Doing Agile Your Way

Speaking of writing my upcoming book “Tech-led Culture” (which we were last week)- I find myself having to pull back quite a bit when it comes to tone.

A book is not a place to be indignant. Neither is this newsletter in a sense by virtue of how open and public it is. So I set up this private corner on Patreon instead and thank you to those of you who found it on Twitter and signed up. If you fancy seeing some of my exclusive hard-hitting member content be it opinions or rants you can find it here: patreon.com/user?u=83255576 . Some people asked me about mugs or T-shirts with some of my most infamous titles over the years - “Nobody gets fired for buying IBM. But they should” or “Agile by heart not by McKinsey PowerPoint” and I had to say I will get back to them about it when I’m clear if that’s ok to do.

I already know it won’t make me any more popular with those specific companies -and others that identify with them- than it did when it meant I had to part ways with Forbes when I refused to change the titles of these articles but I have to say I am as bedazzled about the outcry today as I was a few years back when they came out.

Is this genuinely controversial though? Is it really? “Nobody gets fired for buying IBM” is a business adagio so common I would be surprised if anyone never heard it before. It means nothing else other than “stop sticking with what you know” and the risk-averse attitude towards innovation and size that some of the incumbent organisations have. Equally, mentioning McKinsey in that title was just to match an already existent general mnemonic of a “McKinsey PowerPoint” but it is obviously interchangeable with any of the big names of any of the other big consultancies and it simply refers to how execs at times prefer the perceived security of a big consultancy or integrator when it comes to big transformations and that they trust them above and beyond their own judgement.

This isn’t to say IBM doesn’t make amazing technology or that McKinsey/Big Consultancy slides are always the wrong way to scale a transformation, just that their name and methods must have become entranced in the vocabulary of a certain type of behaviour and experience for them to have become well-known corollaries in the business world.