Sanctuary of Agility

There are drive-through animal safaris in every part of the country. For $20, you can weave your car through a few acres and see wild, exotic animals…in Ohio. Sadly, I’m seeing some parallels between my life in a bullpen and the safari animals.

A few years ago, someone in IT management decided that they wanted to try this agile thing so they picked a few guinea pigs, packed up our desks and shipped us to a bullpen. They gave us some index cards & thumb tacks and sent us to a few classes, then pronounced us “agile.”

It’s like the logic of some person deciding to ship a bunch of African animals to Ohio. Seems like an interesting business venture for the owner, but what is the long-term plan for the animals? Can the animals thrive without the environment that they were designed for?

We are one of only four agile teams at our large company. Few people in IT or the business really understand what we’re trying to do or why, despite efforts to involve, educate and share. So here’s the big question for me:

Can a sanctuary of agility survive in a sea of enterprise bureaucracy?

My gut tells me that a team trying for true agility cannot have long-term survival. Seeing animals lounge around waiting for food trucks convinced me of this. I bet when the animals first got to their new home, they were passionate and spent a lot of energy trying to survive in their new surroundings. Over time, they grew accustomed to being fenced in and with scheduled feedings, they had no need, therefore no desire, to escape.

We are certainly more complex than zoo animals, but I’ve seen this happen to coworkers. After endless battles trying to improve things, they give in to the feeling that change is hopeless and they settle in. Their financial needs are met so their desire to “escape” is satiated.

Don’t get me wrong; I’m eternally grateful that they shipped me to an agile team. Unlike the animals, I feel like I have come home. But without a supportive environment, our team will not thrive and I don’t want to just survive.

Throw the Hammer

I work at a nice company. The people are friendly. The benefits are good. The grounds are well manicured and there is beautiful artwork throughout the complex. It’s nice.

Yet there is something wrong here. Not Stepford Wives wrong, but just this feeling that I’ve been struggling to understand. Reading Seth's Blog the other day, a phrase jumped out at me:

“They institutionalize organized cowardice.”

I noticed my head nodding instinctively. I am surrounded by cowardice. I am surrounded by people who waste their creativity playing the prevailing politics game, people who stay silent while their team languishes, people who accept technology tools because they don’t want to fill out an exception form.

When you praise people for completing their TPS reports on time, rather than for questioning the purpose of the reports, you foster compliance. You create Docker-wearing drones who don’t share ideas, don’t question decisions and don’t color outside the lines.

Some days, I want to be the hammer-hurling girl in Apple's 1984  commercial. In my version, I run through our mazes, tearing down cubicles and the polite, little signs that say, “Please be quiet. This is a work area.”

But I still need my job, so maybe I’ll just wear forbidden flip-flops to work and spend my lunch walking through the well-manicured grass in my bare feet. I might inspire a few people to kick off their shoes and join me. That is until they put up a sign that says, "Keep off the grass."