Bankdata's agile transformation started in 2015, and by 2017, all teams in Bankdata had undergone Scrum training and adopted agile practices. The result today is that each team has the framework to better organize tasks and take responsibility for creating an optimal way of working through structured Scrum events. But one of the biggest questions that the agile transformation brought was the role of the manager as employees and teams became increasingly self-managing.
"We have been working on our agile transformation as an organization for a long time. Since 2015, agile has been a natural part of everyday life in all our teams," Kristina Blach Nielsen is the first to tell us when we talk to her to learn more about their work on building an agile organization and leadership.
Kristina Blach Nielsen is Head of Human Resources at Bankdata and has been instrumental in realizing Bankdata's agile ambition and transformation.
The agile organization takes the individual employee seriously
"Yes, undoubtedly," is Kristina Blach Nielsen's answer when asked if the agile transformation efforts of individual employees, teams and management have made the organization more adaptable and opportunity-oriented.
"The fact that we work agile in Bankdata today means that we can attract talented employees and offer them a motivating framework to work on fulfilling our customers' wishes for new IT solutions," she explains.
But in addition to strengthening attraction and retention, it also means that Bankdata has become much better at seeing what is most important to customers when solving a task, she explains.
"The agile way of working means that the customer, through their Product Owner in each developer team, helps prioritize which tasks the team works on. This closeness gives our customers an understanding that we build based on them and thereby strengthens our relationship, while at the same time enhancing and targeting our products and solutions."
The agile organization must help leaders balance
"The management of the specific tasks is decentralized in the individual teams. Our work with the agile principles dating back to 2015 means that we now have a common agile language and a common framework that the entire organization works from. But it has also made us realize that by setting our teams more free, we have to ask ourselves the question: How does management create value in the agile setup, where there is no need for the more old-fashioned 'manage and distribute work' management? Bankdata's desire has been a vision for leadership that supports the autonomy of the agile way of working, plays a key role in driving Bankdata's strategy forward and upholds the community principles that Bankdata is built on through our customer/owner structure."
"Our take on succeeding as a leader in an agile context focuses on finding the right balance between empowerment and accountability. The task for us in HR has been to provide a language around the ability to balance your leadership, and to provide the right amount of strategic and operational leadership at the right time. You succeed as a leader in an agile context when you are able to strike the right balance in the specific situation; when you manage to act both in a controlling and supportive way towards employees, and at the same time lead strategically with the knowledge that there is also a clear responsibility for progress."
Organization's agile transformation led to new leadership model
As Bankdata became more experienced and the agile organization matured within the company, they also became more confident that their management thinking needed to be challenged.
"I learned about versatile leadership and the LVI (Leader Versatility Index) through LEAD, and then I was hooked. The key premise of the LVI is the ability to read the situation and the moment, and that was exactly what described the complexity that we at Bankdata were experiencing; that the leader was faced with agile Scrum teams that could and wanted to do much more themselves."
"Our own experience and the knowledge that LEAD was able to contribute means that today we have developed a leadership model that stands on three pillars: trust, empowerment and accountability. We describe our leadership model as the foundation on which leadership should be based - and it also reflects the dualities and balance points that we are constantly trying to strike the right balance between. This is where it makes sense to be as a leader in an agile organization like ours."
New program empowers leaders to take responsibility in the agile organization
As Bankdata became more experienced and the agile organization matured within the company, they also became more confident that their management thinking needed to be challenged.
"I learned about versatile leadership and the LVI (Leader Versatility Index) through LEAD, and then I was hooked. The key premise of the LVI is the ability to read the situation and the moment, and that was exactly what described the complexity that we at Bankdata were experiencing; that the leader was faced with agile Scrum teams that could and wanted to do much more themselves."
"Our own experience and the knowledge that LEAD was able to contribute means that today we have developed a leadership model that stands on three pillars: trust, empowerment and accountability. We describe our leadership model as the foundation on which leadership should be based - and it also reflects the dualities and balance points that we are constantly trying to strike the right balance between. This is where it makes sense to be as a leader in an agile organization like ours."
A network for strategic leaders
A network at LEAD Society is your confidential sparring room. Here you can share your issues and get input from other leaders who have been in similar situations. We are all passionate about leadership and use this arena as an opportunity to reflect, discuss and spar with each other.
Each group consists of 25 participants representing different organizations. We put together a group of passionate leaders at the same management level who are keen to discuss and develop their own leadership practice.
Q&A with Bankdata on leadership in the agile organization
Since 2015, Bankdata has been working on implementing agile working methods in the organization. Most recently, the focus has been on agile leadership. We asked Kristina Blach Nielsen, Head of Human Resources, six questions to find out what the role of the manager is and how it is developed in the agile organization.
