The Power of Agile Thinking for Entrepreneurs

I first learned the concept of agile thinking in business school while earning my MBA. In my coursework, we discussed at a high level how various agile frameworks have helped increase productivity for large corporations and manufacturing systems. 

When going through the coursework it was hard to imagine how these concepts could benefit anyone outside of a corporate executive or manufacturing line leader, but as the culture of agile has evolved, so have the use cases where these tools have been utilized successfully. 

In March of this year, I experienced a learning session led by a Scrum product owner who works for a well-known tech firm. Presenting to a group of women that weren’t necessarily in her field, she chose to focus her talk on using Scrum as a way to be more methodical about how we go about losing weight. Yes, you heard that right ⁠— Scrum for weight loss. 

And it worked. 

The audience was engaged and able to comprehend how using an agile system could help them solve everyday life challenges, including losing a few pounds and staying healthy.

According to Rajeev Schroff, Senior Coach at Cupela, “being methodical adds structure and focus on everyday tasks while empowering you to manage your time and resources better.” In other words, using tools such as agile can help us get things done more effectively, making it beneficial to our lives no matter the task. 

My Scrum journey began with a simple experiment that I journaled in a Thrive Global blog. I decided to spend an entire day doing just one thing to see how it helped or hurt my performance and found that it overwhelmingly made me more efficient. 

After this successful experience, I began to incorporate parts of the principles into my everyday life as an entrepreneur. Here’s how I make it work. 

1. I start each week with a clear list of about 5 deliverables that will actually move the needle for my clients. The question I’m asking is, “What actions most impact the goals I’m helping my clients achieve?” Those actions are the top goals for my week of work. 
2. I focus each day on spending a block of time trying to achieve one of the goals on my list. I shut everything off with my phone on do not disturb and hack away at getting something achieved. 
3. At the end of the week, I take a moment to reflect back and think about the value of what I achieved. My top questions are, “Did I maximize my time,” and “Did I further the goal?” Asking myself these things provides a gateway to being more productive the next week or celebrating my small weekly wins. 
4. Busy work can be done on the go in-between “real work” and sometimes in the evenings while I’m watching mindless television. 

There are other agile methodologies to consider, but Scrum has been my favorite to implement and has truly allowed me to live the ideal life of being able to work effectively and have plenty of time to spend with my son.