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I found an old post I wrote in February 2015.

In the post “Approaches, Lets Try A New Blend“, I’d proposed blending Crystal Clear, XP, Scrum, and DSDM into a “People-Centric Hybrid Approach.” Take the best bits from each. Throw them into a pot. Serve to non-software teams.

It wasn’t wrong. It just missed the point.

The post assumed better practices create better outcomes. Combine timeboxing with MoSCoW prioritisation. Add retrospectives. Layer in governance. Success follows.

But here’s what a decade of implementation taught me:

Three teams. Same symptom. Opposite causes.

Team A: Velocity declining because nobody understands how 47 microservices interact.

Team B: Velocity declining because the lead was publicly blamed last quarter. Now everyone escalates everything.

Team C: Velocity declining because they started 23 initiatives with a 10-person team.

My 2015 hybrid would have prescribed the same medicine to all three. It would have made Teams B and C worse.

The shift: from practice-focused to condition-focused.

I stopped asking “which methodology should we use?” Moved past “which elements from multiple approaches best fit this context?”

Started exploring different conditions—often multiple conditions interacting within the same team, different conditions across teams in the same organisation—and asking “which condition are we actually facing right now?”

That question led to CIRCA—five turbulence conditions I now see everywhere:

→ Complex: Nobody holds the full picture

→ Insecure: Fear shapes decisions more than data

→ Rapid: Too much changing too fast

→ Contradictory: Legitimate priorities pulling opposite directions

→ Anxious: Future uncertainty paralysing present action

My previous afterthought

The social care programme I mentioned as an afterthought? It taught me why this matters.

Fifty+ people. Six years of transformation behind them. Lean. Restructures. New systems. Each launched with urgency. Each demanded behaviour change before proving safety.

When I arrived, three conditions were layered:

Insecure (Primary)

Retrospectives produced only safe issues. Skip-levels revealed frustrations nobody mentioned to managers. Experienced staff weren’t fighting—they were quietly updating CVs.

Not this: Poor communication. They had channels. They chose not to use them honestly. Structure wasn’t broken. Trust was.

Anxious (Secondary)

“What’s the next restructure?” Every small decision felt existentially threatening. People sought permission for obvious choices. Innovation proposals died before being voiced.

Not this: Appropriate caution. Risk response wasn’t proportional to stakes. Routine decisions got the same scrutiny as critical ones.

Rapid (Tertiary)

Accumulated backlogs had overwhelmed capacity. WIP exceeded any reasonable limit. Context-switching prevented completion.

Not this: High workload. Busy is sustainable. This wasn’t busy—it was drowning. Start rate exceeded finish rate by 3x.

The combination created a trap:

Insecure amplified Anxious. Broken trust made uncertainty feel more dangerous. Anxious blocked resolution of Rapid. Fear of wrong choices prevented WIP discipline. Rapid reinforced Insecure. Pace pressure meant no time for the patience trust requires.

What actually worked was sequence, not practices.

Empathy first. Leadership vulnerability—acknowledging the impossible situation. Small promises kept relentlessly. Protected spaces where truth-telling was explicitly safe. Weeks before real issues surfaced. Months before the revelation gap closed.

Resilience second. Only after safety was established did we address pace. WIP limits. Sustainable velocity agreements.

Clarity third. Forced ranking conversations. Decision protocols ending the “please everyone, satisfy no one” pattern.

If I’d demanded agile behaviours first—self-organisation, frequent delivery, continuous learning—I’d have applied Agility to Insecurity.

That’s the failure pattern I now see everywhere. Organisations demanding adaptive behaviours without providing the psychological safety those behaviours require.

You cannot ask for self-organisation from teams paralysed by fear. You cannot expect continuous delivery when trust is broken. You cannot mandate learning from people who’ve been punished for honesty.

The 2015 hybrid prescribed practices. What worked was addressing conditions in the right sequence.

Those 50 people delivered outcomes in a fraction of the typical time. Not because of better ceremonies. Because we accidentally diagnosed first. Saw the fear. Saw the overload. Saw the paralysis. Adjusted accordingly.

Took me another decade to understand and decode the why.

Diagnosis precedes intervention. Sequence matters. Same practices, different conditions, opposite outcomes.

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What shifted your thinking about transformation over the past decade?