Maria has been working with Alistair Cockburn, creator of the Heart of Agile Framework (HoA). According to Alistair, the essence of agility can be summed up in four words: Collaborate, Deliver, Reflect, and Improve. This led me to wonder, what is the heart of Personal Agility? I think we can sum it up as follows:
Personal Agility is…
The Personal Agility System is a simple coaching framework to help you spend more time on what really matters and create alignment with yourself and those around you.
Purpose
What really matters gives you clarity of purpose. That gives you context for making decisions. If life is an ocean, you are the owner and captain of your boat. It’s your boat, you get to decide where it goes. What really matter is also the focal point for creating alignment with people around you, like your family, your customers, your manager, or their managers and other stakeholders.
Celebration
Life happens faster than you can plan, so decide as best you can and celebrate whatever you got done. Be kind to yourself and remember the retrospective prime directive.
Choice
It’s normal to have too much to do, so you choose what you want to do, based on what really matters and what will make you happy. Choice puts you in charge of the boat and puts your hand on the rudder, even when you are in a storm.
Emergence
It’s your boat, but no man is an island. Who you are is a reflection of what you do, and vice versa. How you are perceived and what you can achieve depends not just on your own skills and abilities, but also on your interactions with other people.
I believe every element of the Personal Agility System can be mapped back to one of these four elements. This is a first draft. How does this resonate with you?
P.S. As previously announced, the Personal Agility System is an HoA-compatible framework. Our training materials are now recognized by HoA.