Uncomfortable Truths About The Agile Industry's Focus on Vanity vs Outcomes

Help me think through how this episode applies to my situation. Start by asking what I am trying to change. Separate the episode's claims from your suggestions, and say when the notes do not support a claim. Use the transcript to find passages, then check the audio before quoting. Transcript: https://yuvalyeret.com/podcast/episodes/uncomfortable-truths-about-the-agile-industrys-focus-on-vanity-vs-outcomes/transcript.md ## Published episode notes In this special crossover episode of Mastering Agility and Scaling w/ Agility, Yuval Yeret joins Jim Sammons and Rick Visotcky to confront the uncomfortable truths about the agile industry. Together, they explore why so much agile work has drifted into activity for activity’s sake and how coaches, trainers, and leaders can realign their work to drive meaningful outcomes. The conversation strikes a balance between candor and pragmatism, reflecting on the courage required to challenge the status quo while acknowledging the human realities of making a living. If you’re grappling with agile theater and wondering how to bring more integrity to your practice, this discussion is a timely call to action. Highlight Quotes / Concepts * The tension between certification-driven training and real transformation * The impact of commoditization on agile roles and courage * How financial independence or reputation can enable principled interventions * The idea of “forever employable” as a foundation for sustainable courage Chapters (00:00) Introduction and Speaker Introductions (01:55) Discussing Outcomes in Agile Training (05:07) Challenges in Agile Training and Consulting (10:17) The Reality of Agile Roles and Industry Issues (13:41) Balancing Principles and Practicality (23:10) Courage and Safety in Agile Coaching (37:47) Conclusion and Future Topics Notable Quotes “We are guaranteeing the wrong things. We’re focused on vanity metrics. What would it look like if we started to focus on outcomes?”, Yuval Yeret “There’s no courage in safety. If you’re already safe, what do you need the courage for?”, Rich Visotcky “The unemployment line is full of people with strong principles and values.”, Jim Sammons “Forever employable is something that is a good outcome for agileists to strive for, because that’s the only way they can be real agileists.”, Yuval Yeret Guest Links and Resources * Mastering Agility Podcast * Jim Sammons on LinkedIn * Rich Visotcky on LinkedIn * Forever Employable by Jeff Gothelf * Sense and Respond training partners 🌟 Yuval wants to help you scale your organization without falling into the process theater trap. Start with his free email course: Scaling w/ Agility Crash Course 🔗 Follow Yuval on LinkedIn Uncomfortable Truths: Agile’s Vanity vs Outcomes – https://yuvalyeret.com/blog/uncomfortable-truths-about-the-agile-industrys-focus-on-vanity-vs-outcomes ## Transcript This transcript was edited from automatic speech recognition for readability. Speaker turns may be wrong or absent, and it may contain recognition errors. Check the audio before quoting or attributing a passage. Episode: https://yuvalyeret.com/scaling-ai-podcast/uncomfortable-truths-about-the-agile-industrys-focus-on-vanity-vs-outcomes/ ## The friction around safe / scrum Hey, everybody. There is a NATO summit happening in Europe next week. Well, this is like our version of that. It's mastering agility and scaling with agility to to titans in in the world, talking about some topics today. So Yuval, just in case somebody has missed your previous two experiences on mastering agility, can you remind Elsol who you are? I'm helping people achieve better outcomes through their product organizations and their businesses and how they're structured. I'm a professional from trainer and coach, safe guy, just trying to bring nuance to this world. And for your audience, I'm Jim Sammons coming at you from Ohio in the United States. I'm one third of the Mastering Agility Clan. And yeah, I do similar work to the other two guys on this chat. I'm helping clients large and small, experienced and just starting out with all things, lean, agility, value, objectives and key results, everything in that sphere. So that's me. I'm Rich Vasaski. I'm here to help everyone see another team members perspective and try to get on board with it to get that common picture that I share and understanding that helps you all achieve good stuff together. Like the other two people here, a professional Scrum Trainer with Scrum to work. Also a certified training partner with Sense and Respond. We've all gone through that recently. It's just been pretty cool too. And outcomes have been top on our mind there, which I pretty sure we're gonna be getting into here today. So as always, great to be back here. So speaking of outcomes, we had a nice conversation the other day about the somewhat ironic nature of teaching people to focus on outcomes using techniques like OKRs, or even user stories are trying to teach people focus on outcomes, there's nothing new there. But the way we package the training that we provide is sort of the classic activity. Oh, we thought, let's unpack