“Stay Alert” To Stay Agile

All of us reading this know “being Agile” is vastly differ rent than “doing Agile” and that the former is what we want but the question is - “at a time like this” can we “be” and not “do”? 

We hear a lot of “at a time like this…” and yet, realistically, we have no “like this” reference about this time. None of us has lived through anything remotely like it. Where VUCA is on steroids, our brains in a stress response chemical storm and nothing has stopped being bad enough so that we take stock. And yet we function, we move along, we go through process and we do our jobs. We may even excel at times or we have glimpses of what feels like “normal” but all through it we know we live with this deeply cutting feeling in our gut that nothing will ever be the same again and we’re too tired and foggy to imagine it will be better.

If we exclude the parts of humanity with zero present or future exposure to Agile and even exclude those who were in the process of comprehending it or implementing it by numbers, and in particular exclude those who rushed to it as a response to Covid-19 being their Chief Transformation Officer because, to be honest, I don’t think anyone can predict what the future will look like for those scenarios, we’re left looking at how this will affect those of us who were there already. 

It’s tempting to believe that those who “were Agile” to begin with, will do better, will find it easier, will cope differently. And to a degree it must be true, there’s a lot to be thankful for when you’ve had flexibility and resilience self-engineered into our DNA by having understood their value and having them as our cornerstone -both from a work and a personal perspective- but does that make us immutable, immune and impermeable to this unfolding badly scripted apocalypse movie? No. 

I think what’s interesting and worth dissecting, is whether or not all that training gave us a muscle big enough to withstand this particular load. Whether we can keep being “religious” about being Agile. Whether we still defend the theory to the newbies, the doubters, the unexposed and the nay-sayers. Whether we can notice our own internal patterns sliding back towards sequential-isms. If we notice the Agile DNA slipping whether in ourselves or others.

My guess is that there is much of that slipping going around if we’re honest and un-busy enough to be introspective, but the beauty of it is that we can use the realisation and concede that, if we are victims of some residual “waterfall-y” thought patterns when the pressure is cranked on, then it’s worth having “Being alert” as an epic on our own self-improvement CI/CD pipe. 

Around us, we can see where others slip too. There are parts of the community who are seemingly “off script” - speaking about new topics around how to organise remotely, how to scale or de-scale and how to design a new normal. All very worthwhile topics and more importantly, all adding to our understanding of the fact that this is a firmly shared reality which is immensely valuable. It’s why you have 7254 podcasts every week all practically saying the same thing - we need to hear others’ stories and be sure they are experiencing the same things. 

And then there are the ones who must have had the chance to freak out and calm down already and maybe saw the slipping but still found the reserves to keep true to their Agile DNA. You’ll recognise them by the “business as usual” air of their topics. Whether pundits or practitioners (and this is where the Agile community is magical because there are so few people who are exclusively the former and not hands-on the latter which is never the case in all other communities!) invite questions pertaining to everyday GSD and raise issues they are truly “pandemic-agnostic”. 

Look at John Cutler’s Twitter feed or Karen Ferris’ LinkedIn one. Look at all the product companies who are running as fast if not faster. Look at InVision and Scrum. Inc’s release of “Squads”. None of them stopped or even momentarily paralysed by this but using their Agile mindset to plough through. 

I think all of these examples remind us not to be slipping. Why? Because of the bisons, that’s why. We have to do what they do in a storm. Remember that? They run through it not stand there and let it wash over them.

So stay alert and be a bison*! 

*A note to No.10’s copywriters - this is not a suggestion for next week’s silly slogan, you have plenty of material.  

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