Trust is central to agile thinking. You can't move fast enough if you have to get permission. 1/9
If management doesn't fully trust the teams, there's no way that the teams will trust management. 2/9
It's hard, though, to instill trust if there's a history of suspicion and treating employees as criminals. You trust them to build essential software. Why don't you trust them buy pencils? 3/9
An org can start to instill trust by doing things like eliminating the surveillance state (e.g., just stop using tools like Jira that monitor "individual productivity"). 4/9
Replace a reporting-up culture with a Gemba-walk culture where managers go down to and work with the teams to get information. 5/9
Give the teams true autonomy—let them control their own process, schedule, work. 6/9
Give the teams control over their own budget by eliminating formal approvals for things like books or classes or conferences or necessary travel. The only rule is that the expense must be for the good of the company. Trust people to make good decisions. 7/9
Even seemingly-innocuous things like expense reports indicate a lack of trust. Give everybody credit cards. The expense report is the monthly bill. Forcing people to fill out forms is just wasting their time and indicates more distrust. 8/9
Then start building positive feelings by truly acting as "servant leaders" who work hard to help and support the team. In time, the teams will think of management as helpers, not the enemy. 9/9