it a bit. Let's look in the mirror and look at are we focused on outcomes? Are we as individuals? Are we as a digital industry, agileies to coaches, trainers? Are we walking barefoot? Which is nice to connect to nature, especially if you live on the farm or next to a forest, but are we the cobblers, children, in a way? I think we can be. I mean, this week I was just telling somebody, not too long ago that I had to follow my own advice this week. And, well, I mean, geez, I'm gonna hit N or on LinkedIn here later today and you all see it, but effectively, the short version of the story is when I was hanging out with Rich a few weeks ago, he said, hey, I think you really should go do this thing. And I'm like, oh, what about focus? What about my own message to people that focuses about what you say no to and not what you say yes to. And I was very conflicted. And then I thought about what would a measurable change in behavior be? Like if I was going to do this, what's the outcome I'm after? What is it I'm hoping to do? Am I just adding busy work for no benefit or am I just, is it selfish busy work? Like sometimes being busy and doing something is a very selfish is a bad word, maybe, but it's a, it's a me thing versus a we thing, right? Like I can self justify better than anyone else in the world, things that I choose to do. It doesn't mean they'd hold up to any scrutiny or data or outcome type thinking whatsoever. Yeah, we should talk sometime about no OKRs, no curves. You see that term in OKRs? Yeah, like the things you will not do, you're declaring your non-goals. It's an interesting one. No KRs, I love that. OKRs, yeah. I'll tag you on the country. They didn't come up with it. The outcomes you never want to see. But I was hoping we challenged ourselves to talk about the training aspect specifically. So this is the irony, right? When I go in and I'm asked to teach a class as a professional scrum trainer, as a safe SPCT as in a sense and response. Certified training partner with an organization that it flags says outcomes over outputs over activities. But it's true for all of these organizations that we want. Unvaluing transformation can. You know, what does it mean that a lot of what we do is measured by how many people get certification, how many people it butts on seats in classes. That were paid, hopefully a nice, you know, a nice pay land for a workshop that we deliver. Where all we can promise is people that have been for their experience, maybe got certified in something, maybe not. And I don't think the certification is that valuable. You know, that's a different conversation. But have they been transformed? Are we going to see different behaviors? Is it going to have an impact? Hopefully, but that's not what we commit to. And I put myself out there on LinkedIn a couple of weeks ago, So, you know, saying this is broke, like we are broke. We're not guaranteeing anything. We're guaranteeing the wrong things. We're focused on vanity metrics and what would it look like if we started to focus on outcomes? If we were willing to say, don't pay us or don't pay us all our, you know, fancy day rate if this is useless at the end. I deliver in OKR training, even if it's just a training, what would happen? I tell you, you know, let's just talk three months from now about what's the impact that this means. What were the changes in behavior from this training? How would you change the dynamic in our industry? This is one of my most popular posts in recent times. a lot of people felt like you cannot expect a trainer cannot expect the scrum master or coach to be accountable to results because it's out of their control, right? So it's interesting. I don't know what what do you think? Could you expect a trainer to be accountable to results? I think it depends on how you're set up. ## What is really happening in the system And I struggle with this a lot too because when I go to engage with a client, my ideal client helps me what they're trying to achieve. Cause I get requests, you know, can you run this PSM class? Yes, I had. Is that the right class? Like, what do you want? Cause sometimes it's not, oh, we want to learn scrum. I'd rather you take the applying professional scrum. Um, we don't know about that. We know about the PSM. So we want to take. Do you really? Like, you know, and so if I can help engage with that and say, what is it that you're trying to achieve with training, how do you know that this will have been successful? What can I do to help you learn that and check it? Like you said, at that point, we're more focused on outcomes, the changes we want to see organization and the way that people are behaving and what they're doing, the ways in which products are getting managed, the amount of releases that they get into, and they list bugs that they're creating. There'll be lots of things that happen that show that this training had impact. And sometimes they're just not interested in that. They're like, if that's what you want, I will just go talk to another trainer that will just do the thing that I'm telling them to do, which is very indicative to me of how they run their organization, right? And what kind