You Can’t Have the WoW Without PS

As you know, my main obsession is with finding ways to reduce the HumanDebt™ and I believe Psychologically Safe, Agile teams are the key to that. Just as I have a suspicion that one day we will be able to conclusively prove the connection between Agile and higher levels of Psychological Safety, I am convinced the mindset alone accounts for a higher success rate in instilling the latter in teams in a blessed chain reaction of awesomeness. In other words, I strongly believe we will be able to prove that those who truly live and breathe the spirit of Agile -not just do it “by numbers or by PowerPoint”- have a healthier, happier, more open and risk-taking team dynamic than their counterparts.

Returning to my lab coat as an “Agile anthropologist” I think this is chiefly because once people truly embrace Agile they open themselves up to a host of other possibilities where speed and betterment are no longer propaganda, but tangible realities and where changes, of course, are du jour and beneficial, and neither of those are possible without trust as a team dynamic implied in their interactions. So yes, Agile has to be firmly in the DNA of each team member and an entire Agile team made up of those with the heart in the right place, is a thing of beauty and a Psychologically Safe force of nature.

I spent years writing about the difference between Agile as a way of work or process, versus a way of thinking and how one “can’t have the WoW without the WoT” but maybe the most controversial of my articles on this, was the one in Forbes called “Agile by Heart Not by McKinsey PowerPoint” which remains highly read, controversial and misunderstood to this day.

When writing it, I chose that specific name as a stand-in for the term “big consultancy”, no more specific or pointed than when I wrote “No One Gets Fired for Buying IBM, But They Should” - both names practically a universal business saying, not in the least a specific attack as they represented a whole category and exposed a general problem.

I thought it was evident that I had nothing against either of those enterprises -which I incidentally knew first hand had pockets of excellence- but instead, I was pointing out in the first case, that Agile transformations should start in the minds and hearts of those who should undertake them, not in rigid, leafy, mandated strategy collaterals of a consultancy, and in the case of the second article, that innovation and progress can only happen outside of one’s comfort zone.