Reinvention – Why Now Is The Perfect Moment

This is the perfect moment for reinvention. You know, sometimes when I have a cold like I have now, but also when you get a little tired of doing podcast because the the sheer mountain of perfection that you expect out of yourself can obviously slow you down and keep you from wanting to do the thing at all. So in the spirit of what I teach in the forge and around it, my agile practice, of course, I might as well just put a mic up anywhere and just go.

So set something up. We'll talk about things that I'm thinking about, that I'm writing about. And this week, it's all about reinvention. There's no question that things have changed in the past 4 years. We had a pandemic. We have completely changed the way we work and the way we connect. We've completely changed our approaches and our thinking as to what the good life is. We realize that life is not work and it's time to do something more meaningful.

It's time to get rid of our attachment to possessions and not think about those things as much, but rather what we wanna do, who we wanna spend time with. And everyone's still scratching their head. You know, in the same moment, agile has gone through a little bit of a decline. So we know for a fact that, you know, I've cited the stats many times that spending is down not only in agile services and products, but agile training, agile conferences.

Everyone's tightening their belts. And I feel there's an element of blown trust behind that, but you can hear me talk about that in a 100 different episodes. What I'm here to talk about today is where is the opportunity in that? And the opportunity is to recreate and reinvent what we do and how we do it. It's time for a rebuild. Things were bad, things got broken, but the time is ripe for

change. There's no rules right now. Not that we want rules, but if we were gonna make rules, you could set them as easily as anybody else. What is agile now? Here's what's for sure. You're never going back to the gold rush days. Remember them? What if you had the word scrum master or agile coach anywhere near your name? You could pretty much write your own paycheck. We know the landscape has changed, and we know that it hasn't necessarily changed

for the better. So you can never go back. And we really shouldn't want to ever go back. But here's the thing, if it's all broken and all confusing, it's a green field to reinvent what we do. And right now, you have the opportunity to live life by your own design. Here's why. Most of the agilists I know are sitting around waiting and following. They're waiting to meet someone who's gonna tell them what to do next. Where's the next opportunity? Where is our industry going?

What is the next great certification that I'm supposed to get? But if you're not a follower, you could instead lead. You could help redefine the value and the virtue of what we do. But wouldn't that be cool? That's like when you go back to your hometown, and they've torn down the church, and they've gutted the school and they've widened the roads, nothing will ever be the way you remember it. It'll never be the way it was. And clinging to that past is

what causes us pain. World's always changing. There's kids now who are like 30 years old who don't remember a world where you could go through a security checkpoint at an airport and leave your belt and your shoes on. In fact, there's people who've just graduated from school, who are starting their careers having never worked in the pre pandemic conditions that we're all trying so hard to go back to. Look. You can't put a cork back

in what has happened. You can't stuff AI or remote work or cloud or any of those things back in the bottle. This is a time of great revolution, and people are a little bit afraid. They're a little bit confused, but the prize goes to the first movers. And that, my friends, as Agilist, is what we do. So take a moment to mourn the way it used to be if you want, but you gotta do something. See,

here's what a lot of people don't get. Loyalty doesn't mean anything. The fact that you were a valuable agile coach 5 years ago, and everyone at the company loved you and they were happy to renew your contract every 12 months, that doesn't mean anything. The system doesn't care about you. Your loyalty won't be met with loyalty in return. You gotta pay for your existence somehow. You have to keep generating new value. Keep reinventing yourself and finding ways to justify your existence

by emerging different. Things will now change because they have to, and because they can. We can be bold and reinvent what we do, and how we do it. All based on a compelling why. A pause, a break, is an intervention, a moment of reckoning and reflection and recreation. The things that we used to do that were so comfortable are comfortable because they were habit. It was familiar. It was safe. It was approved, but that doesn't mean it was good for us. There are some habits that

we should introduce or strengthen, and there are some that we should break up with. Let them fall to the ground and shatter like a glass bowling ball. When you drop a habit, you reclaim power. You can insert new things that are more aligned with the present. Healthier, more beneficial. Whether that means it's time to change careers, time to build a side hustle, where you can do agile on your own terms. For let's say, a smaller company, who truly values what you do and thinks the way that you

do. It might mean that you reorient how you spend your time and your money, Or, it could mean you create a brand new job title for yourself. Stop going through the same doors as everyone else. The ones that you were faithful to yesterday. Don't kneel in the pews among the masses because you could find a new way to solve problems for people and businesses. You can swim against the current. Look. If you're gonna sweat and crawl every day to keep your head above water, it might as well

be for cause. It might as well be for change. Don't be a servant to the rules. Make new rules. And you might be saying, well, this breaks what the industry expects of me. But remember, the industry doesn't care about you. They'll drop you in a minute. Look. It's scary because none of this has been done before. There is no proven stable ground, but it's worth it. Take my word for it. We could set the bar higher. We could

rewrite what agile means and how it gets used. And in upcoming episodes, I'll tell you about some of the experiments that I'm doing that maybe you wanna try too. I've done some really exciting things just in the past 6 months alone. But the good news that I wanna bring to you is that I validated that the need is there. If I no longer wanna define myself as someone who brings speed or quality or consistency to a software delivery practice, I don't have to. Because people are asking for very

different stuff. But here's the cool thing. Agile is about helping people experiment and discover and validate in unknown territory. And I can think of no more uncertain terrain than what we're seeing here in 2024. This should be what we're awesome at, but it's up to us to create a new definition that's in line with the new world that we're facing. This is our greatest job. I hope this inspired you. If you like this episode, don't forget to share it with

your friends. If you got any questions or comments, go ahead and email me at contact at badassagile.com. And until next time, stay badass.