Agile In Four Or 4 words

I've been heavily reflecting on last week's post agile in 3 words and I'm not happy enough with it.

So this "Agile In 4 Words" is a response to that previous thought - to bring in a previous previous thought I captured in this older post Open question how.

I think the shortest summary to what is agile - other than "collaborative lightweight working practices" that means many different abstract things to many different people I've tried it on...and gotten nowhere with, is actually:

"How can I help?"

This one induces in the person asking out loud or silently to themselves the team working principles, the proaction, the learning, and more. That lovely "how?" question really opens things up more for everyone!

Especially in response to my earlier attempt "Can I help?" - a simple "No" would stop anyone in their tracks. And that "No" is to be expected when people are massively in a state of focus and don't want any interruptions.

The "simple" introduction of the "How" makes this an engaging question that any team member can get creative with by themselves and come up with more creative suggestions - even innovative practice improvements!

How do you think this is better or worse than the earlier version? Or...indeed..."How can you help?" :-)

Agile In 4 Words - How Can I Help?

Thankyou for supporting!

Agile In Three Or 3 Words

How many times have I heard the following from new clients and other coaches telling stories about their "difficult" clients? That's why I crafted this post!

Agile In 3 Words Is Easy

Actually explaining agile quickly, succinctly and simply for anyone, or any team or any organisation of any size is really easy, if you do the work (inspired by Byron Katie). It's simply you, and everyone in your organisation, and every supplier, client, consultant, advisor, regulator and customer around your organisation offering really often:

"Can I help?"

For agile in 3 words it is as simple as this! The implication is that everyone proacts to help each other all the time with everything from making tea to delivering the most complex system requiring 100's of people interlocking and aligning.

As an agile coach one of the things I look/listen out for when assessing the agile fluency of an organisation is how many times I hear the above line, and especially its followup which is highly noticeable in environments where there is a great deal of proaction - namely:

"Thank you!"

Now, go do the work! Thankyou for reading and supporting! :-)