Leadership challenges of large-scale agile transformations

Abstract

Compelled by the digital transformation revolution and the need for organisational agility in environments of high unpredictability, many organisations are striving to achieve organisational agility by adopting agile practices and agile ways of working, and undertaking enterprise-wide agile transformations. While studies have investigated the challenges such undertakings face, there is little academic research on the experiences of leaders involved in such agile transformations, leading to concerns that research is not addressing challenges faced in practice, and organisations are missing opportunities to provide necessary support. The research method adopted was qualitive and exploratory, limited to a case study of a single organisation in the South African banking sector undertaking an agile transformation. Thirteen in-depth interviews with leaders at senior levels within the organisation were conducted. The study found that leaders had to change leadership styles because of the agile transformation, away from command-and-control towards a combination of distributed, empowering, sharing and servant leadership styles. The study contributes to the academic literature on the leadership of agile transformations for large corporates, and provides organisations with valuable input to improve the success of such undertakings, and to identify the critical leadership attributes for the agile, new ways of working.