Why I am absolutely sure that quitting my job is the best decision

Hi guys, this week I bring you a personal story… It’s not about Agile, Scrum or software development, but it´s about our lives. This week I am starting a completely different chapter in my life.

I quit my job. I´ll join my business partner to create a great company.

Before I continue I wanna thanks to several colleagues for the wonderful time that I spent at HolidayCheck during the last 2 years.

I want to say thanks to Karl, Roland, Mitch, Florian, Till and Bjorn. I wanna say thanks to all Scrum Masters: Paul, Kasia, Piotr, Tomek, Thelan, Jassy, Sven and Dominic. I wanna say to my ex-boss Timo for allowing me to do all the crazy stuff at HolidayCheck. And last but not least thanks to Dirk and Georg.

Especially, I want to thank the whole office in Munich.

Last Friday was my last day and when I arrived to the office I saw dozens of people wearing T-Shirts like the one you saw above. You can see a real example below:

During 15 years of my career I lived and worked in Portugal, Finland, spent several weeks in Slovakia and now I´ve been in Germany for seven years and I never received such a gift as this one, big big big thanks.

So why did I quit?

During all these years I struggled with finding my own place inside of different companies and cultures. For many years I thought the problem was with the companies or cultures, now I realise the problem is with me.

You know, I have this “crazy” idea that companies can actually be built in a way that allows people to pursue “Mastery”, give them a sense of “Purpose”, or allow people to be “Autonomous”. I call this a crazy idea because I did not see much of this in the real world.

Instead, what I see on a daily basis, are companies that call themselves “Agile” because they wanna be cool or attract the best professionals, but in reality, the way how they are managed are far from being “Agile”. 90% of the companies where I worked call themselves Agile but they still have the old command and control mentality.

How can they be truly Agile if management still believes that Agile and Scrum is for the nerds and the management does not need to change because they know very well what they do, after all, they have been doing it all their life. Why should they change it, right? Wrong! Completely wrong!

Agile is much more than a process or a framework! Agile is a symptom of something much bigger that is happening in our society.

A century ago, Henry Ford and Taylor created a huge disruption in our society. I truly believe that another disruption is coming. Agile is just a symptom of something much bigger that is on the way!

I truly believe that companies that are “trying to do Agile” will die pretty soon. This is something that you do not try to do! There is not such thing as that. You must create organisations that ARE Agile, that is the only solution for survival.

So “Why am I absolutely sure that quitting my job is the best decision”?

Simple, I have a vision. I believe that we can create a company that is different from anything else around us. Where all employees are treated as people and not a bunch of idiots that are there just to make money. I believe that we can create something where employees are happy to come to work every morning.

Every week I see funny posts on Facebook, talking about “How Mondays” are the worst days of the week. I want to create a company where people post “How Mondays” are the best days of the week because they are happy to contribute towards the growth of my company.

I am tired of listening:

• “You know Luis, this is Germany and you cannot do this”
• “You know Luis, this is how it works, you will not find any other company that makes things like you want”
• “You know Luis, your ideas are beautiful on paper but in reality, that does not work”
• “You know Luis, you cannot be involved with Product Strategy or Company Strategy because you are just the Agile Coach”

I´m tired of giving advice that is not taken into consideration and six months later being called to fix the problems.

My previous blog: “5 Crazy reasons Why Agile Does Not Work in Germany” was in draft for weeks. I discussed these ideas for months with some of my colleagues, most of them told me that it was me who did not understand the culture at all.

After sharing a taxi with Mary and Tom Poppendieck in Krakow and telling them my ideas I decided to release the blog post. The blog post got more than 25 000 views in 1week. I got dozens and dozens of calls and emails. Some of them congratulating me for my courage, others telling me I am an idiot.

This is funny because I´ve lived here for seven years and I do not understand anything about the culture #irony. Once again they proved how right I was ;)

The reaction to the blog post was another wake up call why I should quit and create a completely different company.

The company that would create a better world!

Some years ago I read the book “Maverick” (if you did not read it buy it NOW) .

The author of this books tells us a story of a woman who went to his factory and asked: “What did you do to my husband? He is so happy every time he comes home. He does not even beat me or the kids anymore”.

You might think this is funny, but in fact it is not!! The guy was able to create a company that changed the life of his employees for the better and this is what I wanna do for my future employees.

I left Portugal more than 10 years ago, I did not leave everything behind to be a simple employee for the rest of my life! I wanna make a difference in this world. I wanna create a company that allows people to find happiness in their daily job.

Why is this blog important for you? Why should you care about this kind of stuff?

The answer is simple, I am sure you are in the same situation (ready to quit) just like me, because you wanna create a better world, so what is preventing you from doing that? Don´t be afraid if you believe you can make a better world. Go for it!

Imagine if everyone in the world who is not happy with the current job would quit and create a fantastic sustainable business. How better would our world be?

If you are not yet ready to start something on your own, but you have the same vision as me, drop me a line and maybe we could collaborate in the future.

If you are an Executive Manager who is struggling in turning the company into a truly Agile company, please contact me. I am sure I can help you to create a fantastic company.

Life is too short to be wasted, act now before you waste most of your life!!!

I really hope that you enjoyed this blog post, and please if you believe that you can create a better world, just do it! Do not wait for any clueless company or manager to tell you what to do!

Do not wait for any clueless company or manager to tell you what to do!

All the best,
Luis

P.S. I wanna make sure that everyone understand that I loved to work in HolidayCheck :) I left because I believe there is more to be done in this world ;) ;)

My name is Luis Gonçalves and I am an Organisational Transformation Coach and I love to write about Agile Retrospectives, Agile Retrospectives Ideas, Scrum, the role Scrum Master, and Agile in general.

I have been creating Scrum Master Training for the agile community. If you are interested in knowing more or even working with me you can find me here: Agile Coach München.