Year: 2019

The Agile Counterfeiters on Their Way to Cargo Cult Hell

Published by Marcus Raitner

Anyone who imitates Spotify or introduces SAFe or obtains imitated or falsified agile frameworks and disseminates them as best practice will be punished with futile ritual practices of not less than 20 hours per week and employee. The way into the agile cargo cult hell is well paved with best practices, blueprints and frameworks and is bordered by billboards saying: “Don’t invent the wheel again!” Agility, however, is less a question of methods than of principles and stance.

Discipline Beyond Obedience

Published by Marcus Raitner

Children are awesome. And sometimes they are an awesome challenge. To be honest, our two daughters are this every single day – more than once. Young children in particular express their insatiable desire for self-determination without restraint. Especially when we as parents, for good reasons or because time is pressing, want to control them and demand obedience. However, they react to our threats and manipulation attempts all the more rigorously with refusal, the more forcefully we put these forward. This is exhausting, but in essence also very good, because the point is not obedience and subordination, but rather personal responsibility and (self-)discipline – neither when it comes to bringing up children nor in other leadership situations.

In Titanic’s Ballroom

Published by Marcus Raitner

Several so called agile transformations ultimately end with people dancing rock ‘n’ roll instead of a slow waltz in Titanic’s ballroom and some beautifully decorated deckchairs. And even if it’s sometimes at least the engine room where rock ‘n’ roll is danced, it neither changes the course nor it increases responsiveness and adaptability.

Man as Perpetually Wanting Animal

Published by Marcus Raitner

Successful collaboration in the age of knowledge work, especially in agile organisations with their high degree of self-organisation and self-responsibility, depends to a large extent on the assumptions about human nature. Douglas McGregor stated as early as 1963 in his seminal book “The Human Side of Enterprise” that we should no longer regard people as lazy and reluctant to work (Theory X), but as intrinsically motivated and willing to perform (Theory Y). McGregor clearly builds on the work of Abraham Maslow, which meanwhile has become an indispensable part of management literature in the form of the hierarchy of needs named after him. However, the representation in the form of a pyramid is a misleading interpretation that Maslow did not come up with himself.

Setting Standards in Agile Organizations

Published by Marcus Raitner

Agility requires orientation. It’s exactly this alignment that enables effective autonomy and decentralized decisions, which make agile organizations so adaptable. But agility also requires common standards and conventions to ensure that effective cooperation of autonomous teams. So the question is not whether such standards are required in agile organizations, but rather how they are created and enforced.