Human-Centric Agility Framework

Human-Centric Agility Framework illustration © 2018 Debi Prasad Mahapatra.
Click or tap to view large.

Human-Centric Agility Framework is an approach to establish organic human-centric agile ways of working within the world of work by

• bringing focus back to the basics, explicitly and meticulously fighting Fake Agile[Link] and preventing wastage of human lives and organizational lives, and 
• embedding Servant Leadership[Link], human-centricity, agility, ethics and 'Employees First is the first step to Customers First' in the organisational cultures.

This approach ultimately leads to better lives, better business outcomes and a better society in the context of the world of work.

The Human-Centric Agility Framework

In the context of the Human-Centric Agility Framework, organizational culture is considered a container of the cultural elements that lead to the 'outcomes'. The Human-Centric Agility Framework is not a prescription. It is about the WHATs, and not about the HOWs which are described elsewhere outside this framework-description.

The Human-Centric Agility Framework benefits from the Lean Principles - Identify Value, Map the Value Stream, Create Flow, Establish Pull and Pursue Perfection - through the overlap[Link] between the Lean Principles and Scrum. 

The Root Elements

In the Human-Centric Agility Framework, the Root Elements - Agile Values and Principles, Scrum, Servant Leadership and Ethics - are a small set of complementing and cohesive pieces, where one leads to another, one enhances another, and one supports another etc. 

With the Root Elements in place in their real intended form, the Cultural Elements show up at various levels of interactions and engagement (1) between team members, between teams, between departments, between business units and between businesses, (2) with the customers, (3) with the society at large etc. Strong and valuable habits built - associated with behavioural patterns - in smaller and lower-level contexts expand into larger (broader) and higher-level contexts.

Note: In case it is ascertained that Scrum is not the most suitable Agile Framework for a particular context, another suitable framework could be used instead as long as that (1) isn’t in conflict with the rest of the Root Elements, and (2) as a part of the cohesive set of Root Elements, leads to the intended Outcomes.

The Cultural Elements

Even though the Cultural Elements - Agile Mindset, Growth Mindset, Ownership Culture, Continuous Collaboration, Continuous Learning, Continuous Improvement, Empiricism, Listening, Psychological Safety, Morality, Trust and Resilience - usually show up as a set of complementing and cohesive pieces, where one leads to another, one enhances another and one supports another etc., it’s not a fixed or rigid set.

Depending on the organizational context in question, with the Root Elements in place, additional valuable Cultural Elements can as well show up. Those additional elements usually include, but are not limited to, the Cultural Elements that embracing Agile Values and Principles, Scrum, Servant Leadership and Ethics usually lead to; for example, demonstration of Courage, Commitment, Focus, Openness, and Respect, and other behaviours that those Cultural Elements in turn generally result in: effective and transparent communication etc.

The Outcomes

Even the Outcomes - Greater Value Delivery, Lower Cost, Greater Quality, Greater Innovation, Improved Time to Market, Customer Delight, Greater Well-being and a Better Society - usually show up as a set of complementing and cohesive pieces, where one leads to another, one enhances another, and one supports another etc. However, it’s neither a fixed, nor a rigid set. Depending on the broader organizational-socioeconomic context in question, additional great Outcomes, like significantly improved employee retention / talent retention etc., can as well show up with the Cultural Elements and the Root Elements in place. Those additional Outcomes usually include, but are not limited to, the Outcomes that embracing Agile Values and Principles, Scrum, Servant Leadership and Ethics usually lead to.

The Root Elements and the Cultural Elements, together, (a) lead to the Outcomes and (b) support in sustaining the Outcomes. It's a matter of synergy when it comes to the Root Elements. The interaction and cooperation amongst the Root Elements - Agile Values and Principles, Scrum, Servant Leadership and Ethics - lead to a whole that is significantly greater than the simple sum of its parts - the individual Root Elements. In case of any missing pieces either in the set of Cultural Elements or the set of Outcomes, a very close look needs to be taken at the set of Root Elements to identify the root cause.

