Born Agile: A Time Traveller’s Guide to Natural Human Innovation

You were born knowing how to solve problems. Then someone taught you to ask for permission first. A million years ago, someone cooked the first egg, no business case required. Ancient Olympians redesigned their approach to their event in real-time, no change management process. Polynesian navigators crossed thousands of miles of open ocean by trusting what they could see, not what the charts said they should see. They were being Agile. They just didn't call it that. Then bureaucracy arrived, promising certainty and control. But it delivered compliance and stagnation instead. In six tales spanning prehistory to World War II, time traveller Alistair Corrie reveals the pattern hidden in plain sight: humans are naturally brilliant at innovation, collaboration, and adaptation, until systems designed to provide certainty prevent those capabilities. From the Serengeti to Bletchley Park, from Olympic stadiums to cathedral building sites, the same story repeats: 1) we discover things through natural agility, 2) we experience bureaucratic suppression, 3) in some case we achieve hard-won liberation and a return to our natural state. The twist? The people who achieved liberation and changed history weren't special. They were just allowed to be themselves. For anyone who's ever sat in a meeting and thought "there must be a better way," this book is your proof that there is, and you already know what it is.

Pagina's: 197, Paperback, Independently published