My friend and colleague Mike Hall wrote an insightful article entitled—Starting an Agile Transformation with Understanding, not that long ago. It contains the following quote quite early in the article. It touched me deeply with its truth and I thought I’d share it—
Agile Coaches operating as true change agents will spend the first few months building relationships and understanding how your business works. They will lead with empathy and seek to understand. They will dig for the historical perspective of why things are the way they are, in a non-judgmental way. They will observe, ask questions, interview, and establish a “mental context” prior to making any change recommendations. Don’t short change this crucial time period – it is absolutely required for the upcoming Agile recommendations to be meaningful!
The three things that stood out to me from the quote and in reading the article were: Relationship, Empathy, and Understanding.