Things I've learned about people, productivity, and engagement while doing Scrum

Throughout the course of being part of a software development team, managing teams, and now leading a team of Agile coaches I've noticed a few things.  There seem to be some things that I think would translate to any industry: engagement and servant-leadership.

Engagement

Throughout my career as a manager and director my teams have always had very high engagement.  This has usually been measured by a third party via a survey that has a myriad of questions.  My teams have always scored extremely high.  I've had plenty of different teams.  I've historically taken over plenty of troubled teams, and plenty of troubled individuals.  At the end of the day I find the most effective way to increase engagement is to all people to do their jobs.  Or to put it another way, let them make the job theirs. Once they take ownership and it becomes theirs issues with engagement seem to go away and things like morale and productivity soar.  That isn't to say conflict goes away, in fact if it every does go away I would get very nervous.  Truly engaged people with diverse backgrounds and view points will always have differences. Through my own personal observations and thoughts I've come to the following conclusions about engagement:

1. How much you pay people doesn't matter, what does seem to matter is when people feel they are paid unfairly. It usually deals with a comparison.  Once someone feels they are paid fairly, then money is simply not an issue.
2. Teams matter. I'm sure someone with a psychology, anthropology, philosophy degree or something similar could tell you why they matter, what I've noticed is that they absolutely do matter.  People that feel like they are part of a team that they trust and contribute to are much more engaged than those that are not.
3. People need to be empowered. They need to be as autonomous as possible.  Hold them accountable for goals that they set, not goals that come from someone else.  Let them decide the best way to solve a problem. If you want people to take ownership, you need to let them.
4. There's nothing wrong with a challenge.  Don't shy away from giving teams a challenge. Bored employees are not engaged employees.

To that end I've decided that a lot of our current incentive programs are really counter productive.  I used to be a big proponent of paying the top employees the top bonuses.  I used to believe that paying people differently according to their job function was a good thing.  Now, I'm not so sure.  Here's what I want:  I want teams.  Within those teams I want people to be able to do what they are best suited to do, to use their strengths and talents.  Too often I feel that people will not do what they love, or what they are really good at because it is viewed as 'not as important' or they won't get paid as much if they do it.  I wonder what would happen if we paid teams, and not individuals?  What if we put the bonuses as a flat amount for a team split equally?  What if we gave a bonus that was set as a percentage of the profit?  That would encourage the teams to be frugal, and to focus on revenue. To be able to do that you would need some type of inspect and adapt cycle.  One thing that I love about scrum is the team retrospective.  After a short iteration, usually 2-4 weeks the team reflects on how to get better.  Imagine any industry where the team has a chance to reflect, and then a chance to implement and try new things.  Teams need a voice and an opportunity to innovate, to try new things. One more thing that would need to be in place would be that the team needs to be able to evaluate each other on the team which leads me into servant-leadership

Servant Leadership

Most organizations currently do not encourage servant-leadership.  This is an area that I think we might be able to learn from the intent of republics and democracies.  Would we get better leaders if their performance evaluations were done by those that they are supposed to lead?  Imagine if a manager's performance evaluation was done by their direct reports?  And if they get a 'needs improvement' they are no longer a manager? (by the way, I hate calling them managers, I don't want managers, I want leaders).  What if a team can choose their leader?  If they don't cut-it they are free to move back to the team.  What if performance evaluations for a team were done by their peers?  At the end of the day I think that if you are not actively producing value to the customer then your job is to make it easier for the those that are to do their job.  Surely there must be a better way to encourage servant-leadership.