The agile mindset and methods are rapidly gaining traction in management and organization, with self-organizing teams with high decision-making power becoming the new organizational backbone. The trends of the future are already outdated by the time we see them, and we need to rethink the way we organize ourselves to create future-proof and sustainable organizations in order to keep up and act with the necessary speed.

In this article, which is a shorter version of an article published in Dansk HR, we point out a number of key questions that HR must be able to answer in the future to remain relevant in an agile future.

Agile organizations are the future's answer to complexity and evolution. We live in a world characterized by a high degree of complexity with many conflicting demands and trends. The pace of change is exponential, and the ability of organizations to respond quickly to challenges and trends has become one of the strongest competitive differentiators. HR must help organizations succeed in the transformation towards agile organizing.

The most important task for HR is to ensure the necessary organizational capabilities. To accomplish this task, HR must ask the following questions:

• What does the organization need to get good at in order to succeed in, for example, organizing its activities in teams around the customer's problem?
• What skills and behaviors are most important to succeed in the new reality, and how do we help the organization build them?
• What do our managers and employees actually do when we succeed? What does it look like in specific work situations?
• What does the organization need to do to support a learning mindset and culture?
• Which structures and processes are needed to support the new ways of organizing and working, and which ones should we drop?

HR must be experts in self-organizing teams

The success of agile organizationsdepends, among other things, on the overall ability of the organization to succeed with self-organizing teams. Becoming experts in self-organizing teams is therefore a good place to start for the HR function.

Self-organizing teams organize and plan the work of the team, including specific time estimates for tasks. They choose the tools and methods best suited to the task (within a defined framework) and coordinate their work themselves. Most importantly, they decide how the team can work together most effectively.

The team must be able to produce innovative solutions, execute and evaluate in work sprints, which requires a high degree of team culture and an environment characterized by a learning mindset where mistakes and feedback equals learning and development. It requires a high level of trust between manager and employee, while also demanding a high level of personal responsibility from each employee.

HR needs to be able to ask the following questions:

• Do we have the right structures in place to support team collaboration, such as reward systems to support team-based performance over individual performance?
• How do we resource our business when employees in self-organizing teams self-organize and plan their work?
• Can self-organization also mean more flexible working and employment conditions, where employees' working hours, for example, depend on both personal preferences and workload?
• Do we have clearly defined roles and responsibilities in the new organization so that both managers and employees know what is expected?
• What do managers and employees need to succeed in self-organizing teams?
• How do we build a culture of collaboration and helpfulness, where we dare to act and make decisions?
• Are we recruiting leaders and employees with the right relational skills to work in self-organizing teams, and what does this mean for our concept of talent?
• How do we create career paths in a more fluid organization? And who is responsible for development?
• Does it still make sense to hold individual appraisals or should we work with team appraisals and development?

HR should not work alone but facilitate cross-functional teams, experts and key stakeholders to work together. The key here is to position HR as an expert and facilitator when the organization demands self-organizing teams.

In addition, HR must be a change agent and take the lead in dealing with resistance if, for example, cultural resistance proves to be a hindrance to self-organizing teams.

It's a core task of HR to be experts on people. 'Go agile' and focus on becoming experts in people rather than processes, and become experts in asking the right questions that open up new opportunities rather than bureaucratizing your way through the right processes.