Part 2: Using the wisdom of the whole team

We’ve talked about how agile helps you reduce risk by working in shorter cycles, allowing you to learn as you go. But there’s another big reason agile works. It allows you to use the wisdom of the entire team.

Your team are smarter than you think they are

When you work in an agile way, the whole team gets equal say in choosing what to work on and how you’ll do it. This is another idea that lots of managers understandably resist. We’re taught that these types of decisions should come top-down – after all, that’s why we pay managers more! Managers should be more experienced, have more context about what’s going on in the organisation and so be best placed to make the decisions.

But is this really true?

All of us have biases and blind spots, and that’s no less true for managers. And all of us only see part of the full picture. The manager may well know more about the organisational context. But they’ll probably know less about the practical details of the work.

How long will something will take, what happened when we tried this last time, who needs to be involved from other teams, what’s their capacity is likely going to be… All of these are probably areas where the rest of the team knows more than the manager. And all of them are things that should be taken into account in your decision making.

Make better decisions, together

We default to one person making the decisions because it’s simpler. But agile has lots of tools to help you to decide collaboratively. In fact, I’ve got a whole guide on how to make better decisions with agile, with five different easy-to-follow processes you can use to do this. But the important thing is to decide together.

Each member of your team has different experiences, relationships and knowledge you can draw on. And the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Why wouldn’t you want to involve them in the choices governing your day-to-day work?

How deciding collaboratively benefits each team member

Involving your team in choosing has other surprising benefits. It’s well established that psychological safety is one of the most important drivers of team performance. Teams that feel comfortable speaking up, taking risks and giving feedback perform better. And giving team members equal share of voice in the decisions that affects their work helps build that psychological safety. They know they will be listened to, that their expertise is appreciated. And they know that they don’t have to get it all right. Part of the value of deciding collaboratively is that if one of you is way off track, others will counterbalance that.

Involving everyone in deciding also gives them greater buy-in to the choices you make. They will know exactly why it’s important, and give them real ownership of the decision. It makes it easier for them to connect individual tasks to the bigger picture. Because they were involved in the decisions, they have a real understanding of them and can think more about how that should emerge in different settings.

Finally, it’s good for their development. Prioritising is a skill like any other, as are broader forms of decision making. Getting to practice prioritisation on a regular basis makes you better at it. Not only does the specific skill transfer to other settings, but the process also gives you the opportunity to consider why you make specific choices. It’s a natural way to hone your strategic thinking over time.

I want to emphasise again that this is practical and easy to do. There are simple, well established ways of deciding collectively described in my how-to guide. It may be simple, but it’s also powerful. This is a major reason agile works.

How do you approach decision making in your team?