What's Taboo About Business Agility??
Business Agility Institute
We Help You Accelerate Progress to Achieve Your Goals. No Matter What the Future Brings.
by: Laura Powers
Many Moons Ago...
...In the days when agile was still young, there was a company in Northern California that employed the services of many agile coaches...
...Many agile coaches.
So many - in fact - that coaching at this company was a rite of passage. It felt like you weren't really an agile coach until you coached there.
The local coaching community called the company "Voldemort." The company who shall not be named. Voldemort wanted the cloak of anonymity. No one should know that they were investing so much in this thing called "agile."
Fast forward a few years — and the list of taboo words has grown considerably longer. People in our community tell us that they can't talk about:
Freedom???
A company recently shared that even the word "freedom" is something to be avoided. It's becoming associated with teams who do whatever they please, with no accountability, so much for the idea that business agility helps organizations gain the freedom, flexibility, and resilience to make their dent in the universe. With so many words to omit, our value proposition reads more like a MadLibs story.
The thing is — the need to improve HOW we work has never been greater. Call it agility. Call it better ways of working. Call it Fred. What worked ten years ago - 5 years ago - even what worked last quarter may not cut it today.
How did we end up in this pickle?
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In the words of the 20th-century business philosopher Inigo Montoya,
“You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”
I think we are haunted by misunderstanding. When someone says "business agility," it may not mean what you think it means to them. Not that I have the "right" answer, and you are wrong. More that, we need to slow down longer to understand what the other means.
I recently heard the CIO of FedEx say that one of the most critical aspects of their enterprise-level transformation was "taxonomy." Getting thousands of people on the same page regarding their transformation lingo. Indeed, words matter. Now, when someone tells me a word is "taboo" in their office, I try a new experiment.
I ask three questions:
Will this approach exorcize the ghosts of past transformations gone bad? Probably not. Will it lead to greater understanding and alignment on what's needed today and possible ways to improve tomorrow? I think yes. It's an experiment worth running.
What words are "taboo" in your world of work? How do you handle Voldemort in your world?