The end of the year is nearby, time for some New Year’s resolutions!

It has become a tradition for us to provide some help to busy people coming up with some good (enough) new year’s resolutions. This year we want to support Managers out there struggling to survive within a Scrum oriented organization.

Here are 20 new year’s resolutions to get you started as a Manager

  1. Be courageous and get out of your comfort zone, be vulnerable and try something different.
  2. Admit that you don’t know everything and need others to help you out with their insights and suggestions.
  3. Stop monitoring tools to check up on people (ditch JIRA!), tools that help you to get work done are OK (ex: InteliJ, jenkins, weave…)
  4. Go and see! Talk to people, walk the walk and show honest interest.
  5. Remind everybody about the first sentence in the Agile Manifesto: “Uncovering better ways”.
  6. Delete at least one recurring meeting you have that is not part of the basic Scrum Events.
  7. Track improvement experiments in a Celebration Grid on the wall of your office (if you have one at least).
  8. Don’t talk for a whole day, only listen for a day. 
  9. Start a Kudo Wall in your organization.
  10. Get inspired so you can inspire others.
  11. Stop standing in front of the teams, hold their back and let them shine.
  12. Ban email for a day for yourself and between team members. (just talk)
  13. Sit back relax and let them make mistakes.
  14. Stay away from the content, focus on the how not the what.
  15. Go and ask: “How can I help you today?” – “How can I become a better manager for you?”
  16. Take active steps to allow teams to decide by themselves, create a visual Authority Board.
  17. Do not provide solutions, provide direction and let the teams figure out a way to get there.
  18. Be present! Never type or look at your phone when somebody is talking to you.
  19. Make their day! Let others smile at least once a day.
  20. Play! Find ways to make work fun to do.

Oh and what’s this? *Drumroll* *Ping*! Bonus advice!

Attend a Management 3.0 course and discover some more hands-on tools to experiment with on your journey towards an Agile Manager.

Also have a look at our past editions

2015 – 20 New Year’s Resolutions for Product Owners

2016 – 20 New Year’s Resolutions for Scrum Masters

2017 – 20 New Year’s Resolutions for Change Agents

2018 – 20 New Year’s Resolutions for Scrum in your Organization

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year!