Or: Why we should’ve listened to the Pope instead of your Scrum Master
Let me guess. Your company just rolled out a shiny new “operating system” for teams—Agile, EOS, whatever acronym your leadership team copy-pasted from LinkedIn. There’s a coach, a training module, a new meeting cadence, and a laminated set of values taped to the kitchen wall.
Congratulations. You’ve successfully invested six figures in pretending you know how to lead.
And still… nothing changes.
Because here’s the truth no one wants to say out loud: no framework fixes a team that doesn’t trust each other.
The cult of the framework
We’ve created a full-blown industry around fixing what’s wrong with teams—without ever talking to the actual people on them. You’ve seen it:
- Books and bootcamps.
- Certifications and case studies.
- Slide decks promising "transformation" if you just follow the steps.
Agile promised to make teams more collaborative. EOS swore it would create alignment and accountability. But too often, these systems become just another layer of overhead—one more thing to weaponize in a meeting when someone doesn’t hit a deadline.
And yet we rarely stop to ask: does this even fit how our team works?
Agile, EOS, and the illusion of plug-and-play leadership
Let’s name names. Agile has become the go-to badge of modernity for any team trying to seem relevant. But it's also become bloated, bureaucratic, and—let’s be honest—a little bit culty.
Scrum Masters with no people skills. Coaches more obsessed with velocity than values. Jira tickets used like surveillance reports.
EOS isn’t much better. For all its talk of vision, traction, and accountability, it assumes your team is a blank slate waiting to be reprogrammed. As if culture, nuance, and human dynamics can be replaced with a Level 10 meeting and a laminated scorecard.
The truth is, culture should drive process—not the other way around.
You can’t force-fit a system onto a team that’s never been taught how to communicate, collaborate, or care about each other.
You can’t Kanban your way to kindness.
The lie we tell ourselves about certifications
Somewhere along the way, we started mistaking certifications for competence.
We hand out trust based on acronyms. We hire people because they’ve passed a workshop and can regurgitate the right terms. We promote them because they know how to say “retrospective” instead of “post-mortem.”
But none of that proves they can lead. Or listen. Or navigate a tough conversation. Or build a team that actually wants to show up on Monday.
We treat empathy like an optional soft skill. But it’s the foundation of everything that matters in leadership. And guess what? There’s no certification for being a decent human being.
The Pope gets it. JD Vance? Not so much.
Remember when Pope Francis met with JD Vance last month? Before they sat down, the Pope sent his deputy to deliver a little message about compassion—specifically about showing empathy for migrants and marginalized people. It was a diplomatic gut punch. A reminder that you don’t get to lead without understanding the people you serve.
I’m barely Catholic at this point, but I’ll say it: the Pope went out swinging. And he’s right. We don’t need another Agile rollout—we need a crash course in basic humanity.
If you’re in charge of a team and haven’t taken the time to understand how your decisions affect actual people? You’re not leading. You’re just managing throughput.
Want a better team? Start with the humans.
Listen, I’m not anti-process. I’ve spent my career making systems work better. But the best process in the world doesn’t matter if the people running it are burned out, afraid to speak up, or quietly rage-quitting in Slack.
So before you roll out another “operating system,” ask yourself:
- Do we actually talk about what we value?
- Do people feel safe enough to tell the truth?
- Do we trust each other?
- Are we building systems around humans—or just jamming humans into systems?
If the answer to any of those is “ehhh…” your framework isn’t your fix. Your culture is.
T L ; D R — Here’s the thing: frameworks don’t build teams—people do. Agile and EOS might help, but only when they’re shaped by the culture of the team, not imposed on top of it. If you’re still handing out power based on certifications instead of actual leadership qualities, you’re missing the point. Empathy isn’t some nice-to-have trait—it’s the job. And if Pope Francis can make time to remind powerful people to lead with compassion, maybe you can, too. Stop obsessing over the process. Start giving a damn about the people.
