Embracing 50
shades of grey
- an Agile philosophical contemplation - 

Embracing 50 shades of grey - An Agile philosophical contemplation

by Dirk Depré - August 2, 2024

Context: the world is polarising towards extremes. Everything is either yes or no, right or wrong, good or bad … and you have to pick a side. It is putting all things rather black or white and we are about to forget all 50 shades of grey. At the same time, an amazing industry is killing itself: Agile is dead, Agile is alive, Agile needs to be reinvented, Agile needs to be reimagined. Well, maybe Agile has just evolved and just like in any other industry we have high and low performers. 

A philosophical conversation emerged ... 

Mr Captain-Nine and I started thinking about this and how this actually is like a self-fulfilling prophecy. It seems like we don't want Agile to die, but by saying that the movement is dead, it feels like the industries relying on Agile, all of a sudden start to question the effectiveness of it, and thus Agile might actually die.  In the fast paced world of today, instant glory is expected. And to a certain degree, it is the right ask given that you need to be able to pivot when that is required. But I argue that the process of bringing people together, helping them to form a group and eventually act as a high performing team, remains an extremely difficult job.  You can't expect that when you just throw 10 people in the mix, they are by default a high performing team. That needs some time. 

Reasonable 

Just recently, I've read a post on LinkedIn, if I remember right, that we don't need scrum masters and agile coaches anymore; the industry is looking for leadership behavior and organizational change. The call was to pivot to that. It is kinda a weird thing to say, because I have always assumed that this is already what we should be doing as Agile practitioners. Organizations expect a linear growth towards high performance, if they at least recognize that a team needs some time to become high performing, but even that is unreasonable. Kill the expectation that change is linear and bring back a sense of reasonability within organizations: we are burning up people and in the process blame all people that have something to do with it. Evolution and change is never linear! Change takes time. Just recently, the great Jitske Kramer, wrote a new book "tricky tijden". I am about to read it. Jitske has been talking about liminality for ages. In one of the interviews she gave to promote her new book, she explained the importance of being comfortable with the time people need to accept change: by accepting not knowing, there is space in which answers naturally emerge. What a beautiful thought. 

It brought Mr Captain-Nine and myself to the philosophy of Deep Democracy: we talked about how decision taking, including the voice of the minority, enriches the decision. But also here, it might take longer to get to the decision, but when everybody is on board, you'll have less people sabotaging afterwards at the coffee machine. It is a reasonable thought to include the voice of the minority, because there is value in objections that might be given. It is not about compromising with the minority, but enriching the decision of the majority by adding the insights and wisdom of that minority in the decision. Also in here, you notice the power of accepting the grey areas, rather than stating "we are right, you are wrong". It helps to bring people together rather than polarizing ideas.  Once again, it might take more time, but if the decisions are better and an organization is more aligned, isn't that worth it? I believe that in the long run, it creates a better platform for faster decision taking, especially because people are more aligned.

Responsiveness

"Responsiveness is becoming the key to competitiveness in the ever faster moving and interconnected global economy. To succeed, companies need to shift their focus from efficiency of process to effectiveness of outcomes.",  this is from the video Pop Tech and Microsoft created a couple of years ago about the responsive organization. Responsive is just such a beautiful word because it gives action. Cambridge university is defining responsiveness as: the quality of having a reaction to something or someone, especially a quick or positive reaction. Flexibility, Agility and Responsiveness all feel alike, but I like the word Responsiveness a lot because it means that somebody is expecting you to react. An answer to a challenge must be given and this is what I like for organizations to become so they can quickly and positively react.  

Stretch our thinking

A bit later on I had an interesting conversation about how we all jump to the conclusion of things and propose solutions. By default, our brains are wired to swiftly and quickly define solutions, but I truly believe that when we face a challenge, it is an awesome skill to explore the problem more in depth and stretch the thinking about what is really going on, instead of just dropping low standard solutions. In the spirit of Jitske Kramer, maybe we just need more time to sit down and let the answers come to us. What better way to surf the problem space a bit better for better understanding then. It will definitely help to come up with a better goal setting than when we jump to the conclusion. Swift decision making will always need to happen, but on which occasions can you stretch your thinking and so eventually look for enriched solutions, providing thus positive reactions and creating alignment in the process?

Finding out

Lately, I haven been talking a lot about the struggles to form teams. We typically like to mirror our teams in an organization with teams within sport. A main difference is that for almost all athletes in teams, their why in this life is clear.  Their spiritual quotient is clear and it helps them to keep going. Organizations have to work with a different reality. A large survey from Gallup (2024) showed that globally  23 percent of employees considered themselves engaged in their roles. That means that a baffling 77 percent at the very least is challenged in their engagement. 3 out of 4 might come in disengaged, a lot of people might not have figured out their personal why, … nevertheless, organizations want star performance. How realistic is this? This is by far the biggest challenge for organizations to overcome mediocrity. This is exactly why an organization needs leadership in which people matter and people can blossom! My feeling on this, the spirit of Agile is more alive than ever, especially when we return to do the essential stuff right and embrace the challenges within this digital age. Fix the drought! 

Obviously, there is much more to share on this in depth.. but this serves as some sort of recap of the high level conversations that are happening and might trigger your thinking in a way.