As many of you already know, beLIthe, LLC is a small company.  In fact, we only have two employees.  As the Managing Director, I do it all.  Keep track of the books, invoice, sell, deliver, develop content, blah, blah, blah.  Alex, my son, works with me providing support, editing videos and podcasts, and developing my crazy software ideas.

So, being a small company, we can accomplish a lot, but struggle with doing more than one thing at a time.

On August 25th, I entered the ER at IU Methodist Hospital.  That started what turned into a perfect storm.  I had a heart attack!  The heart attack was so severe, that we were directed to The Heart Failure group.

Fast forward to October 3.  I woke up with new transplanted heart.  As word as spread, the outpouring of support has been overwhelming.  Down days have been often turned positive by a text or phone call.

My anticipated future is gone.  Yet, I am here because of the medical heroes at Methodist.  Check out this link.  Not best picture!

The future of beLithe is also obviously up in the air.

I would ask that you consider this one point:  Despite all the I have been through, I am determined to make this the best thing that has happened to me.  Caveat:  outside of my wife and three great kids.  I am considering this as a reboot of my body and mind.

I am planning on sharing my journey in an effort to help others.  I will draw clear lines so that those of you who are interested can follow.  Those of you who aren’t interested won’t be bothered.

More to come.  Thanks for your support.

Chris

Cleaning out my inbox, I found an email from Seth Godin titled “The do-it-yourself at-home surgery kit”.

As some of you know, I am a huge fan of Seth Godin.  He is one of the easiest folks to follow.  Every morning, you get a short email with a singular thought.  It’s an easy read, and it always seems to be poignant.

Reading Seth’s post, my mind immediately leaped to the approach I see from time to time.  When you think about DIY related to the home improvements, there are a variety of outcomes ranging from perfection to disaster.  Perfection looks as though a professional craftsman completed the work flawlessly.  Disaster, on the other hand, looks as you hired an amateur to take on the project.  What’s more, a professional craftsman can create a disaster as well at the instance of the homeowner.   Over the years as a homeowner, I have created more disasters than perfection.

Many times, I see a lot of DIY Agile that looks like a disaster.  Is it a result of a professional craftsman (Agile coach) creating a disaster at the instance of the homeowner (the organization)?  Or, could it be the result of an amateur (inexperienced Agile Coach/Scrum Master) trying DIY for the first time?

In my experience, DIY Agile is a result of neither one.  The problem isn’t whether you hired a professional craftsman or an amateur.  The problem is you are not a self-learning organization. 

Every opportunity I get, I say basically the following sentences: “A high performing team doesn’t just wake up one day to find they are high performing.  They iterate their way to become a high performing team.  If you get nothing else from this workshop, remember the retrospective is the most important thing you can get right.”

An organization or team that embraces the concept of retrospectively looking in the mirror, identifies the good and bad of what it sees, and then fix the bad will become high performing.  Why do I say that?  They are continuously correcting and adjusting as they go, prioritizing to solve the worst things first. 

In other words, they are finding and fixing their problems. 

That’s all we need to do is start fixing problems. It sounds simple, yet it can be hard to start.  Once you start, DIY Agile will fade into the background.

Chris