Is It Too Late To Be the Agile Buffalo?

Warning: if you’re in need of a pick-me-up and you’re here thinking my staunch optimism guarantees a “we can do this” motivational read, this one will disappoint, as it’s a rare dose of doom-and-gloom. Much as we may not like it, we have to admit failure at times. Pushing any new Agile through at a time like this was a stretch, it may well be time we admit it can’t be done or it can’t be done anymore. That Agile is closed for any new admissions for a while and that while may be long, likely years. 

To see or continue deep mentality change in this extreme situation we would have needed to be buffalo. Remember how they are known to run through a storm, against its direction, instead of away from it when it hits their heard? That. We should have found ways to have done that.  

If this crisis would have only lasted weeks then maybe we could have ushered extreme change and ran through it. Imagine people completely panicking as some catastrophe befalls them and running around flailing with no direction. You can grab them by the shoulders then and drill some home truths in “Stop! Focus! Silicon Valley has been doing this for years already, look at them - Agile to the bone, people-focused to the bone. DevOps runs through their veins. This way of thinking is in their DNA. This is the time to get implicit approvals for all the things anyone was unsure about - remote, the last bits of the CI/CD pipe, authority structures, just present them as the new normal of work and the “crisis response"! Then you stand a chance to permanentize them and do the innovation and the fast products you’ve always been dreaming of.” 

And yes, some of these conversations happened - whether with others or yourselves, whether out loud or inside your heads. And some of us ushered change. And secured value. Reformed, grew, redesigned. Insidiously in some places, manifestly in others. There are now faster ways to do things and better ways to do them. And learnings about how we all function together. How we communicate. How we huddle. How we pull through. All very needed, all very useful and all very valuable from hereon where it happened. Some herds proved to be buffalos But realistically, they are exceptions. 

In most places, the delta was too great. And the crisis too long. It is in fact so lengthy, we are now in a phase where we have to attempt to preserve sanity by pretending things are back to normal -look around you at the number of people on annual leave alone if you want proof of suspension of disbelief- or on their way to being “like before” when they are neither and can never be that. In a phase where, if we look around us, there’s heavy fatigue towards discussing the big realities. Those of the world and those of the enterprise.

We’ve had enough. Of the bad news, of the disaster predictions, of the eternal uncertainty, of the relentlessly frightening facts. We’re entering a phase of the stress response where our brains are nearly shutting down completely to remain in stasis. When they do and because they do, there’s not enough fuel to be having those “Let’s get this mentality change in once and for all as well!” motivational talks. 

Less and less teams talk about the consumer. Less and less backlogs are examined through value lenses. The scrutiny is lax. Performance is un-demanded and undoubtedly low. The purpose and impact reminders sound empty and no one is in the mood for the pep talks. Big ideas are few and far between, dissent nearly absent, no one speaks up or volunteers thoughts or action. No one models or even admits vulnerability, nobody is in the mood for extreme experiments or is open to failing. Empathy reserves are running low. None of the necessary tenants of Agile is easy to uphold. 

Survival mode is not the time for authentic self-application or best teamwork. 

It’s taken too long, it’s been too hard. 

Unfortunately, this may mean that we’re looking at being frozen in time Agile transformation wise. Whoever was past the transformation truly and at a digital-native level will be fine, but that’s a very small proportion of all the companies who needed to be that. Those who had never started yet and were on the verge of an Agile transformation can simply forget about it. The next year or two are not going to be the time that this happened from zero for anyone. Whoever had done most of the legwork but still had big shifts to accomplish, where not everyone was living and breathing this new way of thinking, where various segments still needed work to alter their mentality and even more so, those who were just starting are going to be stuck where they were when the pandemic hit. That’s maybe the saddest part of the story. The half-born Agile transformations that could. 

Can we still manage the flood of cortisol and reverse this gloomy prediction? Can we still be the buffalo, not the cow? Perhaps. We’d have to start meditating to stay the course, breathing in empathy and flexibility, and visualising Agile pots of gold and happy customers and employees. Are we collectively resilient enough to do that despite what we are going through?

Let's hope so.

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