agile ⁽¹⁾

"You were the chosen one." That's how I feel about what happened to agile. We took beautiful principles for unleashing human potential and turned them into exactly what we were trying to escape: rigid ceremonies, certification mills, and story point torture sessions.

What Went Wrong:
🏝️ Cargo cult behavior: Copying agile forms without understanding the spirit
📜 Certification industrial complex: Weekend certifications and 150+ page frameworks
⚖️ Principles vs practices: We codified flexibility and removed adaptability
🔄 The scaling trap: When "this helped our team" becomes "mandatory for all teams"

What Actually Works:
✅ Experimenting and Learning is REAL agility
✅ Principles (trust, transparency) beat frameworks every time
✅ Voluntary adoption vs mandated compliance
✅ Local ownership vs corporate scaling

Real Examples:

• Valve: No hierarchy, billions in revenue through principles over process
• W.L. Gore: Lattice organization enabling constant innovation
• Spotify: Evolved organically, never became rigid doctrine

The Pattern:

• Boeing (rigid processes) failed.
• Alcoa (flexible principles) succeeded.

Your approach avoids the agile trap by growing change organically with informal leaders instead of imposing structure from above.