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Badass Agile

Badass Agile

By: Fuse Chamber Inc
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Episodes
  • What Does an Agile Mindset Mean Now? Get Out of the Box

    What Does an Agile Mindset Mean Now? Get Out of the Box
    26 Oct 2026
    When I first encountered Agile, I didn’t like it. It represented change at a level I wasn’t willing to accept. But ever since, I’ve seen the agile mindset as a gift, and what it taught me matters more now than it ever has. How I found the agile mindset I didn’t get Agile because it suddenly made sense. I got it because I could see what I could do with it…help teams, and help customers get something they really wanted that was elusive. Agile broke us out of the box of 18 months and $5 million before we saw any result, and a lot of those results were just wrong. Then over the years, it became more process-laden, more rules-based, more permission-focused. It put us back in the box. And it kind of sucked. When the wheels came off the industry, I realized we hadn’t just lost the trust of the people paying us. I don’t think we ever had it. They were waiting for their moment to say, we understand what a project manager is. Go do that. Get back in the box. Work changed, and people are pushing back There’s been more change in the past 7 years than I can remember in my entire life. People are tired. Frustrated. Something feels wrong. I was there when desktop computers, the internet and cell phones changed work. But this is the first time I’ve seen people say enough is enough. Look at return to office. I’ve employed people remotely for years, and there is no difference. I set an expectation, a deadline and a budget, and they hit it. I didn’t care if they worked evenings or weekends, 20 minutes at a time. But somebody decided that if you can’t see them, you can’t trust them, and the employer took back the dominant hand. Then look at AI. A recruiter can use it to screen your resume, even interview you. But use it to tailor your resume when hundreds of people are competing for one job? Bad, bad employee. Back in the box you go. That’s made AI feel like it’s there to control the people, maybe even to screw them. “You can’t put me in a box” Last week I registered someone into Forge Genesis, and they said something I can’t shake. You can’t put me in a box. That’s where people are. You’ll make this much and you won’t complain. You’ll fill this role description. Or you’re out on the street. When I think back to the origins of Badass Agile, that was the whole point. Becoming the kind of person who refuses to be put in the box. The agile mindset sees around the corner When Agile hit, when AI hit, even the pandemic, everyone panicked. In 2023 you could write your own paycheck as a prompt engineer, even though nobody knew what good looked like. Then things shake loose. The people in demand next are the ones who know how to make AI really hum, profitably and ethically. If who we were and what we knew yesterday was any use, we wouldn’t have all this mayhem. That’s what agile means to me today. Flex, bend, pivot, sure. But mostly, being comfortable looking around the corner while everyone else looks at each other for comfort. Back to the fundamentals of the agile mindset So here’s what I’m doing with it. Going back to the principles of the badass. Get out of the box. Use your unique voice and your unique vision, and figure out where that’s valuable in the marketplace right now. Do that and the relationship between employer and employee becomes an exchange of value. That takes the badass leader’s ability to fight. Fight the changes that aren’t working. Fight the temptation to ride a trend for a bigger paycheck. Be willing to stretch and fail. Be the rebel voice that says what hasn’t been said. You have a choice. Stay in the box while it shrinks on all sides, or step outside the lines, run your experiment, and insist on being measured on your results. Nobody knows what’s coming. That’s where Agile is meant to thrive, and that’s why you and I have the advantage right now. That’s what Forge Lightning and Forge Genesis were built for. Details below. If You Liked This Episode, you may also like: Episode 117 – 4 Mindsets That Amp Up Your Coaching Skills Episode 143 – The Ultimate Agile Mindset FORGE GENESIS IS HEREAll the skills you need to stop relying on job postings and start enjoying the freedom of an Agile career on YOUR terms. First cohort starts in Q1 2026https://learning.fusechamber.com/forge-genesis THE ALL NEW FORGE LIGHTNING12 Weeks to elite leadership!https://learning.fusechamber.com/forge-lightning CHECK OUT ALL MY PRODUCTS AND SERVICES HERE:https://learning.fusechamber.com We’re also on YouTube! Follow the podcast, enjoy some panel/guest commentary, and get some quick tips and guidance from me:https://www.youtube.com/c/BadassAgilea Follow The LinkedIn Page:https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/badass-agile Our mission is to create an elite tribe of leaders who focus on who they need to become in order to lead and inspire, and to be the best agile podcast and resource for effective mindset and leadership game. Contact us (contact@badassagile.com)...
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    13 min
  • The 4 Agile Trends That Matter Right Now

