The Bungy Jump: Why Agile Transformations Fail

Pattern Recognition Across Contexts

Thirty years troubleshooting transformations teaches you something valuable: the best explanations come from outside the problem domain.

When banking executives struggle with trust deficits, I don’t reference other banks. I talk about bungy jumping. When government teams face decision paralysis, I describe hotel operations from my parents’ business. When retail leaders grapple with contradictory mandates, I reference copper mine security protocols my father navigated in Rhodesia.

Why? Because patterns transfer. The mechanisms that make one system work—or fail—often illuminate completely different contexts. A hotel tea trolley teaches you about feedback loops. A 3,500km drive through Africa in the 1950s teaches you about terrain-dependent responses. A bungy jump teaches you about the relationship between trust and risk-taking.

CIRCA-CLEAR emerged from four decades of collecting these patterns, not just from transformation work, but from lived experience across contexts most consultants never encounter. The framework works because it’s built on universal mechanics, not domain-specific solutions.

Here’s one pattern that explains why most Agile transformations fail.

The Taupo Bungy

New Zealand, October 2014. My wife and I arrived at Taupo’s famous bungy jump for our pre-booked jump to find a closure sign. Incident that morning. We spoke to staff, learned the details (recovery boat hit a rock), rebooked for the next day despite tight travel schedules.

I’d researched extensively. Taupo’s bungy had one of the best safety records in the world. I trusted their skills, experience, reputation. It took more to convince my sceptical wife. The next day, we jumped. It was brilliant.

Why could I take that leap?

Transparency about the incident (vulnerability)
Track record of competence (demonstrated capability)
Honest disclosure rather than cover-up (trust-building behaviour)
Professional systems visibly maintained (observable safety)

This is Agility enabled by resolved Insecurity.

The City of London Pattern

Fast forward to a transformation engagement. Working with the leadership team of one of the London Stock Exchange companies. They wanted to increase team agility. The typical faster delivery, better adaptation, autonomous decision-making.

I had some open and frank conversations with teams, it revealed the actual problem: leadership behaviours.

“They say one thing, but when we hit turbulence, they become controlling.”

Sound familiar?

Stable conditions: Leadership espouses agile values, empowerment, autonomy
Turbulence hits: Leadership reverts to command-and-control
Team response: Psychological safety collapses, agility becomes impossible
Underlying condition: Insecurity (trust deficit), not lack of Agility

This is the anti-Taupo approach.

Leadership wants teams to jump (be agile) but hasn’t established safety. When turbulence hits—the equivalent of the bungy incident—they don’t handle it transparently. Instead, they increase control. The opposite of what the Taupo operators did.

Teams learn: “Don’t trust the safety systems.”

The Diagnostic Error That Kills Transformations

Most “failed Agile adoptions” aren’t execution problems. They’re diagnostic problems.

The pattern:

Surface symptoms: slow delivery, poor adaptation, risk-averse behaviour
Standard diagnosis: “We need more Agility”
Intervention: Scrum ceremonies, sprint planning, retrospectives, empowered teams
Result: Performance theatre whilst underlying dysfunction remains

The missed diagnosis:

The actual condition was Insecurity (trust deficit, psychological safety gap, leadership inconsistency under pressure). Applying the Agility lever to an Insecurity condition makes things worse.

Why it fails:

You’re asking teams to take risks when safety doesn’t exist
You’re demanding transparency when vulnerability gets punished
You’re requiring experimentation when failure isn’t tolerated
You’re expecting the leap without securing the cord

The Mismatched Response

Over three decades troubleshooting transformations, I’ve seen this pattern repeatedly:

Banking client: “Our Agile transformation isn’t delivering.” Actual condition: Contradictory mandates from compliance, business, technology. Applied Agility to confusion. Needed Clarity first—forced prioritisation.

Government agency: “Teams aren’t self-organising.” Actual condition: Blame culture from past failures. Applied Agility to fear. Needed Empathy first—rebuild trust through leadership vulnerability.

Retail organisation: “Sprint velocity declining despite Agile maturity.” Actual condition: Pace overwhelming capacity. Applied more Agility to exhaustion. Needed Resilience—WIP limits, protected capacity.

The common error: Applying the Agility lever when the condition requires a different response.

What to Observe

Insecurity symptoms (need Empathy, not Agility):

Retrospectives surface no real issues
Skip-level conversations reveal what teams won’t say publicly
People go silent, then resign
Cover Your Ass (CYA) behaviour proliferates
Questions die, ideas stop flowing

When you see these, applying Agility frameworks makes things worse. Teams perform the ceremonies whilst protecting themselves. You get agile theatre, not actual agility.

What’s needed: Empathy first.

Leadership vulnerability (model safety before asking teams to risk)
Blameless post-mortems consistently (one blame incident destroys months of progress)
Small promises kept relentlessly (50 kept commitments over six months)
Protected honesty spaces (explicit forums for truth-telling with responsive action)

Timeline: 16 weeks minimum. You know that trust breaks fast, but rebuilds incredibly slowly through accumulated evidence.

The Bungy Jump Principle

The Taupo operators understood something most transformation leaders miss:

You establish safety BEFORE asking for the leap.

When the incident happened, they didn’t:

Hide the problem
Rush to reopen
Minimise concerns
Demand trust

They:

Disclosed transparently
Addressed the issue properly
Maintained professional standards
Earned trust through consistency

That’s why the leap was possible.

The CIRCA-CLEAR Insight

This diagnostic precision is what CIRCA-CLEAR provides:

CIRCA (conditions):

Complex: System behaviour emerges from interactions nobody fully understands → needs Learning
Insecure: Trust deficit prevents candid information flow → needs Empathy
Rapid: Change pace overwhelms capacity → needs Resilience
Contradictory: Incompatible stakeholder mandates → needs Clarity
Anxious: Uncertainty paralysis despite available information → needs Agility

CLEAR (matched responses):

Clarity: Force-rank conflicting priorities
Learning: Build collective intelligence systematically
Empathy: Rebuild psychological safety
Agility: Reduce decision latency
Resilience: Protect capacity through WIP discipline

The framework’s power: Recognising mismatches before applying interventions.

Micro-Move

Before your next transformation initiative:

Diagnose the condition (5 minutes):
- Is the problem trust (Insecurity)?
- Complexity we don’t understand (Complex)?
- Pace overwhelming capacity (Rapid)?
- Conflicting mandates (Contradictory)?
- Paralysing fear (Anxious)?
Match the lever (not default to Agility):
- Insecurity → Empathy first
- Complex → Learning first
- Rapid → Resilience first
- Contradictory → Clarity first
- Anxious → Agility (appropriate context)
Single-lever discipline (2-4 weeks):
- One intervention at a time
- Measure response
- Adjust or continue

Guardrail pair: Condition diagnosis accuracy (did symptoms match condition?) and intervention effectiveness (did lever move the metric?).

Not This

Not: “All transformations fail because of trust issues” (oversimplification)

Not: “Never use Agile frameworks” (they’re valuable when conditions match)

Not: “Leadership is always the problem” (sometimes it’s genuine complexity or contradictory mandates)

This: Different conditions require different levers. Diagnostic precision prevents wasted effort.

What This Means on Monday

Your Agile transformation might not be failing because of poor execution. It might be failing because you’re applying the wrong intervention to the actual condition.

The question isn’t “Are we doing Agile correctly?”

The question is “What condition are we actually in, and what lever does that condition require?”

Sometimes the answer is Agility. Often it’s something else entirely.

The leap is only safe when the cord is secured first.

That’s not pessimism. That’s professional competence.

Next: If this pattern resonates, the 5-minute Entry Diagnostic in Thriving in Turbulence helps you identify which condition you’re actually facing. Available on Leanpub today and Amazon on Thanksgiving Day.

What’s your experience? Have you seen Agility applied to Insecurity? What happened? Comments welcome.

NEIL WALKER