The secret of Agile Transformations - From running to limping..

I recently saw this video on WhatsApp and thought the hidden lesson in the video is very apt for the coaching community.

Lyssa Adkins in her book "Coaching Agile teams" says that “An Agile coach is someone who has seen big dragons in his/her life”. I see a lot of coaches who have no /zero experience in Agile and have become coaches. I also see that these coaches are transforming organizations are not even ready to accept that is something lacking in their skills and this has a huge impact on the system/team they are coaching

The story goes like this.. There was a king who was fond of horses. He had a large stable and had a variety of horses and he was always fascinated with the various categories of horses he had. He got a new pony to his stable. The pony was very obedient and cute and was very loving. He loved it. As time passed by, the pony became a healthy and lovely horse.

To his disappointment, the horse started limping. He called all the veterinary doctors and asked them to find why the horse was limping. The Veterinary doctors did all the tests and found that the horse was perfectly fine biologically. They reported the same to the king, but were unable to find why the horse was limping. The king called all the experts from the neighboring kingdoms but there was no success, no root cause was found.

Finally he heard about a wise-man who had solved many crazy problems. He visited the wise-man and explained his problem to him. The wise-man asked the king that he would like to stay with the horse one full day and would get back to him with his observations. The king agreed and arrangements was made for the wise man to stay with the horse.

The next day morning, the wise man comes to the King’s court and said that he had found the root cause. All of them were surprised.. Some doctors were very curious and some others even felt that the man will fake his answers.

The wise man said that the issue was not with the horse but with the trainer. He said the trainer was physically challenged and he limped and this horse observed him right from the pony days. The horse thought that if my trainer is limping, it is perfectly fine to limp. So without his knowledge and rational thinking, the horse started limping…

I see the same behavior with many organizations who are limping after Agile and SAFe transformations. The reason is that they have hired coaches who are unskilled and lacks the proper knowledge of Coaching, Agile basics, Scrum fundamentals and SAFe knowledge. They limp and hence the organizations start limping. We give a lot of medical attention to avoid limping and finally one day we become immobile..

 The problem is not with the Organizations, it is with the coaches whom they hire..

I think it is our (Coaches') moral responsibility to make organizations start running like horses and not limping ..So start learning with responsibility !!

Let me know your thoughts!!