About Form, Function, Agility, and Taoism
This time we talked about Function and Form, about the relationship they have and how they serve each other in a transformation or anything we construct.
The Lao Tzu (or the book of Tao) was written 2500 years ago. It speaks about the essence of agility, about what may help people and organizations of all sorts become more agile, and about what may block it.
In each episode of our podcast, we shed light on a different poem from Peter's book: The Agile Tao (available to download for free, but please don't tell anyone... ;), and this time a poem that is very special for me, since when I led an Agile Drawing Meetup, it inspired an amazing session (see here)
Here it is:
Before I say something about the poem, please take the time to reread it and see what images surface. You can think of the functions you, your team, or your organization are trying to fill. And of the way your organization, team, or yourself go about it.
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When building something, be it a wheel, a cup, a piece of code, a new insurance offer, or a transformation plan. We are creating new possibilities, enabling new things and ideas to emerge in the world.
Yet too often, we get attached to implementation details, to the form. And along the way, we forget the essence. Over time, the whole organization starts focusing on the How and forgets the Why. In a team, we often trust the 'product people' to 'just tell us what to do', or get lost in our known ways of doing it - we make wheels when transportation conditions or technology have long changed.
When we lose connection to the function, we might also create strange KPIs. Do we measure the quality of a wheel by the number of spokes it has? Do 60 spokes make a better wheel? can a wheel with no spokes even be called a wheel?
In the podcast, we also talked about:
- Fostering an environment where growth is encouraged, and the risk of forcing change.
- Eco-driven vs. Ego driven system
- Does Agility have a form? if so - what is it?
- What happens when work or behavior is pushed instead of pulled?
And as for the rest: you can find it at your favorite Podcasting platform (start here).