Respond To Change

Agile started as a reaction to inflexible software development practices at the end of the last century.  The last twenty years have seen Agile become fairly common now within software development projects as a working practice.  The founding values and principles of Agile are enshrined in a document from 2001, the Agile Manifesto.  While the language and intent was for software development, much of the ideas are relevant outside.

Today, I want to talk about one particular statement from the Agile Manifesto 

“Responding to change over following a plan”

There are a number of subtleties in this statement that are also key for small business owners. 

The first is that this is not saying “Don’t plan!” 

The second is that it’s not even saying “Don’t follow the plan!”

What it is saying is that responding to change is more useful and important than slavishly following a plan.

A quote by Dwight Eisenhower puts this into context.

“In preparing for battle, I have always found that plans are useless but planning is indispensable”

In the military planning is important and the common term “7Ps” highlights that with “Prior Preparation and Planning Prevents Piss Poor Performance”

But this is countered by another standard held military truism that “No plan survives contact with the enemy”

So in the military they hold the natural opposites in mind when they consider “collaborative planning”, prior to an operation and “situational awareness”, during an operation.

The leads us to the next of the subtleties of the statement in the Agile Manifesto with the word ‘responding’.  This is a measured and considered action based on “situational awareness”not a trigger ‘reaction’

So how does this translate into small business.

We are currently just into Autumn and many of us have made our quarterly plans leading us into Christmas and the Winter, and have done our “collaborative planning” following the lessons of the 7Ps.  But we are now into the first contact with the enemy.  The rubber has hit the road and we now need to take into consideration “situational awareness”

In Agile-speak, small business owners should now be “responding to change over following a plan”

If there is anything that 2020 has taught us, it is that our enemies are subtle, plentiful but hugely influential so we all need to have our wits about us, exercise “situational awareness” and “respond to change.”