How to Fortify an Agile Transformation and Deliver Value Faster

We hear about this all the time – so many agile transformations that focus on process and doing Agile, while what really needs attention is a focus on being Agile -- the “Upside Down” of Agile that may be undetectably impeding progress and impacting success. It’s that invisible yet ever-present force that directs a team’s successful (or not) agile execution, just like the bowling bumpers that direct a bowling ball down a lane to its target pins.

While anyone can make a difference, leaders often underutilize their bang-for-buck power to unleash a team’s potential within the “Right-side Up” to achieve results faster and more effectively. Embedding Leadership Coaching in the business is a powerful tool to ensure leaders are well-poised in this process. It helps make the invisible, visible, by providing leaders with a scaffolding of support and a prompt to explore first what may be transpiring within themselves, like a computer’s operating system behind its applications, in advance of what is transpiring within their teams and the business.

This story will share how embedded leadership coaching can impact strategic initiatives to support a faster path to business outcomes through high performance teams. Internal coaches have the perspective, institutional context, ability to observe and then unpack situations, behavior and team dynamics. Sue will shed light on how leadership coaches internal to an organization represent an often underutilized facet of agile being and mindset development. She’ll share insight into how leaders’ willingness to expose their “LeaderOS” in combination with feedback delivery and accountability can help leaders become their best selves and enable empowered teams, iterative learning and desired results.

About Sue Fox Schwartz

Executive Coach @ Fortifying U

Sue has over 25 years of experience in the corporate world within Global Fortune 50 companies to early stage startups. She served both as an internal and external coach focused on executive and leadership coaching, training and development, meeting facilitation, communication effectiveness and conflict management in addition to sales management both in the US and abroad.

She recently founded Fortifying U and its flagship program, Fortifying Fifty, a journey based on the belief that when we combine authentic communicating, shared experience and accountability, we optimize our thinking to in turn optimize personal and professional results. Sue spent the last year applying Fortifying U principles to Business Agility to accelerate product delivery.

Sue is a certified professional Coach through the International Coach Federation (ICF). She has a BA in International Relations from the University of Michigan and an MBA from the University of Texas at Austin (UT).

Sue Fox Schwartz on LinkedIn