Bring Your People AlongThe ACE Model: A Framework fortransformative leaders buildingstronger teams

Bar Schwartz

This book is for sale at http://leanpub.com/ACEModel

This version was published on 2019-04-29

This is a Leanpub book. Leanpub empowers authors andpublishers with the Lean Publishing process. Lean Publishing isthe act of publishing an in-progress ebook using lightweight toolsand many iterations to get reader feedback, pivot until you havethe right book and build traction once you do.

© 2019 Bar Schwartz

Contents

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Chapter One . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3The ACE Model: Leadership that Brings People Along . 3

Chapter Two . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10Identity: Who are you in your context? . . . . . . . . . 10

Chapter Three . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19Emancipation: Create the Space for Your People to Lead 19

Chapter Four . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29Capability: Create Opportunities for Your People to

Grow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29

Chapter Five . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43Autonomy: Tomorrow’s Leaders in Charge . . . . . . 43

Chapter Six . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56Leading with Clarity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56

Leader’s Question Guide . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63

IntroductionTo become a leader in an organization, it takes a lot of courage,competence, intelligence, passion, and empathy. Leaders are thecustodians of the vision in any organization. As such, the need forcontinuous learning for leaders in every sector is crucial.

Every new leaderwants to demonstrate that they can bring somuchmore to the table. This is one of the reasons they usually, from thefirst day of taking over the leadership role, start changing things tofit their ideas and style, “Hoping” that the others follow suit. Well,as inspiring as this idea of leadership and followers is, it is a flawedsystem that has led to setbacks with initiated projects, includinglosing the people the leader led on the way. After all, why wouldpeople follow you if it is all about you and nothing about them?

Leaders lead people; they mobilize and inspire team members tochannel their energies towards the actualization of a vision or agoal, but people are different. Everyone you work with has a differ-ent personality, feelings, thoughts, skill-set, and more importantly,they come from a different work culture, even if they worked at thesame country, city or company.

Globalization is a whole new story. These days, people can relocateeasily or work remotely with an international team. Diversity is thereality of many organizations, not an ideal or a desire. Thinkingglobal, appreciating and seeking a variety of background, thoughts,and expertise, is going to become more critical as technologyevolves, and the location boundary disappear.

Being a great leader isn’t just about achieving set goals or launchingnew products. While these are important, as leaders are beingmeasured on their ability to deliver an outcome, being a leader ismore than that. Being a leader is about bringing your people along

Introduction 2

on the same path and enable them to achieve these goals, even ifyou are not there anymore.

Continuous change is also the reality of many organizations. Forcompanies with software products, it is the desire to become moreagile and accelerate their product or service delivery. For othersectors, it can be due to Digital transformation and automation ofroles and processes that used to be manual. Business models arereinvented, technology solutions become commodities as technol-ogy evolves, and so many large corporates are slowly going out ofbusiness due to young startups who disrupt the status quo in wayslarger corporates are too slow to adopt, so they go “Agile,” or atleast aspire.

Change brings a new layer of complexity to leadership. For changeto take place in your company, you must ensure that everyone ison board with your change vision; the people you work with mustfeel like they belong to your new status quo. Moreover, they needto see themselves in that vision, feel personally accountable forit, accepting it as a desired reality for themselves. It sounds moredifficult than it actually is.

The objective of this book is to inspire leaders of cooperation’s,businesses, organizations (large, medium and small) to operate asan inclusive system with the people they work with. As you read,youwill discover a practical framework that serves as a platform fortransformative business experience to generate clarity for yourselfand the people you lead.

You will discover approaches to how to connect with your team,as well as how to become an inclusive, hands-on leader who leadsan organization that works together collaboratively. As a businessleader, you know that everything achievable with business comeswith a process.

So, I introduce the ACE model!

Chapter One

The ACE Model: Leadership thatBrings People Along

Technology took the world by storm; it affected the way everythingwas done, and the perception people had about specific ideas,especially in the world of business. For anyone to successfullyoperate in this digital age, there is a need for a lethal combinationof creativity, entrepreneurial mindset and a diversity of perspectivefor problem-solving.

The technology nose-dive has led to more businesses trying toreinvent the wheel with novel digital services, products, and ideasthat suit the expectations of their teeming customers.

The desire to become a leading business that is recognized forexcellence has encouraged business leaders to take on a journeyto digitalize or become more Agile which aids smoothing andaccelerating delivery processes and enable the organization to shiftpriorities when new information arises.

The transformative process entails the adoption of new values,cultural ideas and different means of working. Often, those arenot in alignment with the current way things are done in theorganization. Otherwise, it would not be a transformation.

Whether you drive your transformation top-down or bottom-up, the people spearheading the change go through a harrowingjourney that leaves them unclear, overwhelmed and confused.The most common questions are around roles, responsibilities andinformation transparency. It is scary that you do not know whatyou do not know, but you do need to be the example to others as

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you lead it.

Every leader who is confused seeks only one thing; clarity. I wasone of those confused leaders. When I joined McKinsey in 2017,I was extremely excited. Honestly, I didn’t see it happening. Mybackground is in software engineering, and I have been working insoftware companies for my whole career. When I went to businessschool, I explicitly told my teachers and classmates that I am notthe type of person to go to a consulting firm. Nevertheless, just abit longer than one year after graduating, I found myself wearinga suite, waiting for my flight to take part in a full onboarding weekof McKinsey new Rockies.

Digital McKinsey is one of McKinsey functions, specialized oncreating value to clients who are starting or in the middle of adigital transformation, supporting them in reinventing the coreof the company and uncover where the real benefit from digitalis for this specific organization. One of the engagements modelsthey have called Digital Business Building, in short DBB, where ateam of McKinsey consultants and digital experts come together tosupport the client in setting up a new digital department, productor service. The mission includes strategic identification of digitalproduct or service that is aligned with the core of the company,development of a first working product, hiring new digital talentsfor the client, and coaching and training the existing abilities of theclient to work in the new digital setup.

When I joined Digital McKinsey, DBB was still very new. Myrole was of an Agile Coach. Not many consultants at McKinseyunderstood the position at a time. On their defense, most companiesI worked for before also didn’t as the role was not regulated andeveryone could call themselves an Agile Coach. Also, it didn’tinvolve a lot of coaching. I often joined the initial stages of settingup the first team or conducting introductory workshops to aligneveryone on the new culture, principles, and ways of working. Itwas mostly consulting and teaching. Due to the time constraintsof those engagements, often there was not enough time to allow

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enough experimentation and active learning. The focus was firston product delivery.

Consulting engagements are fundamentally different fromworkingas part of an engineering software development team. First, you arethe expert, even if it is the first time you do it. Next, an output isessential, if you have nothing to show, you didn’t do anything. Last,what measured creates impact, if you can’t explain it in numbers, itis just your opinion that you improved it. In comparison, workingwith mostly software engineers over my career, I was never anexpert as continuous learning was a vital aspect of every role Idid. Also, outputs were a waste of time when the focus is oncreating valuable outcomes. Last, measurements were often trickyand misleading as many of the matrixes used for none-softwareprojects can create a fake sense of safety but had an accuracy ofpredicting theweather for the next five years. Our hybridMcKinseyteam had to build a bridge between two very different mindsetswhile engaging in shifting the client’s mindset as well.

Clarity was lacking during most of my engagements. We managedto overcome it through painful conflicts that we tried very hardto keep hidden from the client. It could be as silly as arguingthe amount and quality of slides we created considering our coredelivery is a software product rather than a deck of slides. Moreoften it was about who should be involved in what stage of theengagement to ensure the right scoping, resources and timeline.People at McKinsey are brilliant, creative and dedicated to creatingimpact and delivering results to the client. Hence, we did a lot ofmagic to ensure the clients are always getting more than they ex-pected. Nevertheless, I had a hard time during those engagements.

One engagement led to the evolvement of the ACE model in mymind. As a matter of fact, it was one specific incident. The day wemessed up in front of the client.

Winter in Europe. I remember I was sick during that day, but Iflew to the client site to deliver the workshop nevertheless. The

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workshop was significant. We invited the key internal stakeholdersin the organization to both introduce them to the concept of agilityand kick-off the engagement, ensuring everyone is onboard onwhat we do and understands their role in it. Long story short, theoutcome was very different from what we had in mind. First, thestakeholders felt the workshop was not targeting them as it wasgeneral, the games were perceived as childish, and the focused ofthe workshop was on basics they already knew. Second, we hadtoo many slides, so a lot of the content was irrelevant and was notdiscussed. Third, we didn’t address the most important thing, whatis expected from the people in the room.

Later, as the engagement continued, wemanaged to gain the client’strust back. Nevertheless, failing in delivering such a vital workshopwas troubling me. I kept asking myself what made the expectationsso different? There were three main people involved in preparingthe seminar: the McKinsey partner, the engagement manager andmyself. The workshop was supposed to be an introduction to Agileso as an agile coach, I was the one to drive it. Same time, thepartner and the engagement manager expected that this wouldbe the engagement kick-off. Apparently, there are very concreteobjectives to what a kick-off should include. Unfortunately, I wasnot aware of it at all. Therefore, when I presented the first version ofthe workshop to the partner, most of the workshop was about Agilefundamentals. Nothing was there on the engagement itself, theobjectives, the new roles, the new process, the deadlines, or how toprovide feedback. Many crucial details were missing. The reactionof the partner was “I expected more,” and instead of clarifying whatthey expected, I got quiet and took it as a personal judgment on mycapability to prepare slides for a workshop.

The next days toward the workshop were stressful and emotional.The engagement manager tried to help me out. Instead, I kepttrying to focus and get it done on my own. At some point, Idropped it and let her finish it. Ultimately, that was the primarycause of the workshop failure. We were not aligned, we had a

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completely different understanding of theworkshop objectives, andnone of us actually owned it. We both felt exhausted, frustrated andundervalued. However, the price was paid by the whole team, witha substantial impact on the engagement leadership that had to cleanmy mess. I promised myself that I will not repeat the same mistake,but at a time, I was not even aware of my mistakes.

What happened there? It took me months of coaching to shift awayfrom the story where I was the victim, they didn’t trust me, and itwas on them to clarify their expectations. Here is the thing, youare the only one responsible for your clarity since you are the onlyone who knows what is unclear to you. From their side, everythingwas visible. They worked for McKinsey for years, and they knewexactly what to expect of an engagement kick-off. As the expert inmy domain and the driver of this workshop, it was on me to leadit. I was responsible for filling in the details, clarify together withthem the following questions so that we all have clarity.

* What is the purpose of such a workshop?

* What is the culture of the client?

* What is the most important thing right now to get done with thisworkshop?

* What is my role in this engagement?

* What is the knowledge we need and who has what knowledge?

* What do I bring to the table?

* What do they bring to the table?

* What is in my control?

* What would give them confidence in me?

* What expectations do they have of me?

