Why an Agile mindset makes a difference - in real life

Those of you who have been following me for a little while will know that in 2023 I decided to pivot to acting. It had always been an ambition and I laid out in a few posts about how I would adopt a test and learn approach and try to break into the industry as cheaply as possibly.

The super-quick episode recap is that in May 2023 I had never been on a stage before, I landed my first community theatre role in the June, a few other amateur roles followed across the East Midlands and then I sacrificed one working day a week to attend drama school. I picked up an agent in January 2024, booked a commercial and then...went back to work advocating the Agile values and strong product management.

That was it.

Drama school came to an end in July and after an emotional graduation (uhhh...thank you Mr Jim Beam for helping me making a fool of myself!)...it was into the wide world of acting to try and build my brand.

Except, something else happened and it happened to my classmates as well. For that year as a student you could tell yourself you were an actor. You put on the clothes and you learned lines from a script and you headed off to this make-believe world where you acted.

You were not a barista or an office worker or an Agile Coach. You were an actor who had a side-job.

After graduation, that all evaporated and I watched my classmates very quickly return to their lives and the path to performing overgrew with weeds and became nearly invisible. The whole thing was passive. Many were convinced they needed more training and credentials. Side note: The certification industry preys on every profession. People feed it with FOMO and self-doubt.

The dream was fading away.

Now you might wondering, once again, Steve, what in the name of blue blazes does any of this have to do with Agile?

Well, I will tell you. And it's not a tenuous link like How Agile is like making bread or some other nonsense analogy.

5 days ago I received an email from the Etcetera Theatre in Camden, London.

It was this advert below...

It was genuinely 7am on a Saturday so I fired back an email asking which slots and which days. A few hours later I received a reply and tentatively booked the 26th, 27th, 28th and 29th of September at 7pm.

They asked

What's the show?

...now we get to the Agile part.

I don't know.

Excuse me. You don't know. WTF.

Yeh, I will let you know. Just hold the slot, take my money and I will figure it out.

You open in 38 days.

That's plenty of time.

Plenty of time to write a script, find a cast, rehearse a play, secure props, buy costumes, rig lights, synchronise sound, produce marketing material, sell tickets and perform it???

I will figure it out.

To sign up for something like this takes a wild tolerance for risk and an unwavering belief in your decision making process.

I approached two members of my drama school and offered them paid for roles in the show. Paid acting roles are like gold dust because they qualify you for Equity trade union and also Spotlight, the industry register used by Directors and Casting Agents.

They absolutely balked at the idea.

37 days? It cannot be done. A whole theatre show? No way.

I offered it to another All-In alumni.

Not a chance Steve.

And that is how I decided to write a one-man, one-act stage show. Over the next 2 days I authored 5000 words into a script and sent it to an editor for review; I casted another All-In alumni, the amazingly talented Beth Baker.

I then fired up Canva, produced a ton of marketing materials, built a 1-page website, hooked up Google Analytics and...we went live today at 14.05.

None of this would be possible if I had never been exposed to the concept of an MVP, test and learn and small batch processing.

The problem with my other class mates, like many individuals in corporations, is that their fear of brand-damage overrides the probability of making something good.

Behavioral economics teaches us that humans are more afraid of loss than the are attracted to the prospect of gain.

Repeat that to yourself until you can consciously override it because that sentiment sits at the heart of emergent design.

Humans are more afraid of loss than the are attracted to the prospect of gain

It's the opposite of a big bang delivery. We are not going to wait on perfection, we are going to go now. We go with what we have and we figure it out.

Many of my friends could only see the chance of failure, not the pathway to success. I asked one a few months ago if they were entering a film into an short film festival.

They responded

I don't have the exact camera lenses that I want so I cannot film it. It will look rubbish without these specific lenses.

An MVP is designed specifically to lower your chance of failure but that only works if you consider the product to be the first iteration of something greater and that greater thing emerges further down the line.

This show, in my mind, is a test and learn scenario to inform an iterated version I will take to a theatre festival and then iterate further at Edinburgh Fringe or beyond. It is not a final product. It's a learning experience.

I could honestly see the natural tendency of a waterfall style process emerge in my acting friends minds...as they could only focus on a big-bang deliverable of a great final show. They wanted certainty.

They had not exercised their versioning muscles to see each step as a milestone.

Being able to plot a course to the future through emergent design is a skill that requires learning and then deliberate practice but once you have it; it can help you build a business, landscape a terrain, lead a combat mission or any other pursuit.

Including launching a theatre show, in London, 35 days from now without a script.

I'll figure it out.

Thanks for reading. I am an independent Agile Coach working for the Financial Times and occasionally I act. Articles on agile, acting and business, infrequently.