The Leadership Mindset Shift That Drives True Agility

Excerpts from the book: Unf*ck Your Agile - by Mike Fisher

Why Leadership Is the Bottleneck (and the Solution)

If you’re a leader reading this, let me get straight to the point: You are either the biggest enabler or the biggest obstacle to true agility in your organization. No fancy framework, no army of Scrum Masters, and no Agile Coach can fix what leadership mindset breaks.

Agility isn’t a bottom-up movement. It thrives—or dies—based on how leaders set strategy, communicate intent, and define desired outcomes. But here’s the kicker: after doing that, your job is to get the hell out of the way. Not in a disengaged, “I’ll check back in Q4” way, but in a way that empowers, supports, and—most importantly—trusts your teams to deliver.

Let’s unf*ck the leadership mindset that’s been holding agility hostage.

1. Strategy: Your Job Isn’t to Control—It’s to Clarify

Leaders often think their job is to have all the answers. It’s not.

Your job is to ask the right questions and create clarity. That’s strategy in the context of agility.

A good strategy answers:

• Where are we going? (The Vision)

• Why does it matter? (The Purpose)

• What boundaries exist? (The Guardrails)

But here’s what strategy is not:

❌ A 50-slide deck with buzzwords and vague promises.

❌ A rigid roadmap dictating every feature for the next three years.

❌ A list of projects masquerading as “strategic initiatives.”

Agile leadership means creating a strategy that is clear enough to inspire action but flexible enough to adapt when reality punches you in the face.

If your teams can’t answer, “How does my work connect to the company’s strategic priorities?”—that’s on you.

2. Intent: Stop Giving Orders, Start Setting Direction

Traditional leadership thrives on control. Agile leadership thrives on clarity of intent.

Intent is not about micromanaging tasks. It’s about defining outcomes.

Instead of saying:

• “Build Feature X by Q3.”

Try:

• “We need to reduce customer churn by 15%—what’s the best way to achieve that?”

When you lead with intent, you shift from being a commander to being a catalyst. You’re not prescribing solutions; you’re creating the conditions for teams to discover them.

This is where many leaders struggle because intent without control feels risky. But here’s the truth:

• Trust isn’t the absence of risk; it’s what makes taking risks possible.

If you’re not willing to give up control, you’re not leading—you’re managing. And managing is not enough in a complex, fast-changing world.

3. Desired Outcomes: Focus on Impact, Not Activity

Here’s the trap: measuring success by outputs instead of outcomes.

Outputs = Features shipped, projects completed, hours logged.

Outcomes = Customer value created, business goals achieved, impact delivered.

When you focus on outputs, teams optimize for checking boxes. When you focus on outcomes, teams optimize for solving problems.

As a leader, your job isn’t to track how many story points a team delivered last Sprint. Your job is to ask:

• “How is this work moving the needle for our customers and the business?”

• “What problems are we solving, and how do we know we’ve succeeded?”

If your success metrics are all about activity instead of impact, don’t be surprised when teams lose sight of what really matters.

4. Empower, Support, Trust: The Leadership Trifecta

Once you’ve set the strategy, clarified intent, and defined outcomes—get out of the f*cking way.

But—and this is critical—getting out of the way doesn’t mean disappearing.

It means shifting from controlling to empowering, from directing to supporting, and from monitoring to trusting.

Here’s what that looks like:

✅ Empower: Give teams autonomy over how they achieve outcomes.

✅ Support: Remove obstacles, provide resources, and coach—not command.

✅ Trust: Assume competence. Trust doesn’t mean they won’t fail; it means you trust they’ll learn and improve.

And if you’re thinking, “But what if they fail?”—ask yourself:

Are you afraid of failure because of the risk to the business—or because of the risk to your ego?

Agile isn’t about avoiding failure; it’s about creating systems where failure is small, fast, and a catalyst for growth.

5. The Mindset Shift: From Hero Leader to System Leader

The biggest unf*cking you’ll do as a leader is to realize it’s not about you.

• Not about your ideas being the best.

• Not about your approval being the final stamp.

• Not about your presence in every meeting as the “decider.”

Agile leadership is about shifting from being a hero to being a system leader—someone who designs environments where others can thrive without you needing to be the smartest person in the room.

If your team’s success depends on you being in the room, you’re not leading—you’re bottlenecking.

Final Thought: Leadership Is the Work

Agile transformations fail not because teams resist change, but because leaders do.

• They cling to control.

• They confuse activity with impact.

• They micromanage under the guise of “alignment.”

If you truly want to unf*ck your Agile, start with your own leadership mindset.

• Set a clear strategy.

• Lead with intent.

• Define meaningful outcomes.

• Then empower, support, and trust your teams like your business depends on it—because it does.

Agile isn’t a team problem. It’s a leadership opportunity.

The question is: Are you ready to lead differently?