When I took responsibility for my role in creating clarity on thatengagement, I realized howmany times I was frustrated by the wayleaders to communicate, especially during the time of change. As

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an engineer, I often worked in organizations that were not clearon neither what they want to achieve or what they expect of theirpeople to do. The size of the organization or the type of project,product or service didn’t matter. Also, all leaders I worked withalways had good intentions and thought they were, so how come Iwas still so confused. When I joined McKinsey, I realized that alsoas a leader myself, I wasn’t clearer. Everything was clear in myhead, but no one could read my mind.

Clarity is the outcome of the effort we put into a process ofclarifying through questioning; there are no shortcuts or magicformulas. It is all about asking questions and seeking answers. Ittakes time. Some questions feel extremely obvious. However, onceyou ask it and hear the answer, you understand that even the mostobvious things to you are not always as apparent to others.

The ACEmodel is an exploration and clarification coaching processto create clarity for individuals and teams. Depending on who isseeking clarity, it is recommended to go through the model withanother person. For yourself, that person can be a coach or yourdirect manager. For the people, you lead, involve key stakeholders,regardless if they report to you or not. The process includes concretesteps that are built on top of one another and include questionsthat will help you lead with clarity as you take everyone alongwith you. As a coaching process, each question is meant to start aconversation that creates awareness for all individuals involved andgenerates learnings that would enable you to succeed in movingforward.

The ACE model starts with the idea of “Identity” – You. Yourutilization of the model starts with yourself. Then, we start withthe end in mind with the intention to eventually reach the goalof having “Clarity.” Remember, the process is interactive. Bringingpeople together to answer the questions in the model is a vital stepto ensuring everyone is on the same page, working toward the samething and realizing the same vision. ACE was developed to not justsupport you in finding clarity at the moment for a concrete project

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or task, but also maintain it as information changes or evolves. It isnot a model you go through once, it is a compass to check-in everytime things become unclear to you or anyone you lead.

Just before we dive into the model, you should know what “ACE”means;

Autonomy, Capability, Emancipation.

So, we are ready to commence the process starting with “Identity.”

*Please note that at the end of this book, just after the concludingsection, there is a Leader’s Question Guide. This guide contains setsof questions that help you get the best out of the ACE model afterreading the book.

Chapter Two

Identity: Who are you in yourcontext?

Clarity is a subjective experience. Hence, for you to reach clarity,the ACE model starts with you, your identity. It pertains to theconcept of self-discovery. When it comes to yourself, do you knowyou? What are the experiences that shaped you to be the uniqueperson you are? What motivations do you have? What are yourvalues? What are your needs?What are your beliefs? What triggersyour negative feelings?

Giving an affirmative answer to the questions asked above is easy.After all, you have been living in your body since you were born,and you seem to think you know yourself. But this is the truth;only a few people know who they are and take responsibility forwho they are. This few are the ones who become better leaders inorganizations as they are able to lead authentically, manage theiremotional state, exhibit resilience, inspire trust and create a feelingof safety in others.

Every organization witnesses a period of drastic change which cutsacross products, services or initiatives. Especially if you are in themiddle of a transformation of some sort. It is the responsibility ofthe leader to translate the change vision to a viable approach thatcan be used to get the best out of the situation. However, how isit related to your “identity?” To answer that, let’s use Ellen as anexample.

Ellen is a young, driven product manager at a small, fast-growingstartup. She started as an engineer when the startup was at its earlydays and grew up with the company, leading the core product

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development team. It was not her first job, but it was her firstleadership role. When she was promoted to lead the team, she wasecstatic. Working extremely hard gained her the trust and respectof everyone around her. Leading the product team was a rewardfor the years she dedicated to growing the company.

Ellen recognized the fact that as the company grows, the needfor bringing more people and delegating more work to others isessential. Her close relationship with the founders enabled her tobe involved in strategic discussions that were usually kept behindclosed doors. Therefore, she knew they committed to their investorsmore than they could deliver and anticipated a significant shake-upas they struggled to scale up their engineering team.

To support managing a more significant amount of projects andengineers, the company hired a junior product manager to helpEllen. The idea was simple. Ellen will be the primary lead, and thejunior product manager would support her by working on topicsEllen has no time for. When the team grows enough to split intotwo sub-teams, they would also divide their work, and each onewould focus on one team. Hence, recruitment was the first priority.

Filled with enthusiasm and confidence, the junior product managerstarted her work at Ellen’s team. She was a quick learner and avery ambitious individual. Within a few months, she asked to takeover more responsibility and even suggested changing the wholeprocess and tools the engineers were using to support the growthof the team. Ellen was puzzled and immediately refused. “This ishow we do things here,” she said, “it works.”

Ellen’s team was following one of the known agile frameworkscalled SCRUM. Every two weeks, the team got together to planwhat the team is going to work on. Ellen, as the product manager,was prepared with a list of items ordered by priority called a back-log. Each item on the backlog was selected with a specific person inmind as the teamwas highly specialized and collaboration betweenteam members was rare. Together with the team, Ellen explained

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each item for each individual. Then each member of the teamestimated how much time they think their items would take. Thatmeeting could take two to four hours.

By the end of the two weeks, Ellen would check the status ofeach item. If it were not completed, they would usually continueto work on it for the next two weeks. The backlog never gotemptier as new items were always more important than olderitems. Frequently, important issues that could not be resolvedimmediately disappeared from sight as they were hidden at thebottom of the list. They raised back at themost uncomfortable timeswhen it was too late to fix them. As a result, the team wasted a lotof time planning the work for items that were never prioritized. Notto mention the long planning meeting where they reviewed all ofthose items every two weeks. The team was frustrated.

To change that, the junior product manager suggested splittingthe team to two multi-functional sub-teams so they can workmore collaboratively and reduce the time of the planning. Shediscussed it with the whole team. Considering the further growthand anticipated workload, they would waste days of valuableengineering capacity if they remain growing while working inthe current process where people are so specialized. Nevertheless,without discussing it with anyone, Ellen vetoed that they shouldkeep the process as is and not split the team. They are not ready.

When the team grew, the process became more complex. Theplanning meetings got even longer, sometimes exceeding the day.With every new member, the junior product manager and the teamexpected that now it is finally the right time to break into twosub-teams. However, that never happened. Before every deliverydate, the team would work extremely long hours, or they failed todeliver the committed projects. A fewmonths in, the junior productmanager left the company. She said she had no room to do the workshe was hired to do as she was promised to have her own team.Ellen was perplexed as she dealt with the biggest challenge of hercareer.

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Ellen is facedwith a challenge of “identity,” which is one of themostcommon issues leaders experience when dealing with a change. Ascommitted as she is, she supported a solution that was not alignedwith her needs and beliefs. As a result, she became a change blockerrather than a change enabler.

Who is Ellen in this situation? Ellen loves certainty, knowing whatis going to happen when it’s going to happen and by whom. Duringher career, she was acknowledged for her ability to plan ahead, setup realistic trackable goals and follow through those goals, meetingcommitments of scope and time, even if it meant working extrahours before important deadlines. As a team leader, she was the oneplanning for her team to ensure everyone is working on the rightthing. Unknowingly, she took the full ownership and responsibilityof her team. Even when they implemented SCRUM, a frameworkwhere the whole team owns the delivery. Ellen wants to be incontrol.

What is in Ellen’s control? As the company grows, Ellen had to startgiving up power by delegating work to the junior product managerand the team, allowing them to work independently, parallel to herteam instead of at the same team. Rationally, Ellen understood thatthe company is growing and it would be impossible to deliver thework they committed to without scaling the engineering depart-ment. She also realized she is one person and supported the decisionto hire someone else to help her. Moreover, she agreed to the planto split the team once the junior product manager is onboard. Thefeeling of losing control paralyzed her. Delegating work meant nothaving the certainty that things will happen exactly the way Ellenwanted it. It meant she will no longer be the one to prioritize andexplain every item the people in the team work on. It requiredtrusting others to be responsible with her, however, Ellen neverneeded to trust others, she was in control.

Now, how will the team accept an idea the leader isn’t so clearlyenthusiastic about? Especially when implementing the idea is sostressful to the extent that the leader blocks it. Ellen and other

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leaders in her capacity need to deal with their own values, needs,and beliefs before proffering or accepting solutions they can’tfollow themselves. As long as Ellen believes she needs to be incontrol over the whole engineering team, she won’t be able to bringanyone to support her and share the workload. Neither her team orthe junior product manager could change that, only Ellen.

At times of change, leaders attempt to implement a new way ofworking or a culture which they think is the right way to go,however, they are not passionate about and don’t really believethey can or should do it themselves. Often, it is an outcome ofadopting a market trend or listening to external advice withoutconsidering the current state of the organization. Nevertheless, thepeople working with the leader expect the leader to be the exampleof the change they drive.When the leader does not follow their newapproach, the blame game often starts.

Ellen agreed with the great idea to be supported by someone else,split the team and grow the company. She hired the junior personwith the intention to onboard her, delegate the work and splitthe team. Somehow, it just never felt right. It didn’t matter thatshe knew the organizational context and the unrealistic amountof work ahead. Also, she genuinely thought it is the right wayto go and was excited to support her organization growth. Whatblocked Ellen was herself, nothing else. Her need to be in control,the belief she is the sole person responsible for the product deliveryand the fear of not having the same amount of certainty. Notunderstanding that led her tomicromanage her team, blaming themfor not delivering, and blocking the junior product manager fordoing her job.

Ellen needs to gain self-awareness. Understanding who she is,what her needs are, what she values, what triggers her and whatmotivates her is vital. As long as she doesn’t know, until she hasdealt with the deeper personal issue, she will continue to strugglewith supporting her company growth. As a leader, identifyingwhen you are the problem is crucial.

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Ellen could discover that working for a larger organization is nota good fit for her. She could join another startup at its earlydays. Alternatively, she could find that her need for control andcertainty is limiting her from being the leader she would like tobecome. Understanding her own work preferences and limitingbeliefs would have enabled her to either let go or at least betransparent with her team that she is struggling as much as theydo and they can overcome it together. When the problem is clear,people can support you in finding a solution.

Remember that as a leader, you are also going through the samechange as the organization. For you to have the self-assuranceand trust that you are an enabler rather than a blocker, you mustdevelop a higher self-awareness. Self-discovery is a one-first step.

Personality Assessments

The simplest way to gain initial data and insight into your per-sonality is to take a personality assessment. This step helps to getto know your preferences through questions and the answers youhonestly provide.

Again, technology comes to the rescue here as you can utilizea personality test online to discover a bit about who you are.With thousands of test platforms and apps, you can gain an initialawareness of your nature which becomes helpful to you both onthe job and in your personal life.

There are many types of personality assessments depending onthe information you are seeking about yourself. Assessments likethe DISC or MBTI focus more on the natural preferences of theindividual, focusing on interaction with others, and gathering ororganizing information. Alternatively, assessments like Strengths-Finder focus on your natural talent which can then be developedto strengths. These are only a few options. There are many morepersonality assessments, and it is highly recommended to seek a

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professional before going through those assessments.

