“What do you call a group of agile coaches?” Like, say, a flock of birds, a herd of sheep. Let’s come back to that later.
Adaptiveness guides are catalytic change agents. They are post-Agile. I had a go at guessing what Agile Values might look like in 2026 if the living and well people from the 2001 Agile Manifesto gang somehow got together again. In essence, I guessed that a key difference might be the continuous attention to improving value realization, capabilities, insights, and people empowerment.
In my current role, we’re looking for change agents, but not the usual agility coach, product coach, or lean coach. We’re really looking for adaptiveness guides or catalytic change agents.
In my current role, we’re looking for change agents, but not the usual agility coach, product coach, or lean coach. We’re really looking for adaptiveness guides or catalytic change agents.
In many ways, a typical agility coach, product coach, or lean coach has a lot of unlearning to do before becoming an adaptiveness guide. And the learning curve is steep. Adaptiveness is about systemic responsiveness to market needs, ideally in a coherent direction.
Those who practiced the “industrial complex” often have a tougher unlearning journey. The unlearning is so great that I’m often more open to working with people who have qualities that are difficult to learn, such as humility, curiosity, non-micro-management, and openness to feedback, to the extent they seek it. I say this because I believe that many of the qualities are learnable.
Unlearning is much more difficult than learning. Attitude, aptitude, and proven ability to learn are probably not a bad place to start. Change agents could learn on the job, supported by a strong mentor and an education program such as those offered by https://evolved.institute or the University of Westminster.
People grow up with certain dispositions, then acquire practices and stances, and, hopefully, demonstrate a track record (including learning from and adapting to failure). But people often gain experience without learning. I consider experience overrated. Continuous learning over fewer years can often be more effective. But learning without improvement is a waste; the ideal is experience with continuous improvement.
I had a go at pulling together the qualities of an adaptiveness guide. I received some early input from Damien Bilal Alawiye, Ian Sharp, Karl Scotland, Nader Talai, Michael Huynh, Ralph Jocham, and Thibault Lefèvre. It ended up more like the qualities of a change agent, as many of them could apply to different types of change agents. It’s a start, and it will evolve. It’s contextual; for example, it assumes there are (digital) teams. It’s possible I missed some qualities, and some may be in the wrong place. It is an opinion. It is something I strive for as an adaptiveness guide, and it is what I look for signs of across the groups of change agents. I struggle to find change agents like this. It’s important to find change agents who will handle and share the burden, work together, play to each other’s strengths, and, when they disagree, do so constructively and healthily.
People grow up with certain dispositions, then acquire practices and stances, and, hopefully, demonstrate a track record (including learning from and adapting to failure). But people often gain experience without learning. I consider experience overrated. Continuous learning over fewer years can often be more effective. But learning without improvement is a waste; the ideal is experience with continuous improvement.
I had a go at pulling together the qualities of an adaptiveness guide. I received some early input from Damien Bilal Alawiye, Ian Sharp, Karl Scotland, Nader Talai, Michael Huynh, Ralph Jocham, and Thibault Lefèvre. It ended up more like the qualities of a change agent, as many of them could apply to different types of change agents. It’s a start, and it will evolve. It’s contextual; for example, it assumes there are (digital) teams. It’s possible I missed some qualities, and some may be in the wrong place. It is an opinion. It is something I strive for as an adaptiveness guide, and it is what I look for signs of across the groups of change agents. I struggle to find change agents like this. It’s important to find change agents who will handle and share the burden, work together, play to each other’s strengths, and, when they disagree, do so constructively and healthily.
What do you think? What did I miss? What would you change?
Oh, “What do you call a group of agile coaches?” A disagreement. Thank you, Ian Sharp, for that joke.
To see the related Venn Diagram, click here.
Catalytic Change Agent Center - Full Integration
These qualities connect all four dimensions. They demonstrate the highest level of change agency, in which predispositions, practices, skills, and impact fully integrate.
Adaptiveness Accelerator
All Dimensions Converge
Enables faster learning cycles and pivots based on real evidence.
Enables faster learning cycles and pivots based on real evidence.
Fosters Psychological Safety
Catalytic Center
Fosters environments where truth is safe, mistakes are taught, and honest challenge is welcomed.
Fosters environments where truth is safe, mistakes are taught, and honest challenge is welcomed.
Outcomes Over Outputs
Catalytic Center
Shifts focus from “busyness” or “delivering stuff” to achieving real business and customer results.
