S02 E12 Agile Mindset: How to find your calling with Signe Hjorth Hansen, Agile Coach & Board Member Women in Tech DK.

Jul 5, 2021

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Signe Hjorth Hansen is the last guest of Femme Lead Podcast season 2! Signe is an Agile Coach for the tech & telecom company Nuuday in Denmark and a board member in the organization Women in Tech Denmark. Signe's career started with a graduate program in the company Cisco and continued as a business manager before moving into the telecommunication space for the last 4 years at TDC/Nuuday.

Nuuday is a family of 9 brands in Denmark that includes YouSee, Telmore, eesy, Hiper, YouTv, Blockbuster, TDC Erhverv, NetDesign, and Related. The core of Nuuday is TV, broadband, network, telephony, and entertainment delivered across all brands.

An agile coach is a person who is responsible for creating and improving Agile processes within a team or a company. Signe graduated with a master's in Engineering, Operation, and Innovation Management from the Danish Technical University and her career path at Nuuday included the role of service solution architect and commercial manager before becoming an agile coach.

In this episode, we will discuss the day-to-day activities of an agile coach, and the overall understanding of how IT transformation happens with the help of the Agile framework. Signe Hjorth Hansen also shares how she used the Agile mindset to reflect on her career and how she started making decisions using the framework for her professional development.

We cover:

How does one become an Agile Coach, and what will it mean for the organization?
How do you use Agile as a mindset for change and experiment in your development?
How to find your purpose and calling?

Key takeaways:

Being an Agile Coach means you need to be comfortable with being proactive, build mental strength, and constantly experiment with different scenarios.
The people who flourish in the Agile setup take control over their development: Do you like to work freely in a structured environment? You have a specific role, but the tasks differ depending on the project and team you collaborate with.
Find out what DRIVES you. People will always tell you what you do and who you should become, but they are not you in the end. Understand what drives you.

Connect with Signe via LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/signe-hjorth-hansen-38279721/

Read more about the Agile Principles: https://www.agilealliance.org/agile101/

Read more about OKRs (Objectives and Key Results): https://www.whatmatters.com/faqs/okr-meaning-definition-example/

Episode Timeline:

02:10 What does it mean to be an Agile Coach?

03:07 What are the keywords of the Agile setup?

04:50 How did Denmark's largest digital service provider decide to go Agile?

09:28 How do you define Agile?

13:15 What is the day-to-day role of an Agile Coach?

15:24 Why Agile matter?

20:20 How do you use Agile for career development?

23:30 What changed when applying the Agile mindset to your career?

28:25 Planning your Career Roadmap

29:20 Finding your Calling / Purpose

32:20 How did you realize what was NOT working for you?

34:45 What advice do you have for young women looking to find their calling?

38:35 Being Agile means adopting Servant Leadership.

41:13 The story of Women in Tech Denmark