of actual benefit or outcome they'll get from it. Sometimes I take those gigs because like, fine, if you're willing to throw all this money at me and you know, I need to pay my bills. I was reminded of this fact twice yesterday in two really different settings. But one was, I got a call from a account manager slash recruiter friend of mine, who was a customer. but one was I got a call from a Account manager slash recruiter friend of mine in the Staffing industry and he said Jim I need your help. I need to source two Excellence ground masters really quick. I Just emailed you the job descriptions and all this Let's talk so we got on the phone. I said first off. You don't you don't know what you're asking for where did this come from? People don't like being told or even ask a question. What is it you're trying to accomplish? What's the ideal person? Why is that your ideal candidate? Like they don't like that. They're like, I already gave you all this. Why do you need a Scrum Master? So lift our their. Yeah, like I've learned the hard way not to focus on asking those questions too much because then I never get the opportunity to have the dialogue. But this is what I think is wrong with the staffing world is there is no value or on consultative staffing to say what is it you need? What are you trying to accomplish? Wow, anything around that? And it just leads people to be like, these are the three racks, these are the 12 bullet points, just go filming these people as cheaply as possible, right? and then people are unhappy with the outcome. And then people like us say, well, of course you are, because you didn't approach the problem correctly. You didn't approach it from an outcome-based thing. You gave somebody a list of things to go do. They went and did it, and you're unhappy with the result. The only person you have to blame there is yourself. I grew somewhat, we were on different businesses, right? I grew notorious in the past consulting firm that I was a partner at where I wasn't very good at generating business for staffing. And I wasn't the only one. We were at the top of the list of those that struggled with this. when you're especially in this world of the agile roles and maybe we'll get there, the finding a person, you know, resources to tackle the problem is not necessarily the right approach. A lot of the time the right approach is, you know, different behaviors of the organization but there are different options, right? if you're compensated by Rev Share on bringing feeling staffing positions for your client, if that's your business model, we're creating an ecosystem which is hard for people to everybody to thrive in. And I've lost business, I've lost business like reach has lost business. I've lost business. Yeah, it's a long list. And it feels some days that you're stupid because you're willing to stand up to your values and to focus on the customer outcomes and to have the courage to say some things. And some other days, you feel like because you're standing up for your values because like Richie is saying, you need to pay the bills, You're not courageous enough. And I think we're just representing a much bigger problem that this industry is having. Like we have leverage as trainers, some leverage. It's not, you know, it's not huge, but it's not nothing as, you know, people that do have names, they have experience, case studies. What I'm seeing more and more in the industry around me is this death spiral where we've put those same people that were stuffed as Scramasters or Agile coaches. It's, you know, in situations where they're compensated, based on ours, and billable hours, or their W2 employees, and, you know, they have a salary, what would I do if that's the way I'm compensated? I will create more and more activity. I will make sure that there are a lot of agile events and that there is a lot of agile theater and that I'm still needed. If I'm really smart, I screw the system by making sure that people stay attached to me. If I have too much integrity, I will You know screw myself out of a job. Yeah, and maybe you know the That value follows me and the fact that I created outcomes follows me But the more the industry is going towards commoditization. It will be harder And it will be even harder so people that are still scrumlusters and agile coaches out there in organizations They're saying how many people are struggling do we really expect these people to be courageous, to speak openly about what they're saying, to really coach the leaders, to coach the system, to talk about what's really not working? No, I mean, I think I can understand why agile theater is. This is such a strong phenomenon and why people struggle with speaking up to power about it. We're not, we're not. Are you trying to say that? You're trying to say keeping the roof over your head is maybe a more motivating factor than creating change in the company that you just joined seven months ago. That like, you know, my fire you at any moment. I think that if you're at, that's a good question. I think that unless you're at the position where you might call it prosperous, you might call it, you know, your financial independence, you