23 Mar 2026 4 min read agile-is-anarchy

Turn, Turn, Turn

To everything (Turn, Turn, Turn)
There is a season (Turn, Turn, Turn)
And a time to every purpose, under Heaven

A time to build up, a time to break down
— The Byrds, "Turn! Turn! Turn!" (Pete Seeger, Ecclesiastes 3)

Mark,

Pete Seeger and Ecclesiastes say there's a time to build up and a time to break down. That's cold comfort when you're the one being broken down.

Your company has been letting people go. My team had four managers last year. You've suggested adding "adjourning" to Tuckman's stages—Forming, Storming, Norming, Performing, Adjourning. Teams don't just build and perform. They also end.

After ninety days of waiting, watching, and taking tentative steps to build morale and safety, I find myself asking one question I didn't expect but should have: Why invest in something that's going to be torn down?

Why be careful with a team that might not exist in twelve months? Why hold back on changes to protect stability that's already fragile? Why wait, and wait, and wait—when the thing you're waiting for might not survive long enough for the patience to pay off?

The Season of Suffering

Won't you guide me now? For I can't see
A reason for the suffering and this long misery
— Bad Religion, "Sorrow"

Bad Religion's "Sorrow" is about Job. Ecclesiastes is cosmic. Down here, inside human seasons, it feels different. You ask yourself: is it worth it. Inside the changing seasons, that's hard to see.

My first ninety days have been a season of waiting. Watching and making sure I didn't blow down the house and kill whatever progress this team has made despite its challenges. I'm still a patient boy, I wait I wait I wait I wait, time feels like water down a drain. Time spent not-acting that you never get back, invested in a team that might not exist next quarter.

Job lived that knowledge—a time to be made, a time to be unmade. That knowledge didn't make the suffering less real. Even if everything works out, there will be sorrow. Ecclesiastes says there's a time to break down. If you're Job, you're the one being broken. That tension doesn't resolve. You just keep waiting inside the whirlwind.

Look On My Works, Ye Mighty And Despair

"All is vanity," Ecclesiastes says. Everything passes. Nothing endures.

The corporate transformation initiative that was supposed to "change the culture permanently"—they've terminated the contractors. The enterprise architecture carefully designed to "future-proof the system"—deprecated when the new VP arrived. The team that was "built to last"—disbanded when priorities shifted yet again.

"Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!" Nothing beside remains. Round the decay of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare, the lone and level sands stretch far away.

Things built for permanence crumble. The project becomes two vast and trunkless legs in a desert.

Sometimes things work out differently. The zine that was probably going to last a few issues and has been published for four decades. The volunteer-run venue that was supposed to last a year and hit forty.

You can't predict what will last. The scrappy thing outlives the funded thing. Ozymandias becomes sand.

The difference isn't planning or resources. The things that endured weren't built for permanence. They were built to solve a problem that existed right then. The longevity was incidental.

A Time to Every Purpose

There are two obvious responses to impermanence. The first is grim determination: act anyway, push your changes through, because the work needs doing even if it gets torn down. That's real. It's also what contractors look like from the in-house team's side—they arrive with urgency, make their mark, and are gone before the consequences land.

The second is tragic acceptance: everything is temporary, this too shall pass, find peace in the turning of seasons. That's Ecclesiastes from the cosmic view. It's wise. It's also insufficient when you're inside the whirlwind of seasons, watching people get let go and teams dissolve around you.

What I've actually landed on is subtler than both, and it could be confused for waiting.

The patience isn't passivity. It's a bet that the team's capacity to absorb change matters more than my timeline for delivering it. That showing up predictably is more valuable than showing up brilliantly. That the restraint is the work right now—not a delay before the real work starts.

The care I'm taking matters today, not as an investment that pays off later. For the people who are here now.

Turn, Turn, Turn

Ninety days in, I don't have a transformation story. I have people who are starting to say real things in meetings instead of safe things. I didn't build most of that. It was already happening. What I did was not break it.