Be mindful that personality assessments are one step in gettingto know yourself. Most personality assessments are based on self-evaluation. Thus, they are highly subjective. It is a great indicatorto evaluate how you see yourself. To gain a complete picture, itis highly recommended to ask people who know you and workwith you to provide feedback on the results or even fill in thoseassessments for you.

Some of the assessments suggest that your personality is fixedand you should stick to who you are. Others suggest that youcan change and improve. Ultimately, the purpose of assessmentsis to give you insight so you can have a language to describe yourpreferences. You are in control of your life, and it is your choicewhether you want to follow the results or change them.

Visualization

Identity can also be revealed via exploration and visualization ofan ideal day, future or an activity. What are those things you loveso much that when you do it, you lose track of time? What wouldan ideal day look like? What if you could be anything you wantto be, what would it look like? What are the ideas you promotein your mind? What are the things you can’t stop thinking about?The answers you provide to these questions will give you insightsof who you are, what you value and like.

Visualization has always been a powerful tool for self-identificationbecause a person is a combination of their feelings, thoughts,behavior, and experience. When we think about an ideal day, we gothrough multiple situations and decide how we would like them tobe. When those important situations happen differently, in reality,we are usually triggered.

Most likely in your lifetime, you will respond to situations based onyour dominant thought pattern. For example, Ellen ideal day would

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be well planned so she knows what to do when to do it and howto do it. When she needs to live in the moment and make decisionsbased on unknown information, she is triggered.

Be mindful that some people struggle with visualization. Hence, ifyou can’t visualize in your mind, try writing things down, draw apicture or share your thought with a coach who can support you inexploring further.

Mindfulness

Mindfulness refers to awareness; it is the state at which a personis aware of their present state while acknowledging one’s feelings,thoughts, and bodily sensation.

Being mindful makes it possible for you to identify what makes youtick, the things you don’t like and the things you are passionateabout. You can practice mindfulness by taking time each day toanalyze your feelings and thoughts about the issues you dealt withduring the day.

Ask yourself during the day “how do I feel?” Even if your answer isgood or bad, it is a great start. Ensure to write it down and reviewit later the day. If possible, assist a friend, partner or a coach whenyou identify certain situations where you feel in a certain way thatis misaligned with your expectations or wishes.

When you get to know who you are, it becomes easier to under-stand how changes, concepts, and solutions would impact you.Thus, it will become easier to recognize which ones you willnaturally support and which ones you will struggle with yourself.Knowing that will enable you to better communicate expectationswith your leadership and team as well as ensure you have thesupport system you need.

Ellen took some time off to explore what was standing betweenher and supporting the company growth. She discovered that she

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naturally seek certainty and not having control over the wholeteam was extremely stressful for her. Same time, it was unrealisticand unfair to expect that. Her need for control took away theopportunity for others to think and own their work themselves. Asthe team grows, it would be impossible for her to be the sole owneras it’s already diminishing the performance of her team. Therefore,she walked back to her team and expressed that. The team wassurprised and acknowledged her for her vulnerability. Together,they found a middle ground where Ellen remains involved in allplanning conversations until she is ready to let the team take over.Then, they will proactively include her when they need her inputand ensure to inform her of the decisions they take. She would stillbe able to intervene early if needed.

Ellen wants to be an inclusive leader and support her team to growand deliver the best quality outcome they can. Now that she is moreaware of her own fears and needs, she is able to express it to herteam. This is an important step. No one can know what is in yourhead and heart if you don’t share it.

As a leader, you can take the same step Ellen has taken by firstrealizing that you have to start with yourself. Then with the aid ofthe self-discovery approaches, you can become a better version ofyourself who can contribute a vision, ideas, and solutions that youbelieve in and communicate how you are in line with the visionand objectives of the organization.

Ready for the next phase of the ACE model? We are going to diveinto the concept of emancipation: flip over to the next chapter anddiscover more.

Chapter Three

Emancipation: Create the Space forYour People to Lead

As Nick stepped into the company’s headquarters for the quarterlyc-level meeting, he sensed the tensed atmosphere and immediatelyknew something was off. He hurried quickly to the meeting room,and the faces of others present at the meeting confirmed hissuspicion.

The CEO started the meeting stating his displeasure at the reduc-tion in sales. As a product manager, Nick knew he oversaw thesales team, so he was going to have to explain the reason for thebad sales. As an engineer in his background, Nick felts he didn’thave the knowledge or skill to come up with a good sales strategy.Furthermore, since the company was still at the early startup days,his team was very junior, mostly out of college.

At the end of the meeting, Nick suggested that the company hires asales consultant who can come in to proffer solutions. One monthafter the consultant is hired, sales are even worse than they were.Nick starts to wonder what the problem might be; the consultantsuggested a lot of great organic methods that should have set theproducts rising through the market and dominating the sector. So,what exactly was the problem?

Emancipation refers to the aspect of being set free from legal,social or political restrictions. Concerning leadership, freedom ishow leaders drive solutions from within the company (internal)instead of outside the company (external), delegating ownership tothe people they lead to seeking solutions that fit their context. Thus,emancipating your people means freeing them from the restrictions

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of relying on you to make decisions for them. Namely, that youcan trust that you created the space for others to lead themselvesso when they are given the freedom to make a decision, they arecapable of making the right one. They understand the context theyoperate in.

When faced with a problem, many leaders feel like the sole personresponsible for solving the problem. They take the full ownershipand keep the final decision-making vote to themselves. Usually,it comes from an assumption that as a leader they have to solveall of the problems, protect their team from the struggle as theymaintaining an expert image in front of them. As a result, thoseleaders want to seek the solution outside the organization evenwhen they haven’t exhausted all options inside the organization.Commonly, not seeking the contribution of their team in findingthe solution.

Best practices tend to look simple on paper but hard to implement,predominantly when the decision is made top-down without in-volving the people who have to implement it afterward. Externalsolutions can feel unrelated to the company’s culture, context orexisting ways of working. People tend to feel forced into thatsolution as it is not their own. They feel unheard, restricted andundervalued when they don’t get to have a say on how to solvetheir problems. How do you feel when someone thatmight not be asfamiliar as you with your unique problem vetos you to implementtheir oversimplified solution?

Nick, as a leader, hasn’t engaged his team in solving the salesproblem. Moreover, he hasn’t understood what the problem is. AsNick is not a sales person but a product manager, he felt he shouldknow everything about the product, including how to sell it, butin this specific case, he had no idea what was standing betweenhis team and increasing sales. Knowing his team is junior, heassumed they wouldn’t have the knowledge to solve it themselves.Therefore, for months he told his team to sale the product in aparticular way, his way.

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The external consultant Nick hired worked separately from theteam using Nick’s opinions and data they gathered from the com-pany tools and marketing team. Hence, the consultant never metthe team and was not familiar with the current capabilities theyhad. When the salespeople received the new strategy, they weredispleased. They knew their market and the problems they werefacing. The approach suggested was very different from the waythey were working and didn’t address any of their challenges.However, they had no choice but to implement it. When the salesworsen, no one from the team was surprised. They said, “The newstrategy aimed to correct things that were already working.”

The concept of emancipation encourages leaders to shift theirmindset from “as the leader I know best” to “the people doingthe work know best.” It is about believing that people are alreadyempowered, resourceful and capable of solving their own problemsrather than requiring rescue.

Emancipation alsomakes it possible for leaders to bring their peoplealong as when people are involved, they buy into the same goalsand ideas with you. Thus, increasing your chances of effectingpositive change. Teams who have experienced emancipation areable to translate the leader’s vision to what it means for themselves.When your team sees themselves as owning a part of your vision,they will craft a much more persuading way for themselves to getyou there. As such, you can trust that they will work with you, notagainst you.

What would your team need to be emancipated?

Purpose

Purpose stands for clarifying the reasons for which something isdone or exists. It is about creating a vivid vision that enablespeople to imagine a desirable future where they see themselvesin it. Simply, imagine you had a time machine to visit a day

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in the future. On that day you already achieved the things youare currently working to change. What would it look like to besuccessful? What would change for your company, your team andyourself when your current challenge is resolved, and your visionbecome a reality?

Most companies have a wage mission statement. When the missionstatement is wage, people in the organization tend to see it asa marketing message rather than a guiding compass to wherethe organization is moving towards. Imaging what would it looklike would generate a completely different image in each person’simagination, leading to people working toward a different outcomethan what the leadership intended. As said by Henry Kissinger,“If you don’t know where you are going, every road will get younowhere.” Clarifying where you are going is an essential step foremancipation.

Working with many organizations throughout my career in thesoftware industry, most of the leaders I met considered having avision as a fluff. Hence, it is soft, not really important and a wasteof time in comparison to coming up with a new strategy, financialmodel or a new dashboard to track key performance indicators.Alignment on targets is as essential as having a shared vision. Nickstory is one example of why.

What is the purpose of Nick’s organization? At a time, it was onlyclear to the CEO. As the company grew, the sense of purpose theyhad at the early stages started fading away. The new people theyhired had no shared experiences with the people that were theresince the beginning. For them, the current state of the organizationis what is. At the current state, it was all about money.

Money is a common motivator for many organizations. Nonethe-less, for many people, money is meant to maintain a particularlifestyle rather than their purpose. It is possible that the purpose ofyour organization is generating wealth, but more often it is the easyanswer for those who don’t want to waste time thinking about it.

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Money, as an important outcome as it is, is not an inspiring reasonto get up every morning. It is not what propels most people to cometo work everymorning and seek results daily. Moreover, if it is, theywould easily go to work for anyone else whowould pay themmore.

Purpose is your contribution to the world. It is the change youwant to create or the problem you want to solve. It inspires a senseof determination in you as you translate it from a vision into areality. The people who share the vision will want to work foryou. They will want to see the same future. However, how wouldthey know about your purpose if you never share it with them?Having a language to describe and communicate your purpose isas important as having a purpose.

As a leader, you want every person you lead to be as clear on whatthe purpose is so that they can work toward the same future, alsowhen you are not there to remind them. Therefore, your primaryresponsibility as a leader explicitly communicates the purpose andthen link everything you do on a day to day to that purpose.

Now, it depends if you are the company owner or a leader in anexisting company. Nick is a leader for an existing startup, so hisrole is to translate the CEO vision to the sales team, supportingthem in having clarity on the reasons certain decisions are madeand connect the sales contribution to the broader organizationalvision.

If you are the owner, the company purpose is a reflection of yourpurpose, and there are many ways to discover it. Simon Sinek, theauthor of “Start with Why,” wrote multiple books addressing thischallenge. In short, it is about seeking patterns in the decisionsyou make every day as they reflect your values and reasons. Onetechnique to do that is to write down stories of events and decisionsthat you consider as life turning. Those could be either positiveor negative as long as they had a significant impact on your life.Next, you share those stories with a partner, a coach or a friend,allowing them to ask you exploratory questions that support you to

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dive deeper into your feelings and reasons. You might ask yourselfwhat was important about that decision? What alternatives wereavailable for you? What drove you to choose this one alternativeand not the other? What did you value more? As your partnerwrites the answers down, you might discover patterns in yourbehavior, feelings, and thoughts. This pattern is often your Why.Your business is one of the ways you live your purpose daily.

