The Unbearable Lightness of Agile

How business executives took the good of Agile and killed it

Conflict is as integral and essential to the human experience as birth, love, and death. From struggle comes both the creative and the destructive, and the two are often intertwined. No more so than in the protests and demonstrations for freedom we seen recently.

Milan Kundera, one of the great 20th century writers, experienced the struggle first hand in the former Czechoslovakia during the Prague Spring of 1968. Of the future, he wrote:

“People are always shouting they want to create a better future. It’s not true. The future is an apathetic void of no interest to anyone.”

How often do we talk about change but change never comes about? We want to lose the extra weight, learn a new skill, live in another country, but tomorrow is no different than today. The idea of change is motivating until the reality of how to change sets in. Change is conflict.

So it is when corporate executives want to enact “change” in the organization, they make loud pronouncements and bold promises. There is pomp and excitement and a huge rush of activity. In the end however, the vaunted change runs up into the vast apathetic void.