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The Origin

The Human-Centric Agility Framework is a proposition that I have arrived at based on some of my fundamental beliefs, professional experience, ideas, life experiences and more specifically the awareness that I have gained from one of my favourite long-term slow-paced weekends research projects in which I have been studying, since 2010, human-centric ways of working, agile ways of working, and how those two impact each other within diverse organisational cultures, national cultures and subcultures, in the context of Europe, Asia and North America, where I have lived and worked. The key question that has driven all this exploration is this: Why are some business organisations massively more successful than others in achieving and benefitting from agility?

I believe that there is no real value in (a) attempting to 'glorify' the findings of this research ;-), or (b) making the outcomes of this research 'appear' more credible, by publishing the potentially distracting internal details of the research :-). So, I intend to refrain from doing that. As you know, one size doesn't fit all; and, of course, copy-and-paste doesn't generally work; what worked in one business organisation might not work in another; pretty much every context is unique. The idea is to potentially help the world of work benefit from the application of the findings or outcomes of this research. Anyway, the greatest value of an idea is in the outcomes of its application. So, let's dive in.

The major findings

Well, here are some of the major findings from the aforementioned weekends research project in which I have been studying Human-Centric Ways of Working:

Numerous business organizations have failed to benefit from embracing Agile and Servant Leadership. And those organizations have deprived themselves of better outcomes in terms of significantly better business results. This situation is based primarily on the following:

• So many business organizations have failed to understand Agile, agility and Servant Leadership reasonably well.
• Lack of knowledge and awareness has resulted in massively wrong and suboptimal ways of applying Agile, leading to highly undesirable outcomes.
• Despite understanding Agile and agility reasonably well, numerous other business organizations have failed to apply Agile reasonably well.
• There have been massive wastage of human and organizational lives (explained below in the Fundamental Beliefs section).

Beyond those, I have also found that so many people have been deprived of better lives within the world of work. I believe that the society in general, and the world of work in particular, would be much better places if the aforementioned problems could be resolved.

On the other hand, those business organizations that have been extremely successful in benefiting immensely from Agile are the ones that have (a) really understood and applied the Agile values and principles, (b) understood really well the why, what and how pertaining to the Agile Framework they have used, (c) been able to embed Agile values and principles, Servant Leadership, Ethics, 'Employees First is the first step to Customers First' in their organizational cultures.

The fundamental beliefs

Human-Centric Agility is based on these fundamental beliefs.

• How work gets done has a profound impact on how people doing the work feel. How people feel has a profound impact on how a society behaves. That's how, 'how work gets done' impacts the society. That's how, life within the 'world of work' affects life outside the 'world of work'.
• Time is life within the world of work, and outside. Even though one doesn't know how much of it is exactly left, every day, there is a little lesser of time left in one's life. Every day, there is a little lesser of one's life left. If you don't have time, you don't exist! And that mustn't necessarily lead to fear. Instead, every day, that needs to motivate one to be a little pickier and more selective in the way one works over the remaining part of one’s life.
• There are ‘better ways of working’ and there are ‘wasteful ways of working’. In the context of business organizations, the human-centric ways of working, which are the ‘better ways of working’, generally lead to greater well-being, and significantly better outcomes in terms of Lower Cost, Greater Quality, Greater Innovation, Improved Time to Market with the best possible value, and the resultant Greater Customer Delight.
• Embracing Agile values and principles, and applying Servant Leadership and Ethics to the world of work generally lead to some of the most prominent human-centric ways of working, and a significantly stronger sense of psychological safety.
• The 'wasteful ways of working', which are not human-centric, lead to wastage of human lives and organizational lives. Wastage of human intellectual capacity, effort, time, energy, creativity, and focus etc. is a wastage of precious human life. And, wastage of human life within an organization is a wastage of ‘Organizational Life’; and when this ‘wastage’ takes place, people and the business organizations in question achieve significantly less within their respective lives.
• Nurturing, encouraging and strengthening those wasteful ways of working that lead to wastage of human and organizational lives is absolutely unethical and is nothing less than criminal.
• Through application of human-centric ways of working within business organizations, it’s absolutely feasible to satisfy these 3 concurrent needs - Better Lives, Better Business Results and a Better Society - without having to drop one to pick another, or one at the cost of another.

