You’re Stuck in a “Rocking Chair,” Not on a Journey
A lot of transformations get stuck in an infinite loop and eventually fades with time. Two forces are pulling in opposite directions at the same time. On paper, the company wants teams to move fast and make decisions. But deep down, the organisation still trusts hierarchy, approvals, and control.
So here is what happens.
When teams start acting more Agile, the old control system feels threatened. Leaders feel the tension, even if they do not say it out loud. To reduce that discomfort, the organisation does what it has always done. It pulls decision control back up to few heads. The decision latency creeps in. It adds checkpoints. It asks for more approvals. You get a familiar pattern. A small push forward, then a bigger slide back. It is like trying to push a river uphill. You might manage it for a moment, but the water will always flow back down the way the riverbed is shaped. That is why it feels like a rocking chair. Lots of movement, though no real distance covered
You’re are driven by crisis for Problem Solving
A lot of transformations are powered by a crisis story. Leaders create a burning platform. They say we are in trouble, we must change now, everyone follows. That kind of pressure works. It creates fast action but doesn’t last long. Because the motivation is tied to pain or problem solving. For a moment, it feels like the organisation has finally woken up. But that energy does not last, because it is powered by pain.
Problem solving is not bad. The issue is the fuel source. When the main reason to change is that something hurts, the motivation naturally fades as soon as things start improving.
Here is the Causal loop :
- Action follows pain: when the problem feels unbearable, people move to solving them.
- Success reduces the pain: the change starts working, so the pressure drops.
- Motivation drops with it: urgency fades because it was tied to the discomfort.
- The old system returns: without steady effort, the organisation slides back to its default.
So you get a familiar pattern: worse to better to worse. That back and forth is not random. It is structural.
Underneath, two forces are competing:
- One force wants agility, faster decisions, more local ownership.
- Another force wants hierarchy, control, predictability, safety through approvals.
When the crisis is loud, agility temporarily wins. As the fire cools, the control system quietly reasserts itself. Decision making moves upward again. Checkpoints multiply. Teams lose room to act. The organisation returns to equilibrium.
It is called the rocking chair effect.
You’re Making the Teams Faster, But the Work Slower.
The trap of “local optimization” occurs when an organization restructures at the team level without considering the impact on the entire organisation system. This is like digging a new, efficient riverbed for one team that inadvertently dams the main river of value for everyone else. This often happens when key specialists become dedicated to one team, making them unavailable to the rest of the organization. As a result, the “horizontal value stream” – the actual path work takes to get to the customer becomes clogged with delays and new silos.
Redesigning the Riverbed
The root cause of these structural issues often lies in the type of choices the organization is making. The “hierarchy of choice” reveals, why so many change efforts are superficial. A fundamental choice is a commitment to a basic life orientation or a state of being. By choosing to be a learning organisation, the company establishes a foundation that remains constant regardless of market fluctuations or internal stress. This choice shifts the organisation from a “reactive-responsive” mode — where it only changes when problems arise to a creative mode, where learning is the primary driver of existence. Once this choice is made, the underlying structure of the organisation reorganises itself so that the path of least resistance leads toward constant growth.
A primary choice is the outcome you actually want, for its own sake. In this case, the outcome is continuous improvement. Not doing Agile. Not running agile events. The real aim is that the organisation gets better, week after week, in ways customers can feel. This becomes your vision point. It creates healthy tension between:
- where we are right now
- where we want to be
That gap is what keeps improvement alive.
Secondary choices are the tools you choose to serve the primary outcome. That is where agile practices come in. Sprints, standups, WIP limits, visual boards, smaller batches. None of these are the point. They are just mechanisms to improve learning and flow. Toyota’s Andon is a good analogy. Pulling the cord does not create learning by itself. Learning happens in what the system does next: swarm, collectively understand, change the standard, prevent its recurrence. With agility it should be the same. You do the practice because it helps you learn faster and improve continuously. If a events stops helping, you change it without guilt. How often do we really challenge the agile events and change it ? Because the commitment is to the outcome, not the agile ceremony.
When the primary choice is clear, secondary choices feel obvious. They stop feeling like a rollout imposed from outside.
Without the fundamental choice to be a learning organisation, adopting Agile remains a “behavioural fix” that will eventually fail as the old structure pulls the company back to its original path. When these choices are aligned, the transformation ceases to be a struggle of willpower and becomes a natural surge toward a vision.
References :
1. Being an Effective Value Coach – Al Shalloway
2. The Path of Least Resistance – Robert Fritz