I'm Troy Bitter, an agile practitioner for over five years and member of the PMI Southwest Ohio Chapter. Before my transition to agile, my earlier career focused on traditional waterfall projects. As I moved to larger and larger traditional waterfall projects, I noticed that I needed to be in the details less. It was hard. I'm a details guy at heart. However, I worked long hours, couldn't balance meetings with doing work too, was personally always on critical path, and generally stressed.
A Businessweek article showcased a book that helped: What Got You Here Won't Get You There. It highlighted that past practices that make you successful might be less useful as you continue up the organization. One that spoke to me was "Don't add too much value." By being the answer man, people were less self-sufficient. I don't need to give my thoughts on everything. In addition, as you get higher in the organization, simple brainstormed ideas can be interpreted as edicts that the team should follow. Need to be careful of the power you have.
"Don't add too much value." A nice theme for servant leadership. Some traditional project managers transition to servant leadership easily. Others work on it. As I coach project managers to become servant leaders, I teach a simple technique: mind your 2 cents. It works because I…
