Podcast Summary

Episode Overview

Title: Impact Engineering, Finding Agile's Lost North Star
Podcast: Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast: Agile storytelling from the trenches
Host: Vasco Duarte
Guests: Tom Gilb (EVO approach pioneer) & Simon Holzapfel (system thinker, educator)
Date: December 8, 2025

This episode launches a special five-part series on "engineering your organization for continuous learning." Vasco, Tom, and Simon dig into why the Agile community has lost its North Star—its central guiding purpose—and how a shift from process obsession to value-driven, impact-focused approaches can reignite innovation, effectiveness, and real progress in organizations. The discussion focuses on the concept of "impact engineering" via Tom Gilb's EVO approach, and how clarity, measurement, and adaptive leadership unlock new organizational possibilities.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Tom Gilb’s EVO Approach and the “North Star”

• Tom’s Consulting Trick: Tom explains his signature consultancy strategy: in the first hour with any client, he asks what their most critical problem—their “North Star”—is, then demonstrates they haven’t truly clarified it, and ultimately guides them toward a concrete evolutionary step towards that goal.
  • “Within the hour, I show them that there’s an evolutionary step they can make this week for actually making progress towards the clarified North Star. That blows the mind of CEOs and they’re hooked.” (03:15, Tom Gilb)
• What is Impact Engineering? For Tom, “engineering” means a systematic, logical, experimental, feedback-driven approach—always focused on stakeholder values.
  • “I mean very systematic, very logical, very experimental, with feedback and learning, and very clearly directed towards really important things, which we call our stakeholder values or stakeholder critical values.” (05:07, Tom Gilb)
• The Core: Clarity Over Process
  Tom underscores that everyone starts from “fuzzy, nice sounding words” (06:04), but what’s needed is clarity—not just discipline, not ritualistic processes.

2. Quantifying the “Unquantifiable”

• Tom challenges the notion that “soft values” can’t be measured—he gives the example of quantifying employee or human happiness, now easier thanks to AI.
  • “In other words, it’s really easy today to prove to people that they can clarify their bullshit North Star objectives. And that is the beginning of a whole new culture of management and engineering.” (08:10, Tom Gilb)

3. How Agile Lost its North Star: Simon Holzapfel’s Perspective

• Leadership Avoids the ‘Wet Work’: Simon uses a visual metaphor (a leader avoiding getting wet in stormy seas) to illustrate that many leaders want “flow” but not the discomfort of real participation and reflection.
  • “Leaders often want flow, but they want a wetsuit so they don’t have to touch the flow and truly be part of it.” (10:16, Simon Holzapfel)
• Mismatch with Modern Reality: Simon connects Agile’s origins—addressing the “voice of capital” and managing fixed costs—with the new reality: capital has become fluid, digital, and available as a service. Agile, he posits, hasn’t updated its North Star for this shift.
  • “Basically Agile lost its North Star because these economic problems it was trying to solve within the organization is now mismatched with the digital world ... The North Star is no longer in that ancient sort of fixed mindset. It’s in the forward-facing digital mindset, which is wet and sloppy and requires teams to be coordinated and collaborative, not waiting for someone to tell them what to do.” (12:20, Simon Holzapfel)

4. From Efficiency Obsession to Value Creation in Complexity

• Predictability vs. Innovation: Simon points out innovation is fundamentally unpredictable (“stochastic”), while organizations and leaders desire predictable results. This mismatch destabilizes the hierarchy.
  • “Capital wants predictive returns on a stochastic process, which is innovation. ... It destabilizes the current hierarchy. Who listens to who, right?” (13:33, Simon Holzapfel)
• Agile Tools: Are They Solving Yesterday’s Problem?
  Vasco observes that many Agile approaches are still focused on “flow of work,” not intentionally navigating the complexity of true value creation.
  • “...in the Agile community, we’re using tools for flow, when in fact the problem is no longer the flow of work, it is the creation of value, which is a stochastic process...” (14:01, Vasco Duarte)

5. Looking Ahead: Continuous Strategy and the EVO Approach

• The episode teases the next installment, where they’ll dive deeper into how continuous strategy engineering via EVO helps organizations systematically measure, deliver, and adapt for real stakeholder value.

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “Everybody seems to start from a position of fuzzy, nice sounding words.” (05:59, Tom Gilb)
• “...it’s really easy today to prove to people that they can clarify their bullshit North Star objectives.” (08:10, Tom Gilb)
• “Leaders often want flow, but they want a wetsuit so they don’t have to touch the flow and truly be part of it.” (10:16, Simon Holzapfel)
• “Agile lost its North Star because these economic problems it was trying to solve ... is now mismatched with the digital world.” (12:47, Simon Holzapfel)
• “Capital wants predictive returns on a stochastic process, which is innovation.” (13:33, Simon Holzapfel)
• “...we’re using tools for flow, when in fact the problem is no longer the flow of work, it is the creation of value...” (14:01, Vasco Duarte)

Timestamps for Key Segments

• 01:11 — Introduction of guests and the week’s theme: building organizations for continuous learning
• 02:41 — Tom Gilb’s consulting approach and definition of the North Star
• 05:02 — Defining “Impact Engineering” and the importance of disciplined, value-driven clarity
• 07:13 — Quantifying soft values (with examples, including happiness and AI’s role)
• 09:12 — Simon’s systems thinking perspective: leadership’s aversion to discomfort and the failure to update Agile’s economic lens
• 12:47 — The mismatch between Agile’s origins and today’s digital economy
• 13:33 — Innovation’s unpredictability and its disruption of traditional hierarchies
• 14:36 — Preview of the next episode: measuring and delivering value with EVO

Tone & Style

• Direct, candid, sometimes irreverent (e.g., “bullshit North Star objectives”)
• Rich in metaphor and systems thinking
• Challenging orthodoxies, practical and visionary

Conclusion

This episode lays the groundwork for a deep re-examination of what “Agile” truly aims for in today’s organizational realities. By highlighting the lost North Star—the clear, measurable stakeholder value that should guide all efforts—Tom Gilb and Simon Holzapfel, together with Vasco, challenge listeners to move beyond process for process’s sake and to rediscover clarity, measurement, and radical transparency as the engines of meaningful progress.

Listeners are encouraged to tune into the week’s subsequent episodes for actionable strategies and to revisit Simon and Tom’s previous podcast appearances for more foundational insights.