Nick’s sales team honestly thought the purpose of the companywas to generate more wealth to its shareholders. Therefore, theteam focused on generating money from new customers with noparticular focus on a target niche. The team was also extremelyaggressive with its customers as it enabled them to close deals fastand raise their numbers. For them, the goal was to increase salesas soon as possible at all cost. Considering the product they sold,many customers realized quickly that the product was not a greatfit and requested a refund. That led to the sales decrease. Whenthe consultant provided a targeted sales strategy to focus the teamon what matters, the team was displeased as they were unclear onthe reasons to focus on that specific customer’s niche. Especially astheir aggressive methods were insufficient with that niche. It wason Nick to clarify the purpose of doing that to encourage his teamto change its approach.

Culture

Culture refers to the social behavior and norms found in humansocieties, and it is peculiar to every individual. Every organizationhas a culture. These are the unwritten rules of how people behave,communicate and work to achieve the company objectives. Someorganizations have a written and communicated culture, othersdon’t. Often, even if the culture is written and agreed upon, onecan still find a completely different culture in different departmentsand teams.

Your organization has a unique work culture. However, as a person,

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also you have a culture. Your culture is driven by the country youcame from, how you were raised, and the social rules you learnedto follow. Therefore, when you join an organization that follows asignificantly different culture than your own, it feels odd.

The good news is that as long as significant values of ours are notbeing violated, we can adjust to a new culture. However, we firsthave to recognize what this culture is. When you, as a leader, followa different culture than the organization, also the people you leadwould follow that culture. That often creates problems and frictionbetween individuals across the company. Therefore, understandingthe differences between the company culture, your culture and yourteammates’ culture is crucial to creating an inclusive work culture.As a leader, you are not just responsible for following the desiredorganization culture yourself, you are also responsible for teachingothers how to follow the same culture.

Nick was working incorporates most of his career until he joinedthe startup he works for now. Also, he is coming from a culturewhere older people are considered smarter than younger people.Nick’s organization is a young startup. Thus, most of the employeesthey hire are out of college, young and driven. Nonetheless, Nickoperated under the assumption that junior people are not supposedto be involved in strategic decisions. It created friction betweenNick and his team who could not understand his choice to hire anexpensive consultant instead of brainstorming solutions with theteam like any other leader in the company.

When Nick understood the gap between the culture he came fromand the company culture, he understood the choice he had to make.Either he learns to collaborate with everyone equally regardlessof their seniority level, or he seeks a company which follows amore traditional hierarchy. His need to solve the problem himselfin collaboration with an external expert came from his culturalbelief that his junior team shouldn’t be involved, and this affectedhis expectations from his teammates who expected to be included.Specifically because collaborating with everyone is how decisions

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are made in this company.

When you understand your work culture, you can decide whetherthis is the right culture for you or not. As a leader, you can thenbecome the advocate for this culture, supporting your team tomake the same decisions behavioral decisions for themselves.Whenpeople know what is expected of them, they can focus on the workitself rather than interpersonal conflicts.

Mission

What is the mission? What is the most important thing to achieveright now? What should we prioritize when everything seemsurgent and important?

“If you have seized a lot, you have not seized” is a Hebrew Talmudicidiom to express the idea that when one tries to achieve everything,they achieve nothing. Having a purpose is inspiring your people fora better future, having a mission is focusing your people on whatto do to get there. Especially during the times of change, when theorganization is reinventing its business model, operating model,and culture, prioritization becomes hard. Everything is essentialand urgent. Moreover, what’s important can frequently change,sometimes daily. That is the key reason for having a focus is sovital. A team without a clear mission will be swayed by any newcompelling idea, start and not finish important work, and alwaysneed to seek the approval of external personnel, such as the leader’s,to make decisions. Doing too many things is one of the mostcommon reasons things don’t get done.

As a leader, it is your responsibility to translate the overall companyvision and mission statement to the day-to-day work of your team.You are not alone in it. When was the last time you asked yourpeople to vote what is the most important thing right now? Givena particular objective, what should we focus on? Your people knowbest what they are working on right now. When they are also clear

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on purpose, together you can have a conversation on what needsto happen for you to reach a specific objective and goal.

A clear focus enables your people to finish things rather thanalways starting new things. When they understand the importance,they will be able to prioritize what matters. Also, when prioritiesshift, your team can then confidently judge whether it is alignedwith the overall company purpose and decide accordingly.

Nick thought the mission was clear. He thought everyone knewthat the company is aspiring to go public and everything theywork toward now is related to that. The increase in sales must besustainable for the numbers to count. The team, however, didn’tknow that. They were operating with a short-term outlook anda clear aim to reach a number, not building sustainable customerrelationships.

For Nick, the stages of emancipation were difficult. Through theprocess, he understood that he was unaware of the companyvision, operated in a different culture than his peers and nevercommunicated the company business objectives to his team. Hisfirst reaction was to reject it, but after careful consideration, hedecided to give it a try and took his team to an offsite.

“We are here to solve a problem,” he explained to his team. “Wecare about our customers. Otherwise, we wouldn’t care about theirproblems. Caring is one of our company values.” For the team, itwas the first time they discussed the product from the viewpoint ofa customer, the problem the product solves, the type of relationshipthey were expected to develop with the customer and the reasonssolving this problem was important. Throughout the offsite, theteam asked many valuable questions. Together, they clarified whatsales role is in realizing the vision of the company. Next, theydiscussed the cultural topics, including how sales are expected tobehave with customers, how people are expected to work togetherinside the team and with other departments, and lastly, how Nickis expected to support his team going forward. When they finally

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discussed the ”going public” mission, the team was resourceful incoming up with ideas how to improve their sales approach, acquirenew customers of the target niche as well as restore relationshipswith existing customers they lost on the way. As a team, theyalso agreed on how they can support each other in developing thecapabilities to do that. The quarter later, Nick’s team doubled theirsales and was in the right direction to reach their yearly goals. Nickdeveloped a new trust in his team, emancipating them to makedecisions and own the sales initiatives going forward.

When a leader emancipates their team, they will not go runningoutside for help, they will let their team decide when they requirethat support. Furthermore, they will discover that their team devel-ops a sense of ownership and can now focus on delivering betteroutcomes that are aligned with the company vision and objectives.

For you, as a leader, emancipating your team gives you the trustthat your team is working on the right thing and would be able totake the right decisions when given the responsibility. The next stepis to ensure your team capability. You will learn all about it in thenext section.

Chapter Four

Capability: Create Opportunities forYour People to Grow

Alexa is an extremely talented software engineer. She has gonethrough multiple promotions from being an intern software engi-neer at a small startup to a team leader of one of the engineeringteams at a large multi-division corporate. At every company sheworked for, regardless of her seniority, the size of her team and thecomplexity of the product or service she was part of delivering, shehas been exceeding expectations. When it comes to analyzing andsolving problems, Alexa is your go-to person.

Through her experiences in different companies and firms, shehas maintained her functional expertise in Backend Software De-velopment. Her desire to maintain the expert status led her tocontinuously seek backend specific challenges where she could testher own assumptions and explore new technologies. As a result, shewas frequently given special backend only projects that enabled herto work completely independently from the rest of her team. Whenit comes to the backend technology, Alexa is an undeniable lead.

Capability means a person’s power or ability to get somethingdone. Capabilities could be technical, such as writing code andsolving complex math problems, as well as non-technical, suchas communicating with others and delegating effectively. In or-ganizations, capabilities are often measured by the ability of anindividual to do a certain task or perform a certain activity. Whiletechnical capabilities can be measured using task-oriented examsand on-the-job performance evaluation, the non-technical skillscan only be measured by the perception of others. Therefore, most

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organizations have a 360 feedback cycles in place.

Alexa top capability is a technical capability. She is able to develophigh-quality backend code that is reliable and scalable. When givena challenge, Alexa problem-solves it in her own head and developit all by herself. Her promotions were always a result of being ableto deliver. Even when she worked as part of a team, she was oftenconsidered as the team superstar and received special projects.

Alexa was promoted recently to lead a team of ten junior back-end engineers. The feedback of the first couple of months wasextremely positive. Her team continuously acknowledged her forher approach. She led by example. Therefore, when the previousengineering manager left for another company, the leadership feltAlexa was the most fitting candidate to replace him. After all, shewas hands-on and proved that she is able to lead others to delivergreat results.

Capability to deliver results is one of the most common reasons topromote people to a leadership role. Leaders with high expertise,skill, and wisdom are trustworthy and appreciated by their team-mates. Similar to Alexa, they are often hands-on, lead by exampleand inspire people to deliver better results as they set the standardshigh.

Alexa’s organization, similar to many other companies, is struc-tured in product divisions. Alexa is part of the engineering depart-ment of one product division which includes multiple engineeringteams. Before her promotion to an engineering manager, Alexaled one engineering team with backend specialization. As an en-gineering manager, Alexa is now leading the whole engineeringdepartment of her division.

For Alexa, stepping up to lead the whole engineering departmentwas challenging. The company was also going through an or-ganizational change and the change started at the engineeringdepartment. Before the change, every team at engineering had aclear specialization. After the change, teams were multi-functional

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and included different engineering roles, including supporting rolessuch as Design, Quality Assurance, and Testing. Nevertheless, theengineering teams operated in silos. Meaning, the hierarchicalcompany structure led to most communication between teams toremain managed by the leads of those teams. In the new structure,most people had no experience collaborating with supporting rolesas it was owned primarily by the team leads.

Alexa’s company wanted to take the transformation one step at atime. Therefore, the structure between departments hasn’t changed.Each department was led by a manager. A clear process was inplace to specify the handover of product delivery between thedepartments. Hence, delivery objectives are defined and specifiedfully by the product management team. Then the product man-ager handover it to the engineering manager to break it down totechnical implementation tasks. Parallel to that, the product man-ager also communicates the same objectives with the supportingdepartments such as Sales and Marketing. If everyone is on-time,the software product is available at the same time as the othersupporting materials.

As a backend team lead, Alexa handled everything related to herteam, including being the project manager, release manager andthe representative of her team in every problem-solving meeting.However, now that Alexa is the engineering manager, she isresponsible for all teams, including supporting roles. Therefore,her stakeholders, the people she interacts with and collaboratesfrequently in her role, are different.

One important stakeholder is the division product manager. Everyquarter, a product steering meeting is taking place to enable keystakeholders from across the company to influence the product pri-orities. The results of this meeting influence the quarterly planningmeeting led by the division product manager. During that meeting,Alexa and the other departments lead to receiving the objectivesfor the next quarter. Their role is ensuring their teams in theirdepartments deliver those objectives by the end of it.

