How Important Is it to Use the Word Agile?

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Transcript:

[00:00:00] People have a lot of misconceptions around the word agile and I hear quite often from people, "oh, that's great that you have your own business, but I don't think it's anything for me because our company doesn't do that agile thing."

[00:00:22] And while that may be true in the way that they are thinking in the terms of the commercialized. Agile with an upper case A, the reality is if your company is going to be successful and sustainable, then you do have to have an agile mindset. And if you do not, that means that your company is not flexible and adaptable and able to respond to change quickly, which is the dictionary definition of the word agile.

[00:00:56] So, where did this come from? Where did this aversion or confusion to the word agile come from? Well, if we go full circle to the agile manifesto from 2001 the first line talks about favoring people and interactions over process and tools. And I have talked about this before that the Agile with an uppercase A industry has embraced the commercial aspect of this.

[00:01:27] And has done the complete opposite of the manifesto and pushed the process and tools because that is where the money is. It is much easier for organizations to justify spending thousands of dollars, euros, pounds, whatever you're using on a tangible product or tangible training.

[00:01:49] It is more difficult to justify we're going to work on our mindset. And mindset is even another word that has made people a little prickly. Someone suggested to me over the weekend that perhaps the agile mindset has even become a Western colonization of pushing ideas on other cultures where it doesn't fit.

[00:02:14] And that to me is troubling, but also sad that something that is meant to work around people's flexibility, people's ability to make decisions for themselves, and people's interest in creating value has turned into something that we are pushing on other people. And that is not the intent or at least that is not my internet.

[00:02:38] When I work with an organization, the first thing we do is we discuss the problems that they are trying to solve and make sure that we all agree to the true deep seated problems that we want to work on. And then we talk about how we're going to get to the other end by discussing what success looks like. What is the vision? What do they want to do?

[00:03:05] And at no time during any of that conversation do we need to use the word agile. Because what we're trying to do is put a face to the problems that they want to solve. And then put a face to the potential outcomes. We spend time talking about this might be the outcome that you see right now, but when we start doing the real work that might not be the outcome that you even want at the end of it.

[00:03:39] So for all of that, do we need to use the word agile? There have been days when I have even questioned whether I should have named the company Agility for All.. Because I think in some ways that excludes people from thinking about doing work with me, because they go back to their misconceptions of the word agile.

[00:04:04] But at the end of the day what we are trying to embrace is agility for everyone. It's not isolated to a specific technique or process. It is not isolated to the software industry, for example. If we want to build a healthy, robust companies, then we need to look at the whole. We need to take a holistic approach and it needs to include everyone.

[00:04:36] And that's not about using a specific process or tool to get the job done. It's not about saying, well, we sent everyone to this scrum training, and so now all of our problems should be solved. All of the training, all of the frameworks, all of the tools in the world, are not going to solve core problems or challenges within an organization.

[00:05:02] We can use paper and pencil and still manage work effectively. But we have to change the culture of how we look at the work. Making sure that we have a vision for value. And that everyone in the organization truly embraces those values before we can do the real change work.

[00:05:25] We also, as practitioners in this industry need to take our own medicine and embrace what it is that we expect from other people.

[00:05:35] So for me, I have really examined why I named the company Agility for All and what I want to do that brings value to people. And then I've taken a look at "okay, great indra, you have an idea. But is that what other people really want?" Just because you have an idea of what you think they need does not mean that that is actually what they want or need.

[00:06:01] So, if you look on our website, we share with you our belief system and our own manifesto of what we believe. And then we can work with you to see if there's compatibility in our belief systems. Because if there's not, then it doesn't matter if we use the word Agile with an uppercase A with a lowercase a, underlined or italics. If we don't have the same belief system, we can't move forward.

[00:06:34] So. When I say, take the word agile out of our vocabulary, that does pose a difficulty for those of us trying to do the real work. I had someone the other day ask me why in my LinkedIn title, it says agile therapist. And I said, "Why are you asking the question? What's making you ask this question?" And they said, "well, I just write an article that coaches are not therapists, so you can't be both." And I said, "well, the reason it's there is because part of what I do is help people unwind what they have put into the word Agile with an upper case A so that we can move past it to actual agility which is where the coaching comes in.

[00:07:27] So as practitioners, as I said, this is difficult because there are so many giants out there pushing and selling the Agile with the uppercase A selling huge products with huge revenue sources and marketing teams. And it's no different than watching a commercial on TV and you see it over and over again and next thing you know, you're online or you're in a shop buying that product, whether you need it or not.

[00:07:55] And that happens with this as well. People get inundated with information and they see everyone else around them doing it that they think they need to do it as well. Instead of taking that pause and working with someone who can help them truly identify what the problem is they're trying to solve before picking a solution.

[00:08:16] I had a company say, "can you work with us? Because we've decided we're going to use software X and now we need to make it work." They had chosen software. They had spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on this software and the integration into their business systems without actually understanding what the problem is that they were trying to solve and coming up with lasting change, that was value driven. So they got taken in by the glitz and the glamour, the PowerPoint presentations, the flashy websites, the flashy demos of product and purchased it without even taking a minute to pause to figure out why they needed it in the first place.

[00:09:01] So for those of us that are small practitioners, it's a big climb. It is an uphill climb for sure. But if we all keep singing the same song of we are here to help. Not, we are here to make you Agile or teach you Agile then I think we can start to turn the ship around little by little.

[00:09:25] It is not going to be easy. And we are going to have the hard work because we don't have the powerful machines behind us to do the marketing. But we have to truly stick with this, or we're just going to doom another industry that went the way of capitalism and commercialism. So didn't mean for this to be such a negative talk today, but it's a hard one. It is a very hard one. And this is our last wog of the month. Come back and join us next month and see what other topics we have.

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