Top Ten Reasons Scrum Teams Avoid Self Management - Cue David Letterman

“How to instil self management in a team that looks to be led/fed?” - Believe it or not, this is another classic #Influence problem. (Hint: Most of coaching is an Influence problem).

Autonomy is a core human need. It shows up in every motivational model (ARC: https://agilepainrelief.com/glossary/arc-motivational-model, SCARF: https://agilepainrelief.com/glossary/scarf-model). Since we know it is a core human need, we need to understand why it isn’t happening in this team.

The starting point for Influence and Coaching, is empathy and understanding. Cue the David Letterman music, it’s time for a top ten list:

1. Unclear Goals - Without a clear understanding of vision and strategy the team doesn’t know what they’re organizing toward.
2. Fear of failure - Lacking a culture of psychological safety, people are afraid of making mistakes. They look to others to make decisions, so they can’t be blamed for mistakes.
3. Micromanagement History - having been micromanaged in the past, they expect to be told what to do.
4. Poor Facilitation - Self-organizing requires a facilitator who is able to help everyone have their voice heard. With weak facilitation, only the dominant voices get heard.
5. Unclear Roles - When confusion reigns, we don’t know our role. In this case, retreating and waiting for orders would is easier.
6. Split Across Several Teams - When team members are shared across several teams, they don’t know what to prioritize.
7. Lack of Clear Priorities - When everything is a priority, we don’t know what to work on. It is easier to ask a leader to tell you what to do in this case.
8. External Pressure - As outside pressure increases, teams often fracture because we’re focused on protecting our own skin and not the needs of our team.
9. Lack of Consistency - We need consistency so we know what to do in any moment. When our team lacks consistency in Scrum Events, Sprint Length, Definition of Done, clarity of User Stories, etc., we don’t know how to respond.
10. Focus on Individual Accomplishments - When we focus on the individual over the team, self-organization still happens. We self-organize towards what we think will get us the best performance review next time round.

#YourTurn: What other reasons have you discovered for teams not self-organizing? Drop your thoughts below!