Why another Agile Framework? 

The problem with the current state of affairs

Isn't Agile inherently Human-Centric? Yes, Agile is indeed inherently human-centric to a great extent. However, it's really unfortunate that, in many a case the very ‘basics’ around Agile and agility have been buried in misinformation, misinterpretation, ritualization, 'keeping things implicit', excessive commercialization etc. and those ‘basics’ have unfortunately been lost, diluted, forgotten and ignored to a certain degree over time.

Thus, there is an urgent need to make explicit what has remained implicit, bring to the forefront what has been given a back seat, and strengthen the Agile practitioner community's focus on the fundamentally basic and significant elements around agility that lead to the intended benefits and targeted outcomes of applying Agile.

What's missing?

Fighting Fake Agile

Beyond its 3 goals and 7 foundational features described below, the Human-Centric Agility Framework comes into picture for another reason as well: Fake Agile[Link]. It's 2018, and in many industries, it's now difficult to find a business organization that has not tried Agile in some shape and form. So, it's difficult to find a pristine one, a clean slate, to start the agility journey with. If it's not pristine, if it's not a clean slate, there is always a possibility that Fake Agile has come into existence in some shape and form!

Fake Agile comes in different shapes and sizes; and so does Real Agile. Manifestations of Real Agile in diverse contexts don't generally look absolutely uniform. However, many of the fundamentals or basics of Agile remain absolutely relevant across diverse contexts. And a departure from those fundamentals or basics leads to certain forms of Fake Agile[Link]. And it's not that difficult to distinguish between Fake Agile and Real Agile!

Eradication of Fake Agile is necessary for making room for ‘Real Agile’. It’s, however, difficult to find another Agile Framework that has (1) a particularly explicit and clear inherent focus on fighting Fake Agile, and (2) Fighting Fake Agile' as an explicit essential part or feature and a requirement and an explicit expectation.

Over time, Fake Agile has eaten into real Agile, massively reducing the human-centric aspect of Agile, in the process. Fake Agile is so commonplace and deep-rooted in business organizations worldwide that it requires a framework explicitly focused on reviving the gradually lost, forgotten and ignored human-centricity in Agile. It's about making Agile human-centric again.

Prevention of wastage of human lives and organizational lives

Investment of human intellectual capacity, effort, time, focus, creativity, and energy in activities that don’t generally lead to creation of 'real value' is actually not investment; that’s wastage. That's precisely wastage of precious human life. Wastage of human life significantly diminishes what a human being could achieve within its lifetime. Wastage of human lives within a business organization is essentially wastage of organizational life. Wastage of organizational life significantly diminishes what an organization could achieve within its lifetime, in terms of its vision and mission. 

And, of course, it’s not particularly easy to find another Agile Framework that has (1) a particularly explicit and clear inherent meticulous focus on prevention of wastage of human lives and organizational lives, and (2) 'prevention of wastage of human lives and organizational lives' as an explicit part or feature and a requirement and an explicit purpose.

Servant Leadership

It’s equally difficult to find many Agile Frameworks that (1) don’t just associate Servant Leadership with or confine that to any particular role (or equivalent) pertaining to the frameworks in question, but do have Servant Leadership as an explicit essential part of the very frameworks, and (2) explicitly aim at and facilitate embedding Servant Leadership in the organizational cultures.

Human-Centricity

Again, it’s difficult to find many Agile Frameworks that have (1) a particularly explicit and clear inherent focus on Human-Centricity in terms of its generic and the broadest possible meaning, and (2) Human-Centricity as an explicit essential part or feature.

Embedding agility in the organizational culture

It’s not exactly easy to find many Agile Frameworks that have (1) a particularly explicit and clear inherent focus on 'embedding agility in the organizational culture', and (2) 'Embedding agility in the organizational culture' as an explicit essential part or feature and a requirement and an explicit expectation.

Ethics

It’s difficult to find another Agile Frameworks that (1) goes well beyond just describing the Code of Ethics or Ethical Standards or similar for the people directly associated with the Agile Framework in question and (2) has (a) Ethics as an explicit essential part, and (b) a particularly explicit and clear inherent focus on Ethics - one of the highest of all standards - in terms of its generic and the broadest possible meaning.

