Succeeding with Agile

Encourage Collaboration Through Commitment

Tommy Lasorda, long-time manager of the Los Angeles Dodgers baseball team, has said, “My responsibility is to get my twenty-five guys playing for the name on the front of their shirt and not the one on the back” (LaFasto and Larson 2001, 100). Team learning will only get you so far in your quest to become a high-performing, agile team. To keep your self-organizing team working as a unit instead of a collection of individuals, you must constantly reenergize and focus it toward shared goals. To do this you must find ways to renew team members’ commitment to their purpose and to each other. There are a number of things you can do to build and nurture this kind of commitment.