Outcomes and the Death of Heroes

When chaos reigns, systems are down, and survival hinges on extraordinary efforts, we turn to heroes. The dilemma is that hero culture is self-perpetuating and toxic. Organizations can improve outcomes by focusing on enabling fewer Boromirs and elevating more Fellowships.

Many organizations take advantage of hero culture at the expense of employee well-being, team diversity, and churn. “Hero” has problematic connotations that we will seek to explore over the course of this talk.

We will give examples of how enabling high-performing teams leads to an outcome-based culture. This has the value of creating psychological safety and delivering more reliable products. We’ll also examine how organizations can identify heroes through “people” metrics and demonstrate how XP tenets such as pairing create high-performing teams organically.

So pour yourself an ale, sit down next to the fire, and hear tell a tale of the death of heroes and the rise of the age of outcomes!

Track: Agile Leadership