The Complexity Trap

How well intended it might be, it is people who add complexity so they can avoid pain. A clean sentence like "this is not working" forces responsibility. As a consequence we quietly dodge the real issue through a long explanation that gives the illusion of control, nuance and rationality. In organisations that sounds like: " Our context and culture is unique, that is why need our own hybrid four-speed lean-agile-Spotify-LeSS-but-SAFe matrix concept." Or another excuse could sound like: "We tried Agile, but with everything happening in the market, our people aren't ready. We are just too different from the rest." If you read into this; who am I to say that it isn't true. However... really? Are you really that different? It feels like intellectual camouflage. The painful truth is usually simpler: Leaders are not aligned on vision, priorities are unclear and change every week, teams are asked to move fast in ten different directions at once and no one wants to admit that the operating model is incoherent at the top. The good news is that there is a solution for that. Add complexity like new labels, new frameworks, new terms ... because saying "we as leaders don't agree is a lot harder than buying another model from an expensive consultancy company that based their ideas directly on the key words added in an Ai tool. 

Now add a tough economic climate on top. Suddenly every euro is questioned, and the loudest, most visible cost is people in meetings not being productive apparently. Line by line, the story goes: "we have too many meetings", "coaches are expensive", "people spend more time talking than doing", we could save a lot if we cut this Agile overhead". Let us be honest, it does sound reasonable on the surface. But here's the thing, it is the same "break up" logic that Manson explained: blame something concrete and near (all the meetings), instead of dealing with the deeper discomfort of not knowing where the ship is going. 

Radical saving is attractive because it is measurable (fewer meetings fewer roles and fewer voices), it feels decisive (we control the situation) and it avoids confronting leadership behaviour (leaders must be strong, right?). Yet the core problem still remains misalignment. Cost-cutting on the feedback loops is like saving money on brakes because the car is already going downhill. You will save... until you crash. 

Every strategy work that I facilitated revealed the same pattern at the beginning of the session. I typically started those sessions with asking 5 simple questions:

1. What is the vision of this organisation? Write it down in silence in your own words. 

2. What is the organisation's mission? Write it down in silence in your own words. 

3. What is the highest priority for the next 6 to 12 months? Write it down in silence and explain in your own words. 

4. What values guide the behaviour here? 

5. How do you know if you are winning? 

Now ... listen when everybody reveals their view on the organisation. You don't get one story, but you get 10 different stories: market share, employee engagement, innovation for the future, business as usual to stay predictable, cost optimization... And while I then see a lot of nodding heads, they are not saying the same things. They are not aligned. And this is then where the complexity starts. Teams receive mixed signals, middle management juggle conflicting expectations, priorities change depending on who shouts the loudest that week, metrics fight each other in stead of reinforcing one coherent direction. 

So when people complain about "Agile not working", it's almost never because Daily Scrums exist. It is because teams are trying to be empirical in a system where leaders are not even aligned on what "good" looks like. Misalignment at the top breeds chaos at the bottom. And then the chaos gets blamed on the framework. It sound a lot like the break up story you once invented, no? 

Agile ceremonies are not spiritual rituals invented to keep consultants busy. They are deliberate pauses to do three things:

1. Inspect reality

2. Adapt direction

3. Re-Align people. 

Planning, reviews, stand-ups, retrospectives are not nice-to-have when uncertainty is high. They are the only thing between working with reality and wishful thinking. In disruptive times, market move faster than your annual budget cycle, customers behaviour shifts faster than your org chart, tech and competition don't wait for your steering committee's. So you either talk more frequently with intent to check your hypotheses, or you make big yearly bets and pray. 

We can do better on those meetings. because those meetings become waste when there is no clear purpose in the conversation, leadership doesn't show up, no decision or experiment or learning is the outcome. It means that the problem is not the amount of conversations, the problem is the low-quality conversations. High quality looks like exposing misalignment early, turning assumptions into hypotheses, creating short feedback loops to test the hypotheses, give team the information and context they need to act/execute with autonomy. 

If you cut meeting time in the name of efficiency, it is like turning off the headlights because you want to go faster at night. 

The goal is to remove complexity while keeping your ability to adapt. You don't do that by cutting ceremonies. You do this by upgrading leadership and sharpening guidance. That means a single and coherent story at the top, removing whislists into actual hypotheses, use ceremonies as guidance, not theatre, simplify the rules qnd increase principles. Embrace radical honesty (radical candor) over polite stories. 

People add complexity to dodge discomfort. Today we see that the economic pressure pushes leaders to grab for visible and simple cuts. But the real mess lives in leadership misalignment, not in the Agile toolkit. "All those meetings" only become waste when they are empty. When they are used to give guidance, test hypotheses, align on reality, they are the cheapest insurance you have in your organisation. The work should never be about killing the ceremonies, the work is to have the guts to use them for what they were meant for: facing what is true together and deciding what to do next. Just leave out the comforting bullshit.