Shifts focus from “busyness” or “delivering stuff” to achieving real business and customer results.
Context-Sensitive
Catalytic Center
Tailors change to how work gets done, the unique culture, constraints, and history of each organization.
Tailors change to how work gets done, the unique culture, constraints, and history of each organization.
Fosters Transparency and Openness
Catalytic Center
Makes reality visible, admits uncertainty, and models desired transparent and open behaviors.
Makes reality visible, admits uncertainty, and models desired transparent and open behaviors.
People-Smart
Catalytic Center
Sees change as human, reads dynamics, and values resistance as useful feedback.
Sees change as human, reads dynamics, and values resistance as useful feedback.
Complexity Sensemaker
Catalytic Center
Excels at sensemaking to navigate complexity in systems beyond personal relationships.
Excels at sensemaking to navigate complexity in systems beyond personal relationships.
Well-Read and Well-Practiced on People & Change
Catalytic Center
Blends deep theory and extensive hands-on experience driving organizational change.
Blends deep theory and extensive hands-on experience driving organizational change.
Critical Thinking Catalyst
Catalytic Center
Builds merit-based cultures by teaching critical thinking, questioning, and modeling open-mindedness.
Builds merit-based cultures by teaching critical thinking, questioning, and modeling open-mindedness.
Sports Coach Like Accountability
Catalytic Center
Holds teams and themselves accountable through discipline, prioritizing outcomes, and is informed by evidence like a sports coach.
Holds teams and themselves accountable through discipline, prioritizing outcomes, and is informed by evidence like a sports coach.
Predispositions - Natural Tendencies
Innate qualities and tendencies that effective change agents naturally possess—curiosity and pattern recognition that can’t easily be taught.
Voraciously Curious
Predispositions
Possesses an insatiable appetite for understanding how things work across domains while balancing inquiry with tact.
Possesses an insatiable appetite for understanding how things work across domains while balancing inquiry with tact.
Pattern Recognition
Predispositions
Sees connections and recurring dynamics across contexts using rich thinking models to inform hypothesis generation.
Sees connections and recurring dynamics across contexts using rich thinking models to inform hypothesis generation.
Practiced Stance - Deliberate Approaches
Deliberately cultivated stances and approaches—fostering principles over practices and knowing when to step back.
Principles Over Practices
Practiced Stance
Teaches underlying principles even over practices, enabling teams to generate context-appropriate solutions.
Teaches underlying principles even over practices, enabling teams to generate context-appropriate solutions.
Gets Out of the Way
Practiced Stance
Builds others' capability, then deliberately removes themselves from the critical path to create sustainability.
Builds others' capability, then deliberately removes themselves from the critical path to create sustainability.
Learnable Skills - Developable Capabilities
Skills that can be developed through study and practice—technical credibility, facilitation mastery, domain knowledge, and staying current with technology.
Technical Credibility
Learnable
Earns respect from technical teams through a genuine understanding of engineering principles and practices.
Earns respect from technical teams through a genuine understanding of engineering principles and practices.
Facilitation Mastery
Learnable
Designs and guides conversations that surface diverse perspectives, build shared understanding, and enable timely decisions.
Designs and guides conversations that surface diverse perspectives, build shared understanding, and enable timely decisions.
Business Domain Credibility
Learnable
Develops deep industry knowledge to speak the business language and recognize domain-specific antipatterns.
Develops deep industry knowledge to speak the business language and recognize domain-specific antipatterns.
AI-Informed
Learnable
Stays current with AI change to guide thoughtful adoption and help organizations navigate strategic implications.
Stays current with AI change to guide thoughtful adoption and help organizations navigate strategic implications.
Demonstrated Impact - Proven Results
Measurable outcomes that validate effectiveness—improved flow, inspired colleagues, and tangible organizational improvement.
Improved Flow
Demonstrated Impact
Measurably reduces work item age, eliminates or alleviates bottlenecks, improves the flow of value realization, and knows when to optimize for value, speed, or capability-building.
Measurably reduces work item age, eliminates or alleviates bottlenecks, improves the flow of value realization, and knows when to optimize for value, speed, or capability-building.
Inspires Others
Demonstrated Impact
Ignites passion for continuous improvement and demonstrates that individuals can influence organizational direction.
Ignites passion for continuous improvement and demonstrates that individuals can influence organizational direction.
Two-Way Intersections - Combined Capabilities
Qualities emerging from the overlap of two dimensions—qualities that include product thinking, balanced confidence, idea contagion, and establishing beachheads.
