Peter Saddington of Agile Scout visited Valpak for a Tampa Bay Agile meetup recently. He spoke on the topic of high performing teams: “The New Role of Management in Building and Sustaining High-Performance Teams”
He talked about how self-organizing teams are more theory than reality. In reality, teams self-organize for survival but not necessarily for high-performance. He put forth that it is management’s job to be “high touch” with our teams and emotionally invested in them to get and sustain high-performance. So, Agile is not about getting out of the way of your teams but rather staying involved as servant leaders.
What this means to me? … I no longer have to feel guilty about being a high-touch manager! In fact, I didn’t even know there was a term for it … high-touch manager … I like the sound of that. I do hereby declare that I am not going to just shut up and get out of the way. I am going to stay involved and serve my teams towards high-performing.
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About Stephanie Davis
Stephanie is now VP of Product Excellence at LeadingAgile focused on the growth, development, and delivery of some amazing agile products. Recently, she spent the past two years as Executive Director - Enterprise Agility Office at Catalina leading another top-to-bottom, inside-out agile transformation. Prior to that, Stephanie was Senior Director of Enterprise Agility at Valpak. She was with Valpak for 13 years, most of which were focused on leading their agile transformation to what became a world renowned success story published in case studies and demonstrated to over 50 different companies through the years via agile tours. Prior to Valpak, Stephanie held past positions in the project management domain with AT&T and IBM.
Stephanie's academic credentials include a BS in Marketing from the University of South Florida and an MBA in International Business from the University of Bristol in England. She also maintains the Project Management Professional (PMP), Agile Certified Practitioner (ACP), and Certified Scrum Master (CSM) credentials.
Stephanie is big on tech community involvement! Most recently, she served as an elected board member to the Agile Alliance, a non-profit organization with global membership, committed to advancing agile development values, principles, and practices. In addition, she serves her local community as an organizer for Tampa Bay Agile, the largest and most active tech Meetup in the area, and the annual Agile Open Florida event.
In 2016, Stephanie was awarded Tampa Bay Tech’s Technology Leader of the Year and the Tampa Bay Business Journal’s BusinessWoman of the Year (Tech) and Emerging Technology Leader of the Year.
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