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Now, Alexa is an experienced engineer so she understands allexpertise is needed to deliver a software product, not just herknowledge and skill in backend engineering. With the previousstructure, she could rely on each engineering team to have an expertteam lead to drive the implementation for their team. The newstructure was perceived to Alexa as complex. Each team consists ofall engineering roles the team required to deliver a fully workingproduct increment to a customer. For Alexa, that meant morefrequent planning and releases, as well as her contact person ineach team, wasn’t necessarily a technical person.

The quarter time passed extremely quickly. Alexa started feelinganxious as none of her engineering teams met the objectives shereceived from her product manager. At the quarterly meeting, sheexplained that it was all the testers fault. The engineers deliveredmore than they committed for in every engineering cycle but thetesters couldn’t finish testing in such a short cycle.

The results were puzzling. The change was supposed to enable amore frequent delivery and empower the teams. How could theengineers deliver more than they should but none of it is ready forcustomer release? Alexa kept repeating that they need to hire moretesters as one tester per team is not enough to test everything. FromAlexa viewpoint, her engineers delivered great results. However,for the product manager and other departments, it didn’t matter.They needed a working product.

Agile transformation requires leaders to shift their mindset frombeing responsible only for their function to be responsible for thewhole product or service delivery. Hence, the whole organizationhas to shift their focus from doing their work, in their functionalexpertise, to working collaboratively across functional expertiseso that they can attain the diverse perspectives needed to deliverthe product fully. The goal of a multi-functional engineering teamis to deliver a working product, often released to a customer,so that the team can receive faster feedback on the product andadjust their plan for future development. When one person in the

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team completed the work within their expertise, they are expectedto support others to complete their work before they can startsomething new. Meaning, backend engineers might have to writefrontend code and designers might have to test. The key is thatthe team is measured on a team outcome, a working product, notan individual contribution and everyone’s contribution is equallyimportant and interdependent.

It is often hard to asses what capabilities are required to succeed in arole. It can be for your own role or the roles fulfilled by the peopleyou lead. Especially when the role is new and undefined. Alexamight understand that the changes in her organization requiredifferent capabilities. However, being the technical expert servedher in her previous roles so it was normal to assume the samecapabilities that got her promoted are the ones needed in her newrole. In practice, communicate objectives and expectations clearly,delegating effectively to the teams, and bring people together towork across multiple functions are the capabilities Alexa needed toacquire to lead in the new structure. All of that on top of shiftingher focus from managing the work to enabling people. Still, it wasnever communicated and Alexa was never trained.

When change takes place in a company, especially if the changerequires a role change, so many new leaders don’t know what toexpect. As people are moving between structures, roles and focussuch as from a functional team to a multi-functional team or fromimplementation driven role to a leadership role, the capabilitiesrequired to change as well. It sounds obvious but in practice, ithappens every day. From one day to another you have a newrole. Suddenly you are expected to perform at the same level youperformed before, using the capabilities you have acquired throughthe years prior. However, in the new role, different capabilitiesare required. Particularly in leadership roles where the focus shiftsfrom task-oriented work to people-oriented work. It is often aconfusing time for the individual in transition, especially if thereis no one around to mentor or trains them on the new role. The

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expectation to shift responsibilities and people will just “figure itout” is unrealistic or takes much longer time than often given.

So, what should Alexa do instead?

Alexa and other leaders in this situation can re-evaluate theircapabilities and their team’s capability on a regular basis. Be awareof the new responsibilities and keep asking what is needed tosucceed in performing those new responsibilities. Also, being open-minded about trying new things and involving others to bridgethe capability gap. For example, Alexa could brainstorm with eachteam what would they need to be able to support testing activities.The outcome of the brainstorming might be that the team requirestraining instead of hiring more testers. Remember, hiring morepeople is always an option. Enabling your people to grow in theircapabilities is your priority as a leader.

What could you do to create opportunities for your people andyourself to grow in the capabilities required to succeed in a certainrole? The following steps describe:

* How to identify the required capabilities

* How to create a sense of ownership to build capabilities

* How to maximize growth for individuals

Structure

Organizational structure influences how responsibilities are dele-gated, coordinated and supervised. For example, functional teamswould normally be responsible only for their function while di-visions or multi-functional teams would be responsible for wholeproduct delivery as you have all people needed in one place.

For leaders, understanding organizational structures are importantas it allows you to determine what capabilities are required for eachrole. Expecting a designer to implement a software product alone is

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as unrealistic as expecting a waiter in a large restaurant to also cookall meals. However, expecting a team of engineers to also test theircode is as realistic as expecting the chef in the kitchen to supportwashing the dishes or cutting onions during rush hour.

Analyzing the structure of your organization is the first importantstep to recognize what capabilities are needed in each role. Oftenthe structure, roles, and responsibilities are designed to supportan organizational-wide process to deliver a product or servicein a quality and timely manner. Hence, when the structure isfuzzy, analyzing the process is the alternative way to gather thatinformation. If your organization is large and you lead as part ofa singular division, department or team with no interaction withother parts of the organization, it should be enough to analyze onlyyour core process and roles that are part of that process.

When analyzing the structure or process, think deeply about yourorganization. Then, write down all the different steps and peopleor roles that are needed for the product or service to be delivered.

* Who is expected to do what?

* What department or team do they belong to?

* Who are they reporting to?

* What dependencies exist between teams and roles?

* What is the key delivery for each team and role?

* How communication happens between departments, teams, roles,and individuals?

For example, for a tester to test a product increment at Alexa’steams, they need two key things: understanding of how to testthe product increment and a working software version that in-cludes that increment on a testing environment. To develop anunderstanding of how to test the product increment, the testerneeds to corporate with the product manager and the designer toclarify a set of use cases and their expected behavior. The working

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software version they receive from the engineer, who also needsto understand the same use cases and expected behavior. The keydelivery is a green or red light to release the new version to thecustomers. In addition, a full report of what was tested and theactual behavior is used to keep track of that information in case anyissue is being reported later on. The stakeholders of the tester forthis specific activity of testing a product increment are the productmanager, designer, engineers and everyone who receives the report.Key capabilities include skills such as communication in writtenand verbal form, traits such as curiosity to understand how thingswork, and knowledge of user’s behavior and testing methodologies.

As a leader, it is vital for you to understand each role in thestructure you operate in, including the roles that don’t report toyou. Clarifying the roles of a company or a division is a joint effort.Involve representatives of each role and brainstorm together. Oftenyour people operations or human resources department would havean initial description of each role. Use that as a guiding document.The outcome of a role clarification brainstorming session should atleast clarify the following questions for each role:

* What is the purpose of this role?

* What makes this role important?

* What success looks like for a person in this role?

* What activities, tasks or responsibilities areas should a person inthis role be responsible for?

* What activities, tasks or responsibilities areas should a person inthis role be involved in?

* What decisions are owned by a person in this role?

* What deliverables is this person responsible for?

* Who are the key stakeholders for a person in this role?

After completion of the structure exercise described in this session,you should have a visualization of all steps in your core process.

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For each step, you should have a list of the roles in that step. Foreach role, you should have the questions above answered. Nextis connecting people based on their dependencies. For example,as discussed earlier, the testers have a strong dependency on theengineers in their team and the product managers that are not partof the engineering department.

Understanding your structure enables you, as a leader, to identifywhat type of leadership capabilities you should develop in yourrole. For example, the more hierarchical an organization is, themore important it is for a leader to master top-down communica-tion. In tall structures, where there aremany layers of management,the leaders are often the ones with the wider picture view while theteammates are unaware of the context and the work done outsideof their team. The leader is responsible to communicate that top-down. In flat structures, where there are few or no managementlayers, the leaders do not necessarily have more information on thecontext than the rest of the organization due to people collaboratingacross teams. The role of a leader is then to clarify what is importantas teammates are expanding their work beyond their team anddirect responsibilities.

Understanding your structure also enables you to create growthopportunities for your people. When you know what capabilitiesare required for each role, you also know who in the organizationshould already have an advanced level of a specific capability.For example, Marketing would be a possible department to seekstorytelling and communicating with clarity capabilities. Movingpeople temporarily to another team or working on a project to-gether can be both an opportunity to practice a new capability andbuild relationships with people one doesn’t often work with.

Setting up a project team with diverse capabilities and clear objec-tives for learning is a useful setup to build new capabilities. Similarto Alexa’s teams, people from diverse engineering roles are nowexpected to work together to deliver a product increment so theycan practice activities and tasks that wouldn’t be part of their role

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otherwise. To ensure the success of it, it is important for each personto have the awareness of what they already do well and what theywant to learn. Also, to ensure the safety to explore, the team shouldbe evaluated as a team, on the outcome they agreed upon and ontheir progress as a team in comparison to their evaluation fromwhen they started. Teams in such a setup are never comparableto other teams, even if they work on the same project or product.People are different and the level of capabilities is different.

Going through the structure exercise takes time and involvement ofothers. If you seek a shortcut, remember this: As a leader, when therole or structure changes for individuals, ensure to communicateclearly to the person how their responsibility changes as well.Sometimes it would be enough to explain the new focus andexpected outcome, however, more often you will also need to gothrough the responsibilities of their previous role and compare itwith the responsibilities of the new role. Ensure they know what isexpected of them and can think with you what is required to fulfillthose expectations. Often, just asking “what would you need to dothis?” Would highlight the capability gap. After all, a capability isthe ability to do something successfully.

Knowledge

Knowledge stands for anything or anyone someone knows, includ-ing facts, information, and skills. Hence, one can know anotherperson, a domain or how to do a certain task. Often, knowledge ismeasured by someone’s familiarity, awareness, and understandingof either practical or theoretical knowledge. High familiarity witha domain might suggest a high knowledge in a domain.

Knowledge can be acquired inmanyways such as by education andexperience. Structure, as discussed earlier, usually influences whatpeople know as the responsibilities they have shaped the type ofwork they do and the people they interact with. When one movesfrom one role to another, the knowledge they require also changes.

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What if the person is in the right role to develop the capabilitiesthey need? How can you, as their leader, delegate the ownership ofthe learning to that person? As a leader, you want to create learningopportunities for your people, however, you are not responsible fortheir learnings. Meaning, your role is to clarify with them whatthey should know to succeed in their role, but if they don’t followup on it, it is on them, not you. It is common for leaders to getfrustrated when they provide training, coaching, andmentorship toindividuals and teams but see no results. People learn in differentways. Therefore, they need to own their learnings and informwhat is effective for them or not. This step is about clarifyingthe knowledge needs and setting up an accountability process thatenables you to follow up without taking the responsibility for one’slearning.

Imagine that you are your own manager. You invite yourself to ameeting to discuss your development plan. The first step is to clarifywhat is it that you need to know? Here are questions you could useto inspire your thought process:

What do you need to know to be successful at your role? Who doyou need to build a working relationship with to get your job doneeffectively? What skills are important for your role? What domainknowledge should you have?What organizational processes shouldyou be familiar with?