    The 4 Agile Trends That Matter Right Now
    19 Oct 2026
    Where did agile go? For years there was an Agile is dead controversy, and it was a sore spot for a lot of practitioners. My feeling was it wasn’t dead, but it was definitely changing shape. So here are the agile trends I’m watching right now, and what they mean for you. The agile trends started with blown trust Agile was a wonderful idea largely because it was simple. It was anti-bloat. It was a great way to make a living…until it wasn’t. When people started lifting the veil to see where all the money was going, they didn’t see anything that screamed value. They saw a lot of people doing stuff, and it was hard to tell why it mattered. When times are tight, you cut what isn’t delivering clear, measurable value. And to a large extent, away it went. The core principles haven’t changed. Process for process’s sake is still no good. And technology can’t go faster unless we as humans go faster. There are no Agile problems, only human problems. We have technology that didn’t exist 25 years ago, and we’re not going faster. Agile trend #1: coaching roles are coming back (a little) For about two years, if you searched Indeed or LinkedIn for agile coach roles, you got Scrum Master roles. That’s starting to change. I’ve been a developer, a project manager and a business analyst, and all of those went in waves. When companies need to make cuts, contractors go first, because it shows up immediately in the results. Agile itself never went away. Big room planning, design sprints, iterations, continuous improvement are still embedded in how we build things. What companies need now is someone senior to get people unstuck when things aren’t working. The heyday isn’t coming back. But for senior people with the wisdom and the people skills, there’s room out there if you look. Agile trend #2: AI has divided human labour There are things only people can do, and things automation can replace or heavily augment. I use AI every day. For content, marketing, strategy and business ideas, it generally fails somewhere unless I inject my own supervision and instinct. It doesn’t matter how well I prompt it. Where it does well is anything that’s data processing and directable. Research, parsing data, updating spreadsheets. Code too, but if you’re not great at testing it and making it hang together (also known as architecture), you’re going to have problems. Big businesses are struggling with that just as much as I am. Influence, empathy, insight, creativity, herding cats…that still takes a person. Which is exactly why some of those coaching roles are coming back. Agile trend #3: we’re putting ourselves in the removable category Our value always came from taking something new and landing it inside a company. So naturally we’re looking at how agile and AI fit together. The problem is where a lot of us are pointing it. If you’re automating the stuff that made your role necessary, you’re helping yourself get replaced. Focus instead on what companies need most right now, which is staying competitive and generating shareholder value. If you can make money, save money, save time or reduce risk, you’re valuable. That’s always in style. Agile trend #4: companies need a return on AI, and fast Companies are spending the money and not getting the return. At least not yet. This happens every time. New technology is risky, there are no case studies, so we do it badly. Isn’t that agile at heart? Try something, measure it, get better until we get it right. The problem is it makes CEOs sweat. They want the impact on earnings per share tomorrow, and this can’t wait 8 quarters. If the last investment doesn’t pay soon, that’s an extinction-level event for an executive’s career. That’s where your agile skill comes in…structuring effort to deliver a testable outcome in weeks instead of months. Agile trends don’t come with a job title So what title do you go look for? There isn’t one. When I tell folks they’ll have to knock on doors and offer a service HR doesn’t have a bucket for, I usually hear “nah man, I just want that next contract.” But you can’t serve without risk. Take the path that’s already been worn flat and you won’t grow, and neither will your customers. Agile people are impact people. In Forge Genesis I’m showing the current cohort these agile trends, where I got the data, and how I used AI to figure out what’s coming next. Details below. FORGE GENESIS IS HEREAll the skills you need to stop relying on job postings and start enjoying the freedom of an Agile career on YOUR terms. First cohort starts in Q1 2026https://learning.fusechamber.com/forge-genesis THE ALL NEW FORGE LIGHTNING12 Weeks to elite leadership!https://learning.fusechamber.com/forge-lightning CHECK OUT ALL MY PRODUCTS AND SERVICES HERE:https://learning.fusechamber.com We’re also on YouTube! Follow the podcast, enjoy some panel/guest commentary, and get some quick tips and guidance from me:...
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    14 min
  • Agile For Small Teams with Eric Wu and Andrew Don, Catalyst Impact Studio

