Agile Works With People Who Don’t Actually Need Agile

Agile Works With People Who Don’t Actually Need Agile In a disciplinary society, authority structures dominate. People follow rules, and work is organized through hierarchy and control. Factories, bureaucracies, and military systems are classic examples. In the achievement society the logic changes. And people are no longer told “You must.” Instead they are told “You can.” And this message sounds especially attractive for people who were born and raised in a disciplinary environment, and who dreamed about freedom. Freedom as ability to work without micromanaging, hyper-control and pressure. “Just let me do my job…” Anyway, “You can” at first it feels liberating. But there is a twist: the individual becomes both boss and worker at the same time. People begin to push themselves, optimize themselves, measure themselves. Han calls this the rise of the self-entrepreneur. How to connect with AgileDad: - [website] ⁠https://www.agiledad.com/⁠ https://www.agiledad.com/ - [instagram] ⁠https://www.instagram.com/agile_coach/⁠ https://www.instagram.com/agile_coach/ - [facebook] ⁠https://www.facebook.com/RealAgileDad/⁠ https://www.facebook.com/RealAgileDad/ - [Linkedin] ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/leehenson/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/leehenson/

• 0:15Speaker 00

  I thought it would be fun to tell you a little story. Everyone knows how much I love storytelling, so here we go.

• 0:22Speaker 00

  This story came from a very dear friend of mine who was just winding down a really big project she was working on. It says, "Today was the last day of a very good project. I spent a little over a year, and only now I realize how emotionally connected I became to the team and to the work we did together. I was lucky to have the chance to say goodbye to everyone and to hear many warm words in return. One colleague took the time to write to me." Hello, person. I'm leaving a name out just to protect the innocent, because I did not ask permission. Thanks for the kind words. Your passion for this work is unmistakable. You had this kind of rare, genuine care for the work and for the people simultaneously. It was genuinely a pleasure working with you.

• 1:07Speaker 00

  Wishing you all the best in your next adventure and all the ones to follow.

• 1:13Speaker 00

  These changes in my life, those new adventures waiting ahead, and the philosophical books that I've been reading recently made me reflect on Agile again, on what it really is, on what kind of people it truly works for, and how we can make things all click together. On a philosophical note, Byung Chul Han wrote about the transition from what he calls disciplinary society to achievement society. "In a disciplinary society, authority structures dominate. People follow rules, work is organized through hierarchy and control. Factories, bureaucracies, and military systems are classic examples of this behavior."

• 1:52Speaker 00

  In the achievement society, the logic shifts and changes. And people are no longer told you must do things. Instead, they're told you can do this. You should do this, right? And this message sounds especially attractive for people who are born and raised in a disciplinary environment, who dreamed about having a little bit of freedom. Freedom is as ability to work without micromanaging, hyper control and pressure. The attitude of just let me do my job falls clearly into this. Anyway, you can first, the you can mentality at first feels liberating, but there's a plot twist. The individual becomes both the boss and a worker at the same time.

• 2:35Speaker 00

  People begin to push themselves and optimize themselves and measure themselves. Hein calls this the rise of the self entrepreneur. We are all now becoming self entrepreneurs, whether we want to or not.

• 2:51Speaker 00

  Agile appeared at a moment when companies realized that external pressure is often less effective than internal motivation. And software development especially requires initiative, learning, curiosity and experimentation in order to make sure that you have the right you can attitude and that your you can idea works there in an excellent, efficiently, efficiently increases its desirability. So agile replaced strict command and control structures with ideas like self organizing teams, autonomy, trust, ownership, continual improvement, all those things.

• 3:31Speaker 00

  In theory, agile presumes that not many people behave like responsible professionals.

• 3:39Speaker 00

  I should say, let me rephrase that because I think I read that wrong. I have some notes. In theory, agile assumes people behave like responsible professionals, not like factory workers. That sounds better. And if I think this fact is often missed by companies who want to implement agile properly or effectively. My observation is super simple. I take, I take the best of what I see. So agile works best with people who actually don't really need agile. I know this is gonna sound weird, but hear me out. So agile works beautifully when people already possess some internal discipline. And these are people who care about the product or service they're building. They feel responsibility

• 4:20Speaker 00

  without having severe supervision. They organize their own work and they collaborate naturally with others. If you could do those things, you're golden. Based on my personal experience, agile is especially powerful for people who grew up in a disciplinary society and for individuals who don't understand freedom as an invitation to relax. Freedom means that the work or the opportunity to work without micromanagement and constant pressure, something many of them once dreamed about. These people carry their own internal supervisor, critic, and, and, and judge. They do their work carefully and responsibly, even without external control.

• 5:04Speaker 00

  They treat freedom not as an opportunity to do less, but as an opportunity to do their job well. And in such teams, excessive metrics like KPIs often become unnecessary and sometimes even harmful. Not because measurement itself is bad, but because too much measurement signals a lack of trust within the team. And, and that's, that's the oxygen that agile environments breathe. So it's funny that we never seriously tried to figure out this system for a long time. No one could explain why things just worked the way they did. I used to think that maybe I wasn't good enough as a coach or not skilled as a professional enough, but that turned out not to be true. When I was working on international projects or large scale projects that my work and contribution were valued, I felt different.

• 5:50Speaker 00

  And I think that sometimes we just boil things down to, we do things the way we do because we've always done it that way. When there should be a mental mindset shift and do things a different way so that we can appreciate all the benefits of agile. That's gonna do it for this episode. I hope that you enjoyed it. If you have a topic you want us to discuss, learn more at agiledad.com, we'd love to hear from you. And as always, we encourage you to stay healthy, stay well, and stay agile, my friends. Until next time, do take care. Bye now.