Some of those questions you can answer yourself, others you willhave to answer with your manager or people who work in a similarrole to yours in your organization and other organizations. Createa list of all the things you should know.

When you have the list, you can assess yourself for each of theitems on your list. Then ask people who work with you to assessyou as well. Similar to 360 feedback review, the evolution gap ofyour peers is as important as your self-evaluation. Last, chose themost important items where you received a total low score. Thendiscuss your learning objectives with your manager and add it as a

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topic to follow up in your feedback talks. You can do the same withyour people.

The idea of working collaboratively in one multi-functional teamis new to Alexa and her teams. Alexa, as a lead, should identify thelearning opportunities for her team. For example, if testing is one ofthe bottlenecks, her engineers should know how to support testingwhen needed. Therefore, she discussed with each engineering teamwhat would it take for everyone in the team to be able to test theapplication. Some teams asked for an introduction course, othersasked to commit to less working items so they can start testingtogether with the testers and learn while doing the job. Whenpeople own their learnings, they find the best ways for them tolearn.

Strengths

Strengths stand for the ability of a person to do something betterthan others, on average, consistently. We all have strengths. Theseare the things we do well naturally without noticing. The thingswe are frequently requested by others to help them with. When weare told by others that we do these things well, we think “oh, thisis easy, can’t you do it too?”

Many people are not aware of their strengths, have no languageto describe them and often mistaken their weaknesses as strengthsand vice versa. When we are in a role that enables us to utilize ourstrengths, we flourish. When we are in a role that is focused onour weaknesses, we feel drained. If we have no awareness of ourstrengths, finding a role that builds primary on our strengths is adifficult task.

There are many books and researches on the approaches of leadingwith your strengths vs leading with your weaknesses. Some suggestwe should focus on the talents we naturally have and developthem into strengths, while others suggest we should focus on our

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weaknesses so we challenge ourselves and grow as individuals. TheACE model doesn’t take sides. Both approaches are valid giventhe objectives and goals a person has. The key message here forleaders is that having the awareness of what the people you leadand yourself are strong at is important for maximizing capabilitybuilding initiatives.

When you know one’s strengths, you can place them in a rolewhere they would naturally flourish or challenge them with taskswhere they can work on the skills they would need to succeedin their future roles. When someone is working only on thingsthey are naturally strong at, they might get bored. On the otherhand, when they are constantly over-challenged with things theyare weak at, they might give up. For example, Alexa strengthwas always in problem-solving by herself, being hands-on, and adeep thinker. What if facilitation, collaborating with others, anddelegating effectively are weaknesses of her? In her new role, sheis challenged frequently as she has to involve others in decisionmaking and problem-solving. Every weakness can be developedif the leaders are determined to change it. Nevertheless, we can’tchange something we are unaware of. Awareness gives one thechoice.

As a leader, you want to ensure the people you lead and yourselfincluded have the choice to develop the capabilities required tosucceed in their role. These capabilities will change and growwith you as your role changes in relation to your seniority level,organizational structure, and new responsibilities.

The same capabilities that enabled you to succeed in one role mightnot be the same capabilities you need in your new role. As yourpeople and yourself develop the clarity of the structure, knowledge,and strength needed to succeed in your roles, you will be ableto continuously identify and create new learning opportunitiesfor each other so that together you deliver better results to theorganization.

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Moving forward, autonomy is not an abstract concept; it is a vitalaspect of the ACE model that enables leaders to carry their peoplealong through an astute decision-making process to be able to fullydelegate work to them.

Chapter Five

Autonomy: Tomorrow’s Leaders inCharge

Adam co-founded his company over ten years ago; it has grownfrom a university project to become the leading company in theirsector. He remembers the times where the whole company couldfit into one living room. Therefore, every day he steps into thecompany’s headquarters he feels a sense of pride at all they haveaccomplished. This feeling inspires hope in him that they can dogreater things going forward.

Changes are beginning to take place sporadically within the or-ganization, causing Adam to feel anxious every day. Since thecompany crossed the hundred people mark, the expectations of himare getting higher and higher. As one of the founders and the CTO,he is used to being deeply involved in the engineering department.However now, with so many new people in engineering, largerclients and deal size, and newly joined experts, Adam started ques-tioning whether being so hands-on still makes sense. He realizesthat the company is no longer the small organization it was 10years ago and that changes in growing organization are inevitable.Nevertheless, he struggles to let go of his hands-on tactical role andfocus on the strategic part of his role.

People management is one of the responsibilities Adam struggledto delegate the most. Being the CTO, the whole engineering de-partment reports to him. That was much easier to handle when histeam was small. Now that the team has grown tremendously, hestruggles with overseeing every person in his department, causingsome people to feel uncared for.

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To solve that, he promoted engineers he trusted from within theteams to take over the team lead role, delegating to them the dailyresponsibility of people management without giving them the au-thority to make the final decisions about hiring, firing and compen-sation negotiation. Meaning, the team leads would be responsiblefor conducting individual conversations with each person in theirteam, approve vacation and sick leave, and provide performance-related feedback to Adam. The employee talks, where the feedbackis discussed, would be conducted by Adam every half a year.

Some of the new leads liked the new challenge, others wouldhave preferred remaining in their technical role but caring for thecompany, they agreed. They participated in an external one-weeklong leadership training and started their new role as a team leadfor their team.

At first, the solution was sufficient as the majority of people in thedepartment could escalate important topics to Adam directly whentheir team leads were not able to support them. However, when thenumber of teams grew, Adam started investing most of his timein interviewing potential candidates, hiring, and resolving criticalperformance issues and interpersonal conflicts, leaving no time foreach request.

The people who grew with the company started requesting supportwith their future career development. As the company grew, newroles became available, and people wanted to either move to acompletely new role or develop in their seniority. Furthermore, thecomplexity of the product required hiring roles the company wasnot familiar with such as user experience design, quality assuranceengineers and agile coaches. Adam had the best intentions tosupport them all, yet, keeping up with so many people and diverserequests became harder and harder that he started neglecting otherresponsibilities he has as a CTO, causing the rest of the companyquestioning his capabilities.

There is a leader like Adam in most organizations. People who

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fear delegation and insist on holding on to the reins alone. Thereasons to not delegate vary. Some leaders want to protect theirteam. Others want to feel in control. Regardless of the intention,lack of autonomy can cause a lot of damage to the organization andthe leader in the long run. Especially when experienced people arehired to take over certain responsibilities and the leader refuses todelegate. The impact varies from general frustration to top talentsleaving the company. Further, the remaining teammates’ overtimewould lose their sense of ownership, getting used to not havingauthority and impact. Some leaders who don’t delegate, can’t besick or take vacations, suffer from anxiety and stress, and evenexperience a burnout.

Autonomy stands for the conditions of self-governing. Similar toemancipation, the act of enabling others to make decisions withouthaving to rely on you, autonomy in the ACE model stands for thewillingness of others to take the authority to make decisions sothey can work independently to achieve the vision of the company.Autonomy requires trusting the other person to take the rightdecisions as the responsibility on the outcome remains with theperson who delegates. Hence, the person should be emancipatedand capable of being able to work autonomously**.

When an organization is still at its initial start-up phase, autonomymight not be a consideration as leaders at that stage are required tobe very hands-on. Also, the time to get the input of someone fromthe leadership is much shorter as alignment and communicationin smaller teams are much easier than a larger corporate. Asthe organization grows, the need for people and teams to workautonomously becomes more relevant and critical. Same time,when one maintains certain responsibilities for years, it is hard todelegate them. Not only because of the leader’s struggle but alsotheir people struggle as they might not be ready or willing to getdelegated.

As Brian Tracy wrote in his book “No Excuses!”, “Bad habits areeasy to form, but hard to live with. Good habits are hard to form

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but easy to live with. And as Goethe said, ‘Everything is hard beforeit’s easy.’” We often make a choice to keep behaving or working ina certain way that we know is inefficient because when we thinkabout changing it, it feels too hard, impossible or frightening.

Adam has been in charge of all people in engineering for over 10years, so the idea of letting others take control of that aspect is notsomething he knows how to do or feel comfortable of doing. Also,Adam is not sure whether the people he promoted to team leadsare interested or capable of being responsible for other people’scareer and livelihood. After all, some of them didn’t want to becometeam leads and would gladly give up on it when given a choice.Where does this leave Adam? Over time, as he doesn’t delegate, hewill become an ineffective leader who is not able to attain fully tohis people and neglects his CTO strategical priorities. Where doesthis leave people in engineering? Over time, the people who carewould leave as they have no space to operate or progress in thecurrent structure. The people who don’t care would stay and dothe minimum they need to not be noticed.

The ACE Model supports leaders to become intentional with howthey inspire autonomy in their people. Every leader should be ableto delegate with confidence, not just delegate. Every person youlead should be emancipated, but autonomy is a choice, not a top-down decision.

As it is with other parts of the model, there are three steps to ensureautonomy readiness. Upon successful application of the methods,you will observe that you not only feel more comfortable lettingothers decide, but you also instill a sense of confidence in the heartof your people.

Control

Control stands for the power to influence priorities or direct peopleto work on certain tasks. The person in control is the decision

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maker, therefore, they should also be the ones able to take the riskthat they might not achieve the intended outcome.

As a leader, you are the owner of your team’s outcome. Everyonein the team has responsibilities to contribute to the outcome butyou are responsible for it. You take the risk by default. Therefore,the way to achieve autonomy requires first deciding what shouldbe in the power of others. There are cases where you have severalpeople reporting to you that can take the same responsibilities, soyou need to analyze what is the right allocation of responsibilities.

Prepare a list of all of your responsibilities and ask yourself thefollowing questions on each one of them:

* Who should make the final decision?

* What makes that person the right one to make that decision?

* What capabilities are required to make that decision?

* Who has the capabilities to take that decision?

* What is the impact of me taking that decision on the team?

Note that certain responsibilities can be shared and the decisioncan be made as a team. Then it is recommended to decide whethera team vote is required or a full consensus.

The right person to take a decision is the person who has animpact on the outcome. In Adam’s case, Adam is no longer partof the development teams in engineering. He’s not working withthe engineers on projects and has no visibility on how well peopleperform their work, particularly when the people in the teams areexperts in roles Adam has no experience with. For example, Adamused to be an engineer himself so he felt very close to the engineersin the team. However, he never worked as an agile coach so it ishard to evaluate what makes one successful in that role.

Owning the employee talks with all people in engineering, Adamgathered every six months information from the team leads andsat with each employee to discuss their performance. He was

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the only one to approve promotions, changes in roles and lettingsomeone go. Although, what makes Adam the right person havethe employee talks? Despite being the CTO, in the current companysize, he met most of the people once during their hiring process.The feedback he provided was based fully on the team lead’sassessment, however, the team leads were not part of the meeting.Also, as he could not follow up with every individual, the teamleads were the ones to carry the followup responsibility after thetalk. Last, individuals who were not familiar with Adam werenervous to receive feedback from the CTO as they didn’t have thesame informal relationship with him others might have.

