Agile has a problem. After decades of frameworks, ceremonies, and consultants, we’ve created something the original manifesto was meant to destroy: heavyweight process that obscures the actual work.
Teams dutifully attend standups, estimate story points, and run retrospectives while losing sight of why they exist. Organizations implement Scrum, SAFe, or Kanban hoping to become “more agile” but still hand teams work to execute rather than problems to solve.
The solution isn’t another framework or even better lean flow. It’s leading with clarity.
The Work Assignment Trap
Most organizations attempting agile transformation fall into the same trap: they give teams work to do instead of problems to solve.
“Build this dashboard.”
“Implement these user stories.”
“Ship these features by Q3.”
This turns teams into feature factories. They optimize for velocity and story completion rather than outcomes. They can’t adapt when they learn something new because they’re just following orders. Leadership then wonders why “agile isn’t working.”
But when you lead with clarity, the difference becomes stark:
Instead of “Ship these features by Q3” → “Reduce customer churn by 20% by Q3”
Instead of “Build this dashboard” → “Customer retention dropped 15% last quarter and we don’t know why”
Instead of “Implement these user stories” → “Our support team is drowning in repetitive questions”
Why Organizations Default to Work Assignment
Work assignment feels safer. It’s controllable, measurable, and familiar. You can create project plans, track progress, and hold people accountable for delivery.
Problem assignment requires something scarier: trusting teams with ambiguity and real responsibility. It means admitting that leadership doesn’t have all the answers pre-figured. It demands that teams develop product sense, customer empathy, and the ability to think through complex problems.
Many organizational hierarchies simply aren’t set up for this level of trust and autonomy.
Leading with Clarity Changes Everything
When you lead with clarity about actual problems, several things happen:
– Teams become investigators, not implementers. They have to understand the problem space, form hypotheses, and figure out what to build—if anything needs to be built at all.
– Adaptability emerges naturally. When teams understand the problem they’re solving, they can pivot when they learn something new without waiting for permission or new requirements.
– Autonomy becomes real. Instead of fake autonomy over implementation details, teams get real autonomy over approach, solution, and even whether the problem is worth solving.
– Process serves purpose. Standups become about surfacing blockers to problem-solving. Retrospectives focus on improving the team’s ability to tackle complex challenges. Planning becomes hypothesis formation and testing strategy.
Beyond the Agile Industrial Complex
Leading with clarity bypasses much of what agile has become. Instead of asking “Are we doing Scrum right?” teams ask “Are we clear on what we’re doing and why?”
The process becomes whatever serves that clarity, not whatever the framework prescribes. Some teams might need daily standups; others might need weekly deep dives. Some problems require rapid experimentation; others need careful research and design.
This feels like the natural evolution beyond agile’s accumulated weight—a return to the original spirit of responding to change over following a plan, but with even more focus on the clarity of purpose that makes adaptation possible.
Making the Shift
The transition from work assignment to problem assignment isn’t easy, but it starts with leadership courage:
• Present problems, not solutions
• Define success by outcomes, not outputs
• Accept that teams might solve problems differently than you would
• Resist the urge to break problems down into predetermined work packages
For teams, it means developing comfort with ambiguity and taking real responsibility for results rather than just completing assigned tasks.
The Clarity Advantage
Organizations that lead with clarity don’t just become more agile—they become more effective. Teams develop deeper understanding of their domain, stronger relationships with customers, and the confidence to tackle increasingly complex challenges.
Most importantly, they stop performing agile and start being responsive to what actually matters: solving real problems for real people in an uncertain world.
The frameworks and ceremonies matter less. The clarity of purpose matters everything.
Agile Ways 