Employees First is the first step to Customers First

Again, it’s difficult to find many Agile Frameworks that have (1) a particularly explicit and clear inherent focus on 'Employees First is the first step to Customers First' in terms of its generic and the broadest possible meaning, and (2) 'Employees First is the first step to Customers First' as an explicit essential part or feature.

The Human-Centric Agility Framework is a humble but very authentic explicit attempt at re-establishing real human-centric agility. Without human-centricity, it just doesn't lead to Better Lives, Better Business Results and a Better Society on a sustainable basis. Human-centricity is a matter of ethics. And, Servant Leadership tremendously boosts human-centricity. The Human-Centric Agility Framework attempts to support business organizations in embracing holistic human-centric agility in a sustained fashion. The foundational building blocks of this framework, the Root Elements, have existed for a very long time; but, in many a case, those have frequently been less understood and easily forgotten or ignored. The Human-Centric Agility Framework has been built on the foundation of the established goodness of great tried and tested building blocks. And an attempt to reinvent the wheel has consciously been avoided :-).

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Why this Agile Framework?

Here is why the Human-Centric Agility Framework came into existence.

3 Goals

There must exist at least one Agile Framework the foundational focus of which is to achieve the concurrent and cohesive goals based on the foundational features listed below. And, that’s where the Human-Centric Agility Framework comes into picture.

1. Significantly Better Lives for all the people touched by business organizations
2. Significantly Better Business Results
3. A significantly Better Society

 

7 Foundational Features

The idea is that there must be an Agile Framework that explicitly and meticulously focuses on 'all' of these 7 features, without dropping one to pick another, or one at the cost of another: 

1. Fighting Fake Agile 
2. Prevention of wastage of human lives and organizational lives
3. Embedding Servant Leadership[Link] in the organisational cultures
4. Embedding human-centricity in the organisational cultures
5. Embedding agility in the organisational cultures
6. Embedding ethics in the organisational cultures
7. Helping organizations live 'Employees First is the first step to Customers First'

The 3 goals of Human-Centric Agility Framework are a set of complementing and cohesive pieces, where one leads to another, one enhances another, and one supports another etc. as depicted in the Human-Centric Agility Cohesive Set of Goals illustration below.

Human-Centric Agility Cohesive Set of Goals illustration. © 2018 Debi Prasad Mahapatra.
Click or tap to view large.

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What needs to be done?

These two aspects are involved in attaining Human-Centric Agility:

1. Eradication of Fake Agile[Link] to make room for ‘Real Agile’
2. Embedding Human-Centric agility in organizational cultures

Here is a schematic, titled ‘Human-Centric Agility Framework and Organizational Culture - The Big Picture’, below that depicts where the Human-Centric Agility Framework is applied and what the collective ‘big picture’ looks like. This schematic is based on the SHOD Framework[Link] [Sustainable Holistic Organization Development Framework, 2012].

Human-Centric Agility Framework and Organizational Culture - The Big Picture illustration © 2018 Debi Prasad Mahapatra.
Click or tap to view large.

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Spectrum of Influence and the Golden Intersection

There is a continuous bidirectional interaction between an individual and a team that the individual in question belongs to, between a team and a business organization, between the business organization and the society at large, between the individual and the business organization, and between the individual and the society at large as depicted in the Human-Centric Agility - The Spectrum of Influence illustration below. And, of course, at a macro level, an entire business organization is a cross-functional team. And yet again, it comes down to the assertion that how work gets done has a profound impact on how people doing the work feel. How people feel has a profound impact on how a society behaves. That's how, 'how work gets done' impacts the society. That's how, life within the 'world of work' affects life outside the 'world of work'.

Human-Centric Agility - The Spectrum of Influence illustration. © 2018 Debi Prasad Mahapatra.
Click or tap to view large.

Human-Centric Agility lies at the heart of the intersection of Better Lives, Better Business Results and a Better Society as depicted in the Human-Centric Agility - The Golden Intersection illustration below.

