This is one in a series of posts accompanying a recent discussion I had with Lyssa Adkins on her podcast, “The 5&5 with Lyssa Adkins”. Our theme was the present and future of Agile Coaching. In each of the five mini-episodes, we discussed one question. Because the format is time-limited and off-the-cuff, I wanted to offer some expanded and clarified thoughts here.
In Episode 2 of this series, Lyssa and I discussed the question “Why has the market rejected agile coaching?” Some miscellaneous additional thoughts and clarifications:
I talked about the view of coaching as overhead, and compared it to flossing and exercising. We humans are terrible at sticking to boring habits with a long-term ROI. I see this tendency plaguing organizations at many levels, in addition to the divestment from coaching and other organizational development functions that Lyssa and I covered. This tendency to cut perceived overhead also reminded me of a bias I wrote about years ago in The Teddy Bear and Shark. Namely, a mistaken view of agile values and principles as just touchy-feely luxury, despite the fact that they also offer a great path to mercenary efficiency.
Lyssa talked about orgs saying they are done with coaching. I’ve even heard people perplexingly mention being in a “post-Agile” world. I think this may owe something to the mistaken view of transformation as a simple process that one finishes and then leaves behind. Growth and the need to support organizational health continues after that transformational moment. It also resonates with my experience that non-coach colleagues think that my entire role as Agile Coach is to teach people how to do Scrum. If only it were that easy!
Lyssa also mentioned people not seeing ROI. For me, this goes back to the flossing/exercise argument. I agree that it is extremely difficult to measure the impact of coaching in an objectively quantifiable way. However, I also know that qualitative feedback from coaching clients reflects very strong return. In fact, I was experimenting before leaving Spotify with a new form of collecting quantitative “wrappers” around qualitative feedback after engagements with coaching clients. Though I no longer have access to the detailed data, one number I clearly remember: 100% of clients rated the coaching as very valuable. I encourage those of you coaching to adopt a similar model (I need to write a post about this to share it!) to put the messy qualitative data into a neater quantitative frame for easier sharing.
Lyssa and I both spoke about the pain of seeing agile implementations that bear little resemblance to our sense of what good agile practice should look like. I mentioned the danger of coaches like me seeming as though I am explaining away complaints with a dismissive “you’re doing it wrong”. We coaches should definitely avoid that ugly trap! Unfortunately, it is very, very common for people to talk about agile practices that are counter to agile values and principles and–bottom-line–seem deeply ineffective in helping people achieve what they want. I am not surprised when people say they hate agile given what some of what they have experienced. To take this to a positive place, I encourage people to take responsibility for their own practices. If an agile practice is not working for you, address it! First, ask yourself what you and your team believe it is intended to achieve. Then, work with each other, research options, and get advice from experts on how to tweak your practices to better achieve that end. Repeat and improve. Don’t adopt agile practices mindlessly, but also don’t reject them “Green Eggs and Ham” style; try to engage them in good faith. But do something; sitting back and carping about how agile sucks is not helping you or anyone else. Trust that coaches and others around you are trying to help you, know how to use that help, and be honest about where it is and isn’t actually helpful.
Lyssa opened a couple of slightly bigger cans of worms in mentioning the uncertainty and complexity of the world and the incidence of fear-based decision-making. The world has always been tricky, but it does seem right now that everything is faster and more chaotic than ever, with pressures and anxieties screaming from every angle. Lyssa added, “That’s where agilists thrive.” It’s a great point. When I speak to people unfamiliar with agile about what I do, I tend to lead with the point about the inherent unpredictability of the world. We humans don’t like that. We like to know, to have control, to be able to see a straight line from the present to a happy future. I’ll argue with Lyssa’s point that I thrive in such settings (uncertainty makes my anxiety spike 😜), but I will fully agree that my profession as agilist has helped me build skills for embracing and negotiating that uncertainty. We need people working that way, and we need people teaching each other how to work that way. This is what I really loved about Lyssa’s point in the context of the future of agile coaching. The world needs us!
Finally, I cited a number of layoffs: around 450,000 over the last two years. To be more precise: as of this posting, layoffs.fyi counts 479,307 people laid off in the industry from 2022-2024. Not exact, but close! And gut-wrenching to think of all those people dealing with such a difficult life experience.
Stay tuned for Episode 3 and companion notes to go with it!
Growing Truffles 