have enough money that you're willing to speak up, unless you're in that position where, I mean, if you still need to pay the mortgage, pay the bills, your family. I think it's an inherent conflict for anyone that wants to focus on outcomes and wants to bring courage. It's a struggle where I would totally understand why they would care more about, you know, maintaining their job, maintaining the position, the contract, whatever it is, doing the hours, instead of delivering value and going. I think with that, the smaller your network is, the harder it is to live up to your values, and get paid for that. ## The practical shift Because if you were working at a job, whether you're a direct employee or a contractor, coming in, and you don't know anybody else, And the sense of man, rich always stands up for calling out the issue that he sees when we're in an organization. You've always there to make sure that we are focused on the right things. Jim is always here to support us and make me feel like I belong somewhere, something like that. If it's just that one team that you're working with and whoever your manager is, and they're the only people that get to know you in that way, then if you get fired for doing the right thing, and you get fired mostly because somebody just doesn't want to hear it, you don't have the reputation to go along with you. But if that network exists, either for the previous places you've worked at, other people that you connect to, meetups, just trying to get broader out there, to me that gives me a little bit more of a willingness to say, yeah, maybe this isn't the right spot, and I don't feel too worried about trying to move on. It doesn't mean another job is going to be waiting for me tomorrow. But I'm like, I can find people who want me to be me and actually help them out. I don't know if a lot of us have just found that yet. So to play the outcome versus activities versus output and input. I think you're calling out one way to achieve forever employable status, which is how Deb Guathil talks about it. Either forever employable or I couldn't financially independent, which means I don't care. When I know me neither far from it, but I think forever employable is something that is a good outcome for Agilis to strive for because that's the only way that they that maybe a controversial take, a take. But I think that's the only way that they can be real Agil Agilists. So I think we're in for a Shakeout. The Shakeout is already happening from the perspective of there's you were, you know, agile roles that are available. There's, you know, less interest in agile consulting. The theater, the focus on the vanity and the activities, it's coming back to on to us. I think if there's ever a light at the end of the tunnel, my belief is that the only that while agility will thrive and is thriving, people are working in agile ways, they'll continue to work in agile ways. That's not the question. Angel is not that. But the agility advisory industry coaching, whatever, has to start focusing on outcomes, has to start showing up in a way which is courageous and not the theater and whoever is not able to do that will not be able to thrive in this place. And in order to be able to do that, you need to have to be high enough on the muscle-hard. And you know, and it means some hard truths for people that are coming to us and asking, How do we get a scrum master position? How do we get into the scrum master reward? You know, I don't get those questions that often anymore, but it was very common, like a year to years ago that shouldn't be the, you know, don't expect to go into this space unless you're closer to being forever employable, closer to being independent. Is light tick. That aspect of courage is a big one. And in the last five years, I have been all over the spectrum on my opinion on that. Interestingly, when I felt like we as a group of people doing similar work needed at the least was when I saw the most focus on on Maslow's hierarchy of needs, you know, the most important things in psychological safety, you know, this and I have said on on on Mastering of Jelly, many times, like I think we, many people talk about that stuff too much. But now it is pivotal because to, in my opinion, answering only for myself, not putting words in anyone else's mouth, I feel the most courage when I feel the most other things like safe, respected, valued, confident of these other things. We cannot discount the relationship, in my case, I'll admit direct relationship between courage and those things. And, you know, two sentences that other people told me over the years that I think kind of always rattle around in my head is the unemployment line is full of people with strong principles and values. That's one. And another one is a dead coach serves no one, which both of those things kind of put your basic human needs. And I kind of adapt that second one to put your own mask on first. Like, there's a reason airplanes tell you to do that. You have people with you. You want to help others. If you have children with you, if you're in conscious, you are of no help to anyone else. The problem becomes when that's all you do is