Human-Centric Agility - The Golden Intersection illustration © 2018 Debi Prasad Mahapatra.
Click or tap to view large.

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Disambiguation

Human beings: Which human beings the Human-Centric Agility Framework refers to? It’s about all the human beings, inside and outside business organizations, touched in one way or other by business organizations. That includes (a) the people inside business organizations who are directly or indirectly involved in creating value for the customers of the business organizations; and (b) the customers, and direct and indirect users and beneficiaries of the value created by the business organizations etc.

Human-Centric: If something is human-centric, that 'something' is significantly suitable to serve or be useful for human beings in particular. Among many alternatives, the human-centric ones are the best ones for human beings.

Human-Centric Agility Framework: Human-Centric Agility is a non-prescriptive generic framework that supports attaining ‘Sustainable Holistic Organizational Agility’ in the broadest possible context. This is not another Agile Scaling framework. The Human-Centric Agility Framework reflects a way of thinking and the resultant Human-Centric Ways of Working at an individual level, at a team level, a business organisation level and at the society level.

Agile Values and Principles: Set of Values and Principles described in the original Manifesto for Agile Software Development (February 11-13, 2001, The Lodge at Snowbird ski resort in the Wasatch mountains of Utah). And, of course, the Agile Values and Principles have been applied to contexts other than software development. A slightly more generic and software-development-agnostic interpretation of the Agile Values and Principles is available here[Link].

Scrum: The Scrum Framework as described in the Scrum Guide written by the creators of Scrum, Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland. This also includes Scrum in its purest possible scaled form.

Servant Leadership: Servant Leadership as described by Robert K. Greenleaf (1904 - 1990). It encompasses all that has been written by him on this subject, and all that has been written on him or his profound foundational thoughts on Servant Leadership by many prominent believers including Stephen Covey, Ken Blanchard, M. Scott Peck, Peter Senge, Margaret Wheatley, Ann McGee-Cooper & Duane Trammell, Larry Spears, Kent Keith, Don M. Frick etc. Many people think, and believe, that they really know what Servant Leadership is, while they really don’t. And, if anyone hasn’t come across it yet, it definitely does deserve at least one look in this life. Here[Link] is a bit of potentially interesting information around this topic.

Cost: In addition to its conventional and popular meanings, this also includes a broader meaning of ‘cost’ in terms of the direct and indirect impact of stress, dissatisfaction, frustration, ‘wastage of human intellectual capacity, effort, time, creativity, focus and energy etc.’ and ‘wellbeing problems’ experienced,

1. on the jobs and related to the jobs within business organizations, by human beings directly or indirectly involved in creating value for the customers, consumers and users etc.
2. by customers, consumers and users etc. while attempting to derive the expected benefits from the perceived value delivered by business organizations.

Quality: In addition to its conventional and popular meanings, this also includes a broader meaning of ‘quality’ in terms of the direct and indirect impact of a ‘reduction’ in stress, dissatisfaction, frustration, ‘wastage of human intellectual capacity, effort, time, creativity, focus and energy etc.’ and ‘wellbeing problems’ experienced,

1. on the jobs and related to the jobs, by human beings directly or indirectly involved in creating value for the customers, consumers, and users etc. (i.e., the ‘quality’ of life of everyone within business organizations involved in creating value for the society).
2. by customers, consumers, and users etc. while attempting to derive expected benefits from the perceived value delivered by business organizations (i.e., the ‘quality’ of life of everyone touched and impacted by the value delivered by business organizations).

Customer-centricity: It’s not just about the external and end customers. It’s also about (a) identifying all the direct and indirect customers, customers at all levels within and outside the business organizations etc.; i.e., anyone who is a customer in any obvious and not so obvious way, and (b) establishing the mindset and strong habits (behavioural patterns) to serve the customers in the ways that benefit them in the best ways possible. Habits expand, and so does the impact of habits. Habits established and strengthened within a business organization - on the inside - generally get reflected on the outside.

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Human-Centric Agility Spectrum

Human-Centric Agility Spectrum illustration © 2018 Debi Prasad Mahapatra.
Click or tap to view large.

