Maximizing Human Potential as the Measure of Success | Alidad Hamidi

Summary

Podcast Summary

Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast: Agile storytelling from the trenches

Episode: Maximizing Human Potential as the Measure of Success | Alidad Hamidi

Host: Vasco Duarte (A)
Guest: Alidad Hamidi (B)
Date: November 13, 2025

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Overview

This episode delves into the central question of how to define and measure success in Agile teams and organizations, with a particular focus on maximizing human potential. Host Vasco Duarte engages organizational design and strategy advisor Alidad Hamidi in a rich discussion, exploring practical retrospective techniques and deeply reflective definitions of what success means for Agile practitioners and their teams.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Retrospective Formats—Focusing on Systemic Improvement

• Alidad’s Approach:

  • Views retrospectives as essential moments for candid reflection, bridging perceived actions and actual outcomes.
  • Doesn't advocate for a single “favorite” retrospective format, instead favoring context-driven selection.

• Highlight: The Six Intrinsic Motivators Retrospective

  • Drawn from open systems theory, this exercise asks team members to self-assess across six dimensions of motivation, followed by a group conversation to understand and balance differences.
    • First Three – Personal Focus:
      1. Autonomy in Decision-Making: “Minus 10 is I have no autonomy, plus 10, I have too much... autonomy for me is different to autonomy for you.” (B, 03:09)
      2. Continuous Learning/Feedback: Balances receiving enough feedback without being overwhelmed.
      3. Variety in Work: Assesses whether workload is too monotonous or overly scattered; again, deeply personal.
    • Last Three – Team/Environmental Focus:
      4. Mutual Support and Respect: “You can’t have too much of it... Do I see enough respect in my team?” (B, 04:33) 5. Meaningfulness: Including both “socially useful” and “seeing the whole product.” Hamidi challenges the existence of QA-only teams: “That’s an anti-pattern. There shouldn’t be anything called ‘quality assurance team’ in the first place.” (B, 05:01) 6. Desirable Futures: “Am I stuck in a dead end job? Or do I see development in the future for me?” (B, 05:26)

• Practical Application:

  • Recommended periodicity: Every 3–6 months.
  • Helps surface hidden dynamics and prompts open, constructive dialogue.

Defining and Measuring Success for Agile Coaches

• Challenge in Measuring Success:

  • Especially as an enterprise coach, tangible results may not appear during one’s tenure.
  • Hamidi refers to the “planting seeds” metaphor: “I did this and I planted this seed but I will never see the tree grow...” (B, 07:10)

• Success = Maximizing Human Potential:

  • The key measure: “Does my work lead into maximizing human potential?... the ability of the human to use their potential and freedom.” (B, 07:39)
  • Emphasizes outcome over output: Prefer “creation” over “delivery”—critical of “feature factory” mentality.

• Four Lighthouses for Success:

  1. Customer Value:
     • “Is the team actually creating the value? Are the customers happy with the teams?” (B, 08:12)
  2. Well-being & Psychological Safety in Teams:
     • “Is the team a healthy team? Do they have the psychological safety... is it trust? Is there innovation happening?” (B, 08:27)
  3. Growth (Team & Organization):
     • “Is the team growing? And when I use the term team, I want to expand that to the organization, not just a team.” (B, 08:44)
  4. Business Sustainability:
     • Sustainability is vital. “You can do all the digital transformation etc., but... give them free money. Customers are very happy. But I don’t think you can stay in that business for a long time.” (B, 09:11)
  • Stresses balancing these areas and maintaining awareness of trade-offs in different contexts.

