Learning to be Agile

To start, four myths to undo: AGILE is not short term thinking. AGILE is not new, it’s been here for quite some times actually. AGILE is not the absence of planning. AGILE is not only for software design.

What it is then?  We could talked about an AGILE approach, an AGILE methodology, and AGILE Mindset.

Here you are climbing a mountain, you’re the first one to make your way up those hills. The direction -or horizon- you have given yourself is really clear, you want to climb this mountain, and why this is important, because you want to see what is on the other side. Your objective is not climbing the mountain, your objective is really “see what is on the other side”. Climbing the mountain is your first choice as a chosen route, and being AGILE means to know that having to change route is okay as long as you reach the real objective.

Learning to be AGILE is first about learning to find the true objective -the true HORIZON.

We can easily see in our VUCA world, how AGILE has become so important. Behind AGILE we found resilience, capability to bounce, innovation, facility to adapt. Think now about you as an individual, or a team as a collection of individuals. What would they need to be able to remain AGILE? the skills of resilience, the capability to bounce, the flexibility to think outside of the box to develop new solution, the confidence to walk on rolling stones and find their footing easily, the capability to manage emotions or stress. And yes all these skills are bundled with the competency of Self-Leadership.

Learning to be AGILE is then about learning the skills. We do that when developing Self-Leadership.

W. Edwards Deming would say it nicely… ‘It is not necessary to change. Survival is not mandatory.’