Super Heroes Needed

Dr BJ Fogg has come up with a new and wonderfully simple change model. The Fogg Behavior Model is one that coaches, clients, and organizations would benefit from paying attention to. It is a blindingly simple model with two axis – ‘Motivation’ on the vertical, and ‘Ability’ on the horizontal. The less motivated a person or an organization is to make a change, the greater the effort/skill/ability is that is needed to effect the change.

Start With Why

I thought Simon Sinek’s book “Start with Why” was slightly disappointing and a bit too simplistic…but it does make for a great meme. How many organizations starting an Agile Transformation really understand and communicate why they should transform?

This matters to Agile Coaches because we often get called in to transform clients that aren’t very motivated to do so, and that can be a superhuman effort. We end up spending a lot of time on the ‘ability’ axis – both in improving our own skills in change management, and in finding ways to increase our clients’ own ability in Agile. However, perhaps if we spent more time on addressing the question of why organizations want to become Agile, and what is preventing them from already being Agile, we would have less need for ever-greater supermen and wonderwomen coaches.