Cambridge Business Association
Being the Agile Boss
Article

Being the Agile Boss

Leading through radical uncertainty means helping your team and your network create the future with you.

Linda A. Hill
MIT Sloan Management Review, 2020
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9

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For those leaders who view agile management as a list of practices, it won’t work during turbulent times. Only if you understand its underlying principles and values will it help you ride that uncertainty. In this insightful article for MIT Sloan Management Review, Harvard business administration professor Linda A. Hill describes how agile leaders thrive in an environment of ambiguity.

Summary

During times of deep uncertainty, agility means leveraging the turbulence.

Uncertain times demand agile leadership: Leaders must help their organizations learn, innovate and solve problems to leverage turbulence rather than react to it. Great leadership means managing your team, your network and yourself: You need to empower your team; work with major stakeholders amid an atmosphere of pressure and resource stress; and develop your personal capacity for coping. 

Manage your team by building purpose and facilitating learning.

People become innovative problem solvers if they share a sense of purpose within the organization and if managers grant them autonomy and decision-making authority. People need to be able to experiment, make mistakes and learn together. Empowerment enables them to co-create solutions...

About the Author

Linda A. Hill teaches business administration at Harvard Business School and serves as faculty chair of Harvard Business School’s Leadership Initiative. 

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