Last year I spoke to a friend I used to work with back when I first moved back to New Zealand 3 years ago.
I’d not spoken to him for over a year.
We were about to end our call when he said, “There’s something I’ve gotta tell you.”
“Oh?” - it sounded a little ominous from the tone of his voice.
“Yeah, look, before you joined us, I was told that you were this amazing ToC expert … but then when you joined us, I never really saw any of that. You were just like every other Agile guy, but fatter.”
(He didn’t say the fatter bit, but the rest is true.)
I didn’t respond straight away.
Yes, he was right.
There were two reasons.
One was that the place was overrun with Agile experts and I didn’t feel that pulling the “ToC” joker card out of my pocket, trying to trump them and their thoughts, would help at all.
Mentioning ToC doesn’t always add credibility, especially among a crowd who think they already know everything!
The other reason was that I’d snuck a good bit of ToC thinking in, but sneakily, kinda like how my wife snuck vegetables into our kids food when they were younger.
The biggest, most positive thing I did was to get everyone to SLOW DOWN.
They were, repeatedly, pushing more work into the teams than they could possibly handle. A common problem. But rather than explaining ToC to them, I showed them the “Lucy in the chocolate factory” video on YouTube. And I introduced them to the sailors’ saying that “slow is smooth and smooth is fast” and I repeated, over and over, that “if we want to go fast, all we have to do is slow down a little”.
So, yes, he was right
I said, “Yeah. You’re right.”
And he said something that changed the course of my life.
“Well I think you should start shouting about your ToC and Agile stuff. The world needs to know about it.”
And he was right.
Because there was a third reason: I’d wimped out, in retrospect.
So that’s why I’ve started shouting out about #AgilePlusToC recently.
I don’t think everyone who is doing it needs to mention ToC - the hidden-vege approach is pretty damned effective - but someone needs to start evangelising (but in a nice, respectful, sharing and helpful way) because Agile is better with a bit of ToC.
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I’m sharing this because, you know, it’s really easy to wimp out, and I’d love to hear your thoughts.
Seriously … hit reply.