I posted a few pieces on LinkedIn suggesting defining a ‘hardcore agile’; I like the concept but think I didn’t frame the issue as well as I want to. So let me try again and set out a starting point for thinking about it.
What the heck is ‘hardcore’??
Well, I don’t mean adult movies. I’ve used and heard the term used in describing someone who is deeply committed to a mission. As in ‘they are hardcore about being a competitive cyclist’ or ‘she is hardcore at the gym.’ More famously, Elon Musk used it in his reboot of Twitter (X, whatever…) when he told the team that he only wanted ‘hardcore’ employees.
To him, that sure seems to be people committed to the company at the expense of their own well-being (which isn’t sustainable, and so isn’t really in the interest of the company). And that’s an interesting thing and what I want to seize on in my own definition.
I think, at some level, to be hardcore is to show a willingness to sacrifice for some goal.
Within the agile community, a lot of what we have pushed forward is kind of anti-hardcore. We want workers to be secure, fulfilled, happy, actualized. And we believe – with some reason – that if people feel good they will in turn do good work.
What we don’t talk about a lot is people being challenged, struggling to achieve, facing and overcoming difficulty.
It’s like we want the workplace to be one of the modern playgrounds, with rounded plastic play equipment that’s never more than 3’ off the ground.
Well, that’s changing.
It’s changing for both bad reasons and good ones. And the point of what I want to write is to a) let people have a different take on how the world is changing around us so we can react better; b) try and steer leaders – executives – who are seeing and riding this wave into leveraging it for longterm success and not short-term gains. To be Musk or Jobs and not Chainsaw Al.
The bad reasons aren’t really bad, they are just exogenous and painful. We’ve created insane amounts of financial and social debt, and the books are going to be balanced whether we like it or not. Organizations are going to change in response because they want to survive, and if they don’t change, they won’t (survive).
The good reasons are that we’ve created a population of people who are somewhat lost, and who are discovering that feeling good isn’t satisfying, and that no amount of self-esteem and self-actualization can substitute for an actual earned sense of accomplishment.
That’s where ‘hardcore agile’ begins. As a way of applying the valuable lessons agile can teach to those two problems – organizational survival and personal growth.
So what’s different about hardcore?
Well, let me suggest a few things from an organizational point of view, and then several from a personal.
First, let me set out a few key points:
I absolutely believe that doing work in agile ways helps create value for organizations, and that agile folks have a lot to say about helping organizations thrive. But I think we’ve bumped hard into the limits of what agile (as it’s practiced) can address. First, and foremost because agile doesn’t have a lot to say about actually running organizations (what I call the ‘power and money’ problem) or about actual operations (as opposed to product development/delivery).
This presents two broad options for us in the agile community going forward: either a) we take a seat at the table and learn how to collaborate with these two areas; or b) we figure out what changed in these areas deliver agile outcomes.
Now that’s a little hard because agile hasn’t centered key issues in organizational health enough, and needs to shift ground to do better. Let me be simple-minded: Organizations have to make enough money to pay the bills. To do this, they have to make customers (and stakeholders) happy. That’s a broader and more meaningful remit than “deliver value” which is typically what agile leaders focus on.
I also believe that organizations that are inhumane or even cruel – that burn employees out – aren’t acting in their own long-term interest. But neither are companies that center employee comfort over actual success. And I’ll take it a step further and say that these companies are just as bad for employees as the abusive ones. If we look around, we see increasing levels of emotional dysfunction – there are a lot of roots to this, but I’ll suggest that one of them is that we have pulled folks away from being challenged and having the possibility of succeeding where challenged.
The highest performing teams I’ve ever been a part of were faced with meaningful challenges and the outcome was absolutely uncertain.
I genuinely believe that people rise to meet challenges when properly supported, and that an organization that is both supportive and challenging will maximize people’s potential – as well as the organization’s success.
I think that our challenge as agilists is to help create those organizations.