Doing Agile vs Being agile: Why the distinction matters

A theme that is consistently emerging in my work with organisations is the difference between doing Agile and truly being agile.

It's a conversation I have with clients regularly, because, while lots of organisations aspire to be more agile, they're often talking about it through the lens of frameworks, ceremonies or team-level practices. Don't get me wrong, those things absolutely matter but in my experience they're only one part of the picture.

For me, doing Agile is about the practices, tools and processes, for example: the frameworks such as Scrum, Kanban, SAFe, Agile PM, etc; and tools and processes such as Jira, Confluence, Backlog Refinement, internal processes, etc. They are all absolutely valuable and, used well, they create rhythm, transparency and opportunities to learn.

Being agile is something much broader - it's about whether an organisation is genuinely set up to respond to change. It's about culture, mindset and behaviours. Are your teams empowered to make the decisions they need to move them forward? Do leaders create clarity without feeling the need to control every detail? Can the organisation adapt quickly when priorities shift?

For me, being agile is much more about culture than practice. The practices are there to support that, not become the objective themselves. It's about creating an environment where people can respond to (and actually relish!) change, are empowered to make decisions, have a lean-operating mindset and stay relentlessly focused on delivering value to their end-users (vs. a pre-defined feature list that can't change!).

I've worked with organisations that have invested heavily in Agile practices but are struggling to pivot and deliver at the pace they are aiming for. Equally, I've worked with teams that would never describe themselves as "Agile" but are incredibly effective because they've built the right culture, leadership behaviours and ways of working around them.

If you're more of a podcast person, I recently spoke to Jac on the Everyday Agile podcast about this topic (alongside leadership, delivery, burnout and going freelance). This article expands on some of the themes we discussed there.

Listen to the podcast here.

We spend a lot of time talking about what and when, but not enough time talking about how.

One of the biggest themes in the conversation was something I see in almost every organisation I work with. Most people are understandably focused on what they're trying to deliver: a new service; a transformation programme; a product; a policy; and by when.

What often gets less attention alongside this though is how the organisation is set up to deliver those outcomes. When delivery starts to feel harder than it should, it's understandable that organisations look towards teams first. Perhaps a different delivery framework will help? Maybe more governance is needed? Maybe the answer is pushing people to work even faster...? Sometimes those things do help and create marginal, temporary gains, but in my experience they rarely address the root cause.

More often than not, the challenge is that delivery teams are operating within a system that makes good delivery harder than it needs to be. Decision making is multi-layered and therefore time consuming, ownership and priorities are unclear, dependencies have built up over time, or the environment simply isn't set up to support the outcomes everyone is aiming for at pace.

One question I often encourage leadership teams to ask is: where is the least agile part of your organisation?

You can have brilliant digital teams working iteratively, but if every meaningful decision still requires several layers of approval, or processes that enable the team takes months, or key dependencies sit elsewhere in the organisation, those teams will always be constrained by the slowest part of the system.

In my experience, organisations are only ever as agile as their least agile part.

Ask: Let's look at how you are set-up to deliver outcomes, to ensure good delivery.

Practices absolutely matter, they're just not the whole story.

I want to be clear that this isn't an argument against Agile practices. I've spent much of my career working with them and I've seen the difference they can make. They create structure, encourage regular reflection and help teams learn and adapt as they go - exactly the drumbeat we need for good delivery!

Where I think we sometimes get caught out is assuming that introducing those practices automatically creates a more agile organisation.

You can hold brilliant retrospectives every fortnight, have excellent sprint planning sessions and run textbook stand-ups, but if teams still need layers of approval to make decisions beyond that, or if leaders don't trust them to solve problems, the organisation won't become any more agile.

The practices support agility, but they don't create it on their own.

Ask: How are you supporting your organisation in its agility beyond team-level practices?

Pressure reveals how agile an organisation really is

One of Jac's questions that really resonated with me was our discussion about leadership under pressure.

It's relatively easy to talk about empowerment of delivery teams when things are going well. The real test comes when deadlines become immovable, scrutiny increases or something unexpected happens. I've worked in those environments myself, delivering nationally significant public services where the pressure was very real. I completely understand why leaders become more involved during those moments, and know I've done it myself at times.

But I've also learnt that those are often the moments when teams need trust the most.

I've seen organisations work incredibly hard to build cultures where teams feel empowered, only for those behaviours to disappear the moment things become difficult. Reporting increases, decisions become centralised and leaders naturally want to understand every detail, which unintentionally create exactly the conditions that slow delivery down.

One thing I've learnt over the years is that leaders create the most value when they're completely clear on why something matters, but trust their teams to determine how to achieve it.

Ask: How do you show up when the pressure is on? Does it reflect what you need to happen during that time?

Sustainable delivery matters

We also used the analogy of delivery teams sprinting a marathon, one I keep coming back to in my work. The Men's 100m world record is 9:58 seconds, but we don't assume that athlete can run a marathon in 1h7minutes by sustaining that same pace.

Many teams now work in environments of continuous delivery. That's brought lots of benefits in terms of maintaining service performance and user-value, but it can also create an expectation that people should operate at full intensity indefinitely which we all know isn't realistic.

The best teams have opportunities to pause occasionally, reflect on how they're working and make improvements, before simply pushing on to the next thing. Those moments shouldn't be considered a pause in delivery, but seen as an essential part of good delivery.

Creating that space can feel uncomfortable and difficult conversations may need to be had, particularly when there's pressure to keep moving but the narrative needs to be that it isn't time lost. More often, it's what enables organisations to deliver more effectively over the long term.

Ask: How are you slowing down just enough to improve how you work to enable you to speed up again later?

Final thoughts

I'm certainly not suggesting there's a perfect blueprint for any of this as every organisation is different, and culture, mindset and behavioural type work is hard. If this was overnight type stuff, we'd all be running stress-free delivery of transformation agendas...

What I do think is that we sometimes place too much emphasis on adopting Agile practices and not enough on creating organisations that genuinely are enablers of good delivery.

For me, that's the difference between doing Agile and being agile. One is about introducing practices. The other is about building the leadership, culture and organisational environment that allows those practices to make a real difference.

If you're leading a team, a service or a wider organisation, I'd leave you with one question:

What's one thing that's within your control this week that could make your organisation just a little more agile?

It doesn't have to be a major transformation, sometimes the smallest shifts in how we lead, prioritise or remove constraints create the biggest impact over time.

If these are challenges you're facing in your own organisation, I'd always be happy to chat.
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