Product-Minded
Predispositions + Learnable
Thinks like a world-class product manager, understanding user needs and connecting work to customer outcomes through discovery practices, result feedback, user feedback, and product-telemetry-related insights.
Thinks like a world-class product manager, understanding user needs and connecting work to customer outcomes through discovery practices, result feedback, user feedback, and product-telemetry-related insights.
Humble Yet Confident
Predispositions + Practiced
Balances deep confidence in principles with genuine humility about specific adoption paths for the context.
Balances deep confidence in principles with genuine humility about specific adoption paths for the context.
Contagion of Ideas
Practiced + Impact
Makes ideas spread organically through narrative/storytelling, early adopters, visible success, and removing barriers to adoption.
Makes ideas spread organically through narrative/storytelling, early adopters, visible success, and removing barriers to adoption.
Fosters Beachheads
Practiced + Impact
Establishes pockets of excellence that demonstrate what’s possible and create pull-based scaling through attraction.
Establishes pockets of excellence that demonstrate what’s possible and create pull-based scaling through attraction.
Three-Way Intersections - Advanced Synthesis
Advanced capabilities from combining three dimensions—capabilities that include practicing what you learn, seeking feedback proactively, and creating catalyzed change that endures.
Practices What They Learn
Applies the same principles to their own work that they advocate for teams, creating authenticity and empathy.
Seeks Feedback Proactively
Actively hunts for input across multiple channels, responds non-defensively, and visibly acts on feedback.
Catalyzed Change
Creates lasting change that persists beyond direct intervention as teams internalize new ways of thinking and working.
Range
Brings diverse experience and learning from multiple domains, enabling creative problem-solving through cross-pollination of ideas.
Knowing When to Quit or Switch
Recognizes when persistence becomes stubbornness and helps teams pivot from failing approaches before excessive investment.
Professionalism
Strives for excellence while working together to deliver value in a respectful, transparent, and accountable way—taking full accountability for change outcomes from start to finish.
Additional Central Qualities
Essential catalytic qualities that complement the core framework—team delivery focus, fast pivoting, daily catalysis, aligned autonomy, and evidence-based decision-making.
AI-Augmented Dev
Effective change agents understand the capabilities and limitations of AI tools. They ensure AI augments rather than replaces product developer judgment.
Teams Deliver
Effective change agents resist and eradicate hero culture, local sub-optimization, and individual heroics in favor of resilient value realization.
Failing is a Problem, but failing and pivoting fast are not.
Failure itself isn’t the goal—learning and adaptation are. Effective change agents create environments where teams can fail fast (discover what doesn’t work quickly), pivot based on learning, and avoid prolonged investment in doomed approaches. The key is velocity of learning and improvement, not velocity of failure.
Catalyst for Every Day
Change doesn’t happen only in workshops or special events. Effective change agents catalyze daily improvement—helping teams reflect on and improve their regular work, not just their special change initiatives. They make continuous improvement a habit, not an event.
Practices Genchi Genbutsu (goes to the source to get the facts)
Drawing from the Toyota principle of “go and see for yourself,” effective change agents don’t rely solely on reports, dashboards, or second-hand accounts. They go to the actual place where work happens (the gemba) to observe reality firsthand, talk to the people doing the work, and understand problems at their source.
Fosters Aligned Autonomy
Teams need both autonomy (the freedom to make decisions) and alignment (a shared understanding of goals and constraints). Effective change agents create conditions where teams can make independent decisions that naturally align with organizational objectives, avoiding both micromanagement and chaos.
Fosters Taking Solution Option Credibility Into Account
Not all ideas are created equal, and effective decision-making requires weighing solution options based on their credibility—the evidence supporting them, the expertise behind them, the track record of similar approaches, and the degree to which they’ve been validated in relevant contexts.
Anti-Patterns - What to Avoid
These are the behaviors that undermine effective change agency.
Framework Zealot
They believe their chosen framework is the answer to all problems and rigidly apply it regardless of context or evidence.
Training = Change
Confuses delivering training sessions with achieving organizational change, measuring success by the number of classes taught rather than the behaviors changed.
Death by 1000 Questions
Overwhelms people with endless questioning without providing guidance, creating analysis paralysis rather than enabling action.
Know-It-All Expert
Has all the answers before understanding the questions, dismissing local knowledge and context in favor of prepackaged solutions.
