There's something about Agility
- Sadhbh O'Flaherty
- Jul 7, 2021
- 7 min read
Finding Agile
When I started off my career there was no mention of agility or agile, the first I heard the term was in 2010 when I was working as a project manager and one of our clients was starting to build their short advertising videos in something called sprints. We were 100% waterfall and we fitted our work into the waterfall pattern of our clients. This was the first and last I heard of agile for another 5 years while I took a career break to look after my young family and start my own holistic massage therapy business.
Fast forward to 2018 and I am looking for a new opportunity and I see a role in a local tech company I always wanted to work for - the role was a "Junior Scrum Master". I had never heard of a scrum master before but as I read the description of the role I realised it had my name written all over it:
Empower team to collaborate and make effective decisions through early delivery and continuous improvement.
Encourage rapid flexible responses to change.
Facilitate scrum to encourage and support the team to self-manage their iterations.
Remove barriers to effectiveness.
Communication liaison between the team, product owners and stake holders.
Rewind a little - to give greater context to why these particular role elements appealed to me so strongly - up to this point work was something I found I had to get through, to survive, it was never a place where I could see myself thriving. As a project manager I found the stress of the job altogether too much to handle, the regular late nights, the lack of clarity in the work to be completed, always working to an unrealistic deadline without the sufficient budget to even perform the project to the standard required. It never sat right with me but it was the culture of how things were done. On my return to the office after the birth of my first child, in my first meeting I had to suppress an overwhelming desire to stand up and walk out due to absolute and all consuming anxiety. I thought my heart was going to explode out of my chest. I knew in that moment I had to make a change, this job was going to be the death of me and I couldn't spend one more day feeling so miserable in a job. I loved the people I worked with and I adored my boss but the way business was done went against every fiber of my being.
That phrase "if you love your job you never work a day in your life" would play over in my head. Why did I seem to end up hating every job I did, what was it that drove me insane eventually in each one? Was I chasing an unattainable thing of "loving" my job? Surely the phrase had some basis and it was possible to love your job so much you never felt like you were at work.
Being an eternal optimist I just felt there had to be a role out there for me that tapped into who I was, what I was best at, how I worked and allow me to be happy everyday I went into work and not in a state of constant panic about what I might have to face tomorrow.
So back to this weird and wonderful job role title of "Scrum Master". Someone who empowers, encourages, facilitates, collaborates, communicates and drives continuous improvement and effectiveness. What a dream!! I was hooked and I set about ensuring I got this job. I delved into everything I could find around the role, what they do and how I could link all my experience back to this job and what I felt it was or could be. I knew I didn't have the experience of scrum or development but boy did I have people experience to beat the band and to me this role screamed "people".
Becoming Agile
Needless to say the job was everything I thought it would be and more. As time went on in the role, I grew to understand the influence of the role, how being agile is to be the gentle voice always there when required and nudging thought in certain directions to ensure everything remains on track, adjusting and clarifying process at the sign of any risks or potential issues but always as part of team. Spotting patterns in dynamics and behaviours of teams, being the observer of the subtle and stealthily making those tweaks and changes when needed. You are the servant leader to leaders. A fellow scrum master (unknown) once said "the sign of a great scrum master is that you don't notice what they do yet the process would fall apart without them". The quiet hero of the software development story, we lift our teams to ensure they are succeeding and able to perform at their best. Our reward is their success and the success in the outcomes of their effort. It is the most satisfying and fulfilling job I have ever had.
Discovering Agility
At an ALI conference I attended over a year into my role as Scrum Master and not long after being promoted to people development lead within development I discovered the concept of "Agility", as opposed to Agile. This was something different to the agile frameworks I had been living for the past year or more. This was a way of being, a mindset and it intrigued me greatly. It seemed to explain or put into words the ways of working which resonated with me most. The way in which I liked to work and aspired to work. During a workshop with Michael Nir on Persuading the Bear, I sat beside a humble and unassuming fellow agile mindset enthusiast. We talked about roles and cultures and agility for the duration of the workshop. I was energised by our chat feeling I had met a kindred spirit. At the end he invited me to his own talk on Agile HR at the end of the day. When I attended his talk later it become clear to me the breathe of knowledge, experience and passion he had in the area of Agility. The speaker was Kevin Empey who went on to write the book which has inspired this post and ultimately who has inspired my journey into Agility and the agile mindset.
Over the next two years I followed any webinars, blog posts and articles I could find on the subject of agility or in and around it. I was living it in my job and taking elements I was inspired by into my day to day work. Experimenting and adapting processes through an agile mindset rather than being a purest to any agile framework or methodology. Agility was a feeling for me, it was a way of approaching work, of never feeling like you are done. Always striving to learn more and find new ways of doing things. I was questioning everything, all processes and not just that of development. Sticking my nose into any area I felt needed an inspection and possible adaption or change of process (whether it was welcome or not). I was addicted to being agile but also frustrated with the breathe I could realistically influence. My passion and enthusiasm was far exceeding my actual ability to be fully agile or influence agility in my organisation. Over time I have learned to take a step back and see how best to make small incremental changes or nudges towards change in the hope of eventually influencing agility at an organisational level.
It is the individual who is ultimately the source of organisational agility.
Defining Personal Agility
In Thrive in the Future of Work, Kevin breaks down the components required for Personal Agility as the ability to be purpose and value led, to encompass a learning mindset and be embracing of change, always seeking to encourage change when needed and not being disrupted by it. Possessing a passion and drive for collaboration, effectively building trusting relationships across an organisation and networking both internally in your company and externally in the community to build your knowledge and influence. All this is enhanced by being in a role with a strong sense of empowerment and autonomy.
Ultimately, people only do what they believe, and they only believe what they discover for themselves.
Image taken from WorkMatter's whitepaper "Personal Agility"
I am someone who adores seeing patterns. For me agility is a way to see patterns and then use the skills of personal agility to read those patterns and adapt to or change them. Practically speaking it allows an individual to assess information around a problem or change and work a solution in an agile way, a solution that suits the problem/change, the team and the organisation at that moment in time. It's not about having the solution yourself but being agile in terms of being change orientated, seeking to learn what you need to understand the problem, using your relationship management skills to build trust and collaborate with the people who will help solve the problem with you, being open to see other's perspectives outside your own and adapting to suit. It takes agility to flow seamlessly through each of these skills. And successful agility allows for failure, inspection, adaption and resilience to get back up again and keep tweaking until you find that sweet spot solution which gets you where you want to be. Until the next time change is required... and so on, forever :)
"If resilience is about surviving, agility is about thriving"
Kevin talks about adaptiveness and resilience being the key elements associated with personal agility and in a world where everything is changing at such a fast rate it seems that personal agility and being agile is no longer a nice to have but a need to have.
Little steps towards Agility
To achieve agility takes time, understanding, self-compassion, self-discovery and practice, practice, practice. As my sister says - practice makes permanent. For some it is a skill that is innate in how they are, for others it is a skill to be learned and honed over time.
For me it is the little steps, the little tweaks, the small changes you can influence along the way and doing your own self inspection to see where you might have strengths that lead to agility or where you might need to actively focus your development to build your agility muscle.
Finding agility for me has been life changing and life affirming. I bring it into every facet of my life and not just in work. I don't always succeed in being agile and often fail at it but this is where the self-compassion comes in and all your other skills of agility.
Fail fast, learn fast and be agile :)
If you have been inspired by this blog post I urge you to go ahead and buy Kevin's book, if you are short on time check out his whitepaper on Personal Agility which is well worth a read also.
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