Meeting 4: Leadership & Transformation
Meeting 4 Video
AI-generated video content covering transformational leadership and ING case study
Meeting 4 Podcast
AI-generated podcast discussing leadership transformation and organizational change
Key Insights
Transformational Leadership: Five Dimensions That Drive Performance
Vision
Clear understanding of where organization is going in 5 years
Inspirational Communication
Motivates and inspires even in uncertain/changing environments
Intellectual Stimulation
Challenges team members to think about problems in new ways
Supportive Leadership
Demonstrates care and consideration for followers' personal needs
Personal Recognition
Praises and acknowledges achievements, personally compliments work
Research Finding
High-performing teams reported strongest transformational leadership across all dimensions. Teams with weakest leaders only half as likely to be high performers.
ING Netherlands Transformation Framework
Leadership Impact: Enabling vs. Commanding
Traditional Management
- Command and control approach
- Direct problem-solving intervention
- Focus on individual productivity
- Metrics without context
Transformational Leadership
- Training and conference budgets
- Hack days and 20% time
- Connecting strategy to team work
- Removing obstacles and barriers
Coaching Culture: From Command to Support
Command-and-Control
"Why isn't this getting done?"
"You need to fix this issue."
Coaching Approach
"Help me understand the problems you're encountering."
"What can I do to better support you and the team?"
Transformation Mindset Requirements
- Learn How to Learn: Creating environment for shared organizational learning
- Practice Discipline: Recording time usage, trying uncomfortable new behaviors
- Practice Patience: Decades-old patterns take time to change into new habits and culture
- Practice Practice: Learn, succeed, fail, learn, adjust, repeat - rhythm and routine
Interactive Learning Checkpoint
Leadership Style Assessment
Rate your current leadership approach across the five transformational dimensions:
Select your leadership style to see development opportunities and impact on team performance.
Transformation Readiness
Assess your organization's readiness for sustainable transformation:
Select factors present in your organization to calculate transformation readiness.
ING Transformation Lessons
What Made ING’s Transformation Successful
- Leader Learning First: Management team had to become learning team before helping others learn
- Behavioral Change Drives Culture: “When you change the way you work, you change the routines, you create different culture”
- Quality-First Mindset: “Speed with quality” - sometimes take longer initially but stay green vs others going back to red
- Senior Support: “Senior management is very happy with us” - providing air cover for transformation
Key Transformation Challenges
- Scaling Pressure: Discipline to go deep before going wide despite pressure to scale quickly
- Dispersed Teams: Experimenting with maintaining collaboration across countries
- Impatience: “You get impatient wanting to speed their learning but…they have to have their own learning”
Discussion Questions
Leadership Characteristics
Which of the five transformational leadership dimensions are strongest/weakest in your organization?
Investment in Learning
How does your organization invest in developing team capabilities?
Coaching vs Commanding
How can leaders shift toward supportive questions rather than direct orders?
Practical Exercises
1. Team Obeya Design
Exercise: Sketch a visual management board for your team
- Strategic objectives and current status
- Performance metrics and gaps (red/green coding)
- Current problems and escalation paths
- Work in progress and bottlenecks
- Actions and ownership
2. “Adapt, Don’t Copy” Planning
Exercise: Choose one ING practice and adapt it
- Select specific practice (Obeya, catchball, squad structure, etc.)
- Identify what would need modification for your context
- Plan small experiment to test adapted version
- Define success metrics and learning objectives
Action Items for Next Meeting
Practice coaching instead of commanding
Try coaching questions to develop team capability instead of providing solutions.
Can you ask one supportive question this week instead of giving direct orders?
Invest in your team's capability development
Investment in people development drives sustainable transformation.
What learning opportunity will you fund or create?
Turn failure into learning
Create psychological safety through learning-focused failure discussions.
When did you last discuss a setback without blame?
Culminating Reflection
The Key Question
As we conclude our transformation journey, we return to the central question that drives all DevOps improvement:
“What is the single smallest change we can make that would make our next deployment just a tiny bit less painful?”
This question embodies the entire Accelerate philosophy: start small, build momentum, focus on concrete improvements, and create conditions for continuous improvement.
Related Resources
Leadership & Transformation
Transformation Guides
Next Steps: Continue Your Transformation
Ready to take your DevOps transformation journey further? Visit our Transformation Complete page for:
- 🏆 Success metrics to assess your transformation progress
- 📚 Advanced reading recommendations and professional development resources
- 🚀 Your ongoing transformation planning and next steps
- 🎯 Continue your journey with additional resources and community connections
The transformation continues beyond this book club - use these tools to build your high-performing technology organization!