Good Habits, Teamwork, and Grace Create Agility

Forgiveness is Agile

Being a business person is the ultimate endurance sport.  Each day we awaken and try to earn a living for ourselves and the people we love.  It is a grind.  It goes on for years, and if we are lucky, we will get a chance at the end of our lives to reflect and relax.  It is a precarious existence of striving and survival.  The business person confronts this reality each day.  We compete for the quick win and the big score but understand the long term nature of being a business person.  We need to take a look at the long term nature of the life of a business person and how agile can make the experience more sustainable. 

Building a business is a harrowing process.  For every entrepreneur who succeeds, there are more who fail.  Some of the best ideas fail because they can not find a market, while some of the most trivial can generate oceans of wealth.  The random nature of the success breeds arrogance, and these captains of an industry often ignore problems within their organizations until it is too late.  Only when threatened with extinction do organizations feel the need to change.  The scrum master steps into the world of organizational change when the stakes are highest.  It is the realm of failing fast and making corrections.  For some, it is like building the business from scratch all over again. 

The first step is building successful habits among the people doing the work.  It means meeting standards of quality, showing up to meetings prepared, and communicating correctly to make sure everyone understands what needs to happen.  The process of setting up the fundamental expectation of excellence is outlined by philosopher Will Durant who said, “We are what we repeatedly do.  Excellence, then, is not an act; it is a habit.”  Asking people to develop good habits and practice them is the first step to improvement.  Do not ask people to work extra hours and do not expect them to treat their work as a heroic struggle.  Work should be at a sustainable pace; heroic action is unnecessary. 

It is after this process that you enter the second step.  Everyone should understand the business succeeds or fails together as a team.  It takes a team working together and complimenting each other’s strengths to be successful.  The success is constructed on positive habits and relying on others to do their part.  It is the salesperson respecting the administrative assistant for getting the presentation organized, and it is the developer understanding the quality assurance tester wants to ship quality code.  Everyone has a role to play, and it only happens when we work together. 

Habits of excellence and creating a team mentality in the organization are entry-level steps in creating agility.  It also requires what religious people call “grace.”  A pastor once told me the Christian definition of grace is, “…getting absolutely, positively something you do not deserve.”  It is having school canceled when you did not study for an important test.  It is the client rescheduling a meeting when you are stuck in traffic.  I also think grace is when you forgive yourself and someone else for a bad day.  It is the extra cup of coffee or bag of chips as you muddle through the day.  It is letting some go home early to look after a sick child or deal with the side effects of chemotherapy.  Grace means that you can trust others on the team to step up when you are not performing at your best. 

It is only by combining the habits of excellence, creating teams, and practicing grace do we create a more sustainable business environment.  It is a place where the day in day out grind becomes a day of learning, innovation, and forgiveness.  The victories are more regular, and the defeats are more educational.  It is a new way to look at work and one which I hope to pioneer. 

Until next time.