Rules and creativity

In preparation for this event I read the following book team of teams and I have to speak there about agile leadership and the changes this brings to the table.

 And my first impression is that we all (me included) will get examples from the military on this change. We start with the previous mentioned book, but also we will mention Simon Sinek and his book Leaders eat last, will give examples from the military.

So it looks like we are biased with the idea that the military is a command and control organization, while the army is using a lot of agile principles, also in their leadership according to this article.

And while reading this article I had one of my wonderful moments with my five-year-old daughter. It was one of the magical mirror moments as call them, you see a reflection of yourself, in the actions of your child. Of course in our house there are also rules, there are certain times you will need to go to sleep. There are times we sit at the table and eat etc. In this case we were about to cross the street, and I forced her to look right, left and right again before she was allowed to cross. And that ended up in a debate, why should I do it, why do I need to do it, while others don’t etc. Of course that debate went on and on. That was most likely my magical mirror moment, not easy to satisfy with a simple answer of that it is dangerous to cross the street. That there is other traffic that might be hitting you etc. And then my wife came with a simple book for here on Buzby, the misbehaving bee. And that bee states: "I'm king of the bees, and I'll do as I please!”. And of course will get into trouble and then learns that rules are there not to limit or frustrate you but to guide and help you.

 And that magical mirror triggered me, because I have that discussion in my professional live also. That people state, once they develop a new application, they do not want to be limited by rules. Because rules will limit their creativity, so rules are a bad thing. And in my opinion that is not true, I never heard a writer complain that he is on limited to 26 characters and that has limited his creativity in writing a novel. Or for those of you into soccer never heard Messi complain that the rules in soccer limit him in his creative play.

So I currently wrestling with the idea of rules and leadership in an agile environment. Luckily I still have a month before I need to present at the event.