My first blog post on ‘LeadingAgile the Blog’ was way back in 2007. In those days I was a Project Manager at CheckFree… hadn’t joined or left VersionOne, hadn’t joined or left Pillar Technology… nor had I started ‘LeadingAgile the Company’. Fast forward 11 years and quite a bit has changed. I’ve been running ‘LeadingAgile the Company’ for nearly 8 years… everything is going really, really well… and it’s been a helluva ride.
As a company, we are constantly learning and inventing new ways to effectively lead large-scale Agile Transformation engagements. But me personally, I spend most of my time… when I’m not speaking or selling… figuring out how to build and scale what we do.
Most of my time is spent on building models for talent identification, developing on-boarding strategies, staff development… building a marketing and sales engine to sustain our growth… and building a leadership team so that we can scale without killing any of us.
It’s not an easy task.
Back when I started ‘LeadingAgile the Blog’, it was a super exciting time. I was learning Agile. I was exploring. I was sharing ideas and getting feedback. There was a strong sense of community and many of us felt like we were in this together, trying to change the world. It doesn’t often feel like that anymore. Big Visible and SolutionsIQ are now Accenture. Rally is CA. VersionOne is Collabnet. It’s not the same.
Furthermore, I am personally learning different things. It’s not as much about Agile, Agile at Scale, and Agile Transformation. That is OUR product… and it IS evolving. But writing about it is difficult. What we do is such a different way of doing things that it is really hard to go deep. All these years later, I feel like I am still explaining the basic mental models. It’s difficult to get into the ‘How’ when you are still articulating the ‘What’ and ‘Why’.
What I find myself wanting to write about is what I am learning about building the business. Finance… sales… marketing… organizational structure… running a virtual company… operations… team building… talent identification… talent development… salary and compensation structures… and all the other stuff that goes along with learning, in real-time, how to be a CEO… with over 70 people, and their families… all depending on you.
That is what this blog is about. This blog is about all the things I am learning about running ‘LeadingAgile the Company’. Stuff that isn’t on brand for the main site… but is where much of my passion currently lies. I fully expect some things to show up here that are likely good candidates for the main site… and I trust that Tim Zack will find the good stuff and lift it for general consumption. I’ll leave that up to him and what he thinks is right.
For now… I want to recapture some of the energy from the early days. I want to explore. I don’t want to be right. I don’t want to worry about if what I am saying is on brand or if it ties into the bigger picture. I don’t want to argue. I don’t want to debate. I want the freedom to rant. I might even swear. I want to be anonymous, relatively speaking. I want to recapture that freedom to create without having to think about it so much.
This is an experiment.
We’ll see how it goes.
No promises… but that is what this site is all about.
I love this Mike – true Working Out Loud. As I learn, so do I teach, as I teach, so do I learn.. looking forward to following your explorations.
Sorry for the delay moderating these comments. This blog isn’t in my regular workflow yet 😉 One of the best things about the early days of my writing was the exploration and sharing. Not feeling like you had to know it all. I’m looking forward to getting into a regular cadence of posts on this site. Thanks for your comments.
Looking forward to it!
Thanks Matt!
I’m really excited to have yet another way to follow your journey. If there’s anything that I can do to help you grow and expand don’t hesitate to call. (Also, if it’s just for drinks on CW beach I got the first round.)
Thanks Jason. I’m on my way to Clearwater as I type this. We should get together. I’ll reach out.