In the lean/agile/whatever line of work, providers address all parts of the organization. But in every case, our work, our influence, is with the people. And there are a lot of them.

lots of people

People are connected in various ways. Same team, same room, sure, but many other connections exist. Six degrees of Kevin Bacon, etc. Lots of connections.

many people, interconnected

When we have an idea, or use our influence, it mostly affects those who are more closely connected, with less effect on those we’re not so connected to.

stronger effect with people close by

Looking at a large population, like a company, the further out our influence spreads, the less it looks like what we really had in mind. Far enough away it can be quite different, even wrong.

far away, effect goes wrong

In a company, we do need to get the upper levels on board. Unfortunately, the people doing the work are remote from those levels, and the inevitable idea decay results in weak, quite often very wrong impact on the workers.

effect from top of organization going wrong at bottom

This is the effect that I call Dark Agile™️ or Dark Scrum™️. It is pernicious, and almost inevitable without a strong focus on real Agile learning at the working level.

storm clouds, dark agile

The only way to really transform an organization is to transform how the work is done, not just to polish the knobs in the board room and executive and management offices.

[Rude pun intended.]