Year: 2023

Practice Makes Perfect

For abil­i­ties to become effec­tive skills, we have to prac­tice a lot, make mis­takes, and gain expe­ri­ence. What is intu­itive­ly under­stood for rid­ing a bicy­cle or for crafts­man­ship is gross­ly under­es­ti­mat­ed and some­times com­plete­ly ignored in the agile trans­for­ma­tion of orga­ni­za­tions. Pop­u­lar mod­els and frame­works are good start­ing points, but at the core it is about learn­ing new skills of col­lab­o­ra­tion jointly.

On the Wise Use of Our Insultingly Short Lifespan

There is an absurd­ly wide gap between the human capac­i­ty to make many grand plans and the life­time avail­able to real­ize them. This brevi­ty of life makes rig­or­ous pri­or­i­ti­za­tion cen­tral to all time man­age­ment and, at the same time, makes every choice painful­ly sig­nif­i­cant. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, in our des­per­a­tion, we tend to squeeze so much into our day until we are final­ly suf­fi­cient­ly over­loaded to say no with a clear conscience.

The Borg Effect: Assimilation Instead of Transformation

When agile meth­ods encounter encrust­ed struc­tures of tra­di­tion­al orga­ni­za­tions, one can­not auto­mat­i­cal­ly expect a sus­tain­able trans­for­ma­tion. It is much more like­ly that the new prac­tices will be inte­grat­ed into the exist­ing struc­tures as smooth­ly as pos­si­ble through assim­i­la­tion. As an Agile coach, you might feel as secure and effec­tive as Jean-Luc Picard in the cap­tiv­i­ty of the Borg.