When the Agile Cape is on the Line

Anti-Impression Management new practice: I wrote a book called “People Before Tech: Psychological Safety and Teamwork in the Digital Age” and you can find a discount for it at the bottom of this page, and we make software that measures and improves Psychological Safety in teams. If you care about it- come talk to us. 

If you want to know why the above says “anti-impression management practice” you can read the articles in the “Chasing Psychological Safety” newsletter but in a nutshell, I was apparently too discreet with the two facts above and when I searched myself it was out of loathing to sound too salesy and bore you all with it, a type of impression management. So I’ll stop it. 

Today’s was meant to be sunny and excited as my book arrived -as you’ll see in the video here

but instead, it will have to be gloomy and very grumpy indeed because of a call I’ve just had an hour ago.

I’m keynoting for a company down under and we were discussing content for my presentation and was told to “just slightly dial down the Agile part”. Kid. You. Not.

Turns out the “slightly” wasn’t even genuine, could I take out most of the slides hammering why it’s a sine qua non condition of success in any technology-related business, please? Could I not mention any of this “from the heart”, “DNA level”, “complete change of mindset” or “only sustainable way to remain in business”, please? Just maybe not go into it and just stick to autonomous, happy teams. 

You can see why I’m raging.

To make matters worse, this is the third company that asks me to tone down the messaging around Agile. And the second to ask me to not mention “servant leadership” because it has been banned as a term - don’t get me started on the topic!

What’s happening? Am I just really unlucky and stumbled upon the only three companies where they’re “slowing down on Agile because people have been through enough” - which was a verbatim thing said today to my aghast zoom face- or is this a trend? Agile coaches out there, DevOps people, everyone else with their heart and DNA in the right place- is this happening elsewhere too? Is it some form of post-pandemic effect where any residual resistance comes to the forefront in the form of shying away from forceful messaging around Agile? Please tell me it’s the former and it’s just an eerie fluke I met this many people who are on a superhero-ing break.

I talked about this many times before. To me, anyone who is Agile is an unquestionable Superhero who has to do battle each and every day and of course, the vast majority of that battle is bringing along the ones who do “Agile by numbers” who have not had the chance to take it to heart and truly make it a new way of thinking themselves.

That battle is exhausting and there are times when the superhero costume is in the wash and while that cape dries we’re on a break from the battle. We let the snarky remark about how Agile is so fast it will break our necks slide, we don’t respond to the “but we’re not Silicon Valley” objections, we let people treat their standup as a tiring and potentially unnecessary religious practice and we turn a blind eye when we see them waterfall in their heads. We all have to have the costumes sorted from time to time, that’s fine. But it shouldn’t last long enough that we ask others to take them off! 

This looks like it could be a time where a lot of capes have been hanging on the line way past their drying time, possibly because we’ve been so out of sorts with this pandemic thing but I’m here to tell you all you gotta squeeze right back into that costume even if it feels uncomfortable, this is not the time to be comfy and let any more of the above slide. I wrote about slipping leaders that need catching before, it seems loads more people need it too. 

I have no doubt that DOES next month will be an amazing palate cleanser and I’ll see loads of capes and hear of many stories on them being worn to save the enterprise day but seeing that slide of the DevOps community, soul-soothing as it always is, may not be representative of the norm and if the norm is the “let’s be respectful of the people who just don’t have the personality for Agile” -also an eye-popping shocking verbatim phrase from temporarily naked superheroes- then by the time we wake up we’ll have lost loads of the progress we had previously acquired and will be in serious trouble.

Until we “speak again” I wish you enough energy to never contemplate hanging the costume altogether because the ones who never got to get their cape still very much need you!

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The 3 “commandments of Psychological Safety” to build high performing teams are: Understand, Measure and Improve

Read more about our Team Dashboard that measures and improves Psychological Safety at www.peoplenottech.com or reach out at [email protected] and let's help your teams become Psychologically Safe, healthy, happy and highly performant.

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