Mastering Courage and Conviction: Small Acts, Big Impact in Agile Leadership

In this roundtable edition of Mastering Agility/Scaling with Agility Gang, hosts Yuval Yeret, Rich Visotcky, and Jim Sammons unpack the role of courage and conviction in agile leadership. They share real-world stories—from reorganising an Israeli cyber-security scale-up to confronting “invisible electric fences” in large enterprises—and demonstrate how small, repeatable acts of bravery compound into systemic change. Practical frameworks, such as the Hypothesis Prioritisation Canvas, Appreciative Inquiry, and Critical Uncertainties, illustrate how leaders can replace process theatre with principled, context-driven experiments.“Sometimes the bravest move is simply admitting you don’t know—and turning that into a testable hypothesis.” — Yuval“You can spot a timid leader by the number of fences they’re sitting on; have an opinion and move the needle.” — Jim“Policies you wrote to solve yesterday’s problems shouldn’t shackle tomorrow’s possibilities.” — Rich(00:28) Exploring Leadership and Courage(02:09) Empowered Teams and Small Acts of Courage(05:57) Transparency and Decision Making(07:04) Balancing Courage and Conviction(09:40) Practical Leadership Tips(15:04) Decision Making Frameworks(18:31) Testing and Validating Decisions(28:22) The Importance of Choice in Leadership(29:00) Learning from Target’s Data Breach(30:38) Testing Ideas in Smaller Timeframes(32:08) Real-World Examples of Courage in Leadership(38:07) Overcoming Invisible BarriersInvisible fences—self-imposed constraints—often hold leaders back more than actual policies.(48:41) Practical Techniques for Leadership Development(50:33) Final Thoughts on Leadership and Agility* Hypothesis Prioritisation Canvas – Sense & Respond Press* Evidence-Based Management Guide – Scrum.org* Liberating Structures (Critical Uncertainties, Ecocycle, Appreciative Interviews) * Follow Rich on LinkedIn* Follow Jim on LinkedInExperiment invitation: This week, pick one “invisible fence” in your organisation—something you assume you can’t do—and design a one-week safe-to-fail test to probe whether the fence is real. Share your plan (or results) and learning e.g. on Linkedin (Tag us if you’d like!) Get started on your nuanced scaling journey in Yuval’s free Scaling w/ Agility Crash CourseFollow Yuval on Linkedin