Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast: When a Billion-Dollar Team Becomes Invisible | Alidad Hamidi

Date: November 11, 2025
Host: Vasco Duarte
Guest: Alidad Hamidi

Episode Overview

In this Team Tuesday episode, host Vasco Duarte sits with Alidad Hamidi, a systems thinking practitioner, to explore the journey of a Scrum team that felt invisible within a billion-dollar business. Together, they discuss foundational books that shaped Alidad's thinking, the importance of visibility and identity for teams, and practical frameworks that can reconnect teams to their purpose and revitalize motivation. This episode delivers philosophies and actionable insight for Scrum Masters looking to empower teams that may feel overlooked or undervalued.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

Foundational Books for Scrum Masters (01:21 - 06:40)

• Alidad shares two books that have deeply influenced his coaching and personal philosophy:
  • "More Time to Think" by Nancy Kline:
    • Emphasizes the power of creating space for deeper thinking and listening.
    • Encourages Scrum Masters to move from merely facilitating to liberating, allowing teams to surface their own solutions.
    • Key takeaway: "It teaches you to create a space, not to fill. It helps you to listen better." (Alidad, 02:11)
  • "Confronting Our Freedom: Leading a Culture of Chosen Accountability and Belonging" by Peter Block & Peter Koestenbaum:
    • Explores the tension between freedom, agency, accountability, and the anxiety inherent in both.
    • Practical implication for Scrum Masters: Accepting personal and collective accountability is essential to guiding teams.
    • Notable quote: "The cost of freedom is the anxiety that comes with it." (Alidad, paraphrasing the book, 04:16)
    • Insight: Bureaucratic structures often emerge to avoid the discomfort of anxiety, but it's learning to live with that anxiety that fuels innovation and growth.
    • "If as a person you can't deal with your own anxiety and freedom, if you can't accept the accountability, it's very hard to help the teams that you're working with to do that for themselves." (Alidad, 06:21)

The Power of Systems Thinking in Team Dynamics (07:06 - 09:33)

• Systemic causes behind team issues:
  • Most team performance issues are not due to individuals but stem from systemic factors—"When a flower is not blooming, you don't fix the flower, you fix the soil." (Alidad, 07:36)
  • Systems thinking sees team dysfunctions often as environmental failures, not individual or team failures.
• Agency within the system:
  • While systems shape outcomes, teams and individuals also possess agency to influence their context.
  • "We are always part of the system. System is not something that is out there and we go into it. We are the system as well." (Alidad, 08:01)

Case Story: Making a Billion-Dollar Team Visible (09:33 - 13:19)

The Initial Challenge

• Context: The team was responsible for maintaining numerous critical systems during a company-wide replatforming.
• Problem: The team felt sidelined—nobody seemed to care, leading to demotivation and dependency on one "go-to" person.

Intervention and Approach

• Initial (less effective) solutions: Standard team-building activities had minimal long-term impact.
• Applying the Viable System Model:
  • Used this model to re-examine the team’s identity and role.
  • "Instead of doing the typical, let's just do retro and write better stories...I started with the five systems in the Viable System Model. Number five is about identity of the system." (Alidad, 09:49)
  • Clarified for the team how crucial their systems were by quantifying their business impact—over a billion dollars’ worth of revenue depended on them.

Key Activities

• Stakeholder engagement: Confirmed the business value of the systems managed by the team.
• Team skill mapping & mutual learning: Facilitated skills assessments and peer training sessions.
• Publicizing impact: Made the team’s vital role and value visible both internally and across the broader organization.

Results & Lasting Impact

• Identity Shift: Becoming aware of their importance reinvigorated the team’s sense of purpose and motivation.
• Universal feedback: "When I left, I did a reflection with every team member... Unanimously they said one thing: You made us visible. That’s it." (Alidad, 12:26)
• Host’s summary: Visibility is a fundamental human motivator; when people aren't seen, they question their purpose and worth.
• "If I'm not seen, I don't exist. If I don't exist, I start questioning my identity. It's a deeply human need to be accepted..." (Vasco, 12:32)

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On facilitation as liberation:
  • "It also turns facilitation into liberation. It's about how do you help people to find the solution among themselves." (Alidad, 02:34)
• On visibility and motivation:
  • "You made us visible. That's it." (Alidad quoting team members, 12:26)
• On systems thinking and agency:
  • "We are always part of the system. Systems is not something that is out there and we go into it. We are the system as well." (Alidad, 08:01)
• On the cost and value of anxiety in organizations:
  • "That anxiety is actually the engine for a lot of freedom. It's the engine for innovation, for entrepreneurship. But if you want to... remove that anxiety, we end up with a lot of structure and bureaucracy and control." (Alidad, 05:29)

Timestamps for Important Segments

• 01:21 — Alidad introduces books influential to his professional and personal growth
• 02:11 — The power of space and listening in coaching
• 04:16 — The philosophical concept of anxiety as the cost of freedom
• 07:06 — The importance of systems thinking and systemic causes for team issues
• 09:33 — Start of the case story about making an invisible team visible
• 10:37 — Explaining the Viable System Model’s five systems
• 12:26 — Team feedback: "You made us visible. That's it."
• 12:32 — Host’s reflection on visibility and acceptance as human needs

Conclusion

This episode delivers a poignant reminder: the systems surrounding teams largely dictate their success or failure, but reconnecting those teams to their purpose, business impact, and shared identity can create profound motivation and change. Scrum Masters are encouraged to use reflective frameworks, seek tangible measures of value, and never underestimate the power of visibility—because being seen is the starting point for true engagement and agency within teams.