Agile and Passion

I just realised while writing this today, that this is episode 100 of this Newsletter. I can’t sufficiently thank you all for reading it, caring and making me feel safe enough to keep writing it. We’re an awesome team. 

Today, I wanted to talk about passion. The connection between passion and Agile* is maybe not the most evident one(*for those of you new to my writing, prepare to be irritated: I use “Agile” as an umbrella term for the overall way of thinking to encompass the philosophy, the practices, agility, culture and DevOps all together). 

In fact, the same people who are capable of being “Agile to the bone” would rarely characterise themselves as passionate. After all, it’s a way to get clear, quantifiable, predictable results and it’s mostly IT that truly internalised it and IT professionals are not exactly first in line when it comes to the “fluffy/mushy” stuff. 

As I said many times before, when I don’t obsess over Psychological Safety in teams, I think of myself as an Agile Anthropologist, I’m absolutely fascinated by the types of people who have made Agile part of their DNA and by how in technology, the keepers of the soul of the employees, are DevOps. I often wrote about Agile Superheroes and how hard it is for them, about the fact that Agile is a way of thinking not a way of working, about how this thinking maps to the Maslow pyramid of needs and of course, about my obsession: how Agile will help reduce HumanDebt?.

When I say “types of people” I’m sure we’re tempted to believe it is about a certain personality type or specific psychological make-up. That to be Agile, there’s some kind of acronym that Jung mandated that characterises all that manage to truly take to it and explains why all others can not. It would explain so much if some of us had “the capacity to change our mindset and become Agile” and others simply didn’t.

Unfortunately, that’s not the case at all. 

There are some traits and abilities that “Agile people” have in common across the board of course - they all are extremely courageous, they are open, they are thirsty for knowledge and addicted to improvement, they love a challenge, they’re motivated by progress and innovation and so much more. They’re also intensely flexible and over time, resilient, and we have to admit, they have a high IQ even if they may struggle -or think they struggle- with EQ. (By the way, look out for an article on the concept of Team EQ vs. Individual EQ soon). Still, not only are those not specific to a certain type of personality but they are fundamental and cut across individual and even cultural differences. The main common denominator is how each and every one of the people who are Agile at heart is also brimming with passion whether they recognise it or not. 

Whether they’re passionate about their craft, acquiring knowledge, ideals, or simply addicted to progress and improvement, Agile people are often perfectionists who would continuously go after the next goal with more gusto and daring application than they give themselves credit for. 

It’s why I equate an Agile mindset to fitness goals at times. Because whatever they are - whether they are running, weight lifting, etc - they all require grit, determination and addiction to "betterment" and they are all ultimately powered by passion.

Let’s face it, IT isn’t supposed to be vocational. It isn’t medicine or arts and there’s seemingly no calling to speak of. But is that really so? As ever, I have to start by acknowledging our privilege at PeopleNotTech as we get to make technology that truly changes people’s lives and we get to hear about it live and be as Agile as our hearts desire, while 90% of the teams we work with are nowhere as close to a lofty goal, have none of our autonomy and independence, and at times they aren’t even clear who their end consumers are, leave alone what they want and need. Even so, the ones in these teams who are Agile are a lot closer to feeling the same passion that a doctor or a teacher feels - a belief in the just and deep nature of what they do and a burning to do ever-better. 

The beauty of it is that there’s no going back to dispassionate, sequential, clunky, slow and frustrating waterfall ways of thinking once one saw the light, I don’t know anyone who truly got it, could recite the manifesto by heart and had ever been in even a handful of successful sprints making worthwhile, fast change to a product they care about with a team they love, who just woke up one morning and thought “Nah, not for me, let me resign and find myself a nice 3-year PRINCE-managed project that may never even see the light of day”. 

I would wager that Agile is addictive- once truly understood- and it is so because it stimulates our pleasure centre by bringing a lot more instant gratification thanks to the short feedback loops and it re-affirms self-actualisation when we see progress based on rapid learning and when we get to keep in the zone for much of our workday. That alone justifies the passion Agile breeds. 

Non-Agile people have such difficulty ever reaching flow and its joy because waterfall simply has no room for creative innovation whereas in Agile, not only is the space there, but the team is coming with. What’s better than flow? Team-level flow. Running fast together. You can’t have Agile without Psychological Safety and that too, the connection, the bond, the trust, the ability to experience flow together in a team, they are all supremely addictive.

If you recall the 5 top findings of Google’s Aristotle project we can see them all so clearly interdependent in Agile teams - their passion, the flow, the joy stems from their purpose and impact that thrive only if there is structure and clarity, and they breed dependability and Psychological Safety. 

Being passionate isn’t necessarily comfortable though. It means being willing to take risks - repeat things ad nausea and say unpopular ones, fight windmills, be obstinate about what you know is right, keep striving for better, keep wanting more and therefore we have to be prepared to be eternally in a state of moderate dissatisfaction because nothing is ever final or certain or, let’s face it, even sufficient. 

But that’s a price well worth paying because being passionate means you get to stay in the flow, stay psychologically safe, stay Agile so it’s worth that we recognise it in ourselves and the team - the passion which exists as an undertone powering every sprint, every honest retro, every experiment and every moment of daring whether it’s needed to create a feature, to lead or drive the stubborn organisation. 

I realise this isn’t one to share, after all, who wants to talk about the fluffy/mushy stuff when we’re still trying to sell hard-headed and fearful old school execs to the evident truths of the $ numbers that come from being truly Agile and everyone reading this is fighting that hard fight on a daily basis, but perhaps we go about it the wrong way and perhaps appealing to their common sense and logic is never going to be as efficient as firing up their passion. 

So dare to lean into feeling passionate about Agile, enjoy it and help the ones lost in the waterfall see it and aspire to feel it too so that we bring them along. 

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If you want high performing teams you need Psychological Safety first and foremost.

Read more about our Team Dashboard that measures and improves Psychological Safety at www.peoplenottech.com or reach out at [email protected] and let's help your teams become Psychologically Safe, healthy, happy and highly performant.