The role of mindset in successful agility

Agility isn't just a buzzword; it's a vital skill in an ever-changing world. In our latest blog, Agile Coach & Thought Leader Richard Haydon explores how an agile mindset allows for quick and effective responses to change, whether it's in sports, business, or personal growth.

In the modern business world, organisations are under constant pressure to innovate, adapt, keep ahead of the competition and technology, and meet changing customer demands. Agile ways of working offer a powerful approach to help organisations navigate these complex challenges. 

However, agile isn't just about frameworks or tools; it’s about the people who use them. There is a distinct difference between ‘doing’ agile, and ‘being’ agile - and the major influence and difference is mindset.

The mindset of these individuals, and teams and organisation culture is the true driver of agile success. An agile mindset enables individuals and teams to embrace change, collaborate effectively, and continually improve. This often takes time but when that mindset is embedded, the results—more motivated teams and an improved culture—will be what sets organisations ahead of the competition. 

The business will evolve into an organisation where people want to work, where innovative products are created and customers want to buy, and there will be motivated teams delivering as they understand and are part of the vision, and know exactly how they are contributing to that bigger picture.

Let’s explore mindset a bit further…

So, I've already mentioned agile frameworks - like Scrum, Kanban, and Lean, and these give the organisation the structure and the cadence to become more flexible and customer-focused when dealing with huge, complex deliveries. And this is great to help ‘do’ agile everyday - but embracing and having the right mindset, will help organisations ‘be’ agile. 

The agile mindset emphasises values such as individuals and interactions over processes and tools and responding to change over following a fixed plan. When people adopt an agile mindset, they approach problems with a solutions-oriented mindset, continuously seeking ways to improve how they work with others, collaborate and communicate as a team. This enables teams to deliver value they thought wasn’t possible before, potentially due to organisational constraints or an over-thought historic governance process. 

Without this mindset, the agile events and structure can become hollow rituals that fail to deliver real results. Therefore, it's the mindset that enables the tools to be used effectively and creates the cultural shift needed for agile to succeed.

It’s a team sport: Collaboration over individual achievement

At the heart of all agile frameworks and ways of working is collaboration. The word Scrum comes from rugby, which emphasises the collaboration aspect of mindset and working as a team to achieve the desired result - whether that's scoring a try in rugby or working on developing a new product. While traditional approaches often reward individual performance and siloed work, agile welcomes, embraces, and encourages teamwork and shared responsibility. 

An agile mindset fosters an environment where collaboration, transparency, and communication are the norm, and this is where mindset comes into it. It should be second nature, and colleagues should never think about working in silos, or thinking as an individual. In agile organisations, success is not measured by individual achievements but by how well the team performs collectively. This requires a shift from “heroic” individual contributions to a focus on team success. Team members are encouraged to communicate openly, share knowledge, and rely on each other’s strengths. They share, discuss, are open and transparent, discussing not only successes but also challenges and problems to resolve together. 

This is where the 5 Scrum values come into play:

• Focus
• Respect
• Openness
• Commitment
• Courage

Once these values are embedded in the workplace, they can help change the mindset towards a collaborative environment. If you also look at the 12 Agile principles that sit behind the Agile Manifesto, six of these are people focussed - so they truly are the distinction between whether agile is a success or not.

When collaboration is at the forefront of minds, teams are instinctively more cohesive, decision-making is faster, and solutions are more innovative. By empowering individuals to collaborate rather than compete, an agile organisation creates a dynamic environment where innovation thrives. When that happens, teams are usually happier, motivated, engaged and genuinely interested in helping the organisation succeed. And that’s when the magic happens.

Empowering colleagues, squads and teams

It's an important factor for colleagues to feel empowered that they own the delivery and how the product or service is built - after all, they are the experts. Product Owners know their product, but often don’t know how it’s built, or the art of the possible - this should be left to the experts. Obviously, constructive and important discussions will then take place to discuss collectively, often with stakeholders and POs to create that product or service together. But we must trust colleagues. 

There should be regular sessions to reflect and inspect (every sprint with the scrum framework), but in between sessions, trusting the team is important. And that openness and courage will benefit everyone. If there is a failure, it will be picked up quickly through stand ups, events, or sessions. And whilst not ideal, it should produce learnings within that time.

With empowerment, also comes responsibility and accountability. So, empowered teams should be able to own, but also be accountable for successes and possible failures. This is also where leaders need to have a different mindset of trust rather than command and control - and it goes without saying that leaders should avoid micromanagement.

Teams are then able to demonstrate the value they are delivering - with metrics (this speaks volumes!).  When empowerment is combined with accountability, team morale rises, and the organisation becomes more efficient and effective in achieving its goals.

Getting comfortable with being uncomfortable

A fundamental principle of agile is the ability to respond to change. This can be a difficult shift for organisations used to inaccurate long-term inflexible Gantt charts (especially if they think they are accurate), guessed RAG ratings, and rigid processes. However, an agile mindset encourages individuals to see change not as a disruption but as an opportunity. This mindset empowers teams to react quickly to new leaders, emerging technology, new customer needs and shifting market conditions. Rather than being locked into a fixed course of action, team members are encouraged to iterate, adjust, and learn continuously. 

Teams with this mindset are more adaptable, willing to experiment, and less afraid of failure because they view each iteration as a learning opportunity that drives improvement. This openness to change ensures that agile teams can pivot quickly, providing more value to customers in less time. Due to frameworks like scrum, the structure and events enable this through regular inspection with the right people and the right events to reflect and improve every single sprint.

Great agile leaders also should embrace, adopt and promote this concept by not demanding unreliable long term plans. They need to get comfortable with not always knowing the end product -but understand that the squad are focussed on working towards the vision, and delivering incrementally. Knowing that the end result may change and being comfortable with that will drive organisations to a different mindset - to ‘be’ agile rather than just ‘do’ agile.

Growth mindset vs fixed mindset

Carol Dweck's theory on mindsets can be a game-changer for understanding agility. A growth mindset will really embrace challenges and view them as opportunities to learn and innovate, whereas a fixed mindset sees challenges as threats or disruptions. This is the difference between doing agile (or traditional waterfall delivery done in sprints), compared to ‘being’ agile, which is embracing the scrum values mentioned above, and having that creativity, that intuition, and that imagination to create awesome products incrementally - which stand out from your competitors.

Continuous improvement

Continuous improvement is instilled in agile ways of working. Why wouldn’t you want to continuously improve? An agile mindset is inherently linked to the concept of continuous improvement, or Kaizen. This may happen through retrospectives, sprint reviews, sprint planning, feedback loops or work reviews. It doesn’t matter which as long as it happens, you have the right people there, and you do it regularly. 

Rather than accepting mediocrity, just doing what competitors are doing, or sticking to what’s comfortable, teams are encouraged to experiment with new approaches and solutions. This creates a culture where failure is seen not as a setback but as a stepping stone to learning and progress. When continuous improvement becomes part of the mindset, the organisation evolves incrementally, resulting in better products, stronger team dynamics, and more satisfied customers over time. Magic.

To summarise…

Mindset within an agile organisation is as important, if not more so, than the methodologies or frameworks it adopts. It is centred on embracing change, collaboration, continuous improvement, and empowerment.

It fosters a culture that is adaptable, resilient, and committed to delivering value. Without the right mindset, agile frameworks risk becoming just a set of processes that lack the flexibility and innovation needed to thrive in a constantly evolving environment.

When embraced fully, the agile mindset enables organisations to ‘be’ agile and not just ‘do’ agile - this makes them competitive, able to act quicker, leaner and adapt faster to not only survive, but also lead in an increasingly competitive, complex, and fast-paced world.