Épisodes

  • 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
    Oct 12 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
  • Agile Coach Jobs Aren’t Coming Back (Here’s What To Do)

    Agile Coach Jobs Aren’t Coming Back (Here’s What To Do)
    Sep 29 2026
    Agile coach jobs aren’t coming back, and most of us already know it. What we haven’t done is accept what that means. Agile coach jobs went away (so we hid from the change) The irony of this profession is that agile is an approach to change, and we practitioners are as frightened of change as anyone we’ve ever coached. So when the roles went away, a lot of capable people did the predictable thing. They shrunk themselves. Back to project manager, program manager, product owner. Work that uses a fraction of what they know. I understand it. There’s a job description for those. But there isn’t yet one for what we actually do. No new job title is coming to replace agile coach jobs Don’t wait for it. If it does show up, it will have been written by someone who had nothing to do with the rebellion. That’s the part people forget. Agile was a rebellion, and rebellions are loosely organized and risky. With the economy and the geopolitics doing what they’re doing, nobody is volunteering for more risk. So nobody is going to stand up, announce the new category, and hand you a good rate for it. There are two kinds of change One is patching the bridge. I drove past a thirty-year-old overpass recently and you can see the repairs in the concrete. We know this kind well. Inspect, improve, carry the learning forward. The other is the forest fire. The forest gets too old, too dry, too crowded, too untenable, and the whole thing has to go. Some species of tree only drop their seeds in a fire. Vinyl got better for forty years. Better pressings, better styluses, better amplifiers. Then the CD arrived and none of it mattered. We had the BlackBerry with half its face given over to a keyboard. Then the iPhone. Show me a BlackBerry now. Notice what didn’t change. People still wanted to listen to music. People still wanted to reach each other. The problem stayed exactly where it was, and the thing built to solve it burned. Delivery will always have problems. What we built to solve them is what has to go. What to do instead of chasing agile coach jobs Stop waiting and start listening. Once or twice a year I export my LinkedIn connections, go through the spreadsheet, and highlight the people I enjoyed working with. Then I reach out. How are you doing, what have you been up to, here’s what I’m seeing, what are you seeing? They’ve changed jobs since we last spoke. Their companies have changed strategy. They know things. Have ten of those conversations in the next two weeks and patterns start showing up. Check them against Reddit, Quora, Substack, wherever people complain out loud. When you stop asking someone to hand you a solution, they describe their pain instead. Then propose something. This is where the iteration belongs, and it’s the part people get backwards. You don’t iterate on the bridge. You iterate on the offer. Maybe the price is wrong. Maybe a CEO doesn’t care and a VP does. Tweak it and go again. Eventually somebody says let’s get together and talk about what you’ve been up to. That’s your signal. This takes real courage and it isn’t for everybody. But the rate on an agile coach job is a cap, and you won’t raise it using that title. Forge Genesis is where I teach this. Link below, cohort starting soon. **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 engagements, team-level and executive mindset/agile training, and licensing options for modern, high-impact, bite-sized learning and educational content.
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    13 min
  • Why AI Isn’t Making Companies Faster

    Why AI Isn’t Making Companies Faster
    Aug 31 2026
    Why AI Isn’t Making Companies Faster Why AI isn’t making companies faster? Common question I get these days, and the answer isn’t that mysterious. Everybody bought the tools, and ran the pilots, but nothing sped up. That doesn’t mean the money was wasted, and it doesn’t mean AI is a fraud. AI is an amplifier. What it amplified is a problem we had ten years ago and still haven’t addressed. The gap between a decision and a customer There’s a lag between the moment an executive team decides something and the moment a customer actually feels it…the moment it converts to revenue, or to something valuable. So ask yourself this question – “When did your company last make a real decision? And how long before anyone outside the building noticed?” Most leaders can’t answer that. That’s the whole problem, and it’s the reason AI isn’t making companies faster no matter how much they’re investing right now. It was never the technology Agile is supposedly finished. Has been for a few years now. And yet…lack of agility still shows up in the top five concerns CEOs report every year. They don’t call it agile. They call it speed-to-market, nimbleness, adaptability…the ability to respond when the market moves. Meanwhile every organization I know is being asked to do the impossible. Extract more value from fewer people. Make cuts where no cuts remain. Faster and cheaper while somehow getting better. That runs straight into what I learned in my project management days — the holy triangle of budget, time and scope. You don’t get all three. And you certainly don’t cut one and keep quality where it was. The practical maximum Here’s where it actually stops. Here’s why AI isn’t making companies faster. Resistance to change. Risk aversion. No autonomy. Nobody is allowed to make the call. Fear. Those human factors combine into a practical maximum, and no amount of technology can help you move past it. Give someone a goal tied to their job, their pay and their longevity, and then deny them the authority to make trade-offs, to negotiate, to prioritize. They disengage. They learn to be helpless. Losing control over your own destiny is what makes folks check out, and it’s happening everywhere right now. And…nobody is doing a good job of addressing it, and it’s costing companies. Pushing harder doesn’t shrink the lag. The people side of what we do was never ready for the speed of the technology we already had five years ago, and it’s no more ready today, because we haven’t changed anything. That’s the honest answer to why AI isn’t making companies faster. What leaders actually control A large part of this has nothing to do with the teams. It’s the voice of the leader. The answer is not making things sound more urgent. Pressing harder won’t help. Communicating what’s being built, why it’s being built, and who it’s for directly to the crews responsible for doing it, rather than from a board deck or a shareholder report. Creating a better tolerance for small failures, and giving people the tools to minize risk…that’s how teams can claim the autonomy, the authority and the courage to move. Speed comes from putting the important things at the top of the pile and letting the rest wait. Not from sweating harder. Not outsized consequences. Because if teams don’t feel authorized to do what’s necessary, they won’t do it. And we’ll keep covering the failures with dashboards and nonsense metrics, which serves nobody. If the honest answer to how long before a customer felt it is embarrassingly long, then the change begins with you. Want to learn more about how you can capitalize on this trend and help companies deal with the disarray and fallout of unsupported AI investment? It might be time to start something of your own. Check out Forge Genesis – newest cohort starting September 2026. **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 engagements, team-level and executive mindset/agile training, and licensing options for modern, high-impact, bite-sized ...
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    10 min
  • How To Find Sanity At Scale with Dave Borzillo

