Please forgive the bragging, but I’d like to tell you about how I lost some weight this year. Eat the tomato instead of throwing it.

When we were all locked indoors during the pandemic, I worried about texts I was getting from friends about regaining their college freshman fifteen. Perhaps it’s a new fifteen, feel free to attach any number designator you desire.

My desire to stay somewhat in shape, without a gym, led me to many health experiments. If I stuck to running and walking, how much would I need to stay my existing weight? If I exercised three days a week and dieted some, would that work better? What if I just compared myself to my friends and was happy to be doing better than them?

The first 10 pounds was easy to lose. I’m not a huge dessert eater and with my type 1 diabetes, I am a healthy food eater. Getting into the right exercise rhythm was also an aide (and got me out of the house, remember when that was a treat to do so?). At some point in my health journey, I reached a point where I couldn’t lose any more no matter how hard I tried.

Then I had a revelation. I wasn’t giving up the right things to help me trim up.

My Dry January extended into February after I noticed another jump in my energy and sleep. Then I decided I was cutting out specific foods altogether. Vegetable consumption was ratcheted up. I even started lifting weights to see if adding muscle mass would eat at the BMI% I couldn’t reduce before. At that point, it became a race to how fast I could lose the next 10 pounds. It helped me find a homeostasis where I think I’ve lost all the weight I need to. Now I just want to maintain what I have and tone my aging body a little.

The tipping point in my health journey wasn’t me adding anything. Magnesium supplements didn’t make my sleep any more sound. Abstaining from certain food or drinks on the weekends wasn’t long enough. It wasn’t the rowing machine I added that unlocked added fitness.

I had to be willing to give up as much as I could stand in order to get the scales trending in the direction I wanted.

Want it bad, get it bad.

Many of you are already tuning me out. “I tell leaders what they need to give up all the time, Murman. Instead of telling me water is wet, how ’bout giving me something constructive?!?” Which I would agree with for the most part. Transformational experts have plenty of opinions on what others should give up to achieve their organizational goals.

Work on less at the same time. Prioritize only one thing at a time for teams. Stop interrupting your directs the day after you planned an iteration if you want them to focus. We have tons of advice when it comes to the discomfort of others. Especially if it means we can suggest better ways of working.

So why don’t they want it as badly as we do?

When we present all of the principles and practices of agility to leaders, it is easy for us to passionately advocate for better ways. It’s something we believe in, and have received the appropriate training to understand what we think “good” looks like. Leaders just don’t have the same motivation.

They aren’t convinced that anything specifically needs to be given up in the name of organizational improvements. All they hear is the trainer giving them a list of additional meetings to schedule.

My old coaching partner, Scott Frost, used to have this saying for leaders when we were walking them through a proposal. They would throw out huge, audacious goals for their teams. They want our help, especially because we told them doing this would be “easy”. Scott’s response I could time with a watch.

“If you want it bad, you gotta get it bad.”

Leaders were then told they would need to invest heavily to make change sticky in their programs. They needed to get off the sidelines and take an active role in helping these new practices stick. Also, they need to understand that some sacrifices are necessary. You’re gonna have to give up something.

We are almost always seen as “extra”.

The practices leaders endorse today are a collection of their teams currently doing their best with what they have. I wouldn’t be in the room if they thought change wasn’t needed. The easiest way to save money is by getting rid of the salaries of those who want to shake it up. That said, in every leadership workshop I’ve facilitated I’ve never once asked them what they were willing to give it up and replace with something better.

Every agilist comes across as proposing extra things.

I know you’re shaking your head at me (not sure which direction), but rest assured you are asking leaders to do more than what they want. Need some help coordinating dependencies across teams? Just schedule a scrum of scrums on a cadence. Are teams struggling with understanding requirements? Let’s add an additional refinement session each sprint so clarity is ensured. We have a solution to every problem they have, but most of the time it is pitched in a way that’s viewed as extra.

They don’t need to keep their existing syncs as well as add the events of a specific framework. We tell them to just clear out calendars and replace these. It’s just not agreed to in the room, which is why the complaints of Agile having too many meetings to be successful.

This isn’t to critique how you currently run your leadership sessions. Every idea you’re pitching is absolutely something that will help. I wish everyone got these principles and practices as easily as we did when we first learned. I’m still confused when I hear others struggle with the simple message. Four pillars, 12 principles, and countless framework options to help implement common practices. We just don’t have everything they have on their plates in addition.

What should we be doing instead?

Getting a lay of the land with those in charge is key for anyone starting a session. So how about we take their temperature in a new way? Once we get leaders to write down their hopes and fears on notepads, let’s get right to work. Write down a list of practices, meetings, and policies they would be willing to give up tomorrow.

No playing cute. No doodle ducks. No constellation exercises.

If there’s not much they can do without, then the session will be short. You can discuss some team optimizations and they will be a little better. Some leaders would take that all day.

You don’t want to be responsible for adding anyting to their teams’ plates. You bring something different than “extra”.

When they agree there is a set of meetings they view as unhelpful, we can find out what they find broken. There will be a cadence we can suggest they replace it with, and nobody will be worried about calendars filling up. You make a plan for communication plans, add facilitation assistance, and create the necessary leave-behinds for teams to understand the change.

Leaders show they are willing to do without some of the fat in the schedule, and allow simplification to take effect.

Many of you are worried about the holistic impacts of this. What if they want to change, but the overall system fights back and won’t allow the change to become sticky? This happens all the time because change is treated like a disease by groups of humans. Organizational white blood cells attack change all the time.

This is when we draw a smaller dotted line around the experiment. By highlighting the aspect of the change teams are fully empowered to use, you can ignore the systemic aspects of the change until everyone has a better idea of what this newness means. Smaller scopes of change can often be more successful anyway. Find where you can work unfettered by anyone other than the leaders willing to “get it bad” protecting teams.

We are not done helping organizations find better ways of working by a long shot. Perhaps if we can connect with decision-makers in a new way, we can find how to become more enabled change agents. It beats being the coach adding too many meetings any day.