In many modern organizations, the ambition to “go agile” often sparks excitement, investment, and the hiring of various coaches—Agile Coaches, Business Agility Coaches, Product Coaches, and more. But instead of cohesive progress, what sometimes emerges is a chaotic tableau of competing voices, priorities, and methods. It is also, not uncommon to see coaches changing their “type_of”, to simply respond to shifting market trends. Let’s illustrate this problem—not just conceptually, but literally. Please, refer to the image above.
The Scene: A Boardroom Tug-of-War
In the middle of a large executive board room, there’s a large round table—a classic symbol of collaboration and equality. Standing on top of the table is “Agile PMO” person who issues directives to others, without true system stewardship and cross-functional synchronization. In a way, this is also an oxymoron, since an organizational structure, called PMO, is not agile, by its very nature. What is needed is collaborative systems thinking, shared goals, and co-created strategies. However, they are clearly absent on the picture.
Surrounding the table are three individuals, each facing the table, grabbing onto its legs and pulling it in different directions, drenched in sweat and determination to “win the effort”:
- Agile Coach
- Business Agility Coach
- Product Coach
The Trap of Local Optimization
This image represents a classic anti-pattern: local optimization. Each coach is optimizing for his/her own focus of work—but at the expense of global outcomes. Everyone is acting in isolation, pursuing excellence in their own dimension without regard to the larger whole. As a result, the table—the metaphor for the organization—does not move. It groans and risks collapse. Instead of system-wide alignment and flow, we get fragmented agility: “my agile vs. your agile” and it manifests itself, as redundant and disconnected initiatives, conflicting priorities and internal rivalry.
What’s most ironic is that each coach may believe they are “doing the right thing”—pushing their priorities, getting buy-in, and checking boxes. But in truth is that no one is winning. The organization suffers from lack of coherence, teams experience friction instead of flow, and the transformation stalls.
It’s not agility. It’s a lose-lose game, disguised as progress.
Key Takeaways
- Fragmented agility is a real risk in large transformations. Often, organizations do not even realize that they “promote” bad behaviors by creating bad conditions and setting bad goals.
- Local optimization without systems alignment leads to stagnation, not progress. This leads to system/global sub-optimization.
- When historically outdated organizational structures (e.g. PMO) are tasked with setting the tone and running the show, no meaningful changes should be expected.
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