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What’s the problem with making the role of an “Agile coach” the essence of your professional identity?
The problem with making the role of an “Agile coach” the essence of your professional identity is that in this role, at best, you are creating an oasis of self-organization within a desert. Pretty much all organizations are AINO (Agile In Name Only) or AFPR (Agile For PR) and have projects (supposedly) run in an Agile manner but really embedded within larger org structures that have been built over decades to exploit known value streams, not to explore markets and technologies for the creation of new value-streams through experimenting with and for customers.
People who understand agility must strive to abandon ritualistic roles within organizations that don’t understand agility, and instead of being on the sidelines of business, run a business themselves, or part of someone else’s business, and put their money where their mouth is.
There will always be HIPPOs and ZEBRAs and all the other archetypes in organizations that will always see Agile as some little nonsense that adds little, if any, value to the business, beyond the ability to claim that the work environment “is agile”.
Dear zero-skin-in-the-game Agile coaches: you’re wasting your time, and probably everyone else’s time, too.
It would be much better to contribute to the business and do so with the mindset and tools of Agile/Lean/whatever, than to be a coach or a methods monkey with no skin in the game and no content contribution to the end result.
Certainly, much more fulfilling.
