“Yield and you will have everything.
Bend and you will be straight.
Empty and you will be full.
Wear out and you will be renewed.”

This teaching of the Tao suggests that by ceasing to resist reality, yielding instead of constantly struggling, and emptying oneself of prejudices and excessive desires, one can find renewal and fulfillment in life. In other words, it shows how facing reality with acceptance and humility can lead to a more harmonious and meaningful life.

I want to get something off my chest, and to do so, I understand that I will express some personal opinions, for which I take responsibility, acknowledging that they may be correct or may need further input to be refined.

In any case, my interest is to bring up a topic that I believe has become “the elephant in the room,” using that metaphorical allusion to something that is obvious but uncomfortable and that everyone decides to avoid, even look at. Well, if we say that one of the values of agility is “courage,” someone has to bring it up.

My readings of the context of the initial Agile Agreement

I want to briefly go back to the moment when the Agile Manifesto was signed, in 2001. The context was within the field of project management, and at that time, the trend (which is now agility) was the Project Management Institute (PMI), which was promoting its star product: the PMP Certification, in response to the trend generated around project management. A good part of its work was based on refining the US military standard DOD-STD-2167A for software projects, which PMI summarized into a sequential model now known commonly as Waterfall.

At that time, many of the signatories of the Agile Manifesto, who had been working for nearly a decade (since the 90s) on their less rigid visions for managing projects, decided to meet at a ski resort to explore common ground. Some had a more technical view of the problem, others a more systemic view, others an operational view, and others a more humanistic view. It was valuable work because, in my opinion, they managed to incorporate these different perspectives into what was founded that day as the so-called agile methodologies.

Later, there were works that delved into various aspects, with contributions from each of the participants, which gave rise to something larger: agile, the famous agility, or agilism.

It should be noted that my reading of the most significant concern that sparked the individual and collective work of the signatories of the manifesto was dissatisfaction with traditional approaches (the most relevant being Waterfall), as it became evident that, in terms of software development, they had failed to deliver what they promised (“projects executed on time, within budget, and scope“) and the pain and friction this caused for development teams and their organizations. Today, I will not analyze the reasons for the failure, but a review of the famous Chaos Report from 1994 stated that Waterfall (and its friends) seemed to have failed: “only 16% are completed on time and within budget.”

In this context, a fresh, new, promising vision, which we could even call holistic, was born by trying to address the real situation of Waterfall and offered a proposal that aimed to address, if not all, a significant majority of aspects that were seen as “weak,” poorly accomplished with Waterfall, where a particular mindset (Command Control) prevailed but clearly failed by being highly theoretical.

What a coincidence! At least what can be seen in Latin America, a good part of the so-called agile transformations today are failing to deliver what they promised, at least at a high level. I’m not talking about the specific enablement of agile teams that somehow manage, though too often only mechanically, procedurally. I mean the promise of agilizing the entire organization.

The analysis of the reasons is left to the more academic within agility, but thankfully it is starting to raise from various angles, having taken too long to begin. In any case, it is excellent that we are starting to address it, even if, for this, we agilists must arm ourselves with all those values we say others should develop, but which we have often been seen to lack or not develop enough to call ourselves masters of these topics.

The 80/20 Question

In the 19th century, the Italian Vilfredo Pareto demonstrated something that, in our context, we could boldly summarize as follows: a great deal of value can be reaped by adequately addressing the first issues that stand out.

I said that we were slow to start that introspection, and the question that I think will reveal the first significant results is… Why have we been so slow in making self-criticism? Why?

While a good part of agilists go from conference to conference talking about almost the same things, year after year, country after country, making those spaces more of a platform for their egos than a space for generating somewhat more urgent topics… weren’t we called to teach everyone that we must first address the most valuable things? Isn’t the failure of agile transformations probably one of the most critical issues?

In 2013, we already had a first warning with the article Agile is Dead by John Jeffries, exposing the superficiality with which agility was being taken and how it was becoming highly bureaucratic. I come to raise the same point but from a different angle with some uncomfortable questions…

• Who are the ones being superficial?
• Have we become too theoretical, distancing ourselves from realities?
• Are we aware of where we are starting with changes in organizations?
• Are we realistic in our expectations about the depth of change possible and/or required in each organization?
• Are we the first to get frustrated and lack the mindset, culture, and principles we want to develop?
• Do we ensure that we onboard key actors – not just executives – for cultural change in a strategic and real way?
• Do we manage change well by reinforcing ourselves with professionals in that and other areas – e.g., strategic communication – or do we pretend to do that work alone, even if it doesn’t turn out well?
• Well, I believe the analysis should start there, by understanding why we have been so slow to self-analyze, when in theory, we possess (and teach!!) an open and critical mindset, and supposedly we also promote organizational cultures that can inspect and adapt more easily and with less pain.

