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Me and Myself


Lately I had a discussion with one of friend who works as a scrum master in an organization. He is starving to make the team agile for a long time. But he failed to do so. The main reason I can see is his approaches of developing the team. Sometime I feel that Agile is a bottom up process where as a scrum master you will need help from your sub ordinates to climb the ladder. But the human nature is too dramatic that you have to find a way to do that. That may not be so easy for all individuals. You have to understand the need of all members and also the way they like to work. A team can sustain without a scrum master but may not be the opposite always. Sometime we fail to decide. We do not enjoy what we do. No matter what, you have to accomplish your job by hook or by crook. The team empowerment is really necessary to lead a team towards agility. But most of the cases we see that we lead or push a team in such a situation that we lose the control and finally they fall into nowhere. 

I strongly believe that a scrum master cannot be the only person who can bring agility to the team, rather he can inject best practices and a well defined and goal oriented process which is best suited for all. I have seen people throwing mud on each other’s face when a problem occurs or situation comes wherein you are suppose to make a decision and no one wants to take responsibility. You might think that you have won the battle by dominating others and raising your voice. However I would say you just lost there. You lost of being a professional. You either ruled by your emotion or someone let you win. It is a common human nature and also cannot be avoided; somewhere you’ll find it in our history and culture. Moreover it can go worst if team does not understand the importance of being a team.  Do we think there is a way to overcome this? Do we really care to handle such situation or we also like to fall into that pool of peoples who are so unprofessional and irresponsible. Does create a conflict situation always and never ever allows the team to take a decision. I remember seeing a movie “12 angry men”, a beautiful movie and lots of message can be learnt. A group of 12 jury members of a court meets in a closed room to decide on a murder case. They were supposed to agree on a decision for an innocent person convicted for murder and who was placed between life and death. Those 12 peoples created chaos and they were about to end up in a situation where the convicted could not see that he could get a proper justice, but finally a beautiful mind came forward saved him.  I was fascinated by the movie and also can relate to the real world decision making process. However does all make any sense to individuals those choose such professions and an organization’s goal and success depend on their performance and decision?

Do we really care about our commitment we make in our day to day life? Or does it really make any sense to us. Hope it does to some of us. If my mother asks me to buy a kilogram of sugar I love to help her because I have an emotional attachment with her and I respect that and moreover my emotion says so. Probably I will buy it as soon as possible. However if my boss asks me to do something, is it my emotion or profession – tough time though I have to accomplish that. Does somewhere this emotional attachment or our emotion (good or bad) rule us in our professional life too? Think for a minute! Yes, it does. It does a lot and I can see in all levels. But why this emotion, the organization I work for does not belong to my mother. I am a professional and I can rule my emotions. I am the decision maker. I have all rights to choose the red or the blue pill. I am the creator and I can destroy too. I am one of the people the organization believes on. I can change the way we live or we do. It’s all me and will be me.       

If it is always me, what is the word team doing here? That’s a tough question. Team is a group of people working towards a defined goal.  I cannot be coder, admin and project manager together. I need those individuals to help me and I am one of them. So I have to understand the ‘me’ in them. I have to be the mirror for them. I have to be the man who promotes individual interactions over process and tools. They have to learn the professionalism from me and also I can be their role model. They need me as their coach. So first I have to prepare myself as a professional. Team will follow me, if I can shape the path for them. They may fall many times, and then I will be the motivator to support them and help them to realize the organizational goal. They have to understand why they are here and why organization needs them. We cannot be 12 angry men. Rather we are 12 professionals. We know what we have to do. A team does that.

You have to understand your role in the team. The scrum is there to protect you but he cannot program you to work towards the organizational goal. He cannot make you cross functional; it is your interest of being so. You have to bring continuous development to your role and knowledge. There are many factors that will influence you not to work and also there are many good things that will help you to work. You have to choose between them. There will be problems, constraints and lots of other things waiting for you on your way. But you have to face them and shape your path. No one can succeed by avoiding them rather in most of the cases you’ll learn to be more professional and successful. You will gain experience from them. If you avoid them you will lose the experience as well as tactics to face and resolve them. We can say, write lots of such things and also organization will provide you trainings on them. You can read books, journals, blogs etc but end of the day it’s me and I am the ruler of mine. 

If you have understood my words, ask a question to yourself “What am I doing and what can I do?” 

All the best!!    

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