This can’t really work, can it!?
If you've heard the expression “I was today years old when I found out…” you know what I’m describing. It’s generally associated with some fascinating fact or a life-changing tip, like peeling a banana from the bottom, or that you can use mayonnaise to get rid of water stains on wooden coffee tables. Wait. What!? Anyway, it's that moment of surprise and realization that we never stop learning, regardless of our age or experience. What makes the moment so powerful is its simplicity. It happens quite a bit in “life,” but also quite a bit at work. Sometimes, you just don’t know what is possible until you see it. And once you see it, it becomes so obvious that you never want to go back to the old way again. We had one of those moments not long ago with a client.
Hard Yards recently encountered a DoD client needing to find a way to adapt its limited manpower to be innovative in response to a dynamic environment, while still fulfilling its core mission. A familiar problem, yes. But we took a somewhat unconventional approach. No Scrum certification classes. No Agile 101. No Agile jargon. We simply borrowed tenets and practices from multiple agile approaches and got them started. By giving them just enough to get moving forward without bogging them down in frameworks and rules and lexicon, we were able to get a cross-functional team up and running with a viable quarterly plan in less than two days. It opened their eyes to an entirely new approach of small cross-functional teams.
I never got a chance to discover fire, but this felt just as important to me
If you’re an Agile nerd reading this you’re probably saying “no duh” (as an aside, I am on a personal crusade to bring back the 80’s classic slang phrase “no duh”). But now put yourself in the shoes of the client. They had never practiced Scrum, never heard of a Sprint or a Product Owner. The word Kanban sounded like a piece of candy and SAFe was a place where you store valuables. It was truly an “I was today years old” moment for them. It changed how they thought about work getting done. The most powerful quote I heard was “I’ve been trying to get traction on [this initiative] for two years, and now I think we can get it done.” That person walked out energized and excited simply because we taught them to limit work in progress and visualize dependencies. From an Agilist’s standpoint, it was nothing. It was peeling the banana from the bottom; a “trick” we already knew about. But for the client, it was transformative.
"I was today years old" is not just about fun facts. It stands as a reminder that our work can be an ever-evolving journey of discovery and growth. If you haven’t had an “I was today years old” moment at work recently, shame on you. And if you haven’t shared something you’ve learned with others who might be able to use it, shame on you. Never underestimate the power of sharing and the power of simplification, because you just never know when your “today years old” moment might become a force for change.
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