put your own mask on or when putting it on takes 38 or 40 hours a week and there's nothing left to do anything else. Rinse and repeat, if that takes a month, then it's very normal that somebody might look and you'll be like, well, what have you done this month? And effectively, what you're able to say is all I've done is put is take care of myself. Like, whatever that means, maybe do do in the work that needs done focusing on output and activities, whatever the heck it administering the tool. Which I'd argue is not putting the mask on. I think there's a systemic issue here. There's a flywheel or a death spiral. I'm hoping that the flywheel, I don't know how to start it. I know what worked for me in the past is that often enough, reputation and my notoriety for focusing on outcomes and not creating big transformations and not bringing tons of or forcing you to create tons of new roles in the organization and very focused interventions. It created enough awareness word of mouth that even though I heard the Steve Chandler talks about die before you coach or something along those lines I need to look up the exact quote but it's essentially a samurai mindset where going into the coaching conversation going into an agility and gauge length, you're okay with dying. And by being okay with dying, and I don't think we need to really die for it and shouldn't, you know, really die for an agility conversations, but we should be okay with losing and not working with that client, not starting to work with the client or finishing our work with the team because, you know, we said we asked a two-part full question. We weren't willing to live with the theater. We took the mask, the theater mask off. And that was too uncomfortable for people. We want to be in a situation where we know that that happens will be fine. What I think is happening. I mean, It's happening for me. I'm hearing from a lot of people that it's happening to them as well. That flywheel is not good enough right now. And that's starting to be dangerous. You both are bringing me back three days ago and 27 years ago. At the same time, I just did a recertification for first aid CPR AD type stuff. I was a voice scout. I like to be prepared. I like to help other people. I like to know what I need to do to help other people in a moment of need. and the first thing you do before you don't help anybody is you check to see if the environment's safe. If you're going to put yourself at risk and now there's two people that need to go and get help, rather than just one, you don't get involved. This is you showing up as somebody who can offer help if there's an opportunity. It's not your job or anything like that. So you want to help out in the moment of need, but you should do it if it's safe to go and do so. But then 27 years ago, I was a lifeguard out on the beach in New Jersey. And you specifically have to have the courage to put yourself in some dangerous situations to save a life. And sometimes you're doing so like knowingly and relying on your training and getting out there to try to help somebody else out. I think firefighters and police officers and other first responders do this all the time. But I have to look at a situation and say, can I get out there and perhaps help somebody knowing I might be at risk too, but believing I can actually get through this? Or is this so dangerous that I literally have to watch somebody die. Thankfully, I never had to do that. All right, there was a very close situation once, but we didn't get there. And that's a really hard thing. ## What leaders should pay attention to You know, when I think of our work, and I'm going to go and get involved with some... And especially if I'm going to consult with them, right? It's another position of here I am coming in this thing. There is some danger in this situation. Something is not going right. That's why you asked me to come in as an expert to help and try to move things and turn around. So I believe I can, and hopefully they believe that they can too. Maybe sometimes you look at them and go, actually, no, this is not worth both of our safety. to get involved. You ever like put yourself in those positions or head others, getting like that positions like that? Something I've said on here many times is one of the death knells of innovation and outcome thinking, outcome type thinking is just tell me what you want me to do. And that's why you've all and I have talked many times about the different strategies of a consultative and coaching type of statement of work versus a very specific and finite like come in and do this thing, type of approach, right? Because I know it's not right and I know it's not what he's doing, But there are many people and I feel it in myself like a very specific focus for a little bit of money or a lot of money is still seen as my it feels to me like my way of saying just tell me what you want me to do. Like in your example earlier, Rich of like you may have made, I don't know, let's say $15,000. If you would just kept your mouth shut and went and taught the class that the client asked for. And somebody like me could tell you, yeah, but while you go do that, you can