understand and apply agile principles, adopting a servant-leader role.
From project mode to product mode: a cultural shift
Prioritization power over the digital product is delegated to the team to develop an experience closely aligned with customer expectations.
The company and teams adopt a learning approach, maintaining a humble posture to understand both expressed and unexpressed customer needs. Agile teams experiment to ensure product viability and discover new value-adding opportunities. These tests involve uncertainty and potential failures. In established companies, failure culture is uncommon or even rejected.
Thus, the manager has a dual role:
- Ensuring the team can experiment without posing risks to the company
- Evangelizing stakeholders to accept failure
Operationally, this translates to the need to pivot or close a subject quickly, as the manager remains responsible for achieving team members' objectives.
Cela se traduira opérationnellement par un besoin de faire pivoter ou de clore un sujet rapidement. En effet, ce rôle lui incombe car le manager reste garant de l’atteinte des objectifs des membres de son équipe.
"Adapting to change over following a plan": impacts of agile transformation on company systems
The local manager participates in optimizing procedures affecting their team's activities, ensuring company processes do not hinder action implementation. They must adapt operational management processes to the responsiveness needs of agile teams, advising on adjusting project portfolio governance methods and facilitating dependency management between different production teams. Managers and peers are more frequently solicited to prioritize and re-prioritize subjects, acting as essential actors to streamline and align various company systems, working collaboratively and cross-functionally like their teams.
Conclusion
Evolving roles and responsibilities, impacts of decentralized decision-making, flexibility to change, and team skill development are dimensions the local manager must address. Through their functions around people, understanding of field realities, and comprehension of company strategy and structure, they are at a crossroads, serving as a necessary link and bond for cultural evolution within a company.
Some large French groups have recognized the local manager's role in agile transformation. Beyond declarations of intent and proof-of-concepts, frequent adjustments are essential, necessitating the involvement, training, and support of managers to help them navigate this ongoing transition.
In a subsequent article, we will discuss solutions implemented to support local managers in their new challenges.
Article écrit en collaboration avec Baptiste Aubrée, Consultant Senior Innovation Digitale
Article written in collaboration with Baptiste Aubrée, Senior Digital Innovation Consultant
The article "The local manager: cornerstone of agile transformation" first appeared on Sofrecom.
