The Agile Leader
- Title: The Agile Leader: Leveraging the Power of Influence by Zuzana Zuzi Sochova
- Author: Zuzana Šochová
- Paperback: 368 pages
- Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional; 1st Edition (December 11, 2020)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0136660428
- ISBN-13: 978-0136660422
- Purchase now [original English version]
- Japanese translation
Unleash Your Agile Leadership Potential and Guide Your Entire Organization Toward Agility
The Agile Leader: Leveraging the Power of Influence In today’s complex, fast-changing, and unpredictable world, radically agile organizations thrive when they combine strong local autonomy with deeply shared goals. Leadership is a key factor―individuals who welcome complexity and know how to leverage influence, culture, and organizational design to align widely distributed teams are integral to success.
[Book is available as well in Japanese language]
Written by leading Agile and Scrum expert Zuzana Šochová, “Zuzi” summarizes in this book her 15+ years experience with Agile and Scrum and presents the skills and techniques you need to become that needed agile leader.
Zuzi's inspirational examples draw on her experience working with leaders in organizations of all sizes, in multiple industries, worldwide. Through practical exercises and assessments, you learn how to unleash your potential, become a better catalyst and community builder, sensibly apply transparency, improve functions from HR to finance, and guide entire organizations toward greater agility.
- Build a powerful shared vision and change organizations and cultures to achieve it
- Explore types and models of agile leadership and choose styles that leverage your strengths
- Practice the competencies and high-level cognitive “meta-skills” of agile leadership
- Understand and promote agility at the executive and board levels
- Master practical techniques such as large group facilitation, system coaching, trust building, and team formation
- Lead in a world of soaring volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity
The Agile Leader is for managers, directors, executives, and entrepreneurs―anyone, regardless of position, who’s ready to take ownership, challenge the status quo, and become a true agile leader.
From the foreword...
"Never before in the history of humanity has there been such a demand for business leaders to be truly agile. Leaders who create alignment in the people around them when all is changing. Lead- ers who face volatility and ambiguity with confidence in their own—and their team’s—ability to adapt. And leaders who see, and embrace, the complexity in the systems around them."
— Evan Leybourn, founder of the Business Agility Institute
"We hear a lot about agile leadership these days. The good news is that everyone realizes they need some agility in their organizations. In Agile Leadership, Zuzana Sochova explains—clearly and with examples—how each of us might think about agile leadership. She helps us navigate agile leadership by explaining the various organizational structures, how agile leadership might work, and the overall agile leadership journey."
— Johanna Rothman, author of 'Modern Management Made Easy' and other books
Readers praise
"A great book on what it means to be a successful leader of today. You will learn why traditional management methods no longer work in today's complex and turbulent world, and how to replace them with new concepts so that your organization works great, is full of engaged people, and is long-term viable. Both in terms of creating the right organizational culture, company values, and organization, and in terms of working with vision, with the change, and with people themselves. It would be the first book I would recommend to read to all leaders at all levels. It has everything you need to learn to become a great agile leader! "
— Hana Jadavan
"A must read for anyone interested in organisational agility. One of the best books I’ve read in a long time in relation to agile, and organisational agility. Takes you away from the nuts and bolts, the mechanics of “doing agile”, into the whole realm of “being agile”. It is so good, I shall reflect, then dive back into some of the chapters again."
— F.C.
"Simple and clear. Excellent book, great summary of agility in leadership, simple and frank language"
— Ingrid Medina
Would you like to know how the book looks like? See the short sample chapter.
On more than 350 pages, The Agile Leader book contains practical information and tips for your leadership journey. To leverage your knowledge join one of the Zuzi Agile/Scrum trainings.
Book details
This book is intended for anyone who has the courage to challenge the status quo of traditional organizational design and become an agile leader. It’s for managers, directors, executives, entrepreneurs, and any- one who is willing to take over the responsibility and ownership and become a leader. It’s for anyone who has a passion to change things and anyone who cares about improving the agility at the organiza- tional level. Leadership is a state of the mind; you don’t need to have any positional power to become an agile leader.
This book guides you through your very first steps on the agile leadership journey, bringing the tasting menu of the relevant agile leadership concepts to help you decide where you would like to grow as a leader and how you can help your organization to achieve a higher level of the business agility. Each chapter contains several assessments, exercises, and practical examples that will help you to connect the theory with your day-to-day life and reflect on your personal leadership style and organizational agility. If you don’t like to write directly in the book, you can always use Post-it Notes for the exercises and assessments.
The book doesn’t explain what agile, Scrum, and Kanban are or how to scale agile. It’s not about frameworks, practices, or tools. It’s also not for people who are confident that their way of working doesn’t need any significant change. The book summarizes my experience from leadership positions—entrepreneur, managing director, director of engineer- ing, HR director, director of the board, and from one additional role that people often miss when speaking about leadership: a ScrumMaster, which is a great example of servant leadership. It also builds on top of my coaching experience helping organizations on their agile journey and coaching executives on their agile leadership journey. Last but not least, it builds on top of my experience from running the Certified Agile Leadership program (Scrum Alliance), which is an almost year-long program where I work with a variety of leaders across the world and across different industries on their agile leadership transformation.
Other Zuzi's Books
Coaching, Leadership and Training
Zuzi is not only bookwritter she is also world renowned Agile Coach and Trainer.
She is one of the few Certified Scrum Trainers by Scrum Alliance and she delivers certification Agile and Scrum classes (CAL, CSM and CSPO). It's great opprotunity to attend any of the certification classes and get practical hands-on experiences directly from Zuzi. Check her profile and training dates at Scrum Alliance or her website.
Zuzi is avilable for coaching and mentoring of leaders, ScrumMasters, Product Owners, and all members of Agile/Scrum teams. It's great opportunity to reflect on your leadership and to learn new concepts about teams and organizations in an agile space. Contact us for more information how we can help to transform your teams and oragnizations to Agile/Scrum, and be successful with agility.
Zuzi delivers her services truly worldwide. Contact us for more details.
Keynote presentation
The idea of the being agile leader described in the book was introduced at several international conferences as Keynote presentation. Invite Zuzi to your event and let her talk about her unique concepts and the book.