The Gates of Hell

"What is hell? I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love." — Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, 1880

"Hateful to me as are the gates of hell, is he who, hiding one thing in his heart, utters another." — Homer

You may be wondering what a picture of York Minster is doing juxtaposed with a phrase about hell. I address that in a footnote.1 This newsletter is more about scrum masters, specifically a response to the question: what exactly is a scrum master? Many readers of this newsletter know what a scrum master is, of course, some are indeed scrum masters themselves; other readers have no idea though. This newsletter is for them. Beyond this newsletter there are a great many people—mostly executive directors, hiring managers and human resources personel—who believe they know what a scrum master is, but only because they have successfully manipulated the term to mean what they want it to mean, so it fits neatly into a corporate category and does not interrupt the status quo. This newsletter is for those people too, so if you know of any, please pass this along.

I'll start with a picture. This is a scrum master:

The central figure in this Auguste Rodin sculpture is likely familiar to most of you; the figure is usually seen alone, and entitled "The Thinker". This photograph is a detail of the original context in which the figure sat.2 The title of the piece is "The Poet at the Gates of Hell". My private name for it is "The Scrum Master at the Gates of the Corporation".

The scrum master is an organisational poet. Her material is not language, but environments and relationships. The scrum master sits on the edge of the corporate melee, thoughtfully figuring out how to rescue lost souls from hierarchical, procedural hell, free them up to become the creative humans God made them to be, while at the same time calming the fires of hubris, vanity, indignation, and self-righteousness that threaten to consume them.

Without artists, poets and musicians our world will descend into mundane practicality, where everything has a reason, an explanation, a justification; the human spirit will atrophy, sunsets will be inconveniences, birdsong just noise, and love a commodity. Without effective scrum masters the corporate world will descend into anger, indignation, blame, despair, disengagement and misery. It's already quite far on that downward trajectory. Few knew that it was due to a dearth of corporate poets. That we discovered the need for corporate poets at all was sheer accident. But now we know, we can start to rise. And yet, for the most part, we do not.

What I describe here may be unfamiliar to many, even to those with the job title "scrum master". Most are not aware they are called on to be poets, and sadly too many are trapped in organisational systems governed by fear and stasis. Business leaders, executive directors, governing board members, the ones who have the power to begin this collective ascent, choose not to. Most are afraid of the angels, comfortable with the devil they know. So they take the poet and make her into an advertising copy writer—take the scrum master and force-fit her into the hierarchy, silencing her voice, renaming her as manager, putting her in charge of release schedules, forcing her to measure the productivity of her peers and report back to some faceless entity such as a project management office. This is tragic, of course, but the greater tragedy is that so many allow themselves to be thus shackled, silenced, disenfranchised. It sounds good in the corporate world today to be "doing scrum" and to employ scrum masters, but better not let them do what they are supposed to do, just keep them around as ornaments, and make sure they know their place as lowly employees, powerless, pointless, and the first to go when downsizing starts.

There is a world of difference between the Platonic ideal of a scrum master, and its real world implementation. But just because it is that way, doesn't mean it must stay that way. The ones who have the power to change this system are the scrum masters themselves. Scrum masters are facilitators of change, agents of transformation. If they are not doing that, they are failing the profession, and they need to either step up, or step away and rebrand themselves according to corporate mores. There are no half-measures.

What's my part in resolving this?

Twenty-five years ago, when engaged in developing youth work programs for young people excluded from the school system, I wrote:

The groupwork facilitator is akin to an artist, a sculptor, working in four dimensions. She needs to have a vision of what this raw material—the group— can become, and belief that she is capable of creating the same. Unlike the sculptor's stone, the material the facilitator works with is responsive. It thinks, feels, argues, sulks, arrives late, leaves early, grows and shrinks in size—and can be very, very fragile. The vision of the facilitator needs to be flexible, it needs to accommodate the developing visions of each group member and of the group as a whole. The facilitator needs to be a conceptualist. She needs to fully understand what she is doing and why she is doing it. She should be able to see her work in relation to other aspects of society, recognise the political and sociological implications of the work, identify its meaning in relation to the past, embrace the 'great unknown', the future, but always be firmly rooted in the here-and-now. Groupwork is a big activity. Like art it has the potential for changing the way an individual looks at life, like philosophy it can enhance a person's thinking and encourage them to ask questions, and like religion it can cause a person to trust and believe in themselves, to feel affirmed and strong and to carry that strength to others.3

If we replace the term groupwork with teamwork, and put it in the context of corporate transformation, this passage could have been written today. I have continued this line of thinking throughout my career as a software developer, a manager, a scrum master and an educator of scrum. Its most recent manifestation is The London Scrum Academy where I offer workshops, essays, and ongoing programs to bring out the innate poet in those engaged in the world of organisational change. I hope some of you will join me on the journey, even though the destination is unknown, and potentially bleak. Like the pilgrims in The Canterbury Tales the joy will be in the journey, each of us telling our stories, sharing in the stories of others and creating new stories to confront the status quo and potentially change hearts and minds.

And after all that, if you still don't know what a scrum master is, don't worry; perhaps you only need to know what a scrum master could be, and that is, quite simply, a poet. Maybe you'd like to be one.

1 York is one of my favorite cities, an iconic northern city, still surrounded by its medieval city walls and home to the magnificent York Minster cathedral, it has a unique beauty and an energy all of its own. On a recent trip to York I noticed, in the ground of the cathedral, a bronze statue depicting the Roman Emperor Constantine I, apparently proclaimed monarch in that very region. Constantine ruled Rome between 274 and 337 AD, and presided over the First Council of Nicaea in 325, the council responsible for domesticating Christianity, taking it from a grassroots, rebel movement to a state-endorsed and dominant religion. Christianity has ever since been used as a tool of oppression by the state. Hell on earth, one might say. Although the choice of picture was incidental to the title of this newsletter (I just liked the lights and the evening sky) it now seems somehow fitting, so I let it stand.
2 The full artwork can be viewed here.
3 From Redefining Success: groupwork with young people, by Tim Webb and Tobias Mayer, National Youth Agency, Leeds, 1999.

—

Winter & Spring Things

  1. In-person CSM workshops are happening again, just once a month in London, so please spread the word. The first one takes place on 11th-12th January, in Whitechapel.
  2. The Advanced CSM program will be offered even less often—just once a year in May.
  3. The Scrum Exchange. This is a twice-yearly event. The next one is scheduled for 26th May 2023. Register early for the reduced-price Trailblazer tickets.
  4. My substack account has been lying dormant, but I did write something yesterday about why I am not writing: This is fake news.
  5. KJV 365 continues to broadcast. November saw an exploration of Paul's letters, and December covers the remaining letters and finally the Book of Revelation. If you're interested in how I relate scripture to work, politics, education and mental health check out the tagged collections on the contents page. You may be surprised.
  6. I'm always interested in your questions and thoughts, so Ask Me Anything and I'll respond.
  7. And finally, please check out The London Scrum Academy, my new home for all things scrum: workshops, certifications, articles, videos, books, and more to come...

—

December

Well, we're in the middle of it. Lots of snow in the UK, and sub-zero temperatures keeping us on our toes (and often on our bottoms). December is the month of peaceful death, in preparation for rebirth.

Come, come thou bleak December wind,
And blow the dry leaves from the tree!
Flash, like a Love-thought, thro' me, Death
And take a Life that wearies me.
— Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1993

I'll write again, at the turn of the years. I'm currently considering my word-of-the-year for 2023.
Tobias

15 December 2022, 7 am subscribe