Sam And Lung Cancer

(Many apologies to the ones who have already seen this as an individual article, I mis-posted and missed the Agile Newsletter button, sorry and you can avert your eyes and stop reading now, new stuff next week.)

It’s Wednesday so that means it’s time for a spot of pop-psychology on the topic of #Agile. 

I’ve always been fascinated with the topic of cargo culture and Agile. In my talks, I often refer to it in the context of how no one should expect to be able to have the WoW without the WoT. Obviously, and to ensure this is properly disclaimed from the get-go and not offering any hope of a loophole, for the complete avoidance of all doubt - I absolutely believe that lasting change can not happen in the absence of changing everyone’s mindset. No if’s and but’s. 

With that said, there are a number of human actions where changing the behavior can and will change the train of thought itself, it is the basis of CBT(cognitive behavioral therapy) so why is it that it’s different in Agile? How come we replace the act of extracting a cigarette from the pack and light it with a fidget spinner and that will eventually turn our smoker mind into a non-smoker but we can’t turn planning meetings into stand-ups and be Agile?

So if CBT and other methodology used to drive thought change by driving the action work by making people replace an old pattern with a new one, how come they don’t work for this? 

The only answer I can come up with - but as ever, there are no right ones, we are all up against big consultancies selling “bullet-proof best practices” if you look at a few things doing the rounds last week, so any answer is better than an unexamined and defeated concession so please give me yours in the comments- is that “Agile by numbers” doesn’t work as it’s a far bigger identity change than dropping the fags. 

The change from a sequential way of thinking to an Agile one challenges every part of our intellectual self and is questioning our very identity as a thinker. From “things need to be thought out in advance and imagined in steps that come in one after the other” to “things can be thought of on the fly as we understand the value, let’s make things”. 

Being open, being flexible, being resilient enough to withstand uncertainty, being curious and courageous enough to keep learning and keep collaborating - none of these are either trivial or qualities we have ever before had to exhibit in a waterfall-y enterprise. 

At a process level, people can and will make changes. It will, however, be confined to mannerism, group behaviour and a series of actions that will make them look like they have embraced a deep mindset transformation but, seeing how it challenges every fiber of how they have ordered work-related tasks and concepts in their minds that far, they will simply be doing one thing and keep thinking another. 

We meet leaders every week asking if we are “sure” that their guys that overtly just go through the motions, for now, are not going to simply give in to the process and truly embrace it one day. We are positive. If one has tackled the huge change that Agile is from the middle or without the hygiene work of changing minds and hearts it’s natural to hope that eventually, everyone will reluctantly come on board by process hook or crook. In particular, since they appreciate their minds and effort and know their teams can objectively see the benefits of being close to the consumer, fast, useful and accurate in their output. 

Surely they will eventually see the light and the sense in doing things this way. 

Surely, even if Sam is only wishing the stand-up ended so he has what his colleagues think is his “midday snack break” but instead is a quiet moment where he retreats to the familiarity and comfort of a Gantt chart he carries around in his head to translate what is happening while this Agile trend is forced on the team, surely Sam will one day spontaneously drop the mental chart and Sam’s subconscious will nudge him to accept that Agile is the only way as it so evidently works and he can now focus on that pack of biscuits he shouldn’t have, right?

Wrong. Sam’s subconscious would have to have said “Right, I can completely change who I have been professionally for all my years. I can stop being worried about change, I can accept we have to be flexible, I am ok being uncomfortable not knowing what comes next, I can be open and vulnerable with my team-mates, I get it that things are neither finished nor perfect, nothing is the way it was my entire adult life anymore, everything is up in the air and that’s a good thing, I’m ok, I can and will do this not because they told me so but because I recognize its value. I want to be faster and better, I can’t do that while I am a sequential thinker. Everything is a card.” 

And that’s not the type of long monologue Sam’s subconscious will deliver because his boss Steve Stevensson has made him come to enough retro’s. 

If it does one day, it will be because Sam read “The Phoenix Project” on vacation. Or his sister insisted to use Trello for their joint annual family vacation. Or his wife created an app and he is helping her set-up the developers team in her start-up. Or he sat down with a cuppa and the Agile Manifesto some weekend then fell down a rabbit hole of reading the stories of Valley giants who release 5000 times a day, or the ones who love their customers so much they make things they adore and came out of the hole late on Sunday having had such an “A-ha” moment he’s pumped for going to work on Monday and doing the sprint kick-off. 

It won’t magically happen on its own. It doesn’t matter how long we’ll force our guys to use Jira, they won’t become #Agile because they do. Time and a mandate won’t turn a need for requirement gathering into an open conversation on value and prioritization before all Sams have had their own individual “A-ha” moments and all Stevensson’s can do is give them the time, the books, the examples, the encouragement and the freedom to arrive there. 

Doing “Agile-by-numbers” doesn’t work because it is not the change from “I am a smoker” to “I am a non-smoker” but the change from “I am a professional therefore I think sequentially” to “I am a smart and brave human who wants to do a thing and do it fast and well, therefore I’m Agile”.