Agile Leadership in Higher Education

During this lecture I will introduce the roots of agile leadership and how the values of the Agile Manifesto can be adapted to the field of higher education. As part of my lecture I will argue that technological development, student diversity, international competition, and modern leadership are significant factors that are influencing more universities to integrate agile leadership principles in their administrative procedures and teaching practices. Yet I will present a counterargument by explaining the reasons why agile leadership principles might not be adopted in universities. I will then summarize my analysis in the conclusion. 

The philosophy of agile leadership has grown from the efforts of a group of software practitioners who adopted work methodologies in response to failed information communication technology (ICT) projects that were rooted in traditional, process, and documentation heavy practices in the 1990’s (Cubric, 2013). In a key statement called the Agile Manifesto, the software developers proposed an alternative way to successfully lead ICT projects by focusing on the following four values: “Individuals and interactions over processes and tools, working products over comprehensive documentation, customer collaboration over contract negotiation and responding to change over following a plan” (Beck, et al., 2001, para. 2). Kamat (2012) later adapted the Agile Manifesto to the education context with the Agile Manifesto in Education, which emphasized “Teachers and Students over Administration and Infrastructure; Competence and Collaboration over Compliance and Competition; Employability and Marketability over Syllabus and Marks; Attitude and Learning Skills over Aptitude and Degree” (p. 231). Moreover, the agile leadership approach in education, according to Krehbiel et al., (2017) also encourages teams to expand their capacity and participate in initiatives that are focused on achieving collaboration, meeting instructor and student needs and applying learning by working toward goals, taking action, engaging in critical thinking, and practicing continuous feedback. While some leaders argue that agile leadership principles have the potential to advance university processes, others contend that universities are not ready to adopt them. The issue is controversial but closer examination reveals that technological development, student diversity, international competition, and modern leadership are significant factors that are influencing more universities to integrate agile leadership principles in their administrative and teaching practices.   

Technological development is one of the driving reasons why more universities are following agile principles. Examples of different technologies include: artificial intelligence, autonomous vehicles, big data analytics and cloud, custom manufacturing, 3D printing, Internet of things and connected devices, robots and drones, and social media platforms (World Economic Forum, 2018 & 2020). Thus more educational institutions are drawing on technology to offer personalized online learning experiences and advance research; and in this process higher education institutions must leverage on team-focused collaborative ways to swiftly offer digital learning products that serve not only instructors but also students.

Indeed, students are certainly another key driver for the integration of agile leadership principles in higher education. Students are diverse and have various learning preferences. They come from across the world and bring with them social capital that contributes to teaching and learning processes; and students challenge university systems to innovate as they endeavor to meet students' various learning needs. Moreover, students are at the forefront of the digital transformation in education because of growing access and use of social media (Al-Bahrani, A., Patel, P., Sheridan, 2015). Furthermore, students who learn in the current digital age are studying during a time when organizations are moving towards flatter power structures (Johnson, 2020; Northouse, 2020). With more possibilities to obtain real time information, students thus expect transparent recruitment, financial, grading, and teaching processes throughout their educational journeys (Jongbloed, Vossensteyn, van Vught, & Westerheijden, 2018). In addition to remote and virtual learning options, students have more opportunities to leverage on autonomous learning opportunities with their peers, colleagues and instructors in various learning and professional networks. Accordingly, agile leadership principles can encourage higher education teams to quickly identify and respond to students’ range of interests and situations in order to improve educational experiences across digital platforms.

While universities participate and compete in global digital networks, agile leadership principles can also facilitate how universities establish and strengthen their partnerships (Johnson, 2020). For example, agile principles can support university departments to collaborate, develop relationships, and find synergies that streamline institutional processes in efficient ways that create maximum value for all stakeholders, such as students, staff, and instructors (Baker, 2020). Indeed, universities compete not only for students who are clients that can pay for fees but also as individuals whose talent can advance institutions’ reputations and rankings in the global education market (Kettunen, 2015). However, with more cost cutting across the globe, universities continue to compete for funding and resources. In times of such change, agile practices thus help universities respond to new immigration and trade policies as well as plans to construct and maintain residence, administrative, and teaching buildings. Therefore, agile leadership principles, which aim to ultimately yield quality, transparency, empowerment, and efficiency, are key to protecting universities from economic disturbances that may cause them to lag behind other competing institutions. In addition, as more universities become corporate universities, they compete with multinational corporations’ expanding networks and financial gains from increased security, science, technology, service and industrial advancements (Baporikar, 2015; World Economic Forum, 2020), all of which create added pressures on higher education institutions to innovate and adopt agile methodologies.

Navigating power relations with modern leadership is another reason why universities are increasingly adopting agile methodologies. While many traditional leadership styles developed during the industrial age included traits based leadership, primal and behavioural leadership, transformational and transactional leadership, modern leadership has been developing during the current knowledge era when people have more access to information (Northouse, 2018). Besides agile leadership, other examples of modern leadership are authentic leadership, spiritual leadership, servant leadership, adaptive leadership, followership, and discursive leadership. Similar to other forms of modern leadership, agile leadership principles set direction, align and motivate and inspire people with the intention to lead them towards a common purpose that they believe in while empowering them and fostering autonomy and transparency (Johnson, 2020). Moreover, the current knowledge age has influenced leadership styles to shift from being leader-centered to process-centered due to widespread access and use of information. Furthermore, increasing numbers of educated employees across industries have created shifts in power dynamics and require agile practices such as transparency, collaboration, and creating value to improve higher education processes (Conboy, 2009; Dingsøyr, Nerur, Balijepally, & Moe, 2012; Klopper & Pendergast, 2017, p. 3162).

However, many followers of higher education like Nita Temmerman (2018) argue that universities can be too bureaucratic to support the horizontal relationships that agile leadership methodologies encourage. Certainly, bureaucratic organizations are different than agile ones because they tend to view its members as assets that need to be managed rather than empowered (Crippen, 2020). Moreover, while smaller universities may be more receptive to transitioning under agile leadership because they may have newer and fewer employees, universities have a reputation for being slow to process information and make decisions, which is in contrast to agile organizations that yield swift results. Universities are divided into divisions, departments, centers, and faculties that often create silos and inhibit effective communication and collaboration. Other factors that may slow the adopting of agile leadership in universities are employees’ immunity to change their behaviors, especially in older universities (Kegan & Lahey, 2010; Temmerman, 2018). Furthermore, implementing agile methods in universities may be impractical if the institution is not working toward a common purpose such as excellent teaching and research. 

In conclusion, while there are arguments against universities’ adoption of agile leadership principles, it is clear that technological development, student needs, international competition, and evolving modern leadership trends support the growing practice of implementing of agile leadership principles in higher education. Certainly many similar characteristics of agile leadership have already been integrated in education, such as servant leadership, but due to the high penetration, investment and development of ICT across industries within the last decade universities have only recently been preparing specifically for the current digital transformation that is taking place in the world and which requires an enhanced focus on leading digital teams. However, whether or not universities are ready for agile leadership principles, higher education teams will continue to face changes in the education market that will require teams to maintain confidence even after making mistakes as they adapt to future changing processes because there will be neither right answers, best practices, nor final solutions. Rather, there will be iterations and outcomes that result from following certain values; and if higher education teams adhere to the principles of the Agile Manifesto, collaboration, trust, and reflection will be at the core of their work.

References

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