Adopting an Agile Mindset Beyond Ceremonies

The Unbearable Nonsense of Being vs. Doing Agile Years ago, a struggling team climbed the highest mountain to consult an Agile guru. They'd tried every framework, read every guidebook, followed every ritual - and still... Performance was poor. Retros were pointless. Delivery was unreliable. Morale was low. Once at the summit, exhausted from the journey, they asked, "Oh great one, we’ve done everything - how can we finally achieve agility?" The guru stroked his beard and said, "You have been doing, but not being." He said nothing more. The team gasped. Enlightenment! They wrote it down, thanked him, and began their descent. Halfway down, someone asked: "Hey, what the hell does that even mean?" No one knew. Back at work, they held the same standups, the same planning, the same estimation and velocity debates. Nothing had changed - except now they had a motivational poster - and a selfie with the guru. The False Choice "Doing vs being Agile" is one of the laziest clichés in the Agile community. The trope goes: Doing Agile is mindless compliance. Being Agile is a transcendent mindset where teams spontaneously collaborate, adapt, and deliver value in perfect harmony. But there is no being without doing. And no doing without being. You can't separate them. They shape each other. Want to cultivate an agile mindset? Practice. Iterate. Gather feedback. Inspect. Adapt. Over time, the way you think will evolve. Want to improve the practices? Reflect on the theories and principles behind them. Ask why you're doing them. Adapt them to serve the values you claim to hold. The guru's dichotomy is seductive, but it's not deep. Worse, it may be a consultant's vague critique: "Ah, I see the problem here - you're doing Agile, but not being Agile. You need more workshops." Convenient. Rituals Aren't the Problem People love to blame the ceremonies - planning, standups, reviews, retros. (Side note: I loathe the word ceremony in this context.) But the problem isn't the rituals per se. It's your relationship to them - revealed only through behavior. Do you use standups to coordinate work or just report status? Do you discuss observations and inspect data in retros, or just share kudos and blame? Do you align work with strategy and anticipate risks, or just fill the sprint backlog? Rituals are scaffolding. But scaffolding is only useful if you're building something. Wiser Questions Forget doing vs being. Ask, are we: -Delivering value incrementally? -Inspecting and adapting? -Reducing waste and rework? -Working sustainably? If not, then both your mindset and your methods need work. No Riddles The guru wasn't enlightened. He was pretentious and unhelpful. Agility isn't found in a riddle. It's forged in the messy, disciplined grind of trying, reflecting, adjusting - and repeating. Mindset isn't some parallel track. Behavior produces experience. Experience shapes mindset. They're recursive, not sequential. You become agile through practice.

"Agile doesn’t work" "At least not here" I’ve heard this sentence too many times and sometimes, I don’t even argue back. Because truthfully? What many organizations implemented was never Agile. It was performance. - Stand-ups became reporting sessions. - Sprints became rushed cycles of output. - Retrospectives became therapy rooms with no follow-through. Everybody followed the structure. Nothing actually changed. So leadership eventually says, “Agile doesn’t work.” But here’s what I’ve seen working inside real delivery environments not conference slides, not theory, real pressure: 𝘼𝙜𝙞𝙡𝙚 𝙝𝙖𝙧𝙙𝙡𝙮 𝙛𝙖𝙞𝙡 𝙗𝙚𝙘𝙖𝙪𝙨𝙚 𝙤𝙛 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙛𝙧𝙖𝙢𝙚𝙬𝙤𝙧𝙠 𝙗𝙪𝙩 𝙢𝙤𝙨𝙩𝙡𝙮 𝙗𝙚𝙘𝙖𝙪𝙨𝙚 𝙤𝙧𝙜𝙖𝙣𝙞𝙯𝙖𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣𝙨 𝙬𝙖𝙣𝙩 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙘𝙚𝙧𝙚𝙢𝙤𝙣𝙞𝙚𝙨 𝙬𝙞𝙩𝙝𝙤𝙪𝙩 𝙘𝙝𝙖𝙣𝙜𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙝𝙤𝙬 𝙙𝙚𝙘𝙞𝙨𝙞𝙤𝙣𝙨 𝙖𝙧𝙚 𝙢𝙖𝙙𝙚. You can run every Scrum event on schedule and still miss value. Because Agile was never about the meetings. It’s more... ..about how work flows. ...about how quickly you learn. ....about whether priorities are clear. .....about whether leadership actually adjusts when reality shifts. When someone tells me Agile won’t work in their environment, I don’t defend the framework. I simplify. Three things almost always work: 1. 𝙎𝙝𝙤𝙧𝙩𝙚𝙣 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙛𝙚𝙚𝙙𝙗𝙖𝙘𝙠 𝙡𝙤𝙤𝙥. Stop building in isolation. Show early. Learn early. Correct early. 2. 𝙈𝙖𝙠𝙚 𝙥𝙧𝙞𝙤𝙧𝙞𝙩𝙞𝙚𝙨 𝙥𝙖𝙞𝙣𝙛𝙪𝙡𝙡𝙮 𝙫𝙞𝙨𝙞𝙗𝙡𝙚. If everything is important, nothing is. 3. 𝙍𝙚𝙛𝙡𝙚𝙘𝙩 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙘𝙝𝙖𝙣𝙜𝙚 𝙨𝙤𝙢𝙚𝙩𝙝𝙞𝙣𝙜.. If nothing changes after a retrospective, it was just a conversation. Now you see you don’t need a dramatic transformation. You only need disciplined execution habits. Start small. Fix one behavior. Strengthen one decision point. Improve one feedback cycle. #Agile is not magic but a structured learning under constraint. And constraint is something every organization already has. As we step into a new month and a new week, many teams will launch fresh plans, new ceremonies, and new transformation conversations. My focus remains simpler than that: Better execution. Clearer decisions. Faster learning. Because progress rarely comes from doing more Agile but from working more honestly. Happy New Week Happy New Month Follow Benjamina for practical perspectives on #projectexecution, #leadership judgment, and #delivery under real constraints.

