The “being doing gap”

You don’t need to be Agile, but Agile is mainstream. Other options include DevOps, Lean, Product Management, Modern Agile, and Shape Up. 

Whatever the path, what’s needed is a behavior set that demonstrates agility in action – perception, sense, results, and improvement in a direction. 

Whatever kind of agility you pursue, agility is not a team sport (Klaus Leopold). Telling a flower to grow has little utility (Pia-Maria Thorén). Yet management over-fills the hopper with work and refuses to prioritize within capacity while asking for more velocity without cultivating an environment where performance can improve. Even worse, honoring commitments is given more respect than doing the next right thing.

Agility cannot be bought in a box. Sustainable growth of authentic organization agility is often missing in action. Executive, senior, and mid-senior management must truly empower teams or be proactive to declutter workflows, processes, systems, and impediments.

But where to start from here? 

Agile adoptions

The more things change, the more they stay the same. The current track record of agile adoptions is not very promising. Most of all Agile transformations fail to achieve their goals and therefore miss out on the huge positive impact it has on employee engagement, customer satisfaction, operational performance, and time-to-market. Is it because companies see Agile as an organization process update and not as a cultural shift?

Is “agile” another buzzword or fad in your organization which is difficult to break down into digestible pieces?