I believe that at the heart of this question, we will find a somewhat painful truth, but one that invites us to seek urgent solutions: it seems that too many agilists do not necessarily have a sufficiently agile mindset to openly, frankly, and continuously question ourselves in a group with a simple but brave question: Why are we not succeeding?

“The Business,” yes, “The Business is to blame.” The old reliable answer.

But wait a minute… Didn’t we know that “the business” had that mindset we were trying to change from the beginning? Isn’t our excuse a bit illogical (not to say cowardly)?

Failing Where We Would Reap the Most Value?

In my daily work, I move through different areas and levels of organizations. What is heard in the executive layers in many organizations?

• “Are you sure the General Manager will care about achieving the goals ‘in that way,’ or will it be completely indifferent as long as it’s economical and profitable?“
• “How is this ‘character,’ who hasn’t even done Management 1.0 or 2.0, going to talk to me about 3.0?“
• “I’m tired of this ‘happiness’ talk. We’re here to make money, not to be happy.”
• “Do you think the general manager requested and actually cares about such a radical change?“
• “Once we change… Where are we going to find people who think like that?“
• “I urgently need help solving these projects, I don’t have time for philosophical discussions…”
• “How many of our people will survive the change?”

I’m not saying all their concerns are correct. I only mention those that are. Because they reflect the reality of the mindset of a layer of the organization that, for better or worse, is key to fulfilling the promise we make, and whom it seems we decide to either deny, ignore, or finally, very conveniently blame when things start to diverge from what we promised.

Is it really possible to change with that mindset at those upper levels? Isn’t changing that mindset precisely the core challenge of this work? Do we give this challenge the right approach to impact and change things at that level? Do we make the necessary alliances, move at the right speed, use the appropriate language to do so? Or do we decide to retreat into the theory of what we do, innocently inhabiting an almost ideal world, as ideal as Waterfall’s… just in other areas? Do we start speaking in cryptic languages that could only be understood in later and more mature stages of the organization, but stubbornly push them out of sync? Is it more important initially that they understand those complex theories or that they ultimately live at least a few of them? Do we read their faces (incredulous) when we propose them?

A New Agreement

Well, it would seem that we have reached the same crossroads of 2001, but now from an agility that ends without fully fulfilling its promises… Did we change one set of fictions for another? Do we need a new agreement, a new vision, a new “reality check”?

I say yes. And then the central and critical questions arise:

• Are we doing agility for ideal worlds or to change that world inhabited by those leaders with those questions above? Are we approaching them adequately or ignoring their incredulous faces?
• Do we have in our ranks people with the mindset and in our collective wisdom what is needed to face this crossroads?
• Is it time for a New Manifesto with an even more realistic vision than in 2001?

To my liking, the questions that will reveal the deepest problems, which, once freed, will allow us to advance to that necessary refinement, focus on an introspective questioning about our slowness in evolving agility itself.

The Challenge of Being Agile

If we ask everyone to accept, face, and manage evolutionary change and do it as a team, as a group…

• Why haven’t we been able to do it?
• Could it be that we base our assumptions on fictions (which probably need refinement) about a particular human condition that not everyone seems to want or be able to achieve, not even many of us?
• The figure Carol Dweck provides, about the percentage (40%) of people with a Growth Mindset versus those who don’t, is that a clear call to action to refine our approach to the subject?

Being Agile, Latin America Version

I’ll end the second edition of this post with a short story. I was traveling on a direct flight from New York to Santiago, one of the longest flights I’ve ever had. Next to me sat an official from the Uruguayan Government, and after a while, we began to talk. We reached the point where we discussed our occupations, and then she had the misfortune of asking me what agility was about…

The first part of the conversation was certainly a monologue, which, although I developed it based on questions about her organization’s situation, still sounded like a lecture (my alerts were already sounding). But it was her conclusion that has kept me thinking until today and that somehow also relates to this topic. Her question, after listening to everything agility sought to achieve and imagining everything involved in achieving it, was very simple:

“Let me understand… you want to make all that change… in Latin America? With Latinos?”

So we reach the final component of my topic today, and I return to our uncomfortable questions about the factors that may have been preventing us from increasing our success in agile transformations…

• Is it our (Latin American) culture that hinders it?
• What factors within it are preventing us, in particular, from being agile?
• Can we really overcome them without vehemently focusing on them?
• Is it possible to overcome some basic characteristics of our Latin American culture?
• Do we even dare to start detailing them, at least listing them?

Courage. The famous courage.

How wise the original signatories were.