You poured money into your agile transformation. Your teams are busy. Standups, retros, all the ceremonies—check. The reports say velocity is up. But look past the new roles, the vanity metrics, the maturity assessments. It still feels slow. Where’s the business impact? The old playbook says double down. Fix the teams. Bring in more coaches. More training. Push the flywheel harder. But most leaders I talk to are out of patience—and out of budget. So they give up. The theater rolls on. The old project mindset creeps back in. Here’s the hard truth: You can’t fix this at the team level. The problem isn’t your teams. It’s the game they’re forced to play. After 15 years helping companies build real agility, here's a better pattern that emerged as more sustainable and effective: stop trying to fix the teams. Go upstream. Fix the system they’re stuck in. Start or Pivot to the company or portfolio level. Create a company-level initiatives Kanban. apply the patterns and best practices of product ownership at the portfolio level. Use Lean Product Management to derisk your enterprise bets. When leaders engage at this level, they stop being passengers in a transformation that’s happening to them. They become the drivers. They get the power to lead real change. They can set priorities and make tradeoffs that create clarity for dozens of teams. Suddenly, alignment and collaboration become possible. Autonomy and Purpose unlock motivation and engagement in the trenches. They can limit work in process. That creates focus. It signals real leadership. They can reorganize around outcomes. Break painful dependencies. Point capacity at what matters most. I’ve seen it firsthand. A few well-placed interventions upstream lead to outsized gains: faster delivery, more innovation, clearer teams, real value. This video is an excerpt from a case study where leaders at a global futures exchange changed the trajectory of their SAFe-based Product Operating Model transformation when we went upstream to introduce a product-oriented leaner portfolio management approach. Going upstream used to be the maverick move. Most consulting firms avoided it. (can you guess why? hint - think of their incentives / business model ) Now, it’s going mainstream. Leaders like you want real agility ROI—not vanity, not theater. What's one small way you could go upstream next week? (if you want some ideas - happy to discuss)

Real talk: Your agile process is waterfall in disguise. I used to be an agile evangelist. Now I'm just tired. Here's the uncomfortable truth: 1. Daily standups are status meetings 2. Sprint planning is mini-waterfall 3. Backlogs are graveyards of good intentions 4. Retrospectives are venting sessions Sound familiar? Yeah, I've been there too. 🤦♂️ Real agility isn't about ceremonies. It's about: 1. Embracing change (even when it hurts) 2. Delivering value (not story points) 3. Collaborating (not just sitting together) 4. Continuously improving (not just talking about it) I’ve spent hours arguing about the 'right' way to estimate story points and view velocity. Don't be like past me. Agile isn't a religion. It's a toolbox. Use what works, ditch what doesn't. What 'agile' practice do you think is total BS? Confess below. I promise not to judge (much). 😉

I embraced Agile in 2013. Back then, it was seen as a project delivery framework. But for me, it became something far more powerful—it became a career-defining mindset. Agile taught me to: Lead with adaptability, not authority Embrace feedback as fuel for growth Shift from delivering outputs to delivering outcomes I didn’t just apply Agile principles—I championed them. I led the virtual Agile Community of Practice from 2014 onwards —years before the concept of “virtual leadership” became mainstream. Through this community, I discovered how to: Influence without hierarchy Build trust across cultures and time zones Foster innovation through inclusion and collaboration That experience was a pivot point in my journey. It helped me transition from project manager to transformation leader, from process-focused to people-first. Agile didn’t just change how I worked—it changed how I led. And it propelled me into opportunities I hadn’t imagined. To those wondering how to master Agile: Start with the values Practice adaptability in your everyday work Get involved in a community—it’s where real transformation begins The trajectory of your career can shift with one mindset—and for me, that mindset was Agile. #AgileW2W #TransformationLeader #AgileLeadership #SpeakerPriya