The Hidden Cost of Constant Restructuring in Agile Organizations | Renee Troughton

Renee Troughton: The Hidden Cost of Constant Restructuring in Agile Organizations

Read the full Show Notes and search through the world's largest audio library on Agile and Scrum directly on the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast website: http://bit.ly/SMTP_ShowNotes.

"Trust and safety are the most fundamental foundations of a team to perform. And so you are just breaking the core of teams when you're doing this."

Renee challenges us to look beyond team dysfunction and examine the "dirty little secrets" in organizations—leadership-driven anti-patterns that destroy team performance. She reveals a cyclical pattern of constant restructuring that occurs every six months in many organizations, driven by leaders who avoid difficult performance management conversations and instead force people through redundancy rounds. This creates a cascade of fear, panic, and victim mindset throughout the organization. Beyond restructuring, Renee identifies other destructive patterns including the C-suite shuffle (where new CEOs bring in their own teams, cascading change throughout the organization) and the insourcing/outsourcing swings that create chaos over 5-8 year cycles. These high-level decisions drain productivity for months as teams storm and reform, losing critical knowledge and breaking the trust and safety that are fundamental for high performance. Renee emphasizes that as Agile coaches and Scrum Masters, we often don't feel empowered to challenge these decisions, yet they represent the biggest drain on organizational productivity.

Self-reflection Question: Have you identified the cyclical organizational anti-patterns in your workplace, and do you have the courage to raise these systemic issues with senior leadership?

Featured Book of the Week: Loving What Is by Byron Katie

"It teaches you around how to reframe your thoughts in the day-to-day life, to assess them in a different light than you would normally perceive them to be."

Renee recommends "Loving What Is" by Byron Katie as an essential tool for Scrum Master introspection. This book teaches practical techniques for reframing thoughts and recognizing that problems we perceive "out there" are often internal framing issues. Katie's method, called "The Work," provides a worksheet-based approach to introspection that helps identify when our perceptions create unnecessary suffering. Renee also highlights Marshall Rosenberg's "Nonviolent Communication" as a companion book, which uses language to tap into underlying emotions and needs. Both books offer practical, actionable techniques for self-knowledge—a critical skill for anyone in the Scrum Master role. The journey these books provide leads to inner peace through understanding that many challenges stem from how we internally frame situations rather than external reality.

We have many episodes on NVC, Nonviolent Communication, which you can dive into and learn from experienced practitioners. 

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About Renee Troughton

Renee is one of the most experienced Agile coaches in the Southern Hemisphere with over two decades of transformation experience across banking, insurance, pharma, and real estate. Since 2002, she's helped organizations go digital, tackle systemic issues, and deliver value faster. Passionate about cutting bureaucracy, Renee champions a return to humanity at work.

Follow Renee’s work at AgileForest.com, her website as well as her work on the Agile Revolution podcast. 

You can link with Renee Troughton on LinkedIn.