I think it’s fun to explore and learn what your spirit animal is. This is not meant to be a controversial take. In fact, you’re not even required to believe there is a “spirit” inside of you being represented by an animal. When I first clicked my way through a survey many years ago, I was mostly taking it to laugh at whatever it spat out. Little did I know it would encapsulate the work I spent the next several years undertaking.

The butterfly represents transformation. By dying and being completely reborn (this animal breaks its cells down and rebuilds itself from a many-legged worm to the beautiful flying creature in our gardens. According to a site on animal symbolism, “…your old self is dying so a newer version can present itself.”

“Transformation” was not originally a word that agilists used to describe our efforts. The role of a full-time agile coach was in use at the time, but most organizations didn’t have someone fully dedicated to changing how people worked. We just focused on delivering work to stakeholders and did so using as many tools as possible we learned from others. The end result wasn’t anything involving “being agile.”

Right around then big consulting got involved in the transformation business, which meant statements of work started listing deliverables akin to “do and be agile.” The always magnanimous Bob Galen and I talked at a coaching camp in 2017. We wondered if we were becoming a product just like the products we were trying to support, and what that meant for the overall community.

Fast forward to an industry trying to work its way out of a global pandemic, and transformation had run amok through large organizations. The different transformations they all attempted ended just as furiously as they began. The desire to change turned into more direct strategies of scaling every single idea we could get our hands on, and then blaming the organization when it didn’t take.

When you add the tight IT budgets most organizations go through in an election year in the US, most leaders are trying to find ways to get the most out of the fewer people they still employ. That leaves the rest of us looking for work now, and most of the roles available don’t have the words “agile” or “transformation” in them.

Does that mean that transformation was a terrible idea?

It’s hard to say. There was a solid decade where it wasn’t difficult to find someone willing to pony up for someone willing to assist with updating processes and pairing technical excellence with it. When big consulting is always trying to find new things organizations need help with, it is hard to blame them that with every major deal, clients wanted agile leadership along for the ride. We could train the client teams with whatever framework was chosen, and step them through the many impediments along the way.

Many of us are in the room when ideas are pitched, strategies sold, and impediments roamed with leaders trying to get the most out of teams. We can see merit to most of the principles, and I’ve never heard anyone look at the Manifesto and mock what was written in 2001. All twelve principles are common sense enough that anyone could explain and understand them, even if we disagree on how to implement many.

The biggest problem I’ve seen from day one is treating it like a group activity.

I once facilitated a value-stream mapping workshop for a client trying to find ways to organize their teams around outcomes that resulted in better delivery. In previous sessions with this organization, I had 3-5 people in a room for this exercise and it usually went according to plan.

Only this line of business didn’t have that small group to gather. There were several stakeholders who each sent a few people to represent their ideas, and ultimately we ended up with 30ish people moving around the room trying to weigh in on what we should be doing. It went horribly in that we didn’t really produce anything of real use to building teams and identifying challenges to overcome with our structure.

That’s not to say the smaller groups were more successful with their launches. Execution strategy can be difficult when it comes time to shuffle team rosters. When you start changing who reports to who en masse, that produces the same effect of a re-org from a psychological perspective and I know the pain that causes.

When a group is presented with an approach and asked for their buy-in, I rarely see mass dissent. There might be a few vocal dissidents in the room, but for the most part, I’m used to heads shaking yes or at least not saying no. In actuality, there are four possible responses in each person’s head: 1. An unqualified yes. 2. Accept the decision. 3. Live with the decision. 4. Don’t fully agree with the decision, however, I will not block it and will support it.

That’s not counting the flat-out rejections either.

Going along for the ride does not mean my mind is changed, and each time many didn’t budge an inch towards my pitch decks. As many of you have done, I scheduled one-on-one follow-ups with most of the major stakeholders to see what they thought in private. That was when I truly learned what they thought.

That’s when transformation is possible.

By learning what their individual struggles were, I was able to work through it enough to get their agreement to give this an honest try. Some would tell me they weren’t going to play ball and I respected their honesty and I let his leadership manage that however they wanted. My favorites were those unsure how to respond, but a real light bulb went off when we discussed what could be possible if we caught a few breaks. Those minds were transformed in a way that still persists today.

I’m not here to say the large group activities related to changing how work was a terrible idea. You can notice some interesting things said when there are too many people in the room to shame those who need their voices heard. You can also accomplish a lot in the room if you’re trying to plan a quarter of work, or providing feedback to the latest feature shipped. The rounds of applause heard from appreciative leaders can ease so many aches. Even the retrospective I facilitated had over 500 people in the room yielded positive results.

I just wouldn’t really say that transformation took place in the room. Minds are only changed when you notice real results that include something resembling the hockey stick improvements we all crave. Those who change their minds and want to see things differently always do that privately and rarely share their feelings with others.

Transformation was the first thing that changed about me when I dedicated my work to full-time agile coaching. I had to work on myself because when I first started using frameworks, all of the assumptions I had were dashed and I had to put myself into a willing position of change. It was around then when I learned of my connection to the butterfly, and the rest is history on this blog.

There is, of course, nuance to this topic and I can’t assume I’ve explored this from every imaginable perspective. I’ve heard the objections of a few respected peers, but psychology doesn’t take a timeout to listen to us reading the principles of whatever agile framework our organizations choose. Minds are never fully changed in groups. We just usually avoid conflict and dissent on our own in private.

Leaders are tired of agilsts preaching transformation because most have seen enough attempts to call it what it is. When I meet with them today, I just focus on answering specific questions related to getting things out the door in whatever way makes sense.

We aren’t “transforming” because that’s not the goal. It shouldn’t ever have been.