Approach to Team Roles & Anti-patterns

• Inclusivity in Team Dynamics:
  • Product Owners are “part of the team... not the special role, it’s just, I’m one of the team members.” (B, 03:59)
• Critique of Siloed QA Roles:
  • Strongly asserts that separating QA into its own team undercuts both quality and holistic team engagement.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “Retrospective and to a large degree Agile and agility—it’s about understanding the reality around us and being able to reflect on our action.” (B, 01:39)
• On the Six Intrinsic Motivators: “There are more, but these six are the minimum, the basic. If these six elements don’t exist in the team, you can never have productive human teams.” (B, 05:54)
• “I struggle to define my success, particularly as an agile coach... If you tie your success to the success of individuals or teams, you will struggle unless you have that capacity within you that you can see a much longer time span.” (B, 06:54)
• “If these three things [customer value, team health, organizational growth] are improving, we’re doing something meaningful. If they are not improving... there’s always a balance. Sometimes one grows more than the other, and that’s okay, as long as you have the awareness of why.” (B, 09:45)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [01:22] — Welcome and opening question on retrospective formats.
• [01:36–06:11] — In-depth explanation of the Six Intrinsic Motivators retrospective.
• [06:45–10:06] — Exploring how to define success as an Agile coach; maximizing human potential; key success indicators.
• [10:06–10:15] — Summarizing “lighthouses” for measuring effectiveness in Agile work.

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Final Takeaways

• Retrospectives are not “one size fits all”—choose and adapt formats to context and evolving team needs.
• Encouraging teams to explore intrinsic motivators fosters openness, autonomy, and alignment.
• Success for Agile practitioners transcends velocity or delivery—it’s about lasting impact on people, teams, and organizations.
• True agility requires balancing value creation, team health, growth, and business viability.

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This summary distills the heart of the episode, empowering you with both practical tools and philosophical perspectives for deepening your Agile practice and team success.

Transcript

[A]

Hey there agile adventurer, just a quick question. What if for the price of a fancy coffee or half a pizza, you could unlock over 700 hours of the best agile content on the planet? That's audio, video, E courses, books, presentations, all that you can think of. But you can also join live calls with world class practitioners and hang out in a flame war free and AI slop clean slack with the sharpest minds in the game. Oh, and yes, you get direct access to me, Vasko, your Scrum Master Toolbox podcast. No, this is not a drill. It's this Scrum Master Toolbox membership and it's your unfair advantage in the agile world. So if you want to know more, go check out scrummastertoolbox.org membership, that's scrummastertoolbox.org Membership. And check out all the goodies we have for you. Do it now. But if you're not doing it now, let's listen to the podcast. Hello everybody. Welcome to our Thursday the Success Question this week with Alidad Hamidi. Hey Alidad, welcome back.

[B]

Thank you. It's really good to be back.

[A]

So before we dive into success, which is definitely the key question for all of us, before we dive there, let's talk about agile retrospective. So share with us what's your favorite agile retrospective format and why?

[B]

Actually retrospective and to a large degree agile and agility. It's about understanding the reality around us and being able to reflect on our action. So for example, I use a lot of OODA loop for looking at systemic improvements. I'm looking at how are we observing and I don't want to go into the. Please listeners can look up OODA loop. So for me, retrospective is that part of agility where we think if we do something we're going to get some outcome. Let's see what actually happened in reality rather than our perception. That's the retrospective for me. Right. And I think, to be honest with you, I don't have a favorite one because I think depending on the context and the situation, you use different one. But there is one that I specifically like for team dynamics as well as, as well as if you want to look at if the team is productive or if the self managing is emerging. It's a practice from again open systems theory. It's called six intrinsic motivators. If you're familiar with Damping's work, you know, autonomy, mastery. At purpose there was a, was a kind of a, I don't know, cut down version. So it look at six elements. So you bring the team effectively, you bring the team together and you ask them to assess themselves or where they are for each of these criteria. And then after they assess them, they ask them to have a conversation. Like for example, the number one is autonomy in decision making. And you ask them well, can you assess yourself from minus 10 to plus 10? Minus 10 is I have no autonomy, plus 10, I have too much. Because this is something that you could actually have too much of. It's very personal because autonomy for me is different to autonomy for you. So each individual will say I'm here, I don't know, I'm one, I'm minus two. And then quite often they, when they see each other's number, they get surprised. Oh why? I said look, I realize I'm doing, I'm making all these decisions and someone else I'm making no decision. And they just as a result of that they started to kind of balance that between themselves. That's number one. The second thing is you look at continuous learning, are you learning? Are you getting feedback? Are you able to get the right amount of feedback? Sometimes too much feedback is too much. Something too detail is too little. So the thing is variety. Do I have enough variety in my work? You know, again, variety is a very personal thing. The first three is very personal. So people will say I have too much variety, I have too little. And then they try to balance it. And this happened within the team. So this, there's no interact, there is no intervention from product owner. Product owner is part of the team by the way. It's not the special role, it's just I'm one of the team members, right? So that's the first three. The last three is team environment. Thing one is mutual support and respect. You can't have too much of it. It's not minus to 10 or minus 5 to minus minus 2 plus 5. It's 0 to 10, right? And they have a conversation. Do I see enough respect in my team? Is there mutual support and respect in the team? Fifth one is meaningfulness and break down into two socially useful and seeing the whole product we talked about are you just one step from a much bigger value stream or can you see the entire value stream and your impact? You mentioned quality assurance team. That's an anti pattern. There shouldn't be anything called quality assurance team in the first place. They actually talk about how much work is meaningful for them. And the last thing is desirable futures, which is by the way they know of the company that I, the consulting company I learned from this is am I stuck in a dead end job? Or do I see development in the future for me, if these six element doesn't exist in the team, you can never have productive human teams. All right, so there are more but these six are the minimum, the basic. So I actually find it very, very useful. I think depends on the amount of change that is happening in the team and environment. You could repeat that. You know, usually it's good to do it at least once every six months, but I've seen some teams do it every every three months. So that's one of my favorite reflection.

