In this Wicked & Agile Interview, I had the chance to speak with Scrum Master Marjolein Pilon about the carbon footprint of the IT industry, raising awareness in the scrum community about the carbon efficiency of their applications and IT landscape, helping teams with practical ideas on how to become more sustainable, and embedding sustainability in the scrum process.

In this Wicked & Agile Interview, I had the chance to speak with Agile Coach and CEO Ondřej Dvořák about UA.Support, an international pro bono platform that links Ukrainian refugees requesting legal help with appropriate lawyers. We talked about the impact it has had in aiding those affected by the Ukraine war and how Ondřej used agility to achieve the impact of UA.Support and those it serves.

In this Wicked & Agile Interview, I had the chance to speak with consultant and agility coach, Aldo Rall, who volunteered during COVID lockdowns and mandates to support a group of teachers. With the teachers being recently unemployed, Aldo helped them charter a new community offering tutoring to children in remote settings.

In this Wicked & Agile Interview, I had the chance to speak with Cheryl Hammond about how she combines her decades of agile consulting with decades of volunteer work promoting college access and success in the US. Agile principles like an experimentation mindset, outcome focus, using data to inform decisions, and above all inclusion and respect for people, align beautifully with the values professional educators have espoused for centuries. She’s using specific agile techniques to energize her space and help students and volunteers see their efforts—and themselves—in new ways.

In this Wicked & Agile Interview, I had the chance to speak with Ron Laudadio, Agile & Digital Transformation Executive, about what he’s doing in his local government in Newfoundland.

Ron used Business Agility techniques to create human connection, alignment, and excitement. In Ron’s words, “I now have two data points that it works; it starts with the perspective of: people are people. Business Agility is really connecting humans together. When we apply it to communities, it works. It can help them create this community feel.”

In this Wicked & Agile Interview, I spoke with Jehan Al Fannah to examine Agility in action in hospitals in the Middle East during COVID.

Jehan is a transdisciplinary practitioner, which shares similar principles to Agile. Transdisciplinary objective is to cross boundaries and understand the in-between to better deal with complexity. It also works with collaborative stakeholders while not being held by a certain disciplinary. 

I recently had the chance to sit down with Jutta Eckstein, coach, consultant, speaker and author, to discuss how we can bring agility into sustainability in ways both big and small, along with shifting our conversations so we really understand our contribution towards further sustainability.

Jutta has written several books on agile development. In her most recent book, she has pair-written with John Buck on Company-wide Agility with Beyond Budgeting, Open Space & Sociocracy (dubbed BOSSA nova). In this work, she learned that being agile comes with an expectation for (environmental, social, and economic) sustainability. This shifted her focus toward how agility can help increasing sustainability.

I recently had the pleasure of talking to Paula about some of the gnarly challenges that she faces in her local municipality of Town of the Blue Mountains, the second fastest growing municipality in Canada.

Paula has written 2 traditionally published books on referral marketing and strategic networking along with hundreds of blogs over the last decade, using her skills to connect with her community and learn what are the most important challenges to solve. She is a very tenacious leader who is passionate about solving challenging problems such as housing, climate action, and maintaining the character of her beloved community while experiencing unprecedented growth. As chair of the Official Plan Review Steering Committee, Paula is living with major wicked problems every day.

Recently, I had the wonderful opportunity to interview Robert MacGregor, Principle Agile Coach and Scrum Master.

In this interview, Robert and I talked all about the type of person you have to be to engage in and handle a wicked problem, along with how to start becoming that person. We touched upon mindset needed for tackling the issues, tapping into the passion that aggregates into a cohesive team, and the incandescent fury that led to taking ownership issues as a means of removing impediments.

Recently, I had the wonderful opportunity to interview Mike Edwards, Author, Leader, Leadership Coach and Team Coach.

Mike and I chatted about wicked problems facing our leaders and organizations. Mike likes to reveal the unseen, unheard, and unspoken. He feels that much of the wicked problems are due to what we are not seeing. For example, we have seen leaders wanting the teams to return back to the office. Going back to the office could be due to lack of trust. Yet who is talking about trust? Talking and actioning the unseen elephant in the room can help our organizations chip away at their gnarly problems. We first have to reveal the unseen.

Recently, I had the opportunity to interview Michelle Anhang, a Mental Health and Leadership Coach. Her passion is mental health and how to talk about mental health as easy as talking about physical health.

In this interview we discussed about mental health issues in our teams, conflict management, and wicked problems in mental health space. So many great suggestions including having team members create a user manual about how they are when they get stressed or in conflict or how best to work with them.

Recently, I had the pleasure of interviewing Heather Fox, a 911 Dispatch Operator, from New York. She was able to share her experiences in the Emergency Operations Centre where a team from the Mayors office, Emergency Services, and Local Utility services would congregate to work on a climate disaster.

The approaches towards teams, leaders, and how to tackle problems are similar to what Agilists bring to the corporate world with one difference, urgency. The urgency is around life and how to service those in need.

I had the pleasure of interviewing Lyssa Adkins, an Agile and Leadership Coach, for Wicked Agility’s inaugural Wicked & Agile Interview.

Lyssa and I share a passion about how Agilists can work and support teams who engage in wicked problems. She shared her views of Wicked Problems and what we can do as Agilists. In this interview you will understand how the Agile and Wicked Problem world can support each other.