Agile is not for the Weak Snowflakes

Series is a new product that LinkedIn is piloting to help members build community around the topics they care about by writing regularly about those topics. Aside from my first one called “Chasing Psychological Safety” which is looking at that particular lever of productive teams, this one called “The Future is Agile” is a series about The #FutureOfWork, #Agile and Ways of Work, #Technology, #Leadership, hearts and minds and why we can never have the results of the Silicon Valley darlings without changing the way we think not only the way we work. Some of the articles may be a repeat from Forbes or my blog, but every week I will re-examine them with you and hopefully get a dialogue going because keeping the dialogue strong, is the only way to keep this in the “Doing” column so please Subscribe. 

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Last week I promised I'd come back to the topic of Agile and Strength.

I was saying: "It's also hard because it is a way of thinking that forces us to be at the stretch limit of our humanity - empathy, strength of character and conviction as well as ability to withstand uncertainty while still feeling safe enough in the team to resolve it and grow, strong and self-replenishing sense of purpose and a hefty dose of personal responsibility all come into it."

Whether we call it resilience, antifragility, or any other term to denote both resistance and growth, strength is the sine qua non when it comes to Agile.

Agile delivers faster and better than any other method of work out there. Fact.

Agile brings uncertainty and change, a need to work even more on our own selves and on staying curious and invested and a host of other discomforts. Fact.

Each of those requires us to be strong. Here's how:

Strength for Uncertainty

The only thing we can be certain of is uncertainty. What an intensely uncomfortable thought for those of us hyper-dependent on order and structure.

And yes, even those of us most intensely averse to change know that it's inevitable, so we recognize that to minimize the discomfort, the only antidote is to become resilient by expecting it and even learning to relish in it.

Strength for Change

"If change is the only constant - let's get better at it" says Jenny Blake author of Pivot.

What a wonderful thought. The possibility that change, be it rapid and seemingly unclear or opposite to a course of action we were comfortable with, is not only possibly for the best but also a skill we can learn. That we can be good at changing. That may mean avoiding the panic and simply staying open to the internal or external arguments that brought the change about or it may mean a more complicated internal structure we construct so that we feel safe and master change, but whatever it takes isn't it wonderful that it's possible to embrace it instead of dread it?

Strength for Vulnerability

Being vulnerable is not being weak. On the contrary, being vulnerable takes great strength. For most of us it's often hard to be vulnerable in front of ourselves or those closest to us like our friends or family, so it's of course much harder to do it in a group in a social setting and hardest of all to be vulnerable at work where the perception is that we are being paid to be together, self assured and powerful.

Allowing others to see our failings seems counterintuitive and we project negative outcomes coming from doing so. And yet, there's no way to have progress without utterly open dialogue and we can't be truly open without being vulnerable. It's the basis of why Psychological Safety -in as far as it looks at the team members' ability to admit mistakes and be honest and vulnerable with each other -, is the foundation of productivity.

Strength for Learning

Constantly learning is hard work. We can't exclusively learn about the things we love, so it's not always a pleasurable exercise, in particular, if we do it intentionally as a personal goal.

Taking in new information, reexamining opinions, recapping the old and repurposing the overall result, is the only way in which we can progress and even the most avid of readers can lack focus and need to channel their curiosity to accumulate knowledge in lieu of mere trivia.

Intentional learning is work. Winning every debate with yourself where your natural lazy self impishly pushes non-learning alternatives takes great strength. Staying curious enough to learn things that would challenge your personal, comfortable views of the world takes courage and courage is strength.

Strength for Vision

For tunnel vision that is. It's not easy to hone in on a purpose and pursue it much less to impart it relentlessly but strong leaders get and defend ideas, purpose and, vision and find ways to continuously reaffirm them to the team.

Repeating ad nausea what the greater idea is for a theoretical pie-in-the-sky goal that the company overall has towards the consumer and how building this skyscraper will change the lives of the underprivileged in a respective city in the middle of weekly planning sprint for the team designing the logistics system that will keep builders on schedule for the building is not an easy to-do but good leaders have to be strong enough to overcome the eye rolls, the gossip, the accusations of having their heads in the clouds while at the same time coming up with new ways to avoid motivation fatigue.

Strength for Growth

If we manage all of the above we'll be all kinds of new and exciting things. We'll be curious, flexible, ready, we may even enjoy change and relish challenges. We'll be a better version of ourselves, we would have grown as human beings and we would have been well equipped to become truly Agile.

Training for Strength

I often say to boards we work with, that waterfall and all other old, sequential project management processes and tools, are to delivering in this age of technology what the 80's Jane Fonda aerobics DVD's are to fitness. Who do you know who is serious about their fitness and still does that or even nothing but Treadmill-and-FitBit as the sum total of their exercise in lieu of some combination or other of yoga, HIIT and lifting? Not many and that's because mercifully, nowadays everyone knows that lifting weights is necessary.

And if we agree we have to lift to train psychically, then we have to agree to train to lift emotionally too and we can train all of the strengths enumerated above. Some of the things we can do are:

• Breathe through the discomfort. Borrow from meditation and make mental notes instead of reacting. Observe the pain of volatility, learn from your own reactions and that of the team thinking of each occurrence as an opportunity for progress and a gain.
• Obsessively count wins - celebrate victories, practice gratitude, call it what you will but constantly remind yourself and your team how far you've come. Bonus points if we can get to where we count every uncomfortable change as a win;
• Take frequent mental helicopter rides to get your view from up there and then conjure that image of the purpose daily or as often as you can get away with it, to not only the team but yourself as well. Keep with the big picture. Keep reading seemingly un-useful (sic!) high-level pieces like this to disallow the everyday humdrum from droning out the vision;
• Stay focused on lasting value. The momentary displeasure builds character in both yourself and the team and in a future where this particular project, job or even company may not exist, that value that was built, will certainly still be there, transcending events and making us better and ultimately more employable;
• Work on yourself. Nothing wrong with an all-year-round-NYE-resolutions-list. Meditating, swimming, breathing, reading, learning how to knit. Whatever it takes to make *you* better;
• Stop looking for quick fixes, tips and shortcuts. The only thing that matters is the quality and quantity of internal impetus to grow, all lists of suggestions towards that are ultimately worthless. This one included.

Not for the Snowflakes

Agile is not easy and Agile is not comfortable. I keep saying this. Hats off to those who not only got it but constantly reaffirm it to themselves beyond process and structure. Those who constantly re-examine it and push themselves. Those who look for the next uncomfortability, for the next sharp turn, for the next unexpected change, who crave the volatility, the challenge, the pivot - to test, to learn and to grow.

You don't need to be a marathon runner or an extreme sports enthusiast to really do Agile, but you do need to have an impatient maker's psychological profile, an unwillingness to stand still and be discontent with the status quo. You don't have to be superhuman to be Agile, but you can't be too weak to be strong.