The Human-Centric Agility Spectrum provides a basis to guide discovery of zones - around agility in general, and Human-Centric Agility in particular - that any business organization could cover within this spectrum. The Human-Centric Agility Spectrum depicted above is not exactly a linear or sequential representation of progression. Neither is it a precise measuring mechanism to arrive at a number or something similar. It’s just a spectrum. It's always very interesting to discover how a business organisation can actually cover not only various overlapping zones, but also disconnected and non-neighbouring zones within the Human-Centric Agility Spectrum.

Is an Agile Mindset enough?

An Agile Mindset is just that - a mindset, a set of beliefs, a way of thinking. A willingness to embrace an Agile Mindset is almost a starting point. Is an Agile Mindset enough to attain business agility? An Agile Mindset doesn’t include Agile Behaviours or an Agile Culture, as such. Yes, beliefs do drive behaviours.

However, in the absence of a set of Agile behaviours or an organizational Agile culture, Agile mindset alone doesn’t lead to the intended benefits of Agile or agility. Presence of a collective Agile mindset or a collective belief-system alone doesn’t make a business organization Agile. It’s ultimately a set of Agile behaviours or an organizational Agile culture that makes a business organization Agile. Again, a business organization is not ‘truly’ Agile if it doesn’t generate the intended benefits of Agile and agility. For, agility is also profoundly about the intended Outcomes.

Real agility is not just about a mindset or a belief system. It goes well beyond beliefs and a way of thinking. It's not real agility if it stops just at beliefs and a way of thinking, and doesn't express itself in the behaviours, the ways of working - more specifically, the Human-Centric Ways of Working - and the appropriate resultant Outcomes.

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Foundational Philosophies

The Human-Centric Agility Framework is based on the foundational thoughts, assertions and philosophies that include the ones listed below.

• Time is life: And, that’s true for an individual as well as an organization. Spending or investing time on something is spending or investing 'a slice of one's life' on that 'something'.
• Who deserves what? Human beings deserve better lives, business organizations deserve better business results, a society deserves better businesses; human beings and business organizations deserve a better society.
• Work-Life: Work is a part of life. Balance is about how we organize life.
• It’s all about people: A business organization minus its people equals pretty much to nothing.
• Just can't stop: People can't stop being human beings.

