The Hydra and the Abyss

I recently had occasion to speak to a good friend about the state of agility in general and the needs he was looking at in his organization. This brought me to the question – what is your biggest problem and how are you trying to address it? The answer surprised me a little – because I have dealt with it before. He was looking at the integration of the “last piece” of the IT structure. How do we get the mid tier and back end IT support groups into the Agile umbrella? If I recall my mythology correctly, the hydra is a dragon like monster with many heads – and when you cut one off, two heads grow in its place. I find this an ideal metaphor for transformations, because it seems just when you identified and resolved a core issue – you have two more issues take its place. The challenges I face are always interesting, but they seem to circle around three “heads” – management misalignment of expectations, team misalignment of expectations and product team involvement. I have dealt with all three of these recently, and have realized that any one of these can “kill” a coach immediately.

Row, row, row your boat?

Sometimes, we try to change something about ourselves that we believe will be simple and straightforward. A great example of this is the weight issue. Most everyone can relate to trying to lose or gain weight – and more importantly, keep it off or on! But this is a good example because it is actually simple to start, sometimes simple to achieve – but extremely difficult to maintain. I do not have the answer to the weight issue, but I have noticed that many companies try to change by looking at an exterior methodology – and think this will answer all their issues. But many times, these new ways of doing things only surface the deeper issues – the ones that do not require a simple change. Worse yet, sometimes the organization does not know why it is making the choice it will pursue; it is blind to the deeper issues. This natural blindness can get people and organizations into some interesting trouble.