advise them on things and you can sell them on things and you can show them this wasn't the right class or the best or maybe we could have done this or whatever. You know, like sure, all of those Monday morning quarterback type things could happen. But what I think this comes down to to me is Um, the question that we were talking about before we hit record, which was, what do we see in people who are, are people doing more or less or about the same of challenging the right thing, saying the hard thing, saying the quiet part out loud as I phrase it, whatever. And I think we're seeing less. I feel myself doing it less. I see other people's doing it less. and I'm even advising my friends, family, and people I work with to exercise more caution, not to not do it. I'm not saying keep your mouth shut. I'm saying put your own mask on first, just a bit. And I wanna reflect, I just wanna tell a super brief story. A few years ago, I was working in the oil and gas industry with a very massive household name. and there is an executive there and I forget his exact title, SVP, something like that. And he specifically sought me out for one-on-one advice. And throughout a bunch of our conversations, he said a phrase to me that'll never forget. He said, you know, one thing I'm so happy about, I can finally do the right thing. And I'm like, I was gobsmacked, like to use a British term. What do you mean by that? Well, I'm about to to retire in the next year. There's nothing that can be wielded against me. He felt ultimately safe and therefore happy to be able to do the right thing, courageous enough to challenge the right thing and all that stuff. And I've told this story, a longer vision of the story on Mastering Agility, so I don't wanna belabor the point, but I was just one of a hundred reminders in the last few years of that same exact concept. Do you all have similar stories, whether it's with yourself or with others about that? I think it's actually a great segue to talk about what we could talk about in our next conversation, because I think that notion of how do you put the air mask on? What does that actually look like? Is an interesting conversation in and of itself? I, like I said earlier, financially independent or about to retire, or I have enough of a name that I know the moment I've finished and engaged with. I have one slot open. I know that I have a waiting list of people waiting for me. That's putting the air mask on and putting the air mask on for in that way enables you to do the right thing in an engaging. I don't know that there's a way to put your air must-clong in an engagement. I need to think about it some more. So I'm I'd be happy to talk more about it. Your story made me put a phrase in my head because it maybe runs a little powder to what you were just saying because the phrase is there's no courage in safety. If you're already safe, what do you need the courage for? There's no risk. There's nothing to be courageous about, right? Versus, so I'm glad that this person finally, at least for a year, got to help out people on the way that they should have been getting help, or probably a decade. And that's awesome that they finally got that. there's, there's more safety, perhaps an opportunity. And if we're lacking opportunity, that's when we start to struggle a little bit. That's when, you know, it's easier to lead into that. Just tell me what to do. And hope that we get to a better place afterwards. You know, I go a little more towards the anti fragile, you know, of things there that your job isn't actually safety. Sure, you're getting a paycheck every week or every month or whatever. And you've got this, you know, employment contract and stuff. But you can be fired right at any time. And maybe if you're active towards the scrum master you're talking about before you've all like actively working just to make themselves needed, but without creating change, maybe you should be fired. Because you're not really doing your job. And if that's the case, like, cool, what's the next thing? Like, with us all running our businesses, we have to constantly think about what's the next thing? How do I continue to move ahead? Because engagement might last a long time might be really short. I bet that we take in hoping that this will expand into something else and we will be able to create more of that meaningful change and impact where the client might not pay off and we have to go do something else. So, you know, all those pieces require a bit of courage because there is no safety net to get into it. And I, you know, I feel a little bit more Go to that in the work that I do and the work I do with other people. All right, I'm gonna drop some heavy stuff here. So let's close here. Thank you for joining us for this special episode of Mastering Agility together with the Scaling with the Gility podcast for Jim and Rich, Anuval, see you around! ## Source boundary These are the published show notes from the podcast feed. They are a starting point for discussion, not a verbatim record of the conversation. The transcript is machine-generated and may contain errors or unlabeled speakers. Check the audio before quoting anyone.