• Human Beings and Business Organizations: Despite the advancements in Artificial Intelligence and other associated and similar technologies, human beings shall still continue to play a prominent role in influencing, shaping, and sustaining business organizations.
• Life within business / Life at work: A large number of people live a significantly large portion of their lives working for business organizations.
• Deep impact: Business organizations have a profound impact on the quality of lives of the people touched by the business organizations.
• Not going away soon: Agile is going to stay.
• Too soft? What is hard about Agile is that it ‘appears’ too soft to many. And, the reason number one is lack of knowledge.
• It’s worthwhile: It’s always worthwhile making Business Agility people-centric or human-centric.
• Useful Human-Centricity: Real agility, and particularly real Business Agility, without Human-Centricity is significantly less useful and extremely difficult to sustain.
• Possible, but not worth much: It’s not ‘impossible’ to attain Business Agility without Ethics as one of the building-blocks in the foundation of the organizational culture.
• Not worth without ethics: Business Agility without ethics is difficult to sustain and not really worthwhile.
• Serve to sustain human-centricity: Servant Leadership and Ethics massively help in (a) sustaining Business Agility and (b) making an organization profoundly human-centric.
• Serve to empower: It’s hard to find anything better than Servant Leadership when it comes to ‘people empowerment’ and their growth.
• Cultural influence: The culture pertaining to a nation or geography has a significant impact on Organizational Culture.
• Sustained strength of culture: Organizational Culture is the strongest and most sustained force within every organization.
• Continuous bidirectional influence: Nothing else influences the people within an organization in a holistic and sustained way to an extent the organizational culture does. And, the people within an organization influence its culture to an equally great extent. It's a continuous process in which people shape the organizational culture, and that culture shapes them.
• Embedded in the Culture: To sustain Human-Centric Agility and make it holistic, it needs to be embedded in the very cultures of the business organizations in question.
• The Organic Way: Agile is best established in the most organic way possible.
• Standard Operating Procedures? In the absence of agility embedded in the organizational culture, many a times Agile Frameworks get used like Standard Operating Procedures from the Industrial Era. And, of course, those procedures are not quite as useful in today’s complex domains of work.
• Culture through people: People within an organization are the containers and caretakers of the organizational culture that prevails within the organization. And, there is no way to alter or reengineer the organizational culture without working with the very people within the organization.
• Leadership leading to culture: Attaining a Business Agility Culture without Agile Leadership is close to impossible. These two topics have a great overlap.
• Listening for self-awareness: Listening includes listening to self, and that helps in gaining self-awareness which is especially important for the leaders within business organizations.
• Programmed to be progressive: Human beings are inherently programmed for continuous improvement as a matter of their hierarchy of needs.
• Prerequisites: Gaining a good enough awareness around human-centric agility requires a deep knowledge around human-beings and organizations in terms of individuals’ behavioural patterns, and organizational cultures.
• People can be trusted: As per Theory Y (by Douglas Murray McGregor), work is natural and can be a source of satisfaction when aimed at higher order human psychological needs. The higher-level needs of esteem and self-actualization are ongoing needs that, for most people, are never completely satisfied. As such, it is these higher-level needs through which people within a business organization can be best motivated. Employees are internally motivated, enjoy their job, and work to better themselves without a direct reward in return.
• Not machines: Business organisation are living ecosystems and not machines.
• Sustainable Holistic Organization Development Core Beliefs: A business organization is what its people are collectively. It’s as smart, fast, creative, and innovative as its people are. It’s essentially a reflection of its people. Make it about people! If people feel great about the maker - the business organization -, they will make the maker still greater. If your people are on your side, almost nothing can stop you from achieving your goals. Employees are NOT ‘Resources’ in the true sense of the term. Employment is just a context. Employees are a group of human beings. A group of ‘human beings’ can potentially do and deliver much better and more than what a group of ‘employees’ can.
• Leadership and Ownership Mindsets: With human-centric agility in place, a business organization becomes a place where self-motivated people become generally happier and healthier while they truly practice ethics and empiricism, and own the outcome of their work. They self-manage their work while they self-organize and self-direct. They progress guided by clearly and continuously shared vision, mission and goals pertaining to their business context. The business organization becomes a place where everyone becomes an owner and a leader.
• Health and Happiness: Self-organization - which is generally powered by autonomy and freedom of individuals -, self-motivation, self-direction, self-management, self-empowerment and ethics coupled with an ownership-mindset and empiricism generally free up a massive amount of human intellectual capacity, efforts, time, energy, and focus etc. for achieving significantly greater ‘expression of creativity’ and innovation. All these ‘input-elements’ usually lead to significantly greater health and happiness.
• One leads to another: Happiness generally leads to better health, and better health generally leads to enhanced happiness.
• Better Outcomes: Healthier and happier people innovate more and generate greater positive outcomes. In essence, self-organized, self-motivated, self-directed, self-managed, self-empowered people well aware of the vision, mission and goals of the business organization generate significantly better outcomes. Human-centricity is the recipe required for results - business results. Because, motivated, empowered, self-organized, happier and healthier people generally achieve significantly more for the business.
• Greater Wastage: On the other hand, absence of ‘Self-organization - which is generally powered by autonomy and freedom of individuals -, self-motivation, self-direction, self-management, self-empowerment coupled with an ownership-mindset and empiricism’ generally leads to a significantly greater degree of wastage of human intellectual capacity, efforts, time, energy, creativity, and focus etc.
• Wastage of Human and Organizational Lives: More often than not, it is extremely difficult to detect this enormous wastage. Many a time, this wastage continues undetected, unacknowledged, and unaddressed for an extremely long period of time.
• Stress kills: Many of the inappropriate ways of working lead to a massive amount of avoidable unnecessary stress. And, stress can and does kill people.
  