Rigid Thinker
Cannot adapt their thinking models or approaches to new information or changing circumstances.
Confirmation Seeker
They only see evidence that supports their existing beliefs, ignoring or dismissing data that challenges their assumptions.
Silver Bullet Seeker
Chases the latest trend or tool as a magical solution, never investing enough to make anything work before moving to the next shiny object.
Ivory Tower Consultant
Provides advice without understanding the reality on the ground, remaining disconnected from the actual challenges teams face daily.
Stuck in 2010
Refuses to update their knowledge or practices, teaching outdated approaches while ignoring the latest tools, techniques, and understanding.
Anti-Technology Stance
Dismisses or resists technological advancement, treating tools and automation as threats rather than enablers of better ways of working. Some “change agents” are “no change agents” or “double agents.”
Refuses to Evolve
Clings to methods that worked in the past, unwilling to experiment with new approaches, even when incumbent methods clearly aren’t working.
New Shiny Ball Syndrome
Constantly chases the latest fad without depth, advocating for tool after tool without building genuine expertise in any.
Meeting Addict
Believes every problem requires another meeting, filling calendars with interactions, events, and discussions while avoiding actual work.
Certification Obsessed
Values credentials over capability, collecting certificates while lacking the practical wisdom to apply knowledge effectively in context. Often lacks the required attitude, aptitude, or qualities.
Best Practices Zealot
Insists on “best practices” without considering context, treating practices as universally applicable rather than context-dependent.
Command & Control
Micromanages teams and dictates solutions, undermining autonomy and preventing teams from developing their own problem-solving capabilities.
Process Police
Enforces process compliance rigidly without understanding the purpose, valuing adherence to rules over achieving outcomes.
Hides Information
They hoard knowledge and restrict information flow, using information asymmetry as a form of power rather than enabling distributed decision-making.
Hero Complex
Creates dependency by being the solver of all problems, preventing teams from building their own capability and becoming self-sufficient.
Copy-Paste Solutions
Transplants solutions from one context to another without adaptation, ignoring the unique constraints and dynamics of each situation.
Change Theater
Stages visible change activities without substance, creating the appearance of change while nothing fundamentally shifts.
Activity Theater
Confuses “busyness” with productivity, celebrating how much is happening rather than what value is being created.
Vanity Metrics Focused
Tracks and celebrates metrics that look good but don’t indicate real progress, optimizing for measurements that don’t drive outcomes.
Story Points Lover
Obsesses over estimation mechanics and velocity optimization while ignoring whether teams are actually delivering valuable outcomes.
Takes All the Credit
Claims successes as personal achievements rather than team victories, undermining morale and motivation while building resentment.
Blames the Team
Attributes failures to team deficiencies rather than examining systemic issues or their own contribution to problems.
Winning Arguments Over Helping
Prioritizes being right and winning debates over actually helping teams succeed, using logic as a weapon rather than a tool for understanding.
The Team’s Friend to a fault
While friendliness is to be encouraged, a change agent is not expected to be the team’s friend. This anti-pattern describes change agents who prioritize being liked over being effective, avoiding difficult conversations and accountability to maintain personal relationships. A good friend would tell what needs to be heard, to be fair, but I hope you get the point.
The Manager’s Friend to a fault
Change agents who prioritize maintaining good relationships with management over organizational effectiveness. They avoid speaking truth to power about systemic issues, shield leaders from uncomfortable realities about organizational dysfunctions, and fail to surface the impediments that managers need to address. A good friend would tell what needs to be heard, to be fair, but I hope you get the point.
Lazy
Takes shortcuts, avoids the deep work required for genuine change, and chooses easy answers over thoughtful solutions. Lazy change agents don’t invest in understanding context, skip the hard conversations, copy templates without adaptation, and fail to follow through on commitments.
Fosters Autonomy Without Responsibility (a Holiday Camp)
“Holiday camp facilitators” prioritize making teams feel good over helping them deliver results, creating a false sense of progress while actual value delivery suffers. True autonomy requires capability, context, and accountability, not just permission to do whatever feels comfortable.
I’m Having Fun, and That’s All That Matters
Treats organizational change as a personal playground for interesting ideas rather than serious work with real consequences. These change agents prioritize their own intellectual enjoyment and experimentation over actual organizational improvement.
Detachment
Acts more like an impartial observer watching a game of sport rather than a change agent co-accountable for leading change.
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Adaptiveness Guide - Alternative Narrative (Long Version) - with one addition (Detached)