Adam answered all the questions, realizing that he is not the rightperson to conduct the employee talks. It should be owned by theteam leads. The only reason he kept owning it was his fear of thereadiness of his team leads to take decisions involving a changein compensation. In a lack of clarity, Adam is the type of a leaderthat prefers to do nothing rather than making mistakes. When youfeel you have only two options, think what is the third option youoverlooked. For Adam, he overlooked the options of building thecapability of his team leads or hire new leaders that bring thatcapability with them.

When the right person to take the decision does not have thecapabilities to take the decision, you should build the capabilitiesor place someone capable in this role rather than keep the decisionfor yourself. You should not delegate control to someone who is notcapable or interested in having the control. Nevertheless, the rightperson is still the right person.

Remember, autonomy doesn’t breed irresponsibility. You are stillresponsible for the outcome. You still have the power to overrulesomeone when you feel the risk they are taking is too high. Youcan demand to have an overview of the process and be involvedor informed. Control can be given or taken. Ensure placing peoplewith the right capabilities in the roles you delegate responsibilitiesfor, people that you trust and want to develop further. Capability

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and trust are fundamental for effective delegation. If both don’texist, ask yourself whether this is the right person for this role orwould they be happier doing something else.

When you delegate, the other person takes over the active respon-sibility and you become an accountability partner. If the personis new to the role and responsibility, you can start sharing thecontrol by setting up continuous check-ins where you coach themthrough the decision-making process, get updates on their progressand can intervene when the risk is too high for them to grasp.Keep in mind that they will make mistakes. Those mistakes areimportant learning lessons to recap on during your check-ins.Coaching people to reflect on mistakes enables them to create newlearnings for themselves instead of repeating the same failures.That can only be done when they are in control.

When the person is more experienced than you in taking thosetype of decisions, it’s recommended to use those check-ins tolearn from them. Humility is acknowledging that we can alwayslearn something new. Leading someone more experienced thanyou requires humility and courage to be open, explorative and notperceive them as a treat on your role or power. Let them coach youand stand behind their decision, even when it’s not fully alignedwith your approach. You hired them for a reason.

Autonomy isn’t the loss of control; it is trusting your people,enabling them to grow and have ownership of their work. So, leadwith trust; allow others to be in control, just ensure they are ready.

Confidence

What if the person seems unwilling? You gave them the controland they seem to refuse taking it over. Maybe they are not ready?Maybe they are not capable as initially perceived? Responsibilitiescan only be taken, not given. The obvious choice would be to takeit away, wouldn’t it?

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Confidence stands for the feeling or belief that one can rely onsomeone else to do something. At the ACE model, Confidencestands for both the confidence of the leader in their people and theconfidence of the individual in themselves.

Giving control is one step in building confidence as you shift powerto the people you trust, enabling them to practice being in controland gain confidence over time as they deliver positive results.Lacking the confidence in the control you give can lead to worseoutcomes than not giving the control initially. How can you buildconfidence in the decision? Both from your side and their side.

After successfully handling the employee talks responsibility, Adamstruggled once again delegating people management responsibili-ties to his team leads. The new challenge was the final decision onhiring. Understanding the importance of delegation, Adam decidedto delegate this decision to one of the team leads. He felt theteam lead was capable of taking the decision and it is time togive the control. A few days later, a new candidate passed allinterviews round. Most of the team liked him and wanted to hirethe candidate, except Adam. When everyone came together todiscuss the decision, Adam made a very elaborated case on howthis candidate wouldn’t be able to teach him anything. The teamlead was frustrated and agreed to not hire the person. In the nextinterviews round, the team lead waited with his decision untilafter he received the feedback from Adam, not taking the decisionhimself. Ultimately, he wanted no conflicts with Adam. Adam waspuzzled and decided that his team leads are not ready to makehiring decisions.

Autonomy requires both sides, you and the other person, to acceptthe change in control and have a sense that they will figure out howto handle the new delegated responsibility. If one of you lacks theconfidence in the other person, every small mistake or fear mighttrigger shifting back to the previous state. It is a paradox that manypeople have to have control in order to start taking decisions todevelop confidence while lack of confidence might trigger losing

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control.

More so, the way you communicate the delegated responsibilitiesmatters. Some leaders speak with teammates, staff or subordinatesas though they are not capable, but the leader has no choice butto delegate. If you don’t trust your people, don’t delegate, startby addressing the reasons for the lack of trust. What are theassumptions that led you to the mistrust? What would need tohappen for you to trust again? Speak with your people openly andlisten to them carefully. Sometimes our lack of trust in others tellsus more about ourselves than about the other person.

When you delegate to your people with confidence, you are assur-ing them that you believe in what they can do and this communi-cation pattern itself can ignite faith in your people causing themto go beyond your expectations. Giving someone control meansthat you are confident the outcome they would deliver is sufficient.They might make mistakes. These mistakes are great learningopportunities to build their capabilities further. Nevertheless, whowouldn’t become confident overtime when knowing their leaderhas confidence in them?

Clarity

After asserting control and instilling confidence, clarity is the nextthing to ensure when creating autonomy. Clarity means beingexplicit and coherent, ensuring you repeat the context, clarify theobjectives and expectations. Clarity reduces the risk of misunder-standings and increases the possibility of successful delivery ofdelegated responsibilities.

The three aspects of clarity are the three famousW questions:WHYWHAT and HOW.

Why and What makes it important?

Start with why - ask what. Why stands for the context andfocuses the discussion on the past information that is relevant to

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understanding the importance of successful delivery. Same time,also understanding what makes this the most important thing to doright now, is important. Why connects you to your purpose, whatconnects you to the current mission. Hence, clarify both the Whyand the What.

Many leaders assume that since they told something during ameeting a while ago, people should remember. Even if you justwent through the ACE model and clarified the purpose, mission,and culture for your team, many people will forget. The day-to-day work takes over and it is easy to get distracted by urgentfires and shifting priorities. Especially when your environmentis continuously changing due to the reality of your market andongoing transformation initiatives.

As a leader, you are the one responsible to remind the contextto your people every time that you delegate something. Link thecurrent thing you are working on to the larger purpose and missionof the organization. Explain the reasons that led to certain decisionscriteria. Your people need to know why they should work on thisand what makes it important to you.

Adam delegated the hiring decision to the team lead as part of hisdesire to give autonomy to the lead. He gave him the control, healso had the confidence until the decision was on the table. Whenthe team discussed the candidate, Adam felt the team lacked theclarity of the why. Privately afterward, Adam explained to theteam that he had a negative experience with candidates similar tothe one the team rejected. He went back to the culture step in theACE model and explained, “Caring is one of the core values of ourcompany. The candidate talked very negatively on their previousmanager. “ The team was puzzled. Adam explained, ”Caring tome means that we understand people are human and we don’tjudge them. It is possible that that manager exhibit certain negativebehaviors. Instead of complaining about it, I would like to seepeople challenging each other or at least being curious about whatcauses the behavior.” The team lead challenged Adam that instead

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of telling them earlier that he had nothing to learn from thecandidate, he should have told them that. Adam accepted it.

Understanding the context for a decision enables the team to seekcandidates who are aligned with the culture Adam wanted thecompany to have. As the CTO, Adam is expected to drive theculture and is expected to care about the culture, so the teamappreciated the new knowledge they gained. Furthermore, they nolonger feel he has no confidence in them.

Many leaders struggle to explain the importance of certain respon-sibilities, decisions, and tasks. Sharing with others the context, yourthoughts and feelings openly and honestly are one way to do it.Assume people don’t know. Remember, repetition is better thannot saying anything. If the importance is succinctly expressed, yourpeople will understand the decision making criteria to optimizetheir decision on and can deliver better results.

What would be a successful outcome?

Next, clarifying the expected outcome is vital to ensuring a sharedunderstanding of what success looks like. What do you expectto see as an outcome? What criteria would you use to evaluatehow successful it is? What would change when the outcome issuccessful? When you delegate work to others, they should havethe same understanding as you on what would make the outcomesuccessful.

Together with the importance, clarifying the outcome aspect of theprocess helps to prepare their mind for what is already happeningand what is expected to happen. This is crucial. People have adifferent understanding and they can’t read your mind. Clarifyingthe outcome will help your people to have a shared understanding,prepare mentally for the challenge ahead and give you the confi-dence you are all working toward the same goal.

Similar to Adam’s hiring challenge. When Adam delegated thehiring responsibility, he gave the team a job specification thatincluded technical and soft skills that are required for the role.

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Culture was not mentioned there. Also, the team never had to makehiring decisions before. Clarifying to the team that a successfulcandidate should first be aligned with the company culture was notobvious to the team. Adam assumed it was a given. However, theydidn’t anticipate that culture is more important than the skillsetrequirements. Now everyone is clear on what successful hire lookslike.

How the delegation should look like?

“How” stands for the methodology expected. The answer to “How”questions is often a list of steps that need to be taken. In the contextof creating clarity for autonomy, “How” is a question of guidelinesrather than concrete steps to be taken.

What are your expectations? Who should be the final decisionmaker? Are we talking about full ownership on their side or a par-tial one? Are you there to support? Would you like to be involvedor informed? Should people work together with others? Who elseshould be involved? What information should we gather? Wouldthe decision be facts based or opinion based? How often shouldyou check-in? Howwould you expect to measure the success of thefinal outcome? These are some example questions you could utilizeto clarify the “how.” Considering the type of work, responsibility ordecision you delegated, more questions might come to you or yourteam as you ask the core question “How the delegation should looklike?”

What if you struggle to answer those questions? Adam didn’t.When he delegated the hiring decision to the team lead, he was notable to answer most of the questions above. Therefore, he invitedthe team lead and the team to brainstorm. Together, they cameup with a clear process and a shared understanding of how Adamshould be involved in the hiring process. More brains are betterthan one.

As a leader, you are responsible to create clarity but you are notresponsible to find all the answers alone. Involving others in each

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step of the ACE model expresses your trust in the people you workwith and the belief that you are smarter together than alone. At thisstage, you understand that clarity is all about asking the questionsand bring people together to answer them. It isn’t enough to assumepeople should know because you feel that you know. Moreover,knowing is different from understanding and what you want isa shared understanding. Including your people in your thoughtprocess is what brings the diverse perspectives to the table andwhatcreates clarity and a shared understanding.

Adam understands that giving autonomy and practicing effectivedelegation goes together. Now that he walks into the organization’sbuilding, he is proud of his people as much as he is proud ofeverything they have achieved. Autonomy, for Adam as a leader,means that he can focus on growing the company while having thetrust everyone is onboard, supporting each other to build a betterfuture than he himself can imagine. Also, it is nice to be able to takevacations.

TheACEmodel beginswith “Identity,” goes through the eightmajorpoints and leads up to “Clarity.” Now that you have gained accessto all steps on the ACE model, what is the impact of the new clarityyou gained on the way you lead? What is going to change for yougoing forward? What Leading with Clarity means to you?