[A]

Yeah, absolutely. And I think it's. It covers as. As it says in the name. Right. Like six intrinsic motivators. It covers the system from the perspective of the individual and in this case the team as well. So great insight. And of course this is important because we want the teams to succeed and we want ourselves to succeed as well. But for that we need to define what that looks like. So Alita, how do you define success for yourself as a person that is helping teams achieve their own success?

[B]

That's a very good question. This is a tricky one because especially if you've been a coach. I'm a recovering agility coach now more into organizational design and strategy advisory. For a long time as an agile coach or scrum master, I struggled to define my success, particularly agile coach because a lot of time as an enterprise agile coach, you're not even working directly with individual teams. You don't see immediate success if you tie your success to the success of the individuals or success of the teams. I think you will struggle unless you have that capacity within you that you can see a lot much longer time spanner you're okay with. I did this and I planted this seed but I will never see the three row because by the time this tree start to grow bear fruit, I'll be out for me at the moment the successful is are we. Does there. Does my work lead into maximizing human potential? Maximizing the ability of the human to use their potential and freedom. And for that I use number of things. If it's a product delivery or product creation team actually really hate the term product delivery because delivery means you. You have a. Are you. Are you a feature factory. You're just delivering this top of the reality but creating value, not delivering right. So creating and the act of creation require interaction between the people who can solve a problem and people who have the problem. We need to create zero distance between them. So one of the things I look at is I look at number of things I look at after I the work that I'm doing with the team. Is the team actually creating the value? Are the customers happy with the teams? Are they getting what they hope they get? 2 is people's well being. Is the team, does the team, is the team a healthy team? Do they have the psychological safety? Are they, do I feel comfortable? Is it trust? Is there innovation happening? And the last element is the team growing? And when I use the term team, I actually want to expand that to the organization, not just a team. These are the three main things for me. One is a customer metric, one is a team metrics and one is a growth metric. I think there is fourth one which is the business metrics. At the end of the day your business have to be viable. I use it example for a bank, you know, you can do all the digital transformation etc, but you know, one of the things that the banks can do and make their customers very happy and it's quite feasible, just give them free money. Customers are very happy. But I don't think you can stay in that business for a long time. So I think sustainability as a business is also quite important. So these are the like, I don't want to complicate things. If these three things are improving, we're doing something meaningful if they are not improving. And there's always a balance. Sometimes one grow more than the other. And that's okay, right? As long as you have the awareness of why. And is that the right thing at the right time?

[A]

Yeah, absolutely. I think those are incredibly important, let's call it lighthouses for us to orient our work around. So thank you for sharing that Alibad.

[B]

No worries. Again, very good question.

[A]

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[B]

Slack.

[A]

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