    How To Find Sanity At Scale with Dave Borzillo
    Aug 25 2026

    Ever work on a team where there was one, maybe two people who could be counted on to drag a project across the finish line just before the stroke of 12:00? That’s what happens when you work at scale. People work hard, but the last thing they have time for is proper orchestration to help them land safely under pressure. Cutting people with an appropriate dialing back of scope makes the problem even worse.

    Dave Borzillo is a graduate of my Forge Genesis program. In the time we spent together, he advanced a business idea (or two), but he also conceived and wrote his latest book – “Sanity At Scale – How Engineering Leaders Move from Heroic Firefighting to Systemic Excellence”, now available on amazon.com or from his website, betterwaysofworking.com.

    Dave joins me for this one-on-one interview, where he reveals the dangers of heroic firefighting, why it can’t work at scale, and some of the strategies for ensuring your team doesn’t entrench these patterns. Make sure you grab this book – its no nonsense, crisp and useful for any team leader or agile practitioner!

    **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 engagements, team-level and executive mindset/agile training, and licensing options for modern, high-impact, bite-sized learning and educational content.
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    31 min
  • Stop Looking For Your Old Job – Angela Dugan of Red Foundry

    Stop Looking For Your Old Job – Angela Dugan of Red Foundry
    Aug 10 2026
    No amount of tooling makes an organization go faster or do better. AI has made that clearer than anything else I’ve watched in nine years of doing this. What it has produced instead is what people are now calling the human wreckage of AI. How I Met Angela Dugan So one day I’m cruising around LinkedIn, in a market where nobody can get hired and companies swear they can’t find anyone, and here’s someone doing something simple. She posted about a role she wasn’t hiring for. Didn’t have the requisition, and said so right in the post. It felt awkward, it felt vulnerable…and she put it up anyway, Because she wasn’t willing to wait until she desperately needed somebody before she started meeting people. She got dozens of replies in days. Almost every one of them said the same thing. “It’s a relief to talk to a human.” That’s Angela Dugan. She’s VP of Product Delivery at Red Foundry in Chicago, and she went first while everyone else was feeding resumes into a machine. Stop Looking For Your Past Roles You’ll hear about the advice that ended her own job search, which is the part I want you to sit with: stop looking for your past roles. Look for the activities you want to do, the outcomes you want to drive, the impact you want to have. She stopped hunting for anything with “agile” in the title. That’s how she got a director job at Microsoft, and the VP job she has now. She shares the story of her layoff. She was cut from Microsoft when the AI money started moving and the people money stopped. Two days later she left a comment on somebody else’s post. Not an ask, just empathy for someone in the same wave. And her future CEO saw it. Someone she’d consulted for back in 2014 and never stopped talking to. Ten years of keeping one relationship warm. That’s the whole story. The Human Side of Business and Tech This episode is about the human side of tech, AI and Agile. Right now the job market is breaking, but it won’t stay that way. Know why? Because results speak. And what we learn from Angela Dugan is that doing things the right way (which could mean leveraging AI, but not just throwing tasks carelessly over the fence to AI) gets noticed. Because the RIGHT people make impact. They touch the bottom line. And isn’t that what we’ve been talking about here on Badass Agile? Outcomes. Not frameworks, nor conventions. Not fashion or trends or fast money. Find Angela Dugan: LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/andugan/ (Put a note in the request.) She’s also at the local Chicago events and at VS Live. Show Notes **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 engagements, team-level and executive mindset/agile training, and licensing options for modern, high-impact, bite-sized learning and educational content.
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    53 min
  • Curry Barker And The Art Of Disruption

