The screen flickered, projecting ‘Sprint Planning’ in cheerful, optimistic fonts, completely at odds with the tension in the room. A hand slammed down on a 49-page document, its corners dog-eared from relentless review. “We need to be agile here,” the Product Manager declared, his voice a strained whisper of forced enthusiasm, “so just build exactly what’s in this spec document from the VP.” The irony hung thick, like stale coffee breath on a Monday morning, but no one dared to comment. Instead, 9 sets of eyes meticulously followed the finger tracing lines on a Jira board, pretending.

Pretending. That’s the word that keeps echoing, a low hum beneath the surface of countless corporate initiatives. We’ve all seen it, haven’t we? The ubiquitous adoption of Agile terminology – sprints, stand-ups, backlogs – layered over a deeply entrenched, unyielding Waterfall mindset. It’s like buying a new, flashy car and then only driving it in reverse. The machinery might be modern, but the direction is stubbornly, painfully backward. This isn’t just a minor organizational hiccup; it’s corporate cultural appropriation, taking the rituals and vocabulary of a different, more effective culture and using them as decoration on our own dysfunctional systems, ensuring nothing actually changes. We are, in essence, waving back at someone who was waving at the person standing behind us, entirely missing the actual connection.

And I admit, I’ve been a perpetrator. For 9 years, I believed that if we just ‘did’ the stand-ups every morning at 9:09 AM, if we meticulously updated our Jira tasks, if we had our sprint reviews and retrospectives, we were ‘doing Agile.’ We had the dashboards, the burndown charts, even the sticky notes. What we didn’t have was the underlying flexibility, the trust, or the true empowerment that makes Agile effective. We just swapped ‘project plan’ for ‘roadmap,’ ‘phase gates’ for ‘sprint reviews,’ and ‘requirements document’ for ‘epic breakdown.’ The names changed, but the spirit, the very operating system of the organization, remained fixed in a pre-digital era. It’s a mistake I spent a significant portion of my career cleaning up after, trying to understand where the gears actually jammed.

My mind often drifts to Lucas G.H., a building code inspector I once knew. Lucas wasn’t interested in the fresh coat of paint or the polished lobby; he was relentlessly focused on the structural integrity, the load-bearing walls, the wiring behind the drywall. He’d spend 9 hours inspecting a new commercial property, crawling through crawl spaces and climbing ladders to check roof trusses, not just the visible facade. Lucas understood that true resilience wasn’t about looking good on the outside; it was about being sound at its core. He’d point out flaws in a 9-story building that others overlooked, stating simply, “It might stand today, but it won’t last 9 years if we don’t fix this now.” He cared about the unseen, the fundamental. Our corporate structures, so often superficially “Agile,” desperately need a Lucas G.H. to inspect their operational code, to ensure the underlying architecture isn’t just Waterfall wearing a new hat.

Why do we resist true agility? Perhaps it’s a fear of relinquishing control. The Waterfall mindset, with its sequential phases and predictable timelines, offers a comforting illusion of order. Managers can point to a Gantt chart and say, “We are here.” It’s a familiar map, even if it often leads to unexpected dead ends. Agile, in contrast, embraces iteration and discovery, which can feel unsettlingly ambiguous to those accustomed to strict foresight. It asks leaders to trust their teams, to empower them to adapt, to accept that the path may evolve. And for many, that’s a bridge too far, a leap of faith they aren’t prepared to make. A budget of $99,999 might be allocated to a project, but without any flexibility in how it’s spent or what it actually produces.

This isn’t to say that all structure is bad, or that there’s no place for planning. The issue arises when planning becomes an end in itself, a sacred text rather than a living document. It’s the difference between having a destination in mind and drawing every single turn of the journey before setting off, refusing to acknowledge any detours or new, more efficient routes that appear. What we often forget is that the beauty of a well-maintained system, whether it’s a building’s HVAC or a company’s operational framework, lies in its ability to respond and adapt, to stay healthy and functional beneath the surface. For true operational excellence, sometimes you need to dig deeper than the visible facade, addressing the foundational elements that keep things running smoothly and efficiently. Ensuring the air circulating through a structure is clean and well-managed is as critical as the blueprint itself. Much like a finely tuned climate control system, the operational processes of an organization require constant monitoring and, at times, significant refurbishment to ensure they are truly supporting rather than hindering productivity. You might even say we need to occasionally give our internal systems a good clean sweep, much like how one might approach Restored Air.