My True Story of Being Part of a Dysfunctional Change Team

Long ago, in a distant land of sticky notes and story mapping, I was part of an agile coaching team for the first time.

You see, when I started in the industry, I was always the lone product person, the lone Scrum Master, the delivery lead, the lone agilist. I mean, I made the lone wolf look cooler than a rockstar on tour, just with more sticky notes and fewer groupies.

Being part of this team was a big deal. All eyes were on us. We were the “gold standard,” and I was excited to join a team of people with way more experience than I had. We kicked off strong, with our values, vision, roadmap, and strategy and all the good things that make up for a strong team formation, but soon, things started to feel off.

We began receiving directives and mandates to install certain frameworks, tools and Events that we knew the leaders and teams weren’t ready for or that would offer little value. These were things the teams didn’t need at this point.

The real shocker?

We found out we were supposed to peddle these changes. The leader of our so-called rockstar band had agreed to all this and passed it up the chain without consulting any of us.

The final punch came when I met one of the higher-ups in the lift. They mentioned that this new way of working had supposedly come from us! Now, I’m terrible at hiding my emotions. My poker face was long gone. It was clear we had no clue about any of it.

What followed was a series of forced events and awkward changes. We were shoved into a framework we never signed up for, and I had to impose it across the entire programme delivery I was leading, which included about 10 teams. The pressure was immense as we had to deliver ahead of our competitors, we worked across 5 time zones and this added layer of “it has to be done” was only slowing everything down.

Every fibre of my body rejected it. I got the ick… big time

The team started to fall apart, everyone stayed silent during the meetings, psychological safety was at an all time low and the smell of distrust was everywhere.
We could no longer smell the Neuland markers.

That was the day I said to myself: when I got my chance to lead, I would make sure change was done 𝒘𝒊𝒕𝒉 people, not 𝒕𝒐 people and ever since, I’ve lived by that motto.

PS: These are my MIL’s cats. I am a dog person just in case anyone is wondering.