    Curry Barker And The Art Of Disruption
    Jul 6 2026
    Ripe for Disruption In an environment begging for disruption, Agile lost its reputation. It wasn’t because the 12 Principles were ineffective. It’s because we let it fall prey to comfortable, common thinking. Slow it down, make it safe. Don’t shake the floor; just go faster. When we want calm and predictable, we choose patterns. Copy something that works and repeat it. But patterns get stuck, and stuck patterns are hard to break. The disruptor doesn’t wait for permission. They act. They see a future that promises better, and they march toward it. They are fearless and determined authentic. That’s what Curry Barker is. In this episode, I’ll share why I think disruption is the only path to innovation and change and “better”. Disruption means taking a risk; doing things that others won’t. On the surface it seems like recklessness. But if we’re honest, nothing great was ever created from status quo. We need disruption right now. Not just in Agile, but in business, politics and culture. What Curry Barker teaches us is that you should just take your camera and GO. If you can attract a little attention or brew some success, the right people will find you. And maybe you can make lasting change. It’s certainly a more compelling and gratifying life. And right now, companies are looking for that disruption. They want to be shown. The market will pay a premium for those who go first, take risks, and fight long enough to gain footing. It’s not an easy path, and that’s exactly the point. **LET ME HELP YOU CREATE YOUR OWN OPPORTUNITIES** Reclaim control of your income and opportunities by picking a market that is hungry for your solution – and defining a product that they will pay for – in just 90 minutes! Don’t be late to this trend! Sign up today! **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 **JOIN MY BETA COMMUNITY FOR AGILE ENTREPRENEURS AND INTRAPRENEURS** The latest wave in professional Agile careers. Get the support you need to Forge Your Freedom! Join for FREE here: https://learning.fusechamber.com/offers/Sa3udEgz **GET THE BUSINESS OUTCOMES PARTNER PLAYBOOK** Learn how to deliver undeniable ROI that saves your job and accelerates your future https://learning.fusechamber.com/outcomes-partner-playbook **CHECK OUT ALL MY PRODUCTS AND SERVICES HERE:** https://learning.fusechamber.com **ELEVATE YOUR PROFESSIONAL STORYTELLING – Now Live!** The most coveted communications skill – now at your fingertips! https://learning.fusechamber.com/storytelling **JOIN THE FORGE*** New cohorts for Fall 2025! Email for more information: contact@badassagile.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 engagements, team-level and executive mindset/agile training, and licensing options for modern, high-impact, bite-sized learning and educational content.
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    11 min
  • The Authentic Agile Leader

    The Authentic Agile Leader
    Jun 26 2026
    The Rise of The Authentic Agile Leader I’m obsessed with voice. If you look carefully at history….THERE IS NO politician, writer, performer, or business leader who got the attention and results they’re famous for WITHOUT BEING BOLD. Like the revolutionary voices of our culture, the authentic Agile leader has the potential to create a new future. It doesn’t matter WHAT future, only that it is different than status quo. An evolution from what we have done for the past quarter century. After all…aren’t we supposed to be about iteration and innovation? If you like this episode you might also like: Episode 229 – Why Sameness Is Not A Strategy Sameness Strikes Again Create A Movement With Your Voice NEW! PICK YOUR PRODUCT! Reclaim control of your income and opportunities by picking a market that is hungry for your solution – and defining a product that they will pay for – in just 90 minutes! Don’t be late to this trend! Sign up today! **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 **JOIN MY BETA COMMUNITY FOR AGILE ENTREPRENEURS AND INTRAPRENEURS** The latest wave in professional Agile careers. Get the support you need to Forge Your Freedom! Join for FREE here: https://learning.fusechamber.com/offers/Sa3udEgz **GET THE BUSINESS OUTCOMES PARTNER PLAYBOOK** Learn how to deliver undeniable ROI that saves your job and accelerates your future https://learning.fusechamber.com/outcomes-partner-playbook **CHECK OUT ALL MY PRODUCTS AND SERVICES HERE:** https://learning.fusechamber.com **ELEVATE YOUR PROFESSIONAL STORYTELLING – Now Live!** The most coveted communications skill – now at your fingertips! https://learning.fusechamber.com/storytelling **JOIN THE FORGE*** New cohorts for Fall 2025! Email for more information: contact@badassagile.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 engagements, team-level and executive mindset/agile training, and licensing options for modern, high-impact, bite-sized learning and educational content.
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    19 min
  • The Shift – Opportunity Is Everywhere

    The Shift – Opportunity Is Everywhere
    Jun 1 2026

    The current moment feels like 'the end'. If you're truly Agile, the opportunities are everywhere. Tech feels like mayhem right now, but that creates MORE opportunity to envision the future, and place a bet on an experiment that could change everything. Isn't that what we're supposed to be good at?
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    15 min