Managerial Mindset: Change It or Game Over!

Abstract:

In the DevOps community we talk a lot about “culture”—describing it, changing it, and living in it. In many cases, our ability to embrace and implement DevOps is largely a function of whether or not our “culture” will support it. We say our culture “sucks” or is “awesome” because of what we can or cannot do. What we don’t realize is that culture is just a manifestation of behavior that is the by-product of the organization’s mindset. Ultimately, mindset is implemented and enforced by managers and managerial systems so what do you do? Without managers’ thought processes changing transformational efforts will fail as the prevailing mindset will drive behaviors of staff back to their “safe place.” DevOps, Agile, Lean, Continuous Delivery and other good stuff are eventually doomed unless the mindset changes.

This talk will discuss how to implement transformation by changing mindset, specifically in management. How do you do it? What mindset elements do you need to change? How hard is it? What about large organizations? What about startups or companies that have been around for years? I will discuss key ideas and recommend specific actions based on my experience as a change agent working at the company that moved from a “traditional” operations and development mindset to one of business agility.

Speaker:

John Esser Ancestry.com