    Agile For Small Teams with Eric Wu and Andrew Don, Catalyst Impact Studio
    12 Oct 2026
    Agile was always at its best in small places. Startups, disruptors, the five person team in the corner nobody was watching. Somewhere along the way we dragged it into the office tower. We forgot where it came from, and what it was good at. When I met Eric Wu and Andrew Don of Catalyst Impact Studio, I wanted to know what it looks like when you take Agile back home. They work with nonprofits in Chicago, which means small teams, small budgets and a world that’s turned upside down every other week. Andrew was an engineer in enterprise SaaS when his whole team got Scrum certified back in 2012. He was also sitting on the board of a youth nonprofit at the time, and he couldn’t unsee the gap between those wrolds. Eric spent 15 years in consulting and corporate strategy before he got fed up with chasing profit for its own sake. They met through Chicago’s AAPI philanthropy community and kept having the same conversation for years until they finally did something about it. Why Catalyst Impact Studio works with nonprofits Eric and Andrew know why the resistance hits harder in a nonprofit. Funding gets pulled or tied up in court, inflation and tariffs raise the cost of every service, and nobody knows what AI is going to do next. A big company can eat a failed project and move on, but a nonprofit with that kind of margin can’t. How Catalyst Impact Studio makes Agile stick Here’s what surprised Andrew. The people who fought him hardest were the most overwhelmed and burned out people in the room. They had nothing left in the tank for one more change, even when the way they were working was grinding them into the ground. So he doesn’t lead with the framework. He sits down, listens and figures out what their day actually looks like. Then he shows them something useful right away. You’ll hear the story of the first daily scrum he ran with a nonprofit team, and how in ten minutes you could see eyes go wide because for the first time everybody knew what everybody else was working on. After that they wanted more. We talk about active listening all the time in our world, but most of us think it means taking good notes when someone hands us a requirement. Andrew’s version starts way earlier, with making people feel seen and heard before you ask them to change a thing. What Catalyst Impact Studio removed from Scrum Andrew tried story points and velocity with one of his first nonprofit teams and it went nowhere. When one person’s doing finance, another’s fundraising and someone else is running programs, nobody can agree on what a “3 point task” even is. So he tossed it. What’s left is sprint planning, the daily scrum, retros and a board everyone can see. If something doesn’t pay for itself, it’s gone. Where to start on Monday I asked them what someone coming out of a big bank (with a rulebook and a center of excellence propping them up) should do on day one in a small shop with no guardrails. Both said the same thing. Work in short cycles. Eric is an endurance runner and he calls it sprinting a marathon. Worry about the first mile, because you have no clue what mile 18 is going to throw at you. Andrew adds a question almost no team asks in planning, which is how much capacity they really have. The work didn’t go anywhere For years you could say “I’m an agile coach” and people knew what you brought to the table. That’s over. A lot of good people are shrinking into jobs they hate or leaving the field altogether. Eric and Andrew are living proof of what I teach in Forge Genesis. Companies still need agility, they just stopped calling it that. Pick a sector you actually care about, go talk to people and ask them what they’re struggling with. Most of them already know something’s broken. Lead with focus, clarity and better habits, and leave the jargon at home. Find Eric and Andrew at catalystimpactstudio.com or on LinkedIn. If you like this episode, you might also like: Agile Coach Jobs Aren’t Coming Back (Here’s What To Do) **FORGE GENESIS IS HERE** All the skills you need to stop relying on job postings and start enjoying the freedom of an Agile career on YOUR terms. First cohort starts in Q1 2026 https://learning.fusechamber.com/forge-genesis **THE ALL NEW FORGE LIGHTNING** 12 Weeks to elite leadership! https://learning.fusechamber.com/forge-lightning **CHECK OUT ALL MY PRODUCTS AND SERVICES HERE:** https://learning.fusechamber.com We’re also on YouTube! Follow the podcast, enjoy some panel/guest commentary, and get some quick tips and guidance from me: https://www.youtube.com/c/BadassAgilea ****** Follow The LinkedIn Page: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/badass-agile ****** Our mission is to create an elite tribe of leaders who focus on who they need to become in order to lead and inspire, and to be the best agile podcast and resource for effective mindset and leadership game. Contact us (contact@badassagile.com) for elite-level performance and agile coaching, speaking ...
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    47 min
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