Enlightened Managers: The Key to Empowering & Encouraging Self-Organizing Teams

Session Overview:

Almost all of us have teams we want to work better: better productivity, effectiveness, clarity, quality, and frankly joy. There's no silver bullet, but Ron Lichty wrote the book on the role of managers in empowering and encouraging and evangelizing self-organizing teams.

Self-organization shows up in the Agile Manifesto: “The best architectures, requirements, and designs emerge from self-organizing teams.” But what is self-organization?

Ron will share metaphors he’s found resonate with teams he’s led and coached and trained - metaphors you can use to help managers and team members alike understand their role in making for joyful self-organizing teamwork - what Christopher Avery refers to when he says that Teamwork Is an Individual Skill (the title of Avery's book).

Ron will explain what managers can do to enable and encourage self-organization, discuss the internal work they need to do on themselves to let go of the urge for control, and outline the work they can do to evangelize and support their teams in the larger organization. He'll also share how individual contributors can diplomatically encourage their managers to foster cultures of joyful self-organizing teamwork.