Of convertibles and agile rituals

The first time I rode in a convertible I was… I don’t know… 12?

With agile, like with most things in life, the lesson is: do it right, or don’t do it at all

You’d think open-top cars would be a given in sunny Greece, but they were not, back then at least. They were resolutely an American thing and that made them a Good Thing. Things cool people do in movies.

We had been to the beach and one of my dad’s friends was showing off his new car. An open-top whatever it was. And I was enthralled. So enthralled that my parents consented to me riding shotgun with him from the beach to where we were all having lunch, about a mile down the coast.

I objected most strenuously to how brief the ride was to be but was placated by the front seat situation, so away we went.

Needless to say, it was resolutely not like the movies.

The wind in your hair is also wind in your face, blinding and uncomfortable and full of sand and particles. As for your hair… the pain of untangling it all that night will never be forgotten. The kerchief around the head made sense after the fact.

I recently decided this is the best analogy for why, almost two decades on, we are still debating why financial services entities keep doing agile wrong.

And I mean both banks and start-ups, incumbents and neos. For different reasons, but to the same effect.

Indulge me for a second.

Anyone who is trained in how to run an agile project learns two things: the substance and the rituals.

The substance entails conversations like, “Do we believe this is the right thing to do? Do we believe that our commitments are the right ones, given what we know? Do we believe that we can do what we said we will do?” And also, “What are we doing wrong? Are certain assumptions or behaviours problematic? What are we learning? What needs to change?” And of course, the hardest of all, “What did we do wrong? Where did we fall short? What can we learn?”

Before you ask me: no, this conversation is rarely had and, when had, the truth is almost always drowned in politics. Yes, even in small entities. New entities. The ones that were meant to show the way and shine a light when it came to ways of working.

In a big bank, a lot of folks will go with things they know are futile, pointless or ill-construed because they understand how the winds of senior mind-share blow and they can navigate the fallout to their advantage. So it doesn’t matter if they believe this, whatever it is, won’t work as they won’t be standing in this same spot when it does and by then… disassociate and act surprised. Lower down the ranks, people know they won’t be heard and either way it won’t matter because, contrary to the fundamentals of agile, the team won’t ever really work together again, so even if you were prepared to learn, the learning would be theoretical and impossible to implement in a tight cycle of ever-improving velocity.

In a start-up, the reasons tend to be more visceral. The founder is rarely to be contradicted. If they believe something is the right thing to do, because it was their idea, because their currently-favourite-employee came up with it, because they read a book over the weekend… they are rarely open to debate and even when some semblance of debate is had, once the decision is set, objection is tantamount to dissent.

If it sounds cultish, it’s because it is.

And there’s 10 books worth of analysis on why founders behave like this. Whether it’s the VCs that nurture this type, the market, the personality type that is drawn to entrepreneurship, finance not shedding its macho culture or a confluence of events. But for the purposes of this brief piece, my point is: belief is not discussed as it pertains to the course of action set by the founder as, if you attempt it, you are either silenced, ostracised or treated like you are questioning them.

So, if belief in someone’s suggestion always ends up being about belief in their person, you tell me what happens to your agile principles.

You still have stand-ups and retros, of course.

But the substance… not so much.

Once you’ve dispensed with the discussions around belief, though, then the retros and the stand-ups and the rituals become tactical ‘Plan B’ discussions. Because the unspoken truth is that the biggest obstacle is that we are pursuing the wrong strategy, we have committed to something that can’t be done in the timeframe we have given ourselves or have lied to ourselves about the readiness of some of the foundational pieces.

The rituals are nothing without the honesty.

Which disappears in the absence of psychological safety… and in the presence of the cult of personality, absent-minded leadership, politics or a blend thereof.

So, you start off hoping for wind in your hair and end up with tangled locks, painful to smooth out, your eyes smarting from the sand and it’s the car’s fault, not yours for not getting the goggles and the headscarf.

And look, maybe riding around in a convertible isn’t everyone’s idea of fun. The way running agile doesn’t fit everyone’s culture.

All I am saying is, if you do it, just do it right.

Because the way you do it now sure looks good from the outside, but those inside the car know it’s not working. Their hair’s a mess, their eyes sting and they will be the worse for wear when you get where you are going.

Like with most things in life, the lesson is: do it right, or don’t do it at all.

#LedaWrites

Leda Glyptis is FinTech Futures’ resident thought provocateur – she leads, writes on, lives and breathes transformation and digital disruption.

She is a recovering banker, lapsed academic and long-term resident of the banking ecosystem. She is chief client officer at 10x Future Technologies.

Leda is also a published author – her first book, Bankers Like Us: Dispatches from an Industry in Transition, is available to order here.

All opinions are her own. You can’t have them – but you are welcome to debate and comment!

Follow Leda on Twitter @LedaGlyptis and LinkedIn.