💡⚙️📈 Michael Gerharz on Breaking Out of Agile Theater and Communicating Real Value


Ever get the feeling you’re the “agile person” in the room—brought in to run ceremonies, fix Jira boards, or play Scrum cop, but never actually invited to shape real strategy? If that hits close to home, you’ll want to listen in on my latest conversation with Michael Gerharz.

Michael’s a computer scientist by training, but these days he’s known for helping leaders and teams find the right words so their ideas land, rather than getting tossed in the trash. We dug into why so many agilists get stuck in what I call Process Theater: going through the motions, checking the boxes, but never really influencing the game. Michael sees the same pattern—agile as theater, not progress—and he’s got some hard-won insights about why it’s so damn hard to speak uncomfortable truths in organizations that just want to “do agile” rather than be agile.

We riffed on three big themes:
– Why it’s so tough to communicate the real value of agile work (and why so many leaders default to checklists and ceremonies instead of outcomes)
– The human tendency to avoid nuance, especially when LinkedIn and the broader business culture reward black-and-white takes
– How to actually show up as a strategic partner, not just a tactical commodity

Michael introduced his PATH framework (Plain, Actionable, Transformative, Heartfelt) as a practical way for agile leaders to bridge the gap—ditch the jargon, speak the language of the business, and connect with what actually matters to stakeholders. If you’ve ever felt like your agile expertise is being wasted on the wrong conversations, this episode will give you new ways to break the cycle.

Get the latest episode of the Scaling w/ Agility Podcast on your favorite Podcast player, or watch on YouTube:

video preview​

​

​
Want to go deeper? Check out Michael’s book, The PATH to Strategic Impact, or grab his free PATH in a Nutshell guide for a quick hit of the core ideas.

PS: What do you think about the podcast? I'd love your feedback! Or even a quick word of encouragement to keep going...

​

Yours,

Scaling w/ Agility

Are You Struggling to Scale Your Organization ? Need agility but dubious of process BS/dogma? I share reflective, pragmatic, principled takes on how to approach scaling your organization leveraging the essence (rather than theater) of product operating models, agile practices and frameworks, and business operating systems such as EOS and OKRs.

Read more from Scaling w/ Agility

When Vered and I got married, my father-in-law gave me a very nice watch as a wedding gift. I didn’t wear a watch that often at the time. I wore the watch, but it didn’t transform me. It provided the service of telling the time, but even back in 2004, we had phones that had clocks. And I was and am pretty punctual so didn’t need that transformation. (And when you’re in Engineering/IT leadership, nobody cares about the watch you wear… at least in Israel… ) Don’t tell Eli, but that watch spent...

“GenAI can enable cheaper, faster experimentation / discovery (it compresses the truth curve by reducing the cost of pretotyping style product experimentation techniques)” (Yours truly, in yesterday’s insight on how AI can really help you build better products) This statement seems to have hit a nerve with reader Elad, who is product leader at a cybersecurity scaleup: “Not everyone can do this… New companies, sure. Larger, established companies are knee-deep in mountains of code,...

While the jury is out on the extent of impact GenAI and vibe coding will have on building mission-critical enterprise products… Here are some thoughts on how AI can help turn the product flywheel: Use GenAI to enable fuller-stack engineers and reduce tech debt This will enable you to organize smaller product/outcome oriented teams These teams can achieve more with fewer dependencies and streamlined processes (even without looking at opportunities to streamline product dev processes themselves...