• Simply unethical: Causing, encouraging and not preventing wastage of ‘human life’ and ‘organizational life’ is absolutely unethical.
• Difficult Detection and Tricky Tackling: In the absence of suitable knowledge and experience, it’s actually very hard to detect and tackle Fake Agile.
  
• Growth Mindset doesn’t grow: Non-Human-Centric business organizations repel and stifle growth mindset.
• Enhanced growth and reduced wastage: Real human-centric agility embedded in the very culture of an organization leads to (a) the best possible nourishment, growth, and utilization of human intellectual capacity, efforts, creativity, time, energy, and focus etc., and (b) meticulous prevention of ‘wastage’ of every bit of human intellectual capacity, efforts, creativity, time, energy, and focus etc.
• Spirit to Action: 'Agile in spirit' leads to 'Agile in action'. Not the other way around.
• Serve to transform: The transformative power of agility is also rooted in Servant Leadership.
• ‘Fake Agile’ is real: It does exist, and it has severe negative impacts on people, business organizations and the society at large.
• Global Problem: Fake Agile is a global problem.
• Matter of Knowledge and Experience: Fake Agile, fake agility and fake Agile organisations do exist. Any potential lack of acceptance of that fact is, more often than not, a mere matter of lack of knowledge and experience around real Agile and agility.
• Fake vs Absence: Fake Agility is more problematic than ‘absence of agility’. Fake agility creates a perception of presence of Real Agility, and that's why nothing actually gets done to tackle Fake Agility and establish Real Agility. And, a clean slate is usually a little easier to work with.
• Fake Agile eats into real Agile: It is extremely difficult to establish ‘Real Agile’ without first getting rid of ‘Fake Agile’ to make room for ‘Real Agile’. Establishing or re-establishing human-centric real agility takes identifying, tackling, and eradicating ‘Fake Agility’ to make room for ‘Real Agility’.
• Not going away soon: Fake Agile is not going to go away anytime soon. It has stayed long enough and has become strong enough.
• EDI and Agility: ‘Agile and Scrum’ and ‘EDI (Equality, Diversity and Inclusion)’ profoundly complement each other.
• Is Scrum Lean? There is quite a bit of valuable and useful overlap[Link] between the Lean Principles and Scrum.
• Competition vs Collaboration: When competition outcompetes collaboration on the inside, a business organization is left less competitive on the outside.
• Stress on safety: An increased level of stress generally leads to a greater degree of safety-compromise. People usually demonstrate far more unsafe behaviours on the job under greater level of stress and worry.
• Cultural Reengineering and Collective Mindset Shift: Attaining organizational agility is not really just about a policy, process, framework or a set of practices. It's more about ‘cultural reengineering’ at the organizational culture level, and a ‘collective mindset shift’. Instilling a framework is not equal to attaining agility. That’s just a tool and a means to an end.
• It’s not small and easy: Human-Centric Agility is not something small, quick, and easy to attain. And, it's always possible to start small somewhere with something. It encompasses culture, mindset, processes, practices, and the design of the organization etc. Our habits are many a time significantly stronger than our intent and intellect. And, that’s one of the reasons why Human-Centric Agility is not that easy to attain.
• Accepting suboptimal is slow death: Business without real agility is suboptimal. Business Agility without human-centricity is suboptimal. Human-centricity without servant-leadership is suboptimal. Any of these without ethics is suboptimal. And, accepting suboptimal is slow death.
• Delightful quality and cost position: Agile and Scrum applied in the intended way generally lead to a (a) significantly better cost and quality position, (b) significantly greater customer delight and (c) much improved time to market with value that meets and exceeds the expectations of the customers - the ‘right’ product, solution service etc.
• Addressing reasons can influence results: Many business organizations experience higher cost, lower quality, prolonged time to market, lower innovation and lower customer delight. Many people within the world of work experience a lower level of well-being. And, there are reasons responsible for all these issues. Agile Values and Principles, Scrum, Servant Leadership and Ethics in a certain formation can provide enough to address all the reasons responsible.
• A better society: Happier, healthier, and ethical people and business organizations make the society a better place. Also, while there is an overlap between the two, Ethics and Servant Leadership combined becomes a grand positive force that generally makes the 'world of work' a significantly better place.