Agility is clearly moving into the mainstream of business practice now, and this is a cause for celebration. Yet there is some unease about how well the values associated with “Agile” will make this transition – and even some argument about whether those values are still relevant.

At the heart of this unease is the tension between the objectives of the organisation and the needs of the people who work for those organisations or use their goods and services.

Geof wants to make a case for valuing “human value and meaning” over “business value”. Business value is vital, but as a business agility coach and advocate he take the stand that agility practices work precisely because they unlock greater human potential than “traditional” hierarchies. Greater ethical business value flows from unleashing human potential, not the other way around, so we need to ensure that people, rather than process, are at the heart of our agility thinking and behaviour.

In this talk, Geof will share an example of human-centered agility in recruitment as well as findings from new research about how agile coaches experience the tension between business and human value.