Chapter Six

Leading with Clarity

If you are reading this chapter, it means you have successfullyfamiliarized yourself with all aspects of the ACE model, and youare now ready to lead with clarity.

When we started, you were introduced to ”identity” as the firstform of the ACE model; every leader should create awareness inthemselves before commencing the process with their people asclarity starts with you.

Through the model, you partnered up with your people and eman-cipated them through the creation of a shared vision and under-standing of the purpose, culture, and mission of your organization,ensuring you are creating the space for them to lead and takedecisions without dependencies on you.

Next, you learned that building capabilities are a joint effort.You learned how to assess what capabilities people require tosucceed in their role by analyzing the structure and process of yourorganization. Together, you created opportunities for them to gainknowledge and maximize their growth through the awareness oftheir strengths.

Last, you delegated the control to your people, developed theconfidence in each other and ensured everyone has the clarity ofhow everything fits together and what is expected of them. Theyare now ready to have autonomy.

As a leader dealing with transformations and changes in yourworkplace can be daunting. In today’s world, changes are the normin organizations. It is not a temporary phase; it is an ongoing

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reality. When changes occurrences, it can trigger fear and concernin everyone involved. For example, if there is a modification in aperson’s role, it might come with the feelings of fear of lackingcapabilities, losing power, freedom, and control over the situation.

Clarity in time of change is a state a person experiences that entailsnot doubting the importance of their contribution to the change tosucceed. It is also a state of certainty where a person is confidentabout what they would like to achieve, how they would like toachieve it and feel empowered and capable of contributing to see itcome to fruition. When you lead with clarity, you gift your peopleand yourself that experience.

The essence of the ACE model is to ensure that leaders take theirpeople along with them as they lead changes in the organization.The importance of clarity in leading change cannot be overempha-sized.

When you are clear on what you want and need, you can commu-nicate it with others. When everyone is clear where you are going,they can focus, supporting you and themselves to get there. Wheneveryone is clear of what is expected of them, they can contributeand bring their best selves to it.

In trying to build a better future for the organization, you mustbecome aware of the people aspect of every change process. Afterall, people are the most important resource in every organization.Change can only happen through people and with people, as theysupport to lead it with you to a successful implementation.

The ACE model aims to help leaders shifting from fire fightingor micromanaging in the chaos of change to explicitly involvepeople in creating clarity and focussing for the change to succeed.I can’t emphasize how often leaders either accept the chaos asnormal while focusing on telling people to follow a master planthat makes no sense to those who have to implement it. Or theyleave people unsupported completely as they expect them to changethings themselves with no real authority to impact anything.

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As a leader, when you take the time to observe, you will discoverthat most of the challenges that occur in your organization areeither caused by or magnified because of a lack of insight andclarity. Don’t trust me, take five minutes and ask people aroundyou “if nothing changes and we continue on the same path as weare now, where do you see the company, realistically, a few yearsfrom now?” Would the answer be the one you want to hear? Howfar is it from where you see it?

You can’t fail to implement the ACE model. Ultimately, it is allabout asking questions, gathering insights and clarifying informa-tion while involving the relevant individuals to do that with you.Askingmight feel uncomfortable when you are not used toworkingcollaboratively with others. This feeling will fade away as youpractice. Collaboration is the key to bringing people along.

The reason the ACE model was structured as a flow was for youto start with your clarity and end up with other’s clarity. However,flow is a recommendation. You can begin with every step and finishat any step, depending on where you feel clarity is missing for yourpeople and yourself.

In Chapter One I shared my McKinsey story. That one engagementthat shined some light on the importance of clarity in the work wedo as leaders, regardless if we lead a team of consultants to run aworkshop orwe drive awhole transformationwith an organization.

One would expect that once I had the realization to clarify all thosesteps, I will immediately embed it as part of my new leadershipDNA. In a world where information is unlimited, there are so manysimilar books and podcasts that repeat the same concepts and ideas.It is easy to become a consumer and believe that because you“know” something, you can also “act” on it. In practice, I neededa stronger push than that.

One year after joining McKinsey Digital, I left the firm. At a time, itwas a meaningful experience that shaped my career tremendously,but I needed to experience a full engagement, without the safety of

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the McKinsey brand and partners, to grasp the importance of thatexperience.

With almost a decade of experience on my belt, I joined Signavioas the Head of Engineering Excellence, a new function we createdtogether to support Signavio Engineering in improving the waythey operated. It was a massive step for me, so I was extremelyexcited.

Building uponmy experience at McKinsey, I aspired to combinemycore consulting lessons with my engineering background. A quickreminder from Chapter One:

* You are the expert, even if it is the first time you do it.

* The output is essential if you have nothing to show, you didn’t doanything.

* What measured creates impact, if you can’t explain it in numbers,it is just your opinion that you improved it.

As a result, my first month I invested in gathering data, ensuringto talk with as many as possible people and get familiar withevery possible tool that included data. I was the expert, I wroteeverything down, but I struggled to measure anything in numbersas the company was not as familiar yet with what they need totrack. It is normal for young companies in a growth state to not havesuitable data tracking mechanism in place. Even larger softwarecompanies struggle with that. Nevertheless, for me, it meant thateverything I suggested for improvement was based on my ownopinion and experience with no facts and figures to back up myrecommendations. I was prepared to get grilled by the C-Level.

There are no short-cuts to becoming an effective leader; the processentails a lot of hard work, consistency, and consideration for thepeople you work with. When I presented my “master plan” that weshould change the whole structure of the engineering departmentand introduce new roles so we can measure performance better, thereaction was different from what I expected. None of the problems

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I raised were new to my managers. Even the root cause was clearto them. Moreover, they were onboard with potentially changingthe structure and roles. They were so onboard that they alreadythought about it and had great ideas. The challenge was different.For them to move forward with changing anything, they neededto have clarity of how things are going to change and have a clearreason for every change. It was not about improving engineering;it was about ensuring people can go through this change. For them,letting people go was not an option. Everyone has a place now andshould have a place after we change the structure.

Remembering how things went when everything was clear in myhead while working with my McKinsey partner and engagementmanager to prepare the kick-off workshop, I decided to do thingsdifferently this time around. In every step of the way, from clar-ifying the reasons for the changes to designing the new structureand roles, and facilitating the change with the multiple engineeringteams involved, I involved others.

Together with the leadership, we clarified the company values andstrategy to link the new structure and roles to the purpose, culture,and mission of Signavio. After all, Signavio unleashes the power ofprocesses by enabling people to collaborate the work on processes.It only made sense to collaborate with others to define the newengineering process and roles in the process.

Collaborating took longer than driving it all by myself. I had mymoment of doubt whether we are trying to reinvent the wheel.Often, I felt we discussed the same points repeatedly. At somepoint, I questioned the importance of the change and their readinessfor it. However, when the future structure and roles were clear toeveryone involved, and we announced it to the whole department,everyone was on board, everyone had a place. The time and effortinvested made sense and made a difference.

Next step was implementing the change and shifting people be-tween roles, communicating clearly what is expected of each role

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and starting with the handover of responsibilities and tasks thatwere previously owned by different people to a new person. Thisstep was harder than the previous one as it brought a lot ofresistance. Wanting the change was one thing, acknowledging thechange in practice was a different thing.

Some people realized they had to give up power or responsibilitiesthey didn’t feel like losing, even if they understood it was thebest decision for everyone else. Others were afraid that they arenot capable of taking a new role, also if they knew they were notexpected to know everything on day one. Specific roles kept thesame title, so people expected it to remain the same way it used tobe. Also, we didn’t have all the people in-house, and it took time tohire so some people had to combine a new role with an interim roleof a role they never did before. Once again, everything was normaland expected, but for them, it was the first time, so clarity was evenmore critical. That was the point I started leading with clarity.

As mentioned, people were involved in every step of the way,including choosing their role and clarifying it. They also got a sayin determining their new team and process. What the ACE modelallowed me to do what to have a set of questions to guide thediscussions to ensure people provide me with valuable input anddevelop clarity.

Only a few weeks into the implementation, we started noticingthe positive impact of the change. Beyond performance, peopleare happy and take much more ownership than they used to takebefore. One of my managers even said that now that he delegatedso much work, he finally has time to focus on strategic areas henever had time for.

The ACE model was in my head the whole time throughoutthe implementation process. With the success of the changes atSignavio, I felt it should be shared. Most transformations fail soSignavio did something right; they put people first.

Before Signavio, it was important for me to be the expert. I felt

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responsible for being the smartest person in the room and pushingpeople to do the right thing. I wanted to have all the answers so Ileft no room for others to share with me theirs. In a forest full oftrees, I often saw only my desired trees.

The ACE model enabled me not just to see all of the trees, but alsoacknowledge that I am at the same forest as my tress. Realizingthat, I became a long-life student, listening for other smartness.Ultimately, to create real change as a leader, you need to meetpeople where they are and walk together instead of running alone.

As said by African Proverb, ”If you want to go fast, go alone. If youwant to go far, go together.”

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Thank you for taking the time to read the whole book. I hope ithas been an informative journey for you. If you wish to providefeedback, ask a question or support, please do not hesitate to reachout to bar@lead2coach.com.

Leader’s Question GuideThe questions below are a quick way of internalizing all that youhave learned from this book. Whenever you feel like clarity isfading away, check-in.

Identity

* Who are you?

* What are the experiences that shaped you to be the unique personyou are?

* What motivations do you have?

* What are your values?

* What are your needs?

* What are your beliefs?

* What drives you as a person?

* What situations trigger your negative feelings?

* What feelings do you have about your current leadership posi-tion?

* What leadership means to you?

* What kind of a leader would you like to be?

* What strengths do you bring to the table?

Emancipation

* What is our desired impact on the world?

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* What do we do?

* Why do we do it?

* What success looks like now?

* What success would look like in the future?

* What behaviors do we value?

* What is considered a normal behavior here?

* What behaviors do we aspire to have but don’t necessarily haveright now?

* What is the most important thing right now?

* What makes it important?

* What would it look like when we achieved it?

* How does my contribution or my team contribution support us inachieving it?

Capability

* What is our current structure?

* What are the core processes I am part of?

* What triggers the process?

* What is the outcome of the process?

* What steps are taken to complete the process?

* Who is involved in each step?

* What role do they have?

* What makes this role important?

* What decisions are owned by this person?

* What do they need to do to complete the activity or task in thisstep?

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*What do they need to know to complete the activity or task in thisstep?

* What knowledge and skills are required for this role?

Autonomy

* What is in your control?

* What decisions are part of the areas that in your control?

* Who should make the final decision?

* What makes that person the right one to make that decision?

* What capabilities are required to make that decision?

* What is the impact of not delegating this decision?

* What is the level of confidence I have in that person?

* What would increase my level of confidence?

* What makes the delegated responsibility important?

* Why should we do it?

* What would be a successful outcome?

* How should the delegation look like?