The Agile Thought Provocateur: Helpful Or Harmful?

I frequently spend time on LinkedIn sharing my content and reading the contributions of others. Some people focus on writing articles; some mostly add comments, and others do both.

For some time, a specific group of contributors has drawn my attention. They give themselves titles like Agile Thought Provocateur or Agile Disruptor 💥. Some don’t label themselves as such but proudly live up to it.

I’ve had mixed experiences with them.

Let’s start with the positive experiences. Their contribution helps us see things differently, offers fresh insights, and might even start a paradigm shift. The tone is respectful, compassionate, and helpful — what I call “lovingly provocative.” ❤️

The root of my negative experiences is the opposite behavior. They mostly focus on bashing the ideas of others without offering a helpful alternative. They don’t try to understand someone else’s position and immediately jump to (often false) conclusions. 😢

Unfortunately, these are often the most popular comments.

In the past, I’ve had a few conversations with Agile Thought Provocateurs (the negative version), and their reasoning was that being disruptive is part of your role as an Agile Coach, Scrum Master, or Agile practitioner.

I agree.

Yet the best Agile Coaches I’ve worked with were disruptive AND respectful. They were lovingly AND provocative. It’s not an impossible combination.

In my environment, these so-called Agile Thought Provocateurs (the negative version) are the reason that some people I highly respect are considering not sharing their content online anymore. Well, not on LinkedIn. This would be such a loss; we might have already lost many great voices we were unaware of.

What I consider mysterious is how these people can make a living as an Agile Coach. 🤷‍♂️

If I noticed this unhelpful and damaging behavior in my organization, you would be on the street immediately. Instead, these people often get invited as keynote speakers because they have such a juice opinion…

Anyhow, these are my 